The Seven Hermetic Principles
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KingsOfKings
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Even though op was full of shyt with the majority of his posts. I suggest Franz Brandon
KingsOfKings
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Any book recommendations?
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KingsOfKings
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Props
KingsOfKings
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The corpus is a fire book
KingsOfKings
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Any other gems
KingsOfKings
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KingsOfKings
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Also thoughts on Wayne Chandler?
If we're being honest with ourselves the Kybalion isnt a hermetic text (funny how me and Op would always have this clashes years ago and he would wind up on the short end of the stick). If you want me to be more complicated, the Kybalion's "value" (such as it is) isn't actually found in its seven guiding principles. What the Kybalion gives us is really not much more than New Age drivel that locks us into a particular self-centered worldview that I think is actively harmful to a lot of people. It's in how it develops and unpacks them into something more than a few pithy maxims that look nice on a poster.
Yes, it's true that some of the tenets can be found in the Hermetica to a certain extent. For instance, the Emerald Tablet contains the tenet of correspondence, and the idea that God and Man are similar to one another is a prevalent theme in many ancient philosophies. Even Nick Chapel acknowledges that four of the Kybalion's tenets have some resemblance to the Hermetica in his excellent article The Kybalion's New Clothes: An Early 20th Century Text's Dubious Association with Hermeticism. When this is brought up, people are quick to refer to a specific Hermetica citation and say, "See, the Hermetica supports such-and-such Kybalion principle!"
Overall, the Kybalion can be summed up in Apple's catchphrase, "Think Different." That's really all there is to the Kybalion, which makes sense given that New Thought, the actual philosophy at work in the play, and which had a significant impact on much of the New Age movement up to and through the present day, has that as its main tenet.
The teachings of the Kybalion vary from the blatantly obvious (which is the source of a lot of overlap between Hermeticism and a lot of other traditions, like having to explain that effects come after causes) to the blatantly unhealthy. (like the notion that all of your lived reality is a product of your own thinking, or that one should focus on just being happy at the expense of any grander goal like the causes of happiness itself). The worldview and framework advocated by the Kybalion, especially as a Hermeticist, is so thoroughly solipsistic and (ironically!) materialist, so thoroughly anti-theist that it upsets people much more than if they had never read it at all, but simply began with a copy of Salaman's Way of Hermes. (())
The Kybalion's only real contribution is to provide a window or door through which people can enter esotericism and, ideally, experience a breath of fresh air that will lead to a better life. Others require more, while some people really only require to be instructed to "think differently" before moving on. The Kybalion doesn't really offer much in the way of anything substantial, and what it does offer is better off unlearned completely and replaced with meaningful things instead, despite how much it lauds itself as providing a master-key to all kinds of mysteries.
The Kybalion's only real contribution is to provide a window or door through which people can enter esotericism and, ideally, experience a breath of fresh air that will lead to a better life. Others require more, while some people really only require to be instructed to "think differently" before moving on. The Kybalion doesn't really offer much in the way of anything substantial, and what it does offer is better off unlearned completely and replaced with meaningful things instead, despite how much it lauds itself as providing a master-key to all kinds of mysteries.
Yes, it's true that some of the tenets can be found in the Hermetica to a certain extent. For instance, the Emerald Tablet contains the tenet of correspondence, and the idea that God and Man are similar to one another is a prevalent theme in many ancient philosophies. Even Nick Chapel acknowledges that four of the Kybalion's tenets have some resemblance to the Hermetica in his excellent article The Kybalion's New Clothes: An Early 20th Century Text's Dubious Association with Hermeticism. When this is brought up, people are quick to refer to a specific Hermetica citation and say, "See, the Hermetica supports such-and-such Kybalion principle!"
Overall, the Kybalion can be summed up in Apple's catchphrase, "Think Different." That's really all there is to the Kybalion, which makes sense given that New Thought, the actual philosophy at work in the play, and which had a significant impact on much of the New Age movement up to and through the present day, has that as its main tenet.
The teachings of the Kybalion vary from the blatantly obvious (which is the source of a lot of overlap between Hermeticism and a lot of other traditions, like having to explain that effects come after causes) to the blatantly unhealthy. (like the notion that all of your lived reality is a product of your own thinking, or that one should focus on just being happy at the expense of any grander goal like the causes of happiness itself). The worldview and framework advocated by the Kybalion, especially as a Hermeticist, is so thoroughly solipsistic and (ironically!) materialist, so thoroughly anti-theist that it upsets people much more than if they had never read it at all, but simply began with a copy of Salaman's Way of Hermes. (())
The Kybalion's only real contribution is to provide a window or door through which people can enter esotericism and, ideally, experience a breath of fresh air that will lead to a better life. Others require more, while some people really only require to be instructed to "think differently" before moving on. The Kybalion doesn't really offer much in the way of anything substantial, and what it does offer is better off unlearned completely and replaced with meaningful things instead, despite how much it lauds itself as providing a master-key to all kinds of mysteries.
The Kybalion's only real contribution is to provide a window or door through which people can enter esotericism and, ideally, experience a breath of fresh air that will lead to a better life. Others require more, while some people really only require to be instructed to "think differently" before moving on. The Kybalion doesn't really offer much in the way of anything substantial, and what it does offer is better off unlearned completely and replaced with meaningful things instead, despite how much it lauds itself as providing a master-key to all kinds of mysteries.
The book combines historical fantasy and romance with New Age material. Its description of the "seven Hermetic laws of ancient Egypt" is simply taken from the Kybalion, which is not a Hermetic book despite frequently professing to be one. Instead, it is a book that exemplifies the New Thought movement, a New Age philosophy that emerged in the early 1900s. Please take a look at the following articles/podcasts for more details on the origins and evolution of the Kybalion as well as its relationships to hermeticism (or absence thereof):
The Kybalion with Nicholas Chapel
One of the most popular and purchased Occult Books of the last 100 years, perhaps the most purchased Occult book ever- is The Kybalion. Purported to be the work of the Three Initiates and the transβ¦
whatmagicisthis.com
Is the Kybalion Really Hermetic?
What Chandler does differently in his book is to resituate the Kybalion's material in a real semi-classical setting as opposed to a purely mythical one by incorporating some (emphasis on "some") history and actual Hermetic material with the Kybalion's material. Even though it compares Poimandr's talk to Hermes Trismegistos, it instead uses Manly P. Hall's fantastical reworking of it, which adds a dragon and other elements.
No, it is not a suitable foundation for the study of Hermeticism, to address your query. For that sort of foundation, you'd want to turn to the actual texts themselves. For a fast and inexpensive start, I suggest purchasing these two books first:
Clement Salaman et al., "Way of Hermes" (contains the Corpus Hermeticum and the Definitions)
Clement Salaman, "Asclepius" (contains the Asclepius)
You will be well-positioned to learn about Hermetic philosophy, practices, beliefs, and the like if you purchase these two volumes (both are reasonably priced but high-quality modern translations of three distinct Hermetic works between them).
However, if you can, I'd also recommend getting:
Brian Copenhaver, "Hermetica" (Corpus Hermeticum and Asclepius)
M. David Litwa, "Hermetica II" (Stobaean Fragments and many other smaller texts)
A translation of the Nag Hammadi Codices, either the one edited by Meyer or by Robinson
Hans D. Betz, "The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation"
Marvin Meyer, "Ancient Christian Magic"
If you obtain them all, you will have excellent translations of all currently extant classical Hermetic texts as well as a sizable number of post-classical/medieval ones, along with a wealth of scholarly notes, introductions, and appendices for additional study and reflection.
For scholarly and secondary work, I'd also recommend:
Garth Fowden, "The Egyptian Hermes"
Christian Bull, "The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus"
Kevin van Bladel, "The Arabic Hermes"
Anything by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, but especially "Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination"
KingsOfKings
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It appears to be a collection of extracts from a few Hermetic works (including the Asclepius/Perfect Sermon, the Corpus Hermeticum, and a few Stobaean Fragments) when I flip through a copy of it. It is not a complete translation of these Hermetic works, and what it does contain appears to be primarily dependent on Walter Scott's Hermetica's "translations." (the first three volumes of which are already in the public domain, whose commentary is great but whose "translations" are decidedly not).
Greenlees' book, published in 1949, precedes the publication/translation of the Nag Hammadi Codices, so there's no mention of the Discourse of the Eighth and Ninth, and it also precedes the critical edition of the CH, AH, SH, and other Hermetic fragments put together by A.D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière in the 1960s/1970s (which all subsequent modern translations, like that of Copenhaver or Salaman or Litwa, rely on and which is far more trustworthy than that of Scott). While I am extremely sceptical of its attempts to link the teachings of Hermeticism in a superficial way to Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and other religions, this was a fairly common Theosophical thing to do, and this book is a publication of the Theosophical Society, after all.
The book does, however, offer some really useful comments, summaries, a well-written brief list of technical words used in Hermetic discourse (such as nous, logos, and gnosis), and even a sort of mini-catechism and FAQ of its own to a number of aspects of Hermetic doctrine. I would disagree on a few points here and there, and at times the scholarship and commentary in the book can be a bit dated and stilted towards a Christian or Gnostic viewpoint that more modern scholars and practitioners have generally distanced themselves from, but I think it's actually really neat to read and makes some good points of its own in a fairly accessible way.
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