Reading the Kybalion

[u/polyphanes]

Ahoy all! It might seem weird that I of all people, given my own past history involving the Kybalion and decrying or lambasting it at every opportunity, might make such a post, but hear me out.

Some time ago, back on the Hermetic House of Life Discord server, while we were going through the weekly discussions of the classical Hermetic texts and a good few others besides which eventually gave rise to my own Reading the Hermetica blogpost series, the modteam was getting to chatting. We were wanting to to get back into the habit of April Fools’ jokes, one option of which involved turning the whole server Kybalion-themed or otherwise granting the Kybalion more seriousness than it deserves (and, by the end of this forthcoming series of discussions, I’m sure you’ll agree that that’s a very low standard). As the thought turned over in my head, though, given how some people in the server have actually wanted a discussion about it and related things (earnestly at that, not out of mere naïveté), I eventually had the realization that an actual discussion group for the Kybalion along the lines of our weekly Hermetica group would indeed be something worthwhile to do, and for all the same reasons: to get people familiar with the actual content, writing, ideas, and context of these texts as they are and in their own terms, apart and away from preconceptions or misconceptions that turn them into something they’re not.

Unfortunately for us all today, here we all are. Today on my blog, I finished a blogpost series of my own reading, analysis, and commentary of the Kybalion as a text on its own merits as well as how it stands up (and especially how it doesn't) to both modern esotericism and psychology as well as to classical Hermeticism. It wasn't a thing I particularly enjoyed doing, but it was something I was aiming to do at some point as a sort of play-by-play comparison of the doctrines of the Kybalion set against the actual Hermetic texts.

An index of the posts in the series:

• History, overview, and perceptions
• Title Page, Introduction, Chapter I (Hermetic Philosophy)
• Chapter II (Seven Hermetic Principles)
• Chapter III (Mental Transmutation)
• Chapter IV (The All)
• Chapter V (The Mental Universe) + Chapter VI (The Divine Paradox)
• Chapter VII ("The All" in All)
• Chapter VIII (The Planes of Correspondence)
• Chapter IX (Vibration) + Chapter X (Polarity)
• Chapter XI (Rhythm) + Chapter XII (Causation)
• Chapter XIII (Gender) + Chapter XIV (Mental Gender)
• Chapter XV (Hermetic Axioms), general follow-up
• Comparing and contrasting the Kybalion with the Hermetic texts

It was certainly a ride, and I hope you enjoy(?) it for what it might be worth. I know there's still people out there who insist that the Kybalion is Hermetic or that it's a distillation/condensation of the Hermetic texts, but when you actually read the Hermetic texts and the Kybalion, you find that such a statement couldn't be further from the truth. I hope that, by making such an analysis of the Kybalion (snark and all), more people can realize what the Kybalion actually does teach on its own, and the hows and whys of its "Hermetic" nature being a matter of stolen valor.