Callie Reads... The Kybalion 🤮: 3, Chapter Two
2024 October 23Fuck William Walker Atkinson keeps writing
1. The Principle of Mentalism. 2. The Principle of Correspondence. 3. The Principle of Vibration. 4. The Principle of Polarity. 5. The Principle of Rhythm. 6. The Principle of Cause and Effect. 7. The Principle of Gender.
These Seven Principles will be discussed and explained as we proceed with these lessons. A short explanation of each, however, may as well be given at this point.
This is, however, more than just a really vague restatement, though it certainly is that. The terms are themselves carefully chosen to be vague, to avoid any commitment to a religion, despite this being a fundamental restatement of Christianity's position -- some forms of Platonism as well, but "God made the universe" is, you know not exactly setting the world on fire.
But it's couched in such a way as to sound scientific, because remember we're kind of still riding the tail end of Mentalism, so "Mind" instead of "God" sounds good. It doesn't mean anything significantly different than you'd find in, say, Spinoza, and in fact isn't nearly as carefully put-together as Spinoza's non-existent, non-non-existent pantheistic god.
Never trust anyone who puts things in quotation marks without citing where they're coming from.
"As above, so below; as below, so above."--The Kybalion.
This Principle embodies the truth that there is always a Correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of Being and Life. The old Hermetic axiom ran in these words: "As above, so below; as below, so above."
Also, that's not from the fucking book that doesn't exist; it's from an actual document.
So this is working to claim that the Emerald Tablet was actually quoting from "The Kybalion," a book that doesn't exist. Appeal to authority, as well as poor argumentation and bland restatement.
This Principle embodies the truth that "everything is in motion"; "everything vibrates"; "nothing is at rest"; facts which Modern Science endorses, and which each new scientific discovery tends to verify.
Also, there's a false equivalencey: motion doesn't mean "vibration." This is probably also cribbed from Blavatsky and Leadbeater, and it's one of the more pernicious things this book introduced to occultism, because it provides a "scientific" means of arguing some people just "aren't on my level." If the vibes aren't right, skip out.
If you've ever felt a surge of annoyance at anyone saying, wearing, or putting up a sign that read "good vibes only," this is basically the source of the bullshit.
So ok. This is an attempt to describe what we'd now describe as states of matter, right? If it moves fast, it's a gas. If it moves slow, it's a solid. Except "grossest matter" is at the bottom and spirit is at the top.
Aside from perpetuating the Great Chain of Being in an extremely stupid way, it also nullifies the chain part. Nothing is connected to anything else. Everything is just a wheel, spinning at a particular speed and better if it's fast.
Also, you can't tell the difference between fast and slow. So what's the fucking point then?
"Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled."--The Kybalion.
Second, this mixes a bunch of nonsense, some cliches of the English language, and bullshit racist philosophy to try to prove the false dichotomy.
It's literally saying "everyone says X so X must be true." History would indicate you're wrong there, buddy.
So this is also a kind of straw man argument, inventing an idea to prove wrong in order to prove his own idea right by juxtaposition.
And you'll note it doesn't prove this point anyway. He lists a bunch of "opposites" that all work this way, and then gestures triumphantly as though he's proven anything other than language doesn't emerge from reality but from the phenomenal existence of humans communicating.
But there's actually something really important here. I've seen interminal arguments about whether the Kybalion is hermetic or not. It's clearly not, here, because to the Hermetic tradition, Good is, and Evil is simply the privation of Good. You can't say they're "the same thing" and be Hermetic.
"Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates."--The Kybalion.
This Principle embodies the truth that in everything there is manifested a measured motion, to and fro; a flow and inflow; a swing backward and forward; a pendulum-like movement; a tide-like ebb and flow; a high-tide and low-tide; between the two poles which exist in accordance with the Principle of Polarity described a moment ago.
This is also a great demonstration of his awful writing, where he just thesaurus surfs his way to a long sentence so it seems like he made a point but in fact said nothing.
He's defined "movement" as "vibration," or more strictly speaking he's defined "vibration" as "movement."
Sorry, ok, so this is set theory, right? He's taking advantage of this to make his terms appear to apply where they don't.
So he's claimed all things vibrate. And then he conflated vibration and motion, even though the word "motion" can mean movement that's not vibration.
But relying on some stuff from science, he can get away with saying everything vibrates.
Now he can say, since he's conflated the terms, that "everything moves."
He also set up the polarity thing already. So now he's got a model where everything moves and everything has a dichotomy. So this is just a restatement of those two: if everything moves and everything has two states (that are secretly a third thing), then by necessity they're going to move between those states.
This principle is padding. He wanted seven.
HOW?
He (it's a he, it always is with WWA) "polarizes himself at the point at which he desires to rest." This is taking language from magnetics, another thing still big at this time in occult circles, usually alongside mesmerism and mentalism. A magnet is polarized, and a piece of metal can be made polarized.
But all that means is that it has two poles. So he's saying the Master proofs himself against moving on the poles by... setting himself up to have poles. Which according to previous sections, he already had, naturally.
"Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law."--The Kybalion.
It's also of course insulting that he implies things like your fucking genetics are also something you can just decide to deal with by "becom[ing] Causers instead of Effects." Fuck off, WWA. Fucking Waluigi wannabe.
"Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; Gender manifests on all planes."--The Kybalion.
This is also just a bad version of Jung's idea of the anima and animus, though I realize WWA did this before Jung first published on those ideas. Given the Golden Dawn's idea of godforms, Crowley's genderbending, and even the much older gender fluidity in Christian mysticism (hilariously wrought from its own bad gender take -- we're all marrying Christ and Christ could never be the woman in a relationship, so we must be), this isn't really all that new or shocking.
Since things are propagated, that proves the method is universal.
Think of it like those old exercises in logical deduction you used to have to do. The distributed middle is broken.
Humans propagate via sexual reproduction
All things propagate
Therefore all things have sexual characteristics
Do all things propagate? And what does "propagate" mean? These terms aren't correctly distributed.
Also if you're mad I'm conflating sex and gender, don't be -- that's what WWA is doing.