Mystical systems
Seven Hermetic Principles
Direct answer
Seven Hermetic Principles: The seven Hermetic principles are the teachings set out in The Kybalion (1908): Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender.
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At a glance
- Also called
- 7 hermetic principles, seven hermetic laws, seven principles of the kybalion, hermetic principles explained
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- The Kybalion, As Above, So Below, New Thought, Principle of Mentalism
The seven Hermetic principles are the teachings set out in The Kybalion (1908): Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender.
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What are the seven Hermetic principles?
The seven Hermetic principles are a list of general statements about how the universe works, presented in The Kybalion as the core of Hermetic philosophy. Mentalism says the universe is mental. Correspondence says patterns repeat between levels of being. Vibration says everything is in motion. Polarity says opposites are two ends of one thing. Rhythm says everything swings. Cause and Effect says nothing happens by chance. Gender says a masculine and a feminine aspect are present in everything.
The book treats them as keys to self-mastery: a person who grasps them is meant to manage moods and thoughts instead of being carried by them. The list is modern. Only Correspondence has a clear root in an older Hermetic source, the Emerald Tablet.
On the tree of the hidden arts: The Hermetic principles.
What sets Seven Hermetic Principles apart
What marks this list is its packaging. Each principle is given a name, a one-line axiom in quotation marks and a chapter of explanation, a format that made the seven easy to memorise and repeat. The axioms are presented as quotations from an older work also called the Kybalion, of which no copy is known. The number seven and the claim of antiquity are part of the presentation; the content is the self-culture of its own decade.
- Source: The Kybalion, Yogi Publication Society, Chicago, 1908
- Order: Mentalism stands first and Gender last; Correspondence is second
- Signed: Three Initiates; usually attributed to William Walker Atkinson
- Older root: only Correspondence, from the Emerald Tablet
- Annotated edition: edited by Philip Deslippe, 2011
Often mistaken for something else: The universal laws listed in later self-help books vary in number and wording; the Hermetic seven are fixed by one text of 1908.
The story behind Seven Hermetic Principles
The principles were first published in The Kybalion, issued in Chicago in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society under the name Three Initiates, a work most researchers attribute to William Walker Atkinson. Their language of mental science and vibration is that of the New Thought movement. Philip Deslippe's annotated edition of 2011 set out the case for Atkinson's authorship and the book's sources.
Why Seven Hermetic Principles matters
They are what most people today mean by Hermetic teaching, so knowing their real date keeps a reader from taking a 1908 book for an ancient one.
How to read Seven Hermetic Principles
Readers work through them as a set of lenses, taking one principle at a time and asking what it would notice in a present difficulty.
Seven Hermetic Principles in practice: an example
Someone reading a social media post about seven universal laws can check it against the 1908 book and find the same list, in the same order.
Where readings of Seven Hermetic Principles go wrong
They are a philosophy of life from 1908, and their terms do not carry the meaning the same words have in physics.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- 7 hermetic principles, seven hermetic laws, seven principles of the kybalion, hermetic principles explained
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What are the seven Hermetic principles?
Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender. They are stated and explained in The Kybalion, published in 1908.
Are the seven Hermetic principles ancient?
No. They appear for the first time in The Kybalion in 1908. The ancient Hermetic treatises contain no such list, though the idea of correspondence echoes the Emerald Tablet.
Who wrote the seven Hermetic principles?
The book is signed Three Initiates. Most researchers attribute it to the American New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson, who ran the press that published it, though no signed record settles the matter.
