Ancient Hermetic Wisdom

New age wisdom turns out to be rather ancient. This should not surprise people.

The eternal teaching is found in India and China, but in the West all roads to knowledge lead us to or through Egypt.

Hermes Trismegistus was the the source of what we now call Hermeticism. It was rediscovery of his teaching in the Hermetica that was the birth of what we now call the Renaissance. We may think of ourselves as moderns, and that we are distant from our past. However, the evidence of of the past is all around us. Many of the ideas that people today traffic in and believe have their origin in this rediscovery of the ancient world in 15th and 16th centuries.

The Seven Basic Principals of Hermetic knowledge, according to modern thinkers, are these:

1. The ALL is mind; the Universe is mental

2. As above, so below; as below so above

3. Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates

4. 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.

5. Everything flows, out and in; everything has 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.

6. 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.

7. Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; Gender manifests on all Planes.

These principles are the basis not only of our inherited systems of belief. We find them in traditions, and also in modern systemic thinking. We also find them around the planet and not just in the west, and one might even think of them as primary laws that are expressed as characteristics in the phenomena we observe, as well as the the basic epistemological categories in which we think about the world and nature. Each is worthy of thought and study.

Source; Kybalion. 1908

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