How to interpret the 7 hermetic principles in the light of science
Relating the seven hermetic principles to the newest discoveries in physics
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I recently read an article talking about how the seven hermetic principles could be related to the recent (and some not so recent) discoveries of science about our world. I completely agreed with some of them, but a few of them were not very clear, or there were better relationships. So, I decided to write my own interpretation on the subject.
First, for those who have never heard of the subject before, a brief introduction. Hermes Trismegistus, is a mythical figure (probably representing a group and not a person) who lived in the Ninus region, in ancient Egypt between 2,500 BC and 1,500 BC (we do not know the exact date).
Some people confuse him with gods, others know him by his most famous name: Toth. He was a legislator and a philosopher. In his life he wrote about 36 books (most of which were lost to us) that became the primary source of what was conventionally called hermeticism.
This philosophy (explained in detail in the book The Kybalion), basically rests on 7 basic principles, detailed below:
1st Principle: THE ALL is MIND; the Universe is Mental.
The first principle is perhaps the most distant from current science. This is because your own demonstration refers to the beginning of everything. He tries to explain how a substance cannot generate itself.
“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”
Carl Sagan
In short, for something to arise without depending on something else that already exists, that something has to be a mental creation. Although our current science flirts with the need for a conscience for a physical effect to occur, we have no scientific theory (yet) putting thoughts as the basic substance of the universe.
2nd Principle: What is above is like what is below, and what is below is like what is above.
Unlike other ancient philosophical currents that believed in an Ether that would permeate the entire universe, almost 5,000 years ago, without any modern scientific apparatus or telescope, Hermes already told us that the planets and stars in the sky are made of exactly the same substances than our body. We are star dust.
Also, he also told us that everything that exists in the infinite universe is governed by the very same laws of physics that we feel and measure here on Earth.
3rd Principle: Nothing is stopped; everything moves; everything vibrates.
When Hermes came up with this principle, the most you could see in the atomic world was what you could see with your naked eyes. Democritus even speaks of indivisible atoms (he had this idea observing dust floating through the rays of the sun), but modern particle physics would not emerge until the middle of the 19th century.
Today we know that when a body is at rest, its constituent particles never stop moving. Furthermore, we were able to divide atoms (which were supposed to be indivisible) into even smaller particles called Quarks.
We have theories that say that if we continue to divide the particles further, we will arrive at the very tiny constituent elements of matter, the strings. So since each position of the violinist’s finger corresponds to a different musical note, each different vibration on these primordial strings would give rise to a different particle. At its core, the universe is music.
4th Principle: Everything is Double; everything has poles; everything has its opposite;
Matter and anti-matter. Positive charges and negative charges. Attraction and repulsion. Heat and cold. Although the principle is greater than what is written here (and more metaphysical as well) Hermes showed us that everything in life has two sides.
Does the cold really exist or is it just the absence of heat? Each constitutive part of the universe contains a kind of scale where on one side we have an extreme and on the other side its opposite. Defining where one begins and the other ends is not always simple.
Thinking about it, how is your concept of good and evil? Does evil really exist or is it just the absence of good?
5th Principle: Everything has ebb and flow; everything has its tides;
The rhythm principle tells us that everything that exists has phases. Things come and go. The tides rise and fall. The seasons follow one another and return to their origin. Everything occurs in an infinite cycle of repetitions.
Here we speak of the movement of the planets around the sun, the movement of the sun itself around the center of the galaxy. Atomic Spin. From the seed that gives rise to the tree, that gives rise to the seed. Egg and chicken.
6th Principle: Every Cause has its Effect, every Effect has its Cause;
“I am, in all cases, convinced that He does not throw dice”
Albert Einstein
Today it seems very basic and common knowledge. But remember that Hermes lived in a time when few causes were known. At that time, to risk saying that something could never just appear or happen out of nowhere, as if by magic, it was still revolutionary.
The complete principle still says: everything happens according to the Law; Chance is simply a name given to an unrecognized Law; there are many plans of causality, but nothing escapes the law. Do you want anything more scientific than that?
7th Principle: Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine principle and its feminine principle;
It seems easy to associate this with the biological gender of animals. But let us remember that Hermeticism is based on occult philosophy. So we can assume that Hermes is referring more to the active (male) and passive (female) principles of the universe.
I believe that the best interpretation is associated with Newton’s first law. A body will remain at rest or in uniform motion (passive) unless its state is altered by an external force (active). The universe tends to save and will keep things as they are (passive) unless something actively acts to change them.
The final question is how is it possible for a philosopher from ancient Egypt to know so much about our modern science. Had he discovered all this just by contemplating the mysterious and dark corners of his own mind? Or did he have tools that we don’t have, or that we lost over the course of history?
These questions should be considered with care by any hermetic student. Was Hermes really some god who came to this world to enlighten us? Or simply someone very lucky who stumbled upon some intriguing questions and was extremely enlightened to find answers to them?
The answers, my friends, only you can find.
