Hermetic principles & geometry
SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 (updated on March 8, 2024)
Table of contents
I discovered the hermetic principles a few years ago, during a workshop led by Madeleine. Three months before I found myself in the emergency room because of a ruptured aneurysm, to be precise. I took the time I needed to recover from this unexpected, profound and trying experience [1], then I tried to understand it. And against all odds, I ended up studying physics…
The hermetic principles thus remained for a long time sleeping – or perhaps maturing – in my desk drawer. Until their resonance with Nassim Haramein’s Unified Field Theory [2] became clear to me. The more I observed the relationship between these two views of the universe, the more I was amazed at how unified physics confirms the teachings of the Hermetists.
Today, I propose that you set off to discover this remarkable convergence. A journey that will include no less than eight stops! And we start with a dive towards the origins of the hermetic teaching…
The origins
The founding text disseminating the profound wisdom that comes to us from ancient Egypt is called the Kybalion. A book marked with the seal of mystery, just like its title, whose exact meaning has been lost. Published in 1908 by a trio of no less mysterious authors, the “Three Initiates”, it transmits the teachings of the Egyptian God Thoth, whom the Greeks later equated with Hermes.
Hermes trismegistos, in Greek, means “Hermes three times very great”. The word “great” would refer to the extent and quality of his learning, while “thrice” would refer to his triple attribute of priest, philosopher and king. Unless it is related to the three planes of existence – physical, mental and spiritual – taught by the Hermetics. Unless it is something else again…
The Kybalion places the life of Hermes long before that of Moses. A contemporary of Abraham, Hermes is said to have lived for 300 years, before the Egyptians deified him as Thoth at his death. Guardian of time, which he measured and calculated, Thoth was also the master of magic, and more particularly of the art of creating through thought and speech.
Its teachings have spread from Egypt to India. They also crossed the centuries thanks to a small number of Initiates who knew how to preserve their pure and sacred character. The transmission of the teaching has always been done orally and discreetly, to those who were deemed worthy of understanding it, then keeping it secret or transmitting it in their turn. “The lips of wisdom are closed except to the ears of reason” [3] the Kybalion tells us before anything else.
The hermetic teaching
Hermes is considered the founding father of astrology, psychology and alchemy. However, far from having wanted to make a thought that would have dominated the world, he preferred to sow seeds of truth and let them grow freely. This is how the Initiates have transmitted them, always respecting the tradition.
Hermes possessed inner and outer knowledge, knowledge of the visible and the invisible. He also taught the preponderance of mental forces over those of matter. And this is how the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone, which allows the transformation of the vile metal into gold, finally becomes only an allegory of the hermetic philosophy for which “the true transmutation (…) is a mental art”.
Based on 7 principles, the teaching of Hermes offers a path of evolution in accordance with the laws of nature. It focuses on the study, knowledge and control of causes rather than effects. If we know how to understand it and use it correctly, it will make us grow, on all levels.
The 7 hermetic principles are as follows:
« The principles of truth are seven in number; The one who knows and understands them possesses the magic key that will open all the doors of the temple even before he touches them. »
THE KYBALION
Indeed, our perception of the universe changes significantly in the light of these principles. Suddenly, the universe is no longer random and chaotic, but orderly and intelligent.
And this is where the link with the unified field theory becomes interesting to explore.
Geometry and hermetic principles
A small clarification before going any further: times are changing and nowadays, hermetic principles can easily be found in bookstores or on the Internet. I don’t know if the authors of the Kybalion could have foreseen this and, if so, would have wanted to preserve the teaching from being so widely distributed, but the fact remains that the Kybalion does not really offer an immediate understanding of its contents…! This is of course by design: such a small book for such great teachings, what could be more revealing of the hermetic spirit?
So why would I want to reveal more? Precisely because times are changing, and it seems appropriate to me to accompany the emergence of the evolution of consciousness that is presented to us, particularly in connection with the theory of the unified field.
To carry out this exploration, I relied first and foremost on geometry. It is the basis of Nassim Haramein’s theory and has the advantage of offering a first intuitive and accessible approach to the 7 principles. One could say that it makes them visible. They belong to the world of the invisible – the hermetic world ! – although they are at the origin of every manifestation in the physical universe.
The geometrical representation to which I will refer must however remain what it is: a representation. An aid to understanding. Not a direct access to the mystery of creation… it will not let itself be pierced so easily!
The teaching of 2D
My original idea was to present the principles differently, in a non-linear way and without chronology, at least at first. Here’s what it looks like in two dimensions:
First of all, we note that the geometry of the hexagon (left) and that of the six-pointed star (right) each offer seven places for seven principles. This leads to a first question: would the principles have a predefined place or order?
Yes and no.
No, because they act interdependently and simultaneously. We will see that we cannot study one principle independently of another. Everything is linked and it is not the unified field theory – also known as the connected universe theory – that will show the contrary! Symbolically, we can see here that any rotation allowing to replace a vertice by another one will make again – and for both figures – appear the same geometry.
And yes, because mentalism seems to be a key principle to understanding the other six. In both figures, there is one and only one place that is not interchangeable: the center. The center has this particular role of allowing both rotation and symmetry, while remaining unchanged in each of these transformations. This is why I would intuitively choose this place for the principle of mentalism.
Moral: As the 7 principles appear in dependence to underlie the manifestation of phenomena, no notion of order ever has time to exist between them. Nevertheless, there remains a first principle: mentalism. Moreover, it would also seem that presenting the principles in a certain order facilitates our limited human understanding. All the more reason to stick, in the following articles, to the order transmitted by Hermes.
The teaching of 3D
Two-dimensional geometry is fine, but it is not representative of the universe we live in! Let’s go to 3D, where the hexagon becomes a cuboctahedron and the six-pointed star becomes a tetrahedral star:
Obviously, these geometries have not been chosen at random, and if you know this blog well, they should even remind you something… ! I’ll come back to this in a moment, just to clarify that between the 2D and 3D versions, the number of vertices goes from 6 to 12 for the cuboctahedron and from 6 to 8 for the tetrahedral star. This doesn’t really impact the previous 2D considerations, which were only proposed for exploratory purposes. However, the interesting point – since it is not altered by the passage from one dimension to another – is that in 3D, there always remains a center, of rotation and symmetry. We will see why, when the time comes, this point can only be the seat of the principle of mentalism.
In the meantime, followers of this blog, the cuboctahedron and the tetrahedral star should remind you of the feminine and masculine principles. At least as I identified them in the article Feminine, Masculine, connected universe, to interpret the Unified Field Theory differently.
When we speak of feminine and masculine principles, we are speaking of the principle of gender. If it is the seventh and last principle stated by Hermes – I will come back to it in detail in the last article of this series (online soon) – it is, paradoxically, the geometry at the base of Nassim Haramein’s theory. Fortunately, the Hermetists are not far from a paradox! Moreover, for them “all paradoxes can be reconciled”. So, perhaps the first six principles are contained in the seventh AND the last six are contained in the first?
A fourth dimension ?
Let’s go back to physics for a moment. When he published the theory of special relativity in 1905, Einstein linked to the three dimensions of space a fourth dimension, that of time. This gave rise to the concept of space-time, which has been used in relativistic physics ever since.
From the point of view of the Hermetists, time and space are part of the universe, but “behind the universe of time and space there is always the substantial reality, the fundamental truth”. This fundamental truth is what they call the Whole. The Whole is therefore timeless, unlike the universe. One could also say that the Whole is the timeless at the heart of the temporal. For if the principles underlying the appearance of phenomena are expressed only in the space-time sphere, this does not mean that the Whole is excluded from it. Far from it…
I will try to tame the Whole more in the article on the principle of mentalism. Let’s just mention here that this principle is the only major difference between modern science and the hermetic doctrine, according to the Kybalion. One could also see this principle as the link between time and “non-time”, and deduce that time was nevertheless of particular importance to the Hermetists as well.
It is not so. On the other hand, according to them, there is indeed a fourth dimension. But it is not temporal. It is vibratory, as we will see in the article devoted to the principle of vibration.
From dimension to dimension
For Nassim Haramein, the question of time and dimensions is posed in yet another way… !
On the one hand, he explains that “time without memory does not exist” [4]. The notion of memory being predominant in his theory, time does not occupy as fundamental a place as in the standard theory. On the other hand, vibration occupies a special place in the connected universe since, according to the physicist, “there is no geometric structure without vibration”. Another point in common with the Hermetists!
On the other hand, he considers dimensions only as fractal levels. Thus each fractal level generates material manifestations of increasingly larger dimensions (or sizes). These appear thanks to the geometrical dynamics generated by the cuboctahedron and the tetrahedral star, we will come back to this.
To the fractal principle, Nassim Haramein adds a holographic principle. Thus, our universe is constructed and physically unfolds in the illusion of a separation at the heart of which reigns unity. In the same way, in the hermetic teaching, the principles only make sense when there is separation. Separation is, of course, illusory since the Whole reigns supreme.
Thus, we can see the resonances between hermetic philosophy and the unified field theory. And I believe that this basis will allow us to approach the first Hermetic principle, the principle of mentalism.
Notes and references
[1] Read my story to find out more and discover who Madeleine is.
[2] You can read the articles about Nassim Haramein and his theory for a scientific approach, or you can continue reading here to discover the spirit of his work.
[3] Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in italics are from the Kybalion.
[4] For more information, see the article on Irreversibility, Memory and Entropy.
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