I was looking for a module that would help me embody and believe in the 7 hermetic principles that are in the Kybalion. A light module that I could use in a wealth & status custom with Mogul/Ascension or whatever cores.
Avatar module looks great from its description, however it doesn’t look like something that could easily fit in a wealth custom. It seems deeply spiritual so maybe better suited in a healing or spiritual custom with QL or Alchemist or even DR. Or maybe I am just splitting hairs.
So something that will attune you to natural and cosmic principles but without catalyzing a full-fledged rebirth and lifestyle transformation process.
There are a number of strategies that come to mind:
Intuition facilitating modules: Wayfinder, in particular.
Modules like The Flow and/or Blue Skies (as @Hermit has pointed out Love, in its profound sense, is at the root of all phenomena and principles)
Awakened Perception, to allow your awareness and higher faculties to align with right principles naturally
Energy work modules: The Architect, Energetic Development XI, or Metamorphosis.
If you allow awareness to sink and become calm you will naturally discover and align with natural principles and rhythms. Doesn’t always have to be a big to-do. Although eventually any path you follow is going to involve times of big to-do.
Thanks @Malkuth. I think I will have to consider to build a dedicated healing & spiritual custom.
At some point, it occurred to me that the word ‘spiritual’ did not actually mean anything to me.
In the years since, I haven’t actually found a truly satisfying alternative. These days I tend to use the term ‘experiential ontology’, but only with my self. hahaha.
Anyway, my point is that it may be worthwhile and may enhance your process (and ultimate result) to ask: What exactly do I mean by ‘spirituality’? What am I actually wanting to do?
Could lend some useful clarity.
Here’s one way of talking about it.
contemporary, modernist, materialist (not materialistic) paradigms, are sometimes represented with this symbol:
It represents an unrelenting push towards advancement and improvement. Continually moving upwards and forwards from the conditions of the past and present (these are generally assumed to be obsolete or in the process of becoming obsolete).
In contrast, some traditional paradigms are better represented like this:
The cosmos is understood as an integrated, coherent, unified system. Of course, new and unexpected things can happen, but they are understood as the outgrowths of underlying principles that are stable, consistent, and that contribute to a coherent and integrated overall picture of things. Hence the circle.
Both paradigms have their particular strengths and weaknesses. The former (arrow) paradigm tends to be better, for example, at producing a vaccine.
The latter (circle) paradigm tends to be better at providing a sense of meaning and groundedness.
These are not the only two types of paradigms. And there can be blended paradigms as well.
But when you ask what is the big deal of the Kybalion. This is one possible response.
The Kybalion offers a cosmology–a worldview–that empowers a person to approach the diverse phenomena and conditions of life with a sense of internal integration and groundedness. It communicates integrative, unifying principles that have the potential to reframe and recontextualize how a person relates to experiences and circumstances.
It functions as a kind of ontological gyroscope, or a stable set of principles about existence that can keep one centered and well-oriented throughout the continuous flow of changing conditions.
Imagine being dropped into a maze. You are told that if you walk far enough in any cardinal direction (North, South, East, West) you will reach an exit. But you are also told that you are somewhere in the maze’s center, and that the distance to each edge is about 10 miles from the center. To make matters worse, the walls are periodically shifting, so you can’t use the old trick of just putting your hand on one wall and moving forward in one direction.
Now imagine what a game changer it would be, in that situation, to receive the gift of a functional compass. Now you have a reliable indication of North, South, East, and West that remains the same no matter the changes of your external conditions. Even if you are hungry and tired, your level of terror and frustration can decrease dramatically. Whereas before the compass, you could have wandered endlessly in that maze, with the compass, you’re basically about 90 minutes to 3 hours from an exit at any given time. (Depending on the direction that you choose.)
That’s just a little metaphor to convey the value of a solid, high-quality cosmological paradigm.
I’m choosing, for the sake of my own intellectual comfort, to describe it from an external, ‘objective’ point of view. Other benefits are associated with really jumping into and immersing yourself in a unifying paradigm. Having a personal relationship to a sense of meaning in life comes with a whole lot of benefits as well.
Personally, I want to be able to have a fluid relationship to paradigms and want to be able to move between different ones to some extent. But everyone may have her own preferences.
Anyway, paradigms like the one represented in the Kybalion can be incredibly empowering and can provide a clear avenue between the intentionality of an individual human will and the larger surrounding Universe of changing conditions.
It provides an unassailably stable perspective and even method for connecting where you are now (somewhere in the maze) with where you would like your life to be (finding the entrances, exits, and important landmarks of the maze).
@Malkuth I’d be curious to read about your spiritual journey and how you came to be the person today who is able to provide interesting explanations like this.
I acknowledge that the term “spiritual” is overloaded yet has a meaning that we roughly get.
Yes, I’m okay with using the word ‘spiritual’. It’s a kind of placeholder for a whole bunch of different things. I haven’t found a more satisfying word yet. So, I still just use ‘spiritual’ half the time.
I was born into a herd of Christians. Seventh-Day Adventists. So, no pork, no Saturday morning cartoons. No TV from Friday Sunset to Saturday Sunset.
That was childhood. One good part about that was experiencing the power of ritual and the weight of collective belief. As many know, collective, consensual reality really does impact all of the constructs (time, space, etc.)
Had lots of questions. Dad was a lover of thinking and debate. So, the intellect still got some food , thank goodness.
Believed it all/when I was small
Thought ‘if this is true, I want to meet the angels and the prophets. I mean if they 're right about this stuff, then what else matters?’ Yes, that kind of kid.
Found an American ‘Eastern spirituality’ book when I was a kid of about 10(?) maybe 12. By Richard HIttleman. He taught yoga exercises, including what I now know is sometimes called Kasina meditation (one version of which involves staring at a candle flame). Thought, ‘this seems to be the way to actually verify what they (religion) are talking about’. Tried asanas and meditations over and over again. Was not a natural as far as skill; but was a natural in terms of motivation.
Teenage years - questioned more and more. Kept meditating haphazardly. was behaviorally obedient, but intellectually kind of an a**hole. Challenged more and more as time passed. Didn’t like the supposed answers.
Lots of poetry. Drawn to Daoist philosophy and symbols.
Goal in life at 16: to be a prophet and holistic healer.
College - tried and failed to (intellectually) locate the definitive historical Jesus. Finally deconstructed/gave up on religion of childhood. But then had an intense OBE and thought, ‘uh…was that god?’ Jury was out (and hasn’t really returned to date).
over the years, meditated, learned qigong and taijiquan and other practices, studied and practiced Buddhism/Daoism/miscellaneous. Fetishized and idealized so-called enlightenment.
At the same time, continually investigated bodymind and implications of consciousness. Gregory Bateson made a big difference. Secular models of spirituality.
Dropped it all for a while. “Am I just using so-called spiritual practices as an escape from my repressed emotional/psychological pain?” “Maybe all of my narratives and thinking are just lying bullshit” And moved through various other orientations (that were all still basically spiritual, though I didn’t quite recognize that).
Series of awakenings and anti-awakenings in the mid- to late-90s. Hormone- and developmental stage-related?
either way, took some of the piss out of me. thank goodness.
noticed that: “hey, that’s interesting! I don’t actually know anything.”
rediscovered zen/chan.
so-called enlightenment, recontextualized. Not fun shit. Also, not terrible shit. It is what it is. Relax and practice (if you want to).
Enlightenment reveals everyone’s value, not just mine. Also, reveals that you were actually already fine where you were, pre-enlightenment. The only difference is, now you know it.
practiced. didn’t practice.
married, children were born. More piss taken out of me. as a result, humanity now .0000000000000067% improved.
Take the Path Seriously. Do Not Take Myself Seriously.
學海. Ocean of learning: It’s pretty Big.
what else?
somewhere in the early 00s, mind blown by the ontological implications of empathy and empathic imagination. Each person’s experience, a Cosmos. Can only encounter this vastness to the degree that you get over self a little bit. (Still working on that).
Bunch of other stuff.
late 00’s. encounter Daniel Ingram and Kenneth Folk’s pragmatic Dharma movement. early 00s: Encounter Shinzen Young’s crystal clear Vipassana and Meditation explanations. Ken Wilber also in there somewhere. Appreciate and study all of them. Follow none of them. Not because they’re not awesome, but just because mind and path go where they will.
human beings are higher primates
need, collectively, to fucking relax
but…probably not going to
what else?
Continually encounter more and more amazing ideas, perspectives, practices, and people. Magick. Jung. Subliminals. and more.
and so on, and so on, and so on.
which brings me to today…
Sitting at this white table typing on this grey keyboard. Looking outside at grey sky.
Planet flying fast (67000 mph). Feels like it’s standing still. Is because we’re dumb. And luckily dumb, since much more reality than that is kind of overwhelming, for the most part.
108 billion homo sapiens sapiens born so far in history of species. ~7.3 billion alive now.
still, experienced deaths of too many loved ones in past years. Don’t like it. Not looking forward to own. Is coming anyway. (spoiler alert).
Life: fucking excellent. Value while have it.
Grateful.
Learning.
journey continues…
(oh, and, somewhere in there, read the Kybalion)
I just finished The Kybalion. That was a great read. Thanks for the recommendation! I already find myself reading posts and analyzing them under the lens of the principles.
Biggest takeaway?
I am still processing it and it will likely take a while until I fully understand it (if so).
Thanks all for chiming in.
I must confess in my original post I was asking for universal answers applicable to all spiritual path, but I was secretly looking for something that would work for applying the Hermetics teachings of Kybalion.
I have finished reading the Kybalion. It was a good read, sometimes a little dense, I dont believe everything in it but it is a good framework I think. The first chapters give a description of life and the world. The world description makes senses with the different laws but you can’t really do much with this knowledge IMO.
The last two chapters have the most “actionable” directions towards dominion over oneself and others. And this is for this part that a sub would be useful.
I really think Ascension is the sub that would help me faster and more directly. Anything else is adding bells and whistles towards nice goals that are extra to the pure alignment of oneself toward the 7 principles. Even on the Emperor sales page, the Ascension module description highlights how central it is towards self mastery.
Reading Kybalion with Ascension is IMO the most direct route towards pure personal power towards oneself and others. In addition it helps you towards your goals (broadly) and doesn’t lead you excessively to extra goals such as women or riches. Just dominion over oneself and I think this is what Kybalion is about.
Not sure if I would do a custom but if I do one it would have Ascension as a core plus the following modules:
Will give it a try next week 
Cheers everyone.
You’ve come to a similar conclusion as I did about Ascension being a good pair to the Kyballion
Especially in relation to dominion over not just yourself but also the ability to walk away from toxic people and situations. Ascension is heavily undervalued
Yeah my next custom will be Ascension based
Not 100% sure about the others part but if someone had issues focusing on their goals and are constantly getting distracted by loud unnecessary melodramatic shit around them it’s likely Ascension would fix that
Ascension is no Joke; it just seems “weak” on a superficial level when the store has titles such as Khan and Emperor. Nor is Primal.
You might want to look at:
Tyrant
Current Invoker
That’s some mental Alchemy right there.
I always thought ascension was the basic in many of these titles?
Khan and emperor having lots of that script so there is no point in stacking that?
It is, but the foundation it makes is nothing to joke about. Of course, one should evolve to Khan and Emperor at some point. You know, kinda like getting an undergrad then grad and post grad degrees. But it is a powerful title nonetheless, goes horn to horn with any Alpha titles on the market
@James the Kybalion and Goddard come from the New Thought movement. You can see a brief example of one persons summary of the speculation around authorship here. It was published in 1908. The period from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s within which the so called occult revival occurred was a turbulent, formative period in which old ideas rehashed over and over again became the cornerstone of “new” old movements. I did a personal study of this field myself back in the late 1990s/early 2000s because I’m interested in the history of the so called “New Age” movement and how or where it evolved its ideas from.
The period leading up to the publishing of this book (just a few years after Crowley had penned Liber AL) was a veritable clusterfuck of armchair philosophers, underscored by a number of particularly loud voices including:
It was during this period where self important doddering masonic enthusiasts liked to discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the religions of many nations (this was also the Masonic revival where huge encyclopedias of Masonry and its many fragmented degrees were published) that the Kybalion was born. Some of the battles between the HB of L and the Theosophical Society were legendary; theosophists would slander the HB of L in their newsletters and periodicals, and the HB of L would do the same in turn in their own way.
When you look at the Kybalion, it is essentially somebody’s attempt to build a crash course in theosophical thought: principles taken from the Corpus Hermetica and turned into popular language, combined with things such as the principle of karma culled from Indian philosophy, all packed into a slick presentation and presented as hoary old ideas by “Three Initiates”.
Now that’s not to say the principles it presents don’t have some merit, but its important to understand the context within which it was birthed. Magic and occultism and phantastical secrets and exotic travel destinations like India were all the rage, and the way it was packaged was to try to support this “hoary old philosophy” using the ideas of their time, much like AMORC and other fraternal organizations rework their mandamus’s periodically to keep the ideas current.
In my opinion, its prudent to study the original sources from which the so called “New Thought” movement originated from. In simplifying the ideas for transmission in writings like the Kybalion, often the finer points are lost. The truth of some of the principles such as the principles of correspondence, vibration etc is in fact mathematical and their application is simpler if seen visually in this way.
That whole post has the ring of accuracy about it. Thanks. Can’t always check everything myself.
(Keeping in mind, of course, that wisdom can, nevertheless, be found in all kinds of places.)
So, the Kybalion is not an old book like the Bible or Tao de Ching?
That period of time you mentioned also saw books like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich as well as Charles Hannel’s Master Key System come about .
Do you also happen to know if Mitch Horowitz ever covered the Kybalion in his book, Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation ?
