Hermetic Principles
Rhythm
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Origin 1908
Rhythm is the fifth Hermetic Principle of The Kybalion. Its axiom, 'Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides', teaches that between the two poles established by Polarity there is a measured, pendulum-like swing: all things rise and fall, advance and recede, in a compensating rhythm. The Hermetist does not abolish the law but rises above its backward swing through the mental Law of Neutralization, poising the will upon a plane above the point the pendulum reaches, so as not to be carried down when the tide turns.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1908 1Tradition: The Kybalion (New Thought) Place of Origin Attributed Author / CompilerAtkinson's Yogi Publication Society issued the book 1 Attributed Author / CompilerGenerally attributed to William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) 1 Attributed Author / CompilerPublished anonymously in 1908 as 'Three Initiates' 1 Origin of the NameNamed for Hermes Trismegistus; scheme absent from ancient Hermetica 2 Origin of the NameNot in the Corpus Hermeticum or the Asclepius 2 Origin of the NameThe name asserts a descent from antiquity; it does not record one 2 Attestation
Attested MeaningThe Kybalion states its fifth principle as: Everything flows, out and in; everything has its 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. It holds that a swing toward one condition is always compensated by an equal swing toward its opposite. 1 Learn More
The Hermetic Principle of Rhythm
The Principle of Rhythm is the fifth of the seven Hermetic Principles, summed up in the axiom: "Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides." It holds that all things swing between their poles in a measured rhythm, a rise answered by a fall and a fall by a rise.
A modern statement, an old name
These seven principles should be dated with care. They were set out in The Kybalion, published in Chicago in 1908 under the pseudonym "Three Initiates," a work generally attributed to the New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson. Although it invokes the name of Hermes Trismegistus and calls itself a Hermetic teaching, the seven-principle scheme is a product of the early twentieth-century New Thought movement, not of the ancient Hermetic writings such as the Corpus Hermeticum.
The principle is described here as part of that documented modern esoteric tradition, which has been widely influential in later occult and self-help literature.
Rhythm, the Pendulum and the Law of Compensation
Rhythm states that everything swings, and then adds a second claim that is easy to read past: the swing to the right is measured by the swing to the left. The Kybalion calls this the Law of Compensation and treats it as the reason a run of good fortune is paid for later, and the reason a depth of grief is the price of a height of love.
Attached to it is the only genuinely technical instruction among the seven. The book describes a mental art it calls neutralisation, which consists of refusing to be carried by the backswing by holding a position above the plane on which the swing is happening. The practitioner polarises at the desired pole and then declines to move. It is close kin to the detachment taught in Stoic and in Buddhist practice, although the book claims no such ancestry and names no such source.
Where the principle overreaches is in insisting that the compensation is exact. Nothing in the text supports that beyond assertion, and the same claim in a stronger form is what makes popular readings of karma objectionable to their critics, because it implies that suffering has been earned. Read narrowly, as the observation that moods and fortunes oscillate and that the top of a swing is a poor place from which to make decisions, Rhythm is the least contentious of the seven and the easiest to test against a life.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attested In
The Principle of Rhythm is stated and expounded in The Kybalion, published in Chicago in 1908. The seven principles are not found as a numbered set in any earlier text.
Attributed To
Why this is disputed. The Kybalion was published anonymously in 1908 under the byline Three Initiates, presenting itself as a distillation of ancient Hermetic wisdom transmitted outside ordinary authorship. Philip Deslippe's critical edition identifies William Walker Atkinson, the New Thought writer and publisher behind the book's own Yogi Publication Society, as its actual author on stylistic and documentary grounds, the leading scholarly position today. Parts of the New Thought and Hermetic tradition continue to present the principle of Rhythm, that everything flows out and in and has its measured swing, as anonymous or timeless rather than as Atkinson's own early twentieth century formulation.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition
Philip Deslippe (ed.), TarcherPerigee, 2011Authorship (W. W. Atkinson), 1908 Chicago publication, and New Thought origin of the seven-principle scheme; text of the axioms
1. The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition
Philip Deslippe (ed.), TarcherPerigee, 2011Chapter VI, The Seven Hermetic PrinciplesQuote, Chapter VI, The Seven Hermetic Principles
Everything flows, out and in; everything has its 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.
2. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius
Brian P. Copenhaver, Cambridge University Press, 1992The ancient Corpus Hermeticum, distinct from the modern seven-principle schemeView the Source Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Cambridge University Press, 2012The modern construction and reception of a "Hermetic" tradition
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