Hermetic Principles
Mentalism
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Origin 1908
Mentalism is the first of the seven Hermetic Principles set out in The Kybalion (1908), the anonymous distillation of Hermetic teaching attributed to the Three Initiates and, through them, to Hermes Trismegistus. Its axiom, 'THE ALL is Mind; the Universe is Mental', teaches that the whole cosmos is a mental creation held within the Mind of THE ALL, the one living Reality behind every appearance. Because all things exist within that infinite Mind, the mental nature of the universe becomes the master key by which the remaining principles are grasped, and it is the ground of mental transmutation: the changing of one's own states and conditions by working upon mind rather than upon matter.
Facts
Debunked
Origin of the NameNamed for Hermes Trismegistus; scheme absent from ancient Hermetica 2 Brian P. Copenhaver's Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius, Cambridge University Press, 1992, is a critical translation of the actual surviving ancient Hermetic texts, against which the Kybalion's claimed seven Hermetic Principles, Mentalism among them, can be directly checked. Copenhaver's edition establishes exactly what the ancient Greek Corpus Hermeticum and Latin Asclepius contain, and the seven-principle scheme, first published as the Kybalion in 1908, appears in neither. That direct textual comparison is the method and the finding together: a work presenting itself as ancient wisdom descending from Hermes Trismegistus does not appear in the ancient corpus it claims to descend from, which is why the atlas treats the descent claim as false while still recording the principle as a real feature of the modern text. Origin of the NameNot in the Corpus Hermeticum or the Asclepius 2 Brian P. Copenhaver's Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius, Cambridge University Press, 1992, is a critical translation of the actual surviving ancient Hermetic texts, against which the Kybalion's claimed seven Hermetic Principles, Mentalism among them, can be directly checked. Copenhaver's edition establishes exactly what the ancient Greek Corpus Hermeticum and Latin Asclepius contain, and the seven-principle scheme, first published as the Kybalion in 1908, appears in neither. That direct textual comparison is the method and the finding together: a work presenting itself as ancient wisdom descending from Hermes Trismegistus does not appear in the ancient corpus it claims to descend from, which is why the atlas treats the descent claim as false while still recording the principle as a real feature of the modern text. Origin of the NameThe name asserts a descent from antiquity; it does not record one 2 Brian P. Copenhaver's Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius, Cambridge University Press, 1992, is a critical translation of the actual surviving ancient Hermetic texts, against which the Kybalion's claimed seven Hermetic Principles, Mentalism among them, can be directly checked. Copenhaver's edition establishes exactly what the ancient Greek Corpus Hermeticum and Latin Asclepius contain, and the seven-principle scheme, first published as the Kybalion in 1908, appears in neither. That direct textual comparison is the method and the finding together: a work presenting itself as ancient wisdom descending from Hermes Trismegistus does not appear in the ancient corpus it claims to descend from, which is why the atlas treats the descent claim as false while still recording the principle as a real feature of the modern text. 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 Attestation
Attested MeaningThe Kybalion states its first principle as: THE ALL IS MIND; The Universe is Mental. Everything that exists, matter, energy and Spirit alike, is held to be a mental creation within the Mind of THE ALL, the infinite living Mind the text posits as the ultimate reality behind appearances. 1 Learn More
The Hermetic Principle of Mentalism
The Principle of Mentalism is the first of the seven Hermetic Principles, summed up in the axiom: "The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental." It holds that the whole of reality is, at root, mental, an idea in the mind of an underlying All.
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.
Mentalism and the Book That Carries It
The Principle of Mentalism does not come from ancient Egypt, although The Kybalion presents itself as though it does. The book appeared in Chicago in 1908 from the Yogi Publication Society, credited only to Three Initiates. Philip Deslippe's critical edition sets out the case that the author was William Walker Atkinson, a lawyer turned New Thought publisher who wrote under a long shelf of pen names and whose earlier books argue the same positions in the same voice. Other candidates have been proposed, Paul Foster Case and Michael Whitty among them, but no rival attribution carries comparable evidence.
That history matters most for this principle, because Mentalism is the one that reads least like Hellenistic Hermetism and most like the American New Thought movement the book grew out of. The surviving Greek Hermetica, the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius, do set mind above the cosmos, and a reader of Copenhaver's translation will find nous in something like that position. What they do not contain is the practical turn Mentalism takes: the claim that because the universe is mental, a disciplined mind can act on it directly.
The atlas records the principle as it is stated and used, and separately records where it came from, because those are two different questions. Reading Mentalism as an ancient doctrine gets the history wrong. Reading it as a self-help slogan and nothing more gets its ambition wrong.
Sources The Kybalion: The Definitive EditionPhilip Deslippe (ed.) with Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin AsclepiusBrian P. Copenhaver
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attested In
The Principle of Mentalism 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 Mentalism, that the cosmos is mental, held within a universal mind, 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 II, The Seven Hermetic PrinciplesQuote, Chapter II, The Seven Hermetic Principles
THE ALL IS MIND; The Universe is Mental.
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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