Still from The Kybalion film (2022), shot on location in Egypt.

The Kybalion and the Importance of Religious Novelty

The early 20th century occult classic is neither “real” nor “fake” Hermeticism. That framing misinterprets how ideas endure.

This article is adapted from a talk I delivered at Masonic Con at the South Pasadena Masonic Lodge on July 23, 2022.

“Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)

Freemasonry produces an extraordinary crop of scholars and historians of esotericism from within its own ranks. Based on everything I have seen traveling the country these past several years, lockdown permitting, I would say that probably no other private or spiritual organization in modern life has developed from within its own organization such quality in terms of writing, scholarship, and historicism.

And that is uniquely important because I often say that if you do not write your own history, it gets written for you. And it may get written by people who have no understanding of the values that emanate from the ideas and structures you embrace. That motivated me to write my first book Occult America in 2009.

If you do not write your own history, it gets written for you.