For this week’s Reading the Kybalion discussion, we’re lamentably continuing our reading and discussion of The Kybalion, focusing on chapters XIII (“Gender”) and XIV (“Mental Gender”).
Only a few chapters left, my friends; we’ve made it through six of the Kybalion’s principles, and now we’re on the last, the ridiculous and risible principle of gender. Unfortunately, WWA has seen fit to break it out across two chapters for us to endure. Fun fact: chapter XIV on “mental gender” is the second-longest chapter in the book, right after the lengthy chapter of the Planes of Correspondence. Will it be worth it? Of course not.
Chapter XIII:
Chapter XIV:
One would expect, given how much I’ve written about gender on my own blog with respect to Hermeticism, that I’d find this pair of chapters to be the most abysmal. In a way, it’s really because of how strongly the Kybalion tries to codify binary gender in modern esotericism that I dug through all the actual Hermetic texts to see what’s said about gender there, and (surprise!) it doesn’t actually do any of that. For more on that, check out my blog post series about it:
- Excerpts and Commentary
- Analysis, Ranting, and Questions
- A Book Review and Thoughts About Self versus Identity
- The Sin of Imposing Body-Based Identities on Soulful Selves
However, after last week’s infuriating episode about how WWA teaches that the application of rhythm to advance oneself basically amounts to emotional repression and spiritual bypassing and a whole chapter on causation that was nearly empty of anything meaningful besides the glaringly obvious observation that things happen because of other things, I think last week’s discussion on rhythm was actually the worst of all this. Anyway, here we go with gender (ugh); these chapters aren’t great, mind you, but they’re only as bad as one would expect, so there’s no surprises here. We open up with a few surprisingly reasonable statements, at least:
At this point we think it well to call your attention to the fact that Gender, in its Hermetic sense, and Sex in the ordinarily accepted use of the term, are not the same.
The word “Gender” is derived from the Latin root meaning “to beget; to pro-create; to generate; to create; to produce.” A moment’s consideration will show you that the word has a much broader and more general meaning than the term “Sex,” the latter referring to the physical distinctions between male and female living things.
At least in today’s non-Kybalion conceptualization of the distinction between gender and sex, this is actually fairly spot-on, but this just goes to show that, although the notion of gender fundamentally arises from sex, it is ultimately arbitrary and unrelated to it, as well as any notion of “generation” in general. Up until modern times, “gender” was basically just a grammatical term referring to how certain nouns/pronouns/adjectives (and, in some languages e.g. Hebrew, verbs) change forms. It was only with the Victorian era that “gender” started being used as a euphemism for sex, which of course then got picked up by various forms of lodge-based magical systems into being a metaphor for spiritual sex, and now here we are. For most of history in Western societies and cultures, there wasn’t a good notion of “gender” (like how we do today with gender identity) apart from sex or from social roles based on one’s sex, so we need to be careful about this sort of word and the historical context we find it in.
For WWA, his idea is that physical sex (literally just being bodily becocked or betwatted) is a manifestation of a grander, more cosmically pervasive notion of gender, in that all planes have their own version of masculine and feminine as a strict dichotomy, no more nor fewer than two options available anywhere. Just how physical sex operates “down here”, so too does gender operate in general everywhere, with masculine being active and willful and feminine being receptive and creative. Putting aside for a brief moment about where this all actually comes from, this is basically all WWA has to say about physical sex. The rest of chapter XIII immediately goes off the rails to talk about how various physical phenomena (cathodes and anodes, electrons and protons, molecules generally) are all equally categorizable into male and female based on corresponding masculinity with electrical positivity (where “positivity” really means “real and strong”) and femininity with electrical negativity (where “negativity” really means “unreality or weakness”). While diligently avoiding any talk of actual organs or coitus, WWA really ends up telling us a lot about his own views about those very things.
This raises a really important point about where this all comes from: WWA is just projecting human conceptions of physicality and bodily traits onto distinctly non-human things. Sure, one might claim he can do this because of correspondence, but the issue with this approach is how arbitrary his metaphorization is. For instance, when talking about electricity:
From the Cathode pole emerge the swarm of electrons or corpuscles; from the same pole emerge those wonderful “rays” which have revolutionized scientific conceptions during the past decade.
If something emits or emerges something, then it could just as easily be said to be “father” or “masculine”. The difference between “emit” (e.g. seed) and “emerge” (e.g. child) is ultimately a matter of arbitrary choice in terms of what one considers a useful metaphor; rather than trying to say that all things contain masculine and feminine poles, it’s easier and clearer to say that these are just cultural impositions and overlays on a more fundamental reality that is more cleanly described by abandoning such ideas entirely. Likewise:
A Feminine corpuscle becomes detached from, or rather leaves, a Masculine corpuscle, and starts on a new career.
One could just as easily consider an atom’s protons as an ovum and electrons as sperm, flipping the perceived gender here entirely.
To be clear: none of what WWA describes as gender is some inherent part of the cosmos, nor is any part of description of feminine particles and masculine energies and how they come together to form atoms is indicative of gender at all, whether in his own sense or in our modern sense. Rather, this is all just his own imposition of (some, very limited, very culturally-bound) notions of social roles based on sexual characteristics onto physical phenomena that do not at all follow through with or relate to such roles. Masculinity and femininity are ultimately just arbitrary labels, even according to how WWA uses them, and he just claims that they’re there anyway because they have to be there—with the unspoken reason being just because of cultural hegemony and the assurance of assumption. And, of course, it really is just about his own social and cultural conditioning, too, that leads to his own views of gender that he tries to posit as some sort of cosmic law. When he mentions later on that “science has not as yet progressed thus far” to talk about how gender manifests in physical phenomena, we can think back to the breaking-down of the idea of the luminiferous aether and the discovery of absolute zero; science has also likewise gone on to discover that sex is a lot more complicated than just being “male” and “female”, so not only can the Kybalion not come up with proof, but the proof out there actually denies what the Kybalion says about it all to begin with.
I almost wish I had more to say about this chapter. In the end, it really is just WWA taking his own socially-imposed cultural norms about gender and extrapolating them as universal constants because that’s just the world he lives in. Putting aside how that is pitiful in its own ways, it also reminds us that the moment we step outside that cultural perspective, we not only see how many other models of gender there are out there, but how so little of it is constant or cosmically-mandated.
Other comments about Chapter XIII:
The office of Gender is solely that of creating, producing, generating, etc., and its manifestations are visible on every plane of phenomena.
Prove it.
It is somewhat difficult to produce proofs of this…
lol, ok then
This is in line with the most ancient Hermetic Teachings, which have always identified the Masculine principle of Gender with the “Positive,” and the Feminine with the “Negative” Poles of Electricity (so-called).
literally what
The latest scientific teachings are that the creative corpuscles or electrons are Feminine
They are not, and have never been.
In some of the forms of life, the two principles are combined in one organism.
In which case it might be better thought of as something else entirely than just being hermaphroditic or androgyne.
…the example we have given you of the phenomena of the electrons or corpuscles will show you that science is on the right path, and will also give you a general idea of the underlying principles.
Surprise! It does not.
Some leading scientific investigators have announced their belief that in the formation of crystals there was to be found something that corresponded to “sex-activity,”
what the actual fucque. (I can’t find any reference to this extant, so if you know what he’s talking about, please say so.)
science at last has offered proofs of the existence in all universal phenomena of that great Hermetic Principle — the Principle of Gender.
It really doesn’t, though.
…have you ever considered that all of these things are manifestations of the Gender Principle?
No, because I’m not an idiot.
We cannot offer you scientific proof of this at this time…
For a book that so actively discourages the belief and validity of traditional religions, it asks a whole lot of the reader on faith alone in its own prophet.
As the last line of chapter XIII says:
Let us now pass on to a consideration of the operation of the Principle on the Mental Plane. Many interesting features are there awaiting examination.
God and gods save us all as we now proceed into the penultimate chapter of the Kybalion, on “mental gender”. This is the only chapter besides the introduction itself that doesn’t start with its own quote from the ur-Kybalion.
As we read this chapter, it really does feel like a straightforward development from the previous chapter. Just how the previous chapter started with sex then metaphorized various physical phenomena into gender along sexual lines (which, let’s be honest, is actually what’s happening here rather than WWA’s insistence that sex is just a manifestation of gender), we now progress to seeing how gender manifests on the mental plane, specifically in a (actually fairly elaborate) psychological model that WWA gives us. This model, coming in at the very end of the book, basically gives us the last piece of this (rather incoherent) puzzle and lets us see how it all comes together to make his New Thought via the Kybalion a system.
Unfortunately:
This idea of Mental Gender may be explained in a few words to students who are familiar with the modern theories just alluded to. The Masculine Principle of Mind corresponds to the so-called Objective Mind; Conscious Mind; Voluntary Mind; Active Mind, etc. And the Feminine Principle of Mind corresponds to the so-called Subjective Mind; Sub-conscious Mind; Involuntary Mind; Passive Mind, etc.
All these other serviceable terms and models, and still WWA insists on the banality of a sex-based one. There were plenty of theories of various kinds of mental phenomena in WWA’s time which he explicitly references in this chapter that don’t at all require gender in their models, or even a a “dual mind” model; the Kybalion seems to just ignore all those in favor of this which lets it drop in its gendered model. Go fig.
One such model explicitly brought up is that of Thomas Jay Hudson:
In The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1893, p. 26), Hudson spoke of an “objective mind” and a “subjective mind”; and, as he further explained, is theoretical position was that:
our “mental organization” was such that it seemed as if we had “two minds, each endowed with separate and distinct attributes and powers; [with] each capable, under certain conditions, of independent action” (p.25); and, for explanatory purposes, it was entirely irrelevant, argued Hudson, whether we actually had “two distinct minds”, whether we only seemed to be “endowed with a dual mental organization”, or whether we actually had “one mind [possessed of] certain attributes and powers under some conditions, and certain other attributes and powers under other conditions” (pp.25-26).
So the conscious/objective mind and subconscious/subjective mind is just an interpretive model that doesn’t actually need to relate to reality in any way except in superficial appearances. Hudson used this model to explain ghosts away as creations of one’s subjective/subconscious mind to another; WWA does similar and includes other parapsychological phenomena under this approach, as we’ll see later on in this chapter.
WWA’s psychological model goes like this: the self is divided into two parts, “I” and “Me”. The me-self is the body-centric “feelings, tastes, likes, dislikes, habits, peculiar ties, characteristics, etc.” that make up someone’s personality that exists in the world in a culture with roles and responsibilities. The I-self isn’t so much a person as it is a “will”, a self-constructed consciousness that recognizes that it is not any of the feelings, tastes, etc. of the me-self. The relationship between the I-self and me-self is that the me-self produces “thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings, and other mental states”, directed to do so either by some external stimuli or by the internal stimulus of the I-self as a sort of mental will. In this light, we should be able to see now why this chapter was placed close to the end in a place of importance, and why it’s so long compared to the others: the differentiation of I-self from me-self is actually important for the message and method of the Kybalion. Likewise, based on the various hints throughout the rest of the text, realizing sort of distinction itself is WWA’s key to unlocking psychic/paranormal phenomena.
Also, it would be fair to say here that WWA’s model is somewhat similar to (but still far from the same as) the Hermetic idea of the “higher/proper soul” and the “lower/animal soul”. The animal soul is the combination of the energies of drive and desire, and provide the “servile mind” that consists of the everyday thinkings and rationalizations of the brain. These energies are cosmically-derived and astrally-influenced, and we share them with all other animals. This is in contrast to the “proper soul”, the real essence of humanity coming from beyond the cosmos, made in the likeness of God. The difference with the Kybalion is that these are fundamentally different things, while in the Kybalion separating the I-self from the me-self is a process of gradual realization and development that works in tandem with the me-self; it’s a matter of maturation of awareness into a self-determined construction.
It’s just such a shame that WWA feels it so necessary to couch this needlessly in terms of gender, where the Will/I-self is masculine and the “mental womb”/me-self is feminine. Why? Just because, really, besides the fact that everything’s gotta have gender because it’s gotta have gender (but not too much gender, pick only one of two options). Literally none of this model actually needs gender metaphors to explain the function of it at all, and is rather complicated by it all. Like,
The tendency of the Feminine Principle is always in the direction of receiving impressions, while the tendency of the Masculine Principle is always in the direction of giving out, or expressing.
Does the I-self not take in input and consider it in order to produce a will? Also, the contradiction (not a paradox) of people insisting that femininity must somehow be receptive when it literally constructs, creates, and produces—literally “gives out”—life just because of latent penis-in-vagina imagery never fails to annoy me. Moreover, the only thing that makes the I-self “masculine” is because it “wills” instead of creates.
Worse, despite the model, WWA leaves much of it unspecified. For instance:
Persons who can give continued attention and thought to a subject actively employ both of the Mental Principles — the Feminine in the work of active mental generation, and the Masculine Will in stimulating and energizing the creative portion of the mind
What does it mean for “the Masculine Will” to “stimulate and energize the creative portion of the mind”? Like, really, what’s the mechanism for this to occur, what medium? And why should only mental constructions at all be limited to the me-self? Why can’t the I-self, which comes from and develops upon the me-self, just think its own Will out on its own terms?
As WWA begins to explore parapsychology and other phenomena like telekinesis, what we take from his model implies that the me-self only ever produces stuff internally and never seems to act on others—but what of speech generated from internal mental creations, which itself also influences others? Why is that any less important, any less “active” than the “vibratory energy” of will alone from one mind to another? Moreover, if this is just a matter of “as above, so below”, where the me-self using speech to influence other things “down here” is effectively masculine and the I-self using “vibrations” to influence other minds, then doesn’t this mean that the I-self itself is manipulated by higher things, making it also feminine? After all, all things have to be masculine and feminine (even if doing so makes things only relative and more complicated than it has to be), so doesn’t this make the whole gendered framework moot? (yes.)
Of course, this just gets depressing:
An idea thus lodged in the mind of another person grows and develops, and in time is regarded as the rightful mental offspring of the individual, whereas it is in reality like the cuckoo egg placed in the sparrow’s nest, where it destroys the rightful offspring and makes itself at home.
This is a really unfortunate, dour way of presenting such a model; once again, con artists rejoice.
But seriously, this sort of model just gets handwavy due to a lack of being rigorous. When WWA gets to this part:
The magnetic persons are those who are able to use the Masculine Principle in the way of impressing their ideas upon others. The actor who makes people weep or cry as he wills, is employing this principle. And so is the successful orator, statesman, preacher, writer or other people who are before the public attention.
But are they really, though? Or are they just employing speech and drama as tools to act as the medium for impressions for others to receive and participate in? Because, as it turns out, many politicians, orators, and actors are also just people doing what they’re told or acting on their own base instincts and having to communicate literally because it’s just their job, and so aren’t necessarily using any sort of “magnetism” beyond speech—which would be a generation, then, of the Me-self, not of the I-self. Further, this would be their me-selves acting upon the me-selves of others—a feminine thing acting upon a feminine thing! Unless the me-self of one can take on the role of an I-self for others just to preserve the idea of gender, though, which is just looping back on itself to eat itself alive. This whole framework WWA builds up to here just falls apart, but he insists on using it to explain everything from spreading ideas around to all other kinds of mental and parapsychological phenomena, each of which actually operate in different ways but just collapsed together for WWA’s convenience.
This gets us into even more problems, too. Because WWA keeps talking about Will as masculine, we end up with statements like:
…such persons [in which the Masculine Principle is too ennervated to act upon] are ruled almost entirely by the minds and wills of other persons, whom they allow to do their thinking and willing for them.
The gendered implication is that they are therefore “feminine” people who are therefore listless and unenlightened in their ignorance and material concerns, unlike the “masculine” masters who can resist laziness and passivity and elevate themselves to higher awareness.
Likewise, WWA further points out the “strong people, how they manage to implant their seed-thoughts int he minds of the masses of the people”. Masculinity = positive = active = strong; femininity = negative = passive = weak. It doesn’t need to be said, but I may as well here: ew.
But also, when we get to phrases like “Masculine Principle of Will”, my only immediate mental response is <RHPS magenta voice> A TRIUMPH OV YOUR VILL. On that note, though fun fact: that line from Rocky Horror Picture Show was indeed a nod to the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, also because of Rocky’s own Aryan übermensch stereotype. Although both were decades after the Kybalion, we can see where language like this ends up all too often.
Towards the end of the chapter, we’re faced with pablum like:
The purpose of this work is not to give an extended account of psychic phenomena, but rather to give to the student a master-key whereby he may unlock the many doors leading into the parts of the Temple of Knowledge which he may wish to explore.
Except that this book has done nothing of the sort. At most, it’s just teased the reader with grandiose promises and offering the most meager of a sample of a recipe that shows little more than the concept for a plan. There’s almost nothing practical in this, and what’s left is actively harmful. There’s no key to any temple of mysteries here; it’s a scalped ticket to a sideshow selling snake oil. The purpose of the book is not to “illumine many dark pages and obscure subjects”, but to be popular and to sell, and in that it has regrettably succeeded.
I will say that, the way this chapter was developing its model of a masculine I-self and feminine me-self, I was really hoping that WWA would also build on the earlier model of the higher conscious mind versus the lower unconscious mind from the disastrous chapter on rhythm, which would at least offer some sort of reasonable scheme of how to shunt off unwanted/negative mental conditions without just ignoring or repressing them, e.g. by simply letting them resound and reverberate in the me-self, letting it work them out while recognizing that they do not affect the I-self, but this chapter hasn’t done that or built that model up. Instead, there’s nothing preventing the repression of such things from eventually bursting forth to wreck the I-self, merely trusting the I-self to stalwartly Will away the me-self to feel certain ways regardless of what it is or isn’t aware of, is or isn’t experiencing; we just have to hope that we can ignore these negative feelings and experiences to a point where they just go away. This is, as noted last week, an unmitigated mental health disaster.
Other comments about Chapter XIV:
…some of the said theories and claims being very far-fetched and incapable of standing the test of experiment and demonstration
YOU BITCH UNBRIDLED. The absolute shamelessness of this statement, given everything said before in this abysmal book!
…this “I Am” may be separated or split into two distinct parts, or aspects, which while working in unison and in conjunction, yet, nevertheless, may be separated in consciousness.
Is it sane or reasonable to do this, as opposed to seeing oneself as literally just one self and operating accordingly? But also, if we are going to split the self into multiple parts, why stop at two?
But it is not our purpose to dwell upon this phase of the subject, which may be studied from any good text-book upon psychology, with the key that we have given you regarding Mental Gender.
Thank fuck actual science has progressed past this bullshit.
The manifestation of Mental Gender may be noticed all around us in everyday life.
To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail; to someone with a guilty conscience, everything feels like a call-out.
For the whole principle of Suggestion depends upon the principle of Mental Gender and Vibration.
Does it really, though? (No, it does not.)
It is customary for the writers and teachers of Suggestion to explain that it is the “objective or voluntary” mind which make the mental impression, or suggestion, upon the “subjective or involuntary” mind.
Behold, no need for gender in these models!
The principle “works out” in practice, because it is based upon the immutable universal laws of life.
I too can assert many things, and it’s very easy to do so when there’s no need to show evidence for any of it.
The student may acquaint himself with these matters…
Heavens have mercy on such a fool.
We do not come expounding a new philosophy…
I call bullshit.
As as you read Chapters XIII and XIV (a few more than normal):
- How many uncited claims about history/science does WWA make? How many claims have gone on to be refuted by later research/findings?
- How many quotes does WWA make attributed to some mysterious/unnamed other that can’t be found in another text beyond WWA’s own writings?
- What similarities can you find in message or medium between this reading and actual Hermetic stuff? What differences? How might some idea present in both be extrapolated from in either context according to that context’s own rules?
- What logical arguments does WWA develop? What issues do those arguments have? How well do they mesh (or not) with other arguments we’ve seen so far?
- What doctrines/ideas in this reading can be found in other texts written by WWA? In other New Thought texts? In other New Age texts?
- What ideas/claims does WWA make that would’ve been novel in 1908? What would’ve been common in New Age beliefs at the time? What do we still see publicly believed/stated today?
- In your own spiritual or religious traditions, what models of gender do you make use of, if any at all? Does it align with WWA’s? Can you discern any historical link between what WWA uses and what you do?
- For each example of gender in physical phenomena that WWA gives, how could you flip the metaphor to invert the gender assignments he gives to also make sense? Does what you come out with help with justifying his principle of gender? What about if you add other genders?
- Does WWA’s gender “fluidity” (such as it is, with the Masculine always being in feminine things and vice versa) work well in a dichotomy? Does it better relate to third or other genders?
- Does WWA’s principle of gender and it providing a basis for attraction and repulsion account for sexual orientations other than straight? What about your own personal experiences?
The Digital Ambler 
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