“From other lands also came the learned ones, all of whom

regarded Hermes as the Master of Masters, and his influence

was so great that in spite of the many wanderings from the

path on the part of the centuries of teachers in these different

lands, there may still be found a certain basic resemblance

and correspondence which underlies the many and often

quite divergent theories entertained and taught by the

occultists of these different lands today.”

– The Kybalion

The Kybalion, written in 1908, published by “The Three Initiates” but rumored to be authored by William Walker Atkinson, a Layer, occultist and author of one of my favorite books, “Your Mind and How To Use It”

This passage spoke to me because I had come to a similar conclusion, well before ever hearing about The Kybalion. What they are claiming here is that no matter which religion or occult tradition you examine, you will find a similar archetypal structure underlying some core teachings and principals. First, In my journey of self actualization, I took a newborn interest in the bible, and began reading it for myself. Then I was drawn to studying Kabbalah, other hermetic traditions, and then Alchemy. I found all, even the bible to an extent, were trying to teach the same processes of spiritual evolution, but they had slightly different stakes in the ground. Boundaries from one spiritual state to the next might be slightly different but their corpus’ all covered the same terrain, sort of speak.

When I got to Integral theory and then the teachings of Carl Jung, that I saw what these underlying structures or archetypes were. Integral theory being a theory about theories or a meta-theory, began opening my eyes to this process being subtly spoken about in all the before mentioned traditions. Each wrapped in different costumes and semiotics. I recall one author speaking of this as though each religion had a shard or fragment of the root story of mankind, and that if you took each of these truths and put them back together, you would find this root story of which each religion was built upon, to be the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus.