Online back in 2018, while researching a piece of writing on an unrelated topic, I stumbled across a little book published way back in 1908 under the pseudonym of ‘The Three Initates’, entitled ‘The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece’.
Not only was I amazed by its seven great Hermetic principles attributed to the ancient Egyptian - said to be half-man, half-God - Hermes Trismegistus, but one of its many intriguing assertions was ‘when the ears of the student are ready to hear, then cometh the lips to fill them with wisdom’. This was followed by ‘And likewise, when the pupil is ready to receive the truth, then will this little book come to him, or her’. I seriously wondered if I was meant to do something here!
This was a few years before my wife Emma Wertheim came up with her idea for Yoga Mudra Oracle (YMO), a project I would collaborate on with her on from 2020 to 2025. So at the time, I simply wrote seven sonnets (below), each inspired by one of the principles, forming a septet of poems I dubbed ‘Keys to the Kingdom’.
During the latter stages of YMO, the ‘light bulb’ moment arrived when I realised these ancient principles could form the basis of an Oracle deck. With seven suits of seven, the symmetry was breathtaking - 49 cards in all. Unable to hold myself back, I went to work (even while working on YMO) checking in with Emma here and there for her feedback and ‘big picture’ thoughts and feelings.
In surprisingly quick time, the guidebook and paintings for the card imagery were finished. I sent off the artwork and text as a proposal to our wonderful editor, Tania Ahsan of UK publisher Arcturus. She loved it, and the rest is history!
Egyptian Alchemy Oracle is available here.
‘Egyptian Alchemy Oracle’ presents the timeless wisdom of the seven great Hermetic principles from ancient Egypt - a tool of divination, a way of tapping into the wellspring of your intuitive nature as a source of decision-making and life guidance.
Watch the video here
Open your mind
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Attract your life
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To receive, let go
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From the lower, glimpse the higher
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Invite spirit in
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Become a creator
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Come to stillness
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Shoot for the stars
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Transcend the laws
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Polarise up on your bootstraps
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See it's a matter of degrees
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Thread the spectrum
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Understand the pendulum
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Change your rhythm
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Within law, become free
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Become a mover
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Will to be free
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Release your soul
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Attract mateship of soul
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Separate 'I' from 'me'
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Know it's all about energy
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Embrace the light unknown
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Focus your mind
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Simply believe
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Feel the universe yoiu are
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Expand your being
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Discover your answer within
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Open to your cosmic destiny
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Lift your chemistry
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Move into flow
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Exist finite, rise eternal
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Move toward spirit
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Visualise and transform
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Connect, lift, ascend
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Know the sound of truth
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Master momentum
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To begin, stop
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Take the high road
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Allow for cause
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Trek the Holy
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Be servant and master
〰️
Know it's meant to be
〰️
Balance masculine and feminine
〰️
Ignite the creative
〰️
Unify opposites
〰️
Become your true self
Open your mind 〰️ Attract your life 〰️ To receive, let go 〰️ From the lower, glimpse the higher 〰️ Invite spirit in 〰️ Become a creator 〰️ Come to stillness 〰️ Shoot for the stars 〰️ Transcend the laws 〰️ Polarise up on your bootstraps 〰️ See it's a matter of degrees 〰️ Thread the spectrum 〰️ Understand the pendulum 〰️ Change your rhythm 〰️ Within law, become free 〰️ Become a mover 〰️ Will to be free 〰️ Release your soul 〰️ Attract mateship of soul 〰️ Separate 'I' from 'me' 〰️ Know it's all about energy 〰️ Embrace the light unknown 〰️ Focus your mind 〰️ Simply believe 〰️ Feel the universe yoiu are 〰️ Expand your being 〰️ Discover your answer within 〰️ Open to your cosmic destiny 〰️ Lift your chemistry 〰️ Move into flow 〰️ Exist finite, rise eternal 〰️ Move toward spirit 〰️ Visualise and transform 〰️ Connect, lift, ascend 〰️ Know the sound of truth 〰️ Master momentum 〰️ To begin, stop 〰️ Take the high road 〰️ Allow for cause 〰️ Trek the Holy 〰️ Be servant and master 〰️ Know it's meant to be 〰️ Balance masculine and feminine 〰️ Ignite the creative 〰️ Unify opposites 〰️ Become your true self
Egyptian Alchemy Oracle is now available for purchase. Order here
Check out the 7 sonnets I wrote back in 2018, after I first read ‘The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece’ grouped under my original title ‘Keys to the Kingdom’
For me poetry is the ‘liquid concentrate’ of the muse, allowing you to tune back into an original impulse. These poems were the seeds of ‘Egyptian Alchemy Oracle’, 4 years later.
PRINCIPLE I - All is Mind
Everything is mind, and mind is all within which relative and absolute … entwine from plane to plane in terpsichore. Electrons, atoms, molecules, matter … in truth solidity’s an illusion; yet honour we must, the rock and the tree … for mortals there’s no scope for presumption even with knowingness of energy. Bellow not - and humility favour; in the name of scientific prowess ever countenance the laws of nature but revere both human, and the abyss. It’s all mental - but more than yours or mine, these mentations of an infinite mind.
PRINCIPLE II - As Above So Below
All’s in the worm, and the worm’s in THE ALL; let alone the sun, fauna and flora ... mountains and clouds, mankind, his flaws and laws floods, snowflakes, forests, the deep and her shores all imagination, emotion, thought, dreams, feeling, sensation, intuition ... all hearts, souls, extra-sensory organs; every mantra, wish, prayer, contrition. The physical, mental and spiritual ... worlds within THE ALL, and worlds within worlds; from lower to higher, hierarchical ... ‘As above, so below’ ... meaning scaffolds. Drawing from the common to the unknown, the coarse reveals the fine, the boot the crown.
PRINCIPLE III - Vibration
‘Nothing is still’ means all things are in flux, or that stillness resides in nothingness; both are true, goes the law of paradox ... vibration’s the heart, the key, the essence of it all - matter, energy, spirit; from the sloth of gross to the flash of fine, it’s just a question of degree, extent ... sped up, the monad becomes the divine. Even the physical proves the principle ... a wheel revolving faster and faster reaches the point it appears to be still; or an object heated loses colour. Thought, emotion, reason, will or desire ... grasp vibration, the ‘sceptre of power’.
PRINCIPLE IV - Polarity
As different as night and day, we say … as hot and cold, high and low, dull and sharp; foreign leagues we assume, be love and hate … yet they’re one and the same, e’en poles apart. Good and evil, courageousness and fear … in fact these are not incompatible ... for everything’s dual, opposites paired; every truth’s half false, and sage half fool. Although it seems counter-intuitive inhabiting the ends of two extremes - spirit stuff and matter are identic ... atoms vibrating at varied degrees. Conscious polarity lifts vibration … through Hermetic mental transmutation.
PRINCIPLE V - Rhythm
Rhythm - the tides of life flow in and out ... the pendulum swings upon earth and star, for each rise a fall, and whisper a shout; forward a distance, and back just as far. In nature the seasons come and recede ... animals, plants, minerals, energy born victorious, they wane in defeat ... eternally outpouring, indrawing. But for the mind of man, the ‘planes’ are key; lower to higher, unconscious, conscious ... everything happens differently; ‘gainst the cyclic pull, stands mental firmness. Rhythm’s karmic ... across incarnations, until standing still brings liberation.
PRINCIPLE VI - Cause and Effect
Edict, not chance, determines human life -serendipity’s just a mask for cause, which governs even a tumbling dice; everything that happen’s forced by laws ... from rockslides to an eye nettled by lint ... there’s no such thing as random occurrence; there’s always cause for every effect ... we proclaim ‘chance’ in causal ignorance. An ancient gumtree in the forest falls as a consequence of prior events ... rain, erosion, disintegration caused in turn by conditions antecedent. Understanding the laws is mankind’s quest, become a cause instead of an effect.
PRINCIPLE VII - Gender
The forces masculine and feminine combine at all levels of creation ... the active push ‘I’ and passive urge ‘me’; even among atomic electrons, together in mutual attraction; negative and positive ions in their seeking and volition for union ... electricity and magnetism ‘birthed’, their ‘children’ ... along with heat and light; then on planes of body, mind and spirit the same gender principle applies ... the father’s will, the mother’s creative ... even immanent within the one mind there’s the positive and the cathode pole; one to drive, the other to imagine; joining together, the two make a whole. Understand well the gender principle, to evolve and create ... fertilise soul.