The Principle of Cause and Effect

The Principle of Cause and Effect


I find myself saying, “This must have happened for a reason,” all the time. This is why. Things don’t just occur; there is no such thing as pure chance, just as there is no pure determinism. These kind of polarities are always paradoxical and are merely two faces of the same phenomenon. There is no pure causal determinism just as there is no pure indeterminism.  

According to The Kybalion,


The etymology of the word “chance” relates to the idea “to fall,” as in the fall of dice. When dice are thrown, they fall a certain way, not because there were no determining causes, but because we are not able to perceive them by relying on our physcial senses. If one examines the situation thoroughly, one will find that many causes contributed to the way the dice landed.

Chance is just another way of saying we don’t understand the causes behind a certain occurrence. There are laws existing on the planes of matter and laws existing on higher planes. The laws of the higher planes affect entities on the planes of matter. We may not have knowledge of these, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real.

There is no such thing as pure coincidence. Again, such a concept violates the principle of polarity. C. G. Jung, as we know so well, formulated the idea of Synchronicity, which he defined as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” Jung believed these seemingly unrelated events could be connected because they share meaning. The idea implies an underlying web that includes all Reality, an interconnectedness that permeates the Universe, which Jung called the Unus Mundus, or “one world.”


Hermeticism teaches that humans can transcend cause and effect entirely, just as the principle of polarity is transcended. With enough experience on the higher planes, the student can rise above the planes of materiality and live as he or she is meant to live, i.e. a life of transcendence, not being moved about as a piece on a chess board, and not carried along by every whim of the herd. Transcendence means creating your own Reality!

Hermeticism teaches that such Masters cannot transcend the laws of the higher planes, only the planes of matter. These Masters use their knowledge of the laws of the higher planes to transcend the planes of the material word. So mote it be!

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2 thoughts on “The Principle of Cause and Effect

  1. I'm so glad to have stumbled across your blog. I've just begun a personal exploration of Hermeticism. Starting with the Seven Principles, and familiarizing myself with the Corpus Hermeticum and other Hermetic writings. I'm an Eclectic Wiccan with strong interest in Gnosticism, but for whatever reason had never felt the urge to dive into Hermeticism until now. Your blog has been a great inspiration.

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