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FIRST CIVILIZATIONS. FIRST PRINCIPLES.
Across early civilizations, people sought to understand the enduring patterns underlying nature, human conduct, order, and society. These principles appear across traditions and provide a foundation for examining responsibility, lawful relationships, institutions, and governance.
First Principles are not beliefs to adopt, but truths to understand, live, and pass forward.
Underlying Law
First Principles describe the underlying laws that order reality—patterns of mind, relationship, and consequence that remain constant even as circumstances change.
Standard for Institutions
Institutions exist to serve, not replace, First Principles. These principles define the purpose, limits, and responsibilities of civic, legal, and social structures.
Measure of Authority
First Principles provide a standard by which all authority is measured. They clarify when power is being exercised lawfully and when it departs from its proper bounds.
Guidance for Conduct
First Principles inform how individuals and communities ought to act—shaping responsibility, accountability, and the pursuit of justice in public and private life.
THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES
Seven expressions of an underlying order through which relationship, movement, consequence, and correspondence may be examined.
01
Mentalism
Mind and consciousness as fundamental dimensions of experience.
02
Correspondence
Patterns at one level may correspond with patterns at another: As Above, So Below; As Within, So Without.
03
Vibration
Movement and change are inherent characteristics of existence.
04
Polarity
Apparent opposites may represent different degrees or expressions within a related whole.
05
Rhythm
Movement occurs through cycles, patterns, tides, and recurring change.
06
Cause & Effect
Actions and conditions participate in chains of consequence.
07
Gender
Generative and receptive principles are used in Hermetic philosophy to describe complementary processes of creation.