From the book
The Kybalion
Three Initiates · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordAttraction and repulsion name opposing tendencies by which bodies or particles are drawn together or apart.
- In The KybalionI says that cause and effect, as a law of attraction, brings pupil and book together.
- In this editionAttraction, affinity, cohesion, and repulsion retain their different ordinary ranges.
- A place to readI.14: … “Effect, in its aspect of The Law of Attraction, will bring lips and ear together—pupil and” …
Meaning
Attraction and repulsion name opposing tendencies by which bodies or particles are drawn together or apart. The book also uses attraction for the relation between a prepared pupil and an appropriate teacher, extending a physical image into human affairs.
Use in the book
I says that cause and effect, as a law of attraction, brings pupil and book together. VIII assigns likes, dislikes, attractions, and repulsions to lower mental entities. XIII invokes chemical affinity and cohesion as familiar phenomena, then interprets them through universal gender.
The move from particle behaviour to love and hate is deliberate. It gives the lower levels of the author's universe a rudimentary mental character and connects physical combination with the generative relation found on higher planes.
Places to read
- I The Hermetic Philosophy · Block 14… “Effect, in its aspect of The Law of Attraction, will bring lips and ear together—pupil and book in company. So mote it be!”
- VIII Planes of Correspondence · Block 18… “and hates"; "likes and dislikes"; "attractions and repulsions". "affinities and non-affinities," etc., and some of the more daring of modern scientific minds have expressed the opinion that the desire and will,” …
- XIII Gender · Block 7… “the varied phenomena of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, attraction, repulsion, chemical affinity and the reverse, and similar phenomena. And all this arises from the operation of the Principle of Gender on” …
- XIII Gender · Block 10… “time with the well known phenomena of the "attraction and repulsion" of the atoms; chemical affinity; the "loves and hates" of the atomic particles; the attraction or cohesion between the molecules” …
In this edition
Attraction, affinity, cohesion, and repulsion retain their different ordinary ranges. The law of attraction in I is explained from that passage, without importing a later programme of wish fulfilment.
Reading the argument
A description of attraction does not independently show conscious desire, human feeling, or a masculine and feminine relation in the objects involved. The passage shifts between physical terms and psychological analogy. The lexicon makes that shift visible instead of treating the two vocabularies as interchangeable.
attraction
“attraction” — 9 occurrences in 5 text blocks: I.14; VIII.15; IX.6; XIII.7, 10.
repulsion
“repulsion” — 2 occurrences in 2 text blocks: XIII.7, 10.
affinity
“affinity” — 4 occurrences in 4 text blocks: VIII.15; IX.6; XIII.7, 10.
affinities
“affinities” — 2 occurrences in 1 text block: VIII.18.
cohesion
“cohesion” — 3 occurrences in 3 text blocks: VIII.15; IX.6; XIII.10.