DiotimosReading Desk

Mental life and practical action

Love and hate

Love; Hate; Like; Dislike

Love and hate are the leading emotional illustration of polarity.

From the book

The Kybalion

Three Initiates · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordLove and hate are the leading emotional illustration of polarity.
  • In The KybalionII points to rapid transitions between love and hate as an experience that makes deliberate transformation seem possible.
  • In this editionThe reading edition retains the transcription's Love and.
  • A place to readII.16: … “us take a radical and extreme example—that of "Love and Hate," two mental states apparently totally” …

Meaning

Love and hate are the leading emotional illustration of polarity. Like and dislike provide a proposed middle region in which the distinction becomes difficult to draw.

Use in the book

II points to rapid transitions between love and hate as an experience that makes deliberate transformation seem possible. X states that the two are ends of the same thing and describes movement along a scale. It also restricts them to their own class: love cannot become a compass direction or colour.

The physical chapter on mineral mind already speaks of atomic loves and hates, extending emotional language to attraction and repulsion. This earlier metaphor helps reveal how widely the book uses the pair.

Places to read

  1. II The Seven Hermetic Principles · Block 16… “us take a radical and extreme example—that of "Love and Hate," two mental states apparently totally different. And yet there are degrees of Hate and degrees of Love, and a middle” …
  2. VIII Planes of Correspondence · Block 18“The Plane of Mineral Mind comprises the "states or conditions" of the units or entities, or groups and combinations of the same, which animate the forms known to us as "minerals,” …
  3. X Polarity · Block 7“And so it is on the Mental Plane. "Love and. Hate" are generally regarded as being things diametrically opposed to each other; entirely different; unreconcilable. But we apply the Principle of” …
  4. X Polarity · Block 8… “that is, may have their polarity changed. Thus Love never becomes East or West, or Red or Violet-but it may and often does turn into Hate and likewise Hate may be” …
  5. X Polarity · Block 9… “by lowering the vibrations. In the same way Hate and Love are mutually transmutable; so are Fear and Courage. But Fear cannot be transformed into Love, nor can Courage be transmuted” …
  6. X Polarity · Block 10… “be classified as Positive and Negative, respectively. Thus Love is Positive to Hate; Courage to Fear; Activity to Non-Activity, etc., etc. And it will also be noticed that even to those” …

In this edition

The reading edition retains the transcription's Love and. Hate in X.7. The lexicon's headword removes that stray punctuation for filing but records the source form.

Reading the argument

An emotion can concern several aspects of a person, and love and hate may coexist rather than form a single measurable quantity. The scale is the author's interpretation of emotional change. Its atomic application is a further metaphor, not evidence that particles experience human affection.

Love

“Love” — 17 occurrences in 8 text blocks: Intro.5–6; II.16; VII.16; X.7–10.

Hate

“Hate” — 14 occurrences in 5 text blocks: II.16; X.7–10.

Like

“Like” — 27 occurrences in 21 text blocks: II.15–16, 19, 22; III.4; IV.7, 9; V.16; VI.2, 4, 11, 16; VII.5; VIII.29; X.1, 7; XI.2; XII.12; XIV.14; XV.1, 14.

Dislike

“Dislike” — 3 occurrences in 2 text blocks: II.16; X.7.