DiotimosReading Desk

Principles laws and relations

Positive and negative

Positive; Negative

Positive and negative first name opposed positions, then take on an evaluative meaning in mental practice and a conventional electrical meaning in the physical examples.

From the book

The Kybalion

Three Initiates · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Browse this book’s lexicon →

Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordPositive and negative first name opposed positions, then take on an evaluative meaning in mental practice and a conventional electrical meaning in the physical examples.
  • In The KybalionX places positive and negative among pairs used to illustrate polarity.
  • In this editionPositive and negative are retained in each context; the lexicon identifies the transition rather than choosing one meaning for all occurrences.
  • A place to readX.5: … “Soft follow the rule. Likewise Sharp and Dull. Positive and Negative are two poles of the” …

Meaning

Positive and negative first name opposed positions, then take on an evaluative meaning in mental practice and a conventional electrical meaning in the physical examples. Those uses are not identical.

Use in the book

X places positive and negative among pairs used to illustrate polarity. It subsequently calls love positive to hate, courage positive to fear, and activity positive to inactivity. XIII links positive to the masculine principle and negative to the feminine, then objects to the supposed implication that negative means weakness.

The cathode is introduced to rehabilitate the generative function of the negatively named pole. The author replaces electrical sign language with a gender symbolism that it presents as a clearer description of activity.

Places to read

  1. X Polarity · Block 5… “Soft follow the rule. Likewise Sharp and Dull. Positive and Negative are two poles of the same thing, with countless degrees between them.”
  2. X Polarity · Block 10… “Plane, the two poles may 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” …
  3. XIII Gender · Block 5… “atom is really due to the clustering of negative corpuscles around a positive one—-the positive corpuscles seeming to exert a certain influence upon the negative corpuscles, causing the latter to assume” …
  4. XIII Gender · Block 6… “erroneous impression regarding the qualities of the so-called "Negative" pole of electrified or magnetized Matter. The terms Positive and Negative are very wrongly applied to this phenomenon by science. The word” …
  5. XIII Gender · Block 7… “are Feminine (science says "they are composed of negative electricity"-we say they are composed of Feminine energy). A Feminine corpuscle becomes detached from, or rather leaves, a Masculine corpuscle, and starts” …

In this edition

Positive and negative are retained in each context; the lexicon identifies the transition rather than choosing one meaning for all occurrences.

Reading the argument

An electrical sign does not mean moral goodness, strength, or absence of reality. Correcting a popular association of negative with weakness would not establish that a particle is feminine. The passage moves between conventional notation and evaluative language.

Related texts

The IUPAC definition of cathode concerns reduction, not a feminine principle. It helps separate a physical process from the interpretation given to it in XIII.3

Positive

“Positive” — 19 occurrences in 9 text blocks: II.16; X.5, 10–11; XI.12; XIII.5–6; XV.7, 11.

Negative

“Negative” — 26 occurrences in 10 text blocks: II.16; X.5, 10–11; XI.7, 12; XIII.5–7; XV.7.

Source note

IUPAC Gold Book Cathode. Terminological reference consulted for the definition of a cathode as an electrode at which reduction occurs. https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C00905/PDF