Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender: The Three Principles That Govern Motion, Consequence, and Creation

The first four Hermetic principles describe the nature of reality — what it is (mind), how it connects (correspondence), what it is made of (vibration), and how it is structured (polarity). The final three principles describe how reality moves, what drives it, and how it creates. They are the operating instructions: Rhythm tells you about cycles, Cause and Effect tells you about consequences, and Gender tells you about the creative mechanism itself. Together, they complete the Hermetic system — and each maps with startling precision onto modern science.

The Principle of Rhythm: “Everything Flows, Out and In”

The fifth Hermetic principle states: “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”

This is the principle of cycles. Not the vague spiritual notion that “everything is cyclical,” but a precise observation: every movement in one direction creates an equal compensating movement in the other direction. Every outbreath demands an inbreath. Every peak generates a trough. The universe breathes.

Modern science has documented this rhythmic breathing at every scale.

Circadian Biology: The Body’s Master Clock

In 2017, Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms — the roughly twenty-four-hour biological clock that governs virtually every aspect of human physiology.

The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a cluster of about twenty thousand neurons in the hypothalamus, serves as the body’s master clock. It coordinates oscillating gene expression in virtually every cell of the body. These are not approximate rhythms — they are precise molecular oscillations: the proteins PER and CRY accumulate during the day, inhibit their own transcription at night, and are degraded by morning, restarting the cycle with clockwork precision.

Cortisol peaks around 6-8 AM and reaches its nadir around midnight. Melatonin follows the inverse rhythm, rising in darkness and falling with light. Core body temperature cycles by about 1 degree Celsius over twenty-four hours. Growth hormone pulses primarily during deep sleep. Immune function, cognitive performance, metabolic rate, blood pressure — all oscillate in rhythmic cycles synchronized to the master clock.

Disrupt these rhythms — through shift work, jet lag, chronic light exposure at night — and the consequences cascade: increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, depression, cognitive impairment. The body does not merely prefer rhythm. The body requires rhythm. It is built from rhythm.

The Schumann Resonance: Earth’s Electromagnetic Heartbeat

In 1952, physicist Winfried Otto Schumann predicted — and subsequently measured — a set of electromagnetic resonances in the cavity between Earth’s surface and the ionosphere. The fundamental frequency is approximately 7.83 Hz, with harmonics at roughly 14.3, 20.8, 27.3, and 33.8 Hz. These resonances are continuously excited by the approximately two thousand thunderstorms occurring simultaneously around the planet at any given moment, generating roughly fifty lightning strikes per second.

The 7.83 Hz fundamental frequency falls at the boundary between the theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8-13 Hz) brainwave bands — precisely the frequency range associated with relaxed wakefulness, meditation, creativity, and the transition between sleep and waking. This is not a casual coincidence. Research suggests that exposure to Schumann-range frequencies can influence circadian rhythms, sleep quality, and cognitive function. The Earth pulses, and our brains pulse with it.

Some researchers, including those at the HeartMath Institute, have proposed that the Earth’s magnetic field and its Schumann resonances serve as carriers of biologically relevant information that connects living systems to planetary rhythms. The Global Coherence Initiative has placed magnetometers around the world to study correlations between geomagnetic activity, Schumann resonance variations, and collective human physiological and psychological states.

Whether or not the mechanism is fully understood, the pattern is clear: organisms do not exist in isolation from planetary rhythms. The tides of the Earth — geomagnetic, electromagnetic, gravitational — move through biological systems the way ocean tides move through coastal estuaries. Everything flows, out and in. The pendulum swings.

Larger Cycles: Precession and Civilizational Rhythm

The Hermetic principle of Rhythm operates at scales far beyond the circadian. The Earth’s axial precession — the slow wobble of its rotational axis — traces a complete circle every 25,772 years. This “Great Year” has been tracked by ancient civilizations from the Egyptians to the Maya, divided into ages (the Age of Pisces, the Age of Aquarius) that correspond to which constellation rises with the sun at the spring equinox.

Solar cycles of approximately eleven years modulate sunspot activity, which correlates with geomagnetic disturbances that measurably affect human cardiovascular and neurological function. The Milankovitch cycles — variations in Earth’s orbital eccentricity (100,000 years), axial tilt (41,000 years), and precession (26,000 years) — drive the rhythm of ice ages. At every temporal scale, rhythm compensates.

The Principle of Cause and Effect: “Every Cause Has Its Effect”

The sixth principle states: “Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”

This is not a simple statement of determinism. Note the final clause: “there are many planes of causation.” The Hermetic tradition acknowledges that causation operates across multiple levels simultaneously — physical, mental, spiritual — and that what appears to be chance on one plane is the operation of law on another. This is a sophisticated understanding that modern science is only beginning to approach through fields like epigenetics and morphic resonance.

Epigenetics: How Experience Writes the Future

The Central Dogma of molecular biology, as Francis Crick formulated it in 1958, stated that information flows in one direction: from DNA to RNA to protein. Your genes are your destiny. You inherit what your parents gave you, and that is that.

Epigenetics demolished this dogma.

The term “epigenetics” — meaning “above the genes” — describes mechanisms by which gene expression is modified without changing the underlying DNA sequence. Methyl groups attach to cytosine bases, silencing genes. Histone proteins are acetylated or deacetylated, opening or closing access to stretches of DNA. MicroRNAs regulate which genes are read and which are ignored.

The revolutionary discovery is that these epigenetic modifications are driven by environment and experience. Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist who taught at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, demonstrated in his research that the cell membrane — not the nucleus — is the true “brain” of the cell. The membrane reads environmental signals and transmits them to the genome, which responds by adjusting its expression. Lipton’s central thesis: “The environment and our perception of the environment control our genetic activity.”

More strikingly, epigenetic modifications can be inherited. Studies on the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-45 showed that children and grandchildren of women who experienced famine during pregnancy carried distinctive epigenetic markers and had higher rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic disorders — effects transmitted across generations through the epigenome, not the genome.

This is the Principle of Cause and Effect operating across time. Your grandmother’s experience of famine chemically modified the expression of genes that were passed to your mother and then to you. The cause preceded the effect by two generations. The arrow of consequence extends far beyond the individual life.

In many traditions, this multigenerational transmission of consequence is called karma. The word literally means “action” in Sanskrit — the principle that actions generate effects that ripple forward through time, shaping future conditions. Epigenetics provides a concrete biological mechanism for exactly this process.

Morphic Resonance: Memory Without a Brain

Rupert Sheldrake, the Cambridge-trained biologist and former fellow of Clare College, proposed in his 1981 book A New Science of Life a more radical extension of the Principle of Cause and Effect: morphic resonance.

Sheldrake’s hypothesis states that self-organizing systems — molecules, cells, organisms, societies — are shaped not only by physical and chemical laws but by morphic fields that carry a kind of collective memory. When a particular form or behavior has occurred, it becomes easier for similar systems to adopt the same form or behavior in the future, even without direct physical contact. The more often a pattern occurs, the stronger its morphic field becomes.

The implication is that causation operates not only through physical mechanisms but through a kind of resonance across time and space. Once crystals of a new compound are grown in one laboratory, it becomes easier to crystallize the same compound in laboratories worldwide — not because of contamination or communication, but because the morphic field has been established. Once rats learn a new maze in London, rats in Melbourne learn the same maze faster — not because of genetic transmission, but because of morphic resonance.

Sheldrake’s hypothesis remains controversial. Mainstream biology has not accepted it. But the pattern Sheldrake points to — that nature exhibits a kind of non-local memory, that precedent shapes the present — resonates with both the Hermetic principle and with emerging research on quantum entanglement and non-local correlations.

The Principle of Gender: “Gender Is in Everything”

The seventh and final Hermetic principle states: “Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; Gender manifests on all planes.”

This is the most misunderstood of the seven principles, because modern readers immediately think of biological sex. The Hermetic tradition is not talking about men and women. It is describing the two fundamental modes of creative energy: the active, projective, initiating force (which it calls masculine) and the receptive, gestating, formative force (which it calls feminine). All creation — at every level, from atomic to cosmic — requires the interaction of these two complementary forces.

In physics, this maps onto the distinction between force and field, between particle and wave, between kinetic and potential energy. In biology, it maps onto the interplay between DNA (the code, the pattern — active, projecting information) and the cellular environment (the womb, the context — receptive, interpreting and implementing the information). In psychology, it maps onto what Carl Jung identified as the anima and animus.

Jung’s Anima and Animus: Gender Within the Psyche

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, proposed that every person carries within their unconscious the archetype of the opposite gender. In men, this inner feminine is the anima — the source of emotion, intuition, receptivity, creativity, and relationship to the unconscious. In women, the inner masculine is the animus — the source of logic, focus, action, assertiveness, and clarity.

Jung considered these archetypes among the most powerful forces in the psyche. The anima and animus serve as bridges between consciousness and the deeper unconscious, mediating between the ego and the Self. They profoundly influence relationships, creativity, and psychological development.

Jung’s concept of individuation — the central goal of psychological development — requires the conscious integration of the anima or animus. A man must learn to relate to his inner feminine. A woman must learn to relate to her inner masculine. This is not about becoming the opposite gender — it is about achieving wholeness by honoring both poles within oneself.

Jung wrote that androgyny — the integration of anima and animus — “may be the oldest archetype inherent in the human psyche.” He believed that psychological individuation was impossible without this internal reconciliation of masculine and feminine principles. The Hermetic Principle of Gender, expressed in the language of depth psychology.

The Sacred Marriage: Creation Requires Union

Many mystical and spiritual traditions describe the highest state of spiritual development as a sacred marriage — the hieros gamos of Greek mystery schools, the union of Shiva and Shakti in Hindu tantra, the marriage of heaven and earth in Chinese alchemy, the conjunction of Sol and Luna in Western alchemy. These are not metaphors for sexual union (though they sometimes include it). They are descriptions of the creative principle itself: manifestation requires the coming together of the active and receptive, the projective and the formative, the yang and the yin.

In modern physics, every act of creation involves this polarity. Virtual particle-antiparticle pairs emerge from the quantum vacuum — positive and negative, matter and antimatter, appearing together because creation requires both poles. The strong nuclear force binds quarks into protons and neutrons through the exchange of gluons — a constant creative dialogue between complementary color charges. At every scale, the universe creates through the union of polarities. Gender is in everything.

The Final Three as Dynamic Engine

Rhythm provides the timing — the cycles, the seasons, the breath that gives pattern to existence. Cause and Effect provides the direction — the arrow of consequence that gives meaning to action. Gender provides the engine — the creative tension between complementary forces that gives rise to all new form.

Together, these three principles are the dynamics of the Hermetic system. The first four principles (Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity) describe the structure of reality. The final three describe its motion. Structure without motion is a blueprint. Motion without structure is chaos. You need both — all seven — for the complete picture.

The Hermetic system is not seven separate ideas. It is one idea viewed from seven angles. It is a unified description of a universe that is conscious (Mentalism), self-similar (Correspondence), vibratory (Vibration), polar (Polarity), rhythmic (Rhythm), consequential (Cause and Effect), and creative through the union of complementary forces (Gender).

If a biological cell encodes its grandmother’s famine in its epigenome, and the Earth pulses at the same frequency as the meditating brain, and every act of creation in the quantum vacuum requires the emergence of paired opposites — then the ancient Hermetic claim that rhythm, causation, and gender operate at every level of reality is not mysticism. It is observation.

What cycles are governing your life right now that you have not yet recognized? What consequences are ripening from causes you set in motion years ago? And what creative potential lies dormant in you because the masculine and feminine within you have not yet met?