Law VIII:
The Law of Attraction
Like attracts like; thought and emotion magnetize corresponding forms.
Essence of the Law
Like attracts like; thought and emotion magnetize corresponding forms. Desire shapes destiny, and the soul draws toward itself those conditions, images, lessons, and companions that resonate with its inward state.
Law Overview
The Law of Attraction teaches that consciousness is not inert. Thought, feeling, attention, imagination, and desire form a subtle magnetism through which the inner life enters relationship with the outer world.
This law is not a license for shallow wishing or blame. In the deeper mystical sense, attraction is the correspondence between inner quality and outer experience. The soul gravitates toward what it loves, fears, contemplates, and repeatedly energizes.
To practice this law is to purify desire, direct imagination, bless what is already present, and release obsessive attachment. The seeker learns to magnetize through harmony rather than desperation, through gratitude rather than grasping, through alignment rather than force.
Historical, Civilizational, and Comparative Analysis
Ancient Roots
Egyptian
In the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day, the heart is weighed, purified, and revealed as the seat of moral and spiritual truth. The heart draws what it loves, and the soul becomes shaped by what it inwardly contemplates.
Greek and Hermetic
In the Corpus Hermeticum, thought and becoming are joined through the power of mind. What the soul turns toward, it begins to resemble. Contemplation is therefore not passive observation, but spiritual formation.
Indian
In the Bhagavad Gita, the final movement of thought reveals the direction of the soul. The object held in consciousness at the end discloses the deep tendency of a life shaped by attention, devotion, and desire.
Pagan Echoes
In Wiccan and magical ethics, energy sent forth is understood to return according to its nature. The Wiccan Rede and related teachings encourage practitioners to consider not only the spell, but the emotional and moral quality that charges it.
Attraction in this context is not mere acquisition; it is resonance. A magical act succeeds most cleanly when desire, symbol, intention, timing, and ethical alignment vibrate as one chord.
Eastern Echoes
The Dhammapada teaches that mind precedes experience. A purified mind brings happiness like a shadow that does not depart, while an impure mind draws suffering through the conditions it perpetuates.
“Mind precedes all things; speak or act with pure mind, and happiness follows.”
Dhammapada 1:1–2
Esoteric Echoes
In the visionary work of William Blake, imagination is a divine faculty rather than fantasy. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, desire, perception, energy, and spiritual vision are inseparable forces in the making of experience.
“The imagination is the faculty of God in man.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Christian Echoes
Christian scripture presents prayer as an act of seeking, asking, and receptive trust. Desire becomes holy when aligned with faith, humility, and divine will rather than isolated self-will.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find.”
Matthew 7:7
Notes on Usage, Application, and Practice
Direct Thought with Feeling
Focus Upon Gratitude
Release Attachment
Trust the higher will to unfold perfect timing. Attraction becomes distorted when desire hardens into grasping, fear, or control.
Quotes and Key Statements
Egyptian: “The heart draws what it loves, and the soul becomes what it contemplates.”
Hermetic: “What one thinks, one becomes.”
Indian: “Whatever being a man thinks of at the end, to that he goes.”
Bhagavad Gita VIII.6
Eastern: “Mind precedes all things.”
Dhammapada 1:1–2
Christian: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find.”
Representative and Definitive Sources
Bhagavad Gita VIII.6
Gospel of Matthew, King James Version
Dhammapada 1:1–2
A central Buddhist source for the relation between mind, intention, and lived experience.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
A visionary Western source for imagination, desire, perception, and spiritual energy.
Contemplative Exercise
Write one desire clearly. Beneath it, write the feeling you believe it will bring: peace, freedom, love, security, joy, recognition, or service.
Then sit quietly and cultivate that feeling without demanding its outer form. Ask: What action, relationship, habit, or thought would naturally arise from this inner state if I already trusted its presence?
Literature, Film, Music, and Cultural References
Literature
A modern spiritual fable of desire, destiny, omens, and the soul’s magnetism toward its treasure.
A contemplative novel in which longing, seeking, renunciation, and realization shape the path of becoming.
A poetic source for love, desire, work, joy, sorrow, and the invisible forces that draw the soul toward meaning.
Film
A psychological study of attention, belief, memory, and the realities created by fixation.
A story of focused desire, perseverance, hope, and alignment between vision and action.
Music
The Beatles, “All You Need Is Love”
A cultural hymn to love as the central attractive and unifying force.
A song of desire, emotional weather, longing, and the return of what is inwardly carried.
Law VIII:
The Law of Attraction
What the heart loves, the soul approaches. What the mind blesses, the path reveals. Desire purified becomes destiny illumined.