Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The All

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. There is a clear consensus that this article is meets criteria for deletion according to our policy. There is also consensus that this might be a useful redirect term for our users. However, there was no consensus here what the target for the redirect should be. If someone creates a redirect, further discussion on the talk page and, if that's unsuccessful, at WP:RFD could be appropriate to reach consensus on the target. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The All

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The All (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 13:00, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 13:00, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Spirituality-related deletion discussions. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 13:13, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(1) The article, calling itself a few times explicitly "a commentary", is a piece of original research that is almost entirely based on primary sources: it cites three times book 1 of the Corpus Hermeticum (in the translation by Salaman et al., called The Way of Hermes), one time book 2 of the Corpus Hermeticum, thirteen times the Kybalion (a Neo-Hermetic/occultist work published in 1908), three times Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages (an occultist work published in 1928), three times The First Encounter (a pamphlet by Claude Nowell, leader of the new religious movement called Summum), one time SUMMUM: Sealed Except to the Open Mind (a book published by the same organization), one time an online Latin dictionary ('Mirza'), and two times Scott's introduction to vol. II of his translation of the Hermetica. Of these, only the references to Scott are appropriate.
(2) Although the concept of 'the All' does indeed occur in some ancient Hermetic tracts, this article is almost completely devoted to the interpretation of that concept by twentieth-century occultists, in casu the Kybalion and Summum, a new religious movement whose doctrines are closely based upon the Kybalion. Thus, in order to save the article, we would have to change the lead to reflect that the article is about a concept in twentieth-century occultism rather than in ancient Hermetism. But the problem then arises that it will be impossible to rewrite the article so as to be based on reliable secondary sources, because hardly any such sources exist even for Kybalion itself (I spent considerable effort looking for this when recently rewriting the article on the Kybalion, but found only a very few semi-decent sources).
(3) Given this lack of coverage, the subject does not at this time meet the requirements for notability. Moreover, as it stands now, it is largely a form of self-promotion (see also the comment, already from 2006, with regard to this on the article's talk page).
(4) While an article on the concept of 'the All', either in ancient philosophy, in modern occultism, or both, may one day be written, the article we have now really is a case of 'blow it up and start over'. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 12:50, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete Agreed with nominator. –Cupper52Discuss! 13:23, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per nom. I have to agree that this is a case where we have to “blow it up, and start over”. There are definitely some noteworthy (and perhaps even WP:Notable) subjects being discussed in the article, but they have been joined together in a way that clearly constitutes synthetic original research. Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - This reminds me of Conceptions of God, where any important material could possibly be merged... —PaleoNeonate – 17:55, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Would there be value in making it a redirect, maybe to Hermeticism where "The All" is mentioned in the Philosophy section? XOR'easter (talk) 18:19, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify – The All is important in Hermeticism - The All is referred to 5 times in the Hermeticism article – it differs from pantheism, in which reality is identical with divinity, to include spiritual and other realms beyond the senses (not arguing whether or not other realms exist, just that they're part of the beliefs of Hermeticism) – the article needs revision and relies too heavily on the Kybaliom – drafitfying the article would provide an opportunity to improve the article – as an alternative, a section could be added to the Hermeticism article explaining the concept of The All (it is mentioned in the Philosophy section of the article, but not fully developed) - cheers - Epinoia (talk) 19:39, 29 January 2021 (UTC) – comment redacted due to new comment – see below, Epinoia (talk) 01:02, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Redirecting might be a good idea. I just rewrote the section in Hermeticism#God as 'the All' so as to be based on scholarly views (it previously only referred to book 10 of the Corpus Hermeticum), so we may for the time being redirect there. Rather than draftifying the current article on The All, I propose that interested editors work directly on the Hermeticism article, which is in need of a lot of attention. As for the section in Conceptions of God#Hermeticism, it seems to be written by the same author, or at least from the same perspective (OR and misleadingly based on modern occultist/new age works like the Kybalion) as the article currently under discussion. It (the section on Hermeticism in Conceptions of God) suffers from the same problems, and I propose to also delete it. Some further clean-up in other related articles will probably be needed as well. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 21:06, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: The concept of The ALL does not exclusively belong to Hermeticism; for example, it is used in the New Age movement. Redirecting to Conceptions of God] won't help as that article is focussed on specific religions and their teachings - in the main. My sense is the the focus on Hermeticism is misleading in the light of modern usage. WP:TNT applies here. --Whiteguru (talk) 10:55, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect I would suggest deleting the article but redirecting it to Absolute (philosophy). The All and the Absolute refer to the same thing in philosophy and certain esoteric religions i.e. an unconditional reality. The All article even lists the Absolute directly in the lead as a synonymous term. Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:18, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Absolute (philosophy) describes itself as "about the concept in Hegelian philosophy", but then goes on to also discuss a number of (presumably completely different) concepts in "Indian religions", and ends up pointing to Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. That is quite disastrous. Moreover, it does not seem to be the case that any of these philosophical systems actually used the term 'the All'? As both Epinoia and I have pointed out, "the All" (Greek: to pan) is a known concept in ancient Hermetic texts, which has been noted and discussed by modern scholars (see the references in Hermeticism#God as 'the All'). As Whiteguru says, the term as such is also used in the New Age movement (though there are very good reasons to suspect that the modern New Age conceptions of 'the All' are ultimately rooted in the ancient Hermetic concept). Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 15:47, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect to wherever is appropriate, probably the relevant section of Hermeticism. GPinkerton (talk) 17:54, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify and redirect. Worthy of coverage, can be done better than this in time. Hyperbolick (talk) 03:00, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: To confirm redirect target and confirm deletion is the best option
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Amanda (aka DQ) 11:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was already thinking this may be really hard to close. Let's make it a bit easier for the closing admin by coming to some definite decision ourselves. I propose to delete and redirect to Hermeticism#God as 'the All': delete rather than draftify because the entire article is OR and there is not one decently sourced paragraph in it that can be salvaged (thus qualifying for WP:TNT), and redirect to Hermeticism#God as 'the All' because that section actually contains a rudimentary discussion of a concept by that name in ancient Hermeticism. Everyone agrees that the concept as it exists in Neo-Hermeticism (the Kybalion) or in the New Age movement is also worthy of coverage, but since it appears that scholars have not actually covered it yet, please do not use this as an argument without actually providing sources we can work with. If you believe that the article should be draftified, please clarify which sections of the article are worthy of keeping and why. If you believe we should redirect to some other page, please argue why it would be a better option than Hermeticism#God as 'the All'. Generally, please present arguments that go beyond it's interesting (I agree that it is, but we can't work with that). Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 12:44, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect as suggested in the proposal just above. XOR'easter (talk) 00:56, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect – I redacted my earlier comment – I think Hermeticism#God as 'the All' provides enough coverage of this topic – cheers, Epinoia (talk) 01:02, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • What would become of that "one decent paragraph"? Hyperbolick (talk) 03:09, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect as suggested in the proposal just above. --Whiteguru (talk) 03:44, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/Delete - I revisited the article, checked more closely if the material matched the sources. Much of the article corresponds to its citations, most reflecting parts of The Kybalion. Some of the text apparently altered later (notably the lead) doesn't fit the citations. The Kybalion is a primary source and the article fails to properly present it as what it is, a modern new-age spiritualist synthesis somewhat inspired from Hermetism. Some parts may belong in The Kybalion article (but should still ideally be supported by a secondary source about the Kybalion). As for "The All" itself, it's indeed already covered in Hermetism as others have pointed out. —PaleoNeonate – 11:13, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dear PaleoNeonate, could you be a bit more specific about which sections of the article would be a candidate for merging? Also, since this will be far from trivial, would you take it upon you to actually perform the merge? As I see it, the fact that individual claims in the article match their source (i.e., the Kybalion) is not very helpful, since these claims are firmly embedded in a synthetic interpretative reasoning that we could not possible keep per WP:PRIMARY. Moreover, we would indeed need to support this by secondary sources on the Kybalion, but the crux of the problem is of course that such sources do not seem to exist (yet). I believe that if the Kybalion article is going to have a section on 'the All', it would be best to directly quote the Kybalion itself (like I've done for the seven principles) rather than paraphrase it (always an interpretation) without secondary sources supporting that paraphrase. Would you be willing to work on this? Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 13:30, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't put work into this at current time, sorry. As for quoting the primary text itself, it may be acceptable when uncontroversial (especially for quotes), although it's generally best to use secondary scholarly sources when possible. If no secondary sources cover the Kybalion, its notability may be at stake... —PaleoNeonate – 04:17, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, we've got the six pages in Horowitz 2019 and the short reference to the seven principles in Brînzeu 2011. It's enough to base the notability of the seven principles on, and generally to cover the little that is currently present in the Kybalion article, but not any more than that. This is precisely why I argue that the article currently under discussion should be entirely deleted: no secondary sources exist for any of it. Can you agree on deletion then? Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 09:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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