Babylon

Babylon appears in The Secret not as a developed geographical setting or a site of narrated action, but as an emblem of ancient knowledge and prosperity. Its importance lies in the book’s claim that the principles governing wealth were known long before the modern teachers who explain them, and that Babylon’s legendary success demonstrates the practical force of those principles.

Ancient Knowledge and Historical Placement

Babylon is placed within a long historical chain of teachings about the law of attraction. The book says that this law has been expressed across religions, civilizations, writings, stories, poetry, music, painting, and philosophy, and that it was recorded in stone as early as 3000 BC. Against that broad chronology, Babylon functions as one of the earliest named civilizations associated with the Secret, helping frame the doctrine as rediscovered rather than newly invented.

The text groups the ancient Babylonians with other historical figures and traditions said to have preserved the same knowledge. The law is described as the most powerful law in the Universe, while Babylon becomes a concrete historical reference through which that abstract claim is made visible. Its presence gives the teaching an antiquity that reaches beyond contemporary self-help and connects it to a supposedly continuous human inheritance.

Prosperity and the Law of Attraction

The book presents the ancient Babylonians as exceptionally prosperous and says that their prosperity has been documented by scholars. Their wealth is linked to their understanding and application of the laws of the Universe, making Babylon an example of collective abundance rather than merely individual success. In this account, prosperity is not treated as an accident or as the result of material circumstances alone; it is interpreted as the consequence of a governing mental and universal principle.

This example supports the book’s larger argument that people who draw wealth into their lives think predominantly about abundance and wealth, refusing to allow contradictory thoughts to take root. Babylon therefore represents the civilization-scale version of a rule the book also applies to individuals: attention directed toward abundance is said to produce abundant results. The civilization’s prosperity becomes evidence within the book’s persuasive structure, even though the text does not describe Babylonian institutions, daily life, or specific historical episodes.

The Hanging Gardens as a Symbol of Achievement

Babylon is also associated with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, identified in the book as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The gardens provide the most vivid material image attached to the civilization. They transform the claim about Babylonian wealth from an abstract assertion into a monument of extraordinary human accomplishment, suggesting that the civilization’s command of universal laws was expressed in visible, lasting works.

The gardens are not examined architecturally or narrated as a scene. Instead, their legendary status amplifies Babylon’s symbolic role. A civilization capable of creating one of the world’s wonders is used as a model of what becomes possible when knowledge is understood and applied. The image joins material magnificence to mental discipline, reinforcing the book’s recurring movement from thought, to belief, to manifested circumstance.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Babylon serves as an authority-bearing reference in the book’s effort to legitimize the Secret. The teaching is supported not only by modern teachers and personal testimonies, but also by the prestige of ancient civilizations. By invoking Babylon’s prosperity, the narrative presents the law of attraction as a timeless explanation for wealth and as knowledge that a select group of wise people have always understood.

The reference also contributes to a contrast between those who supposedly know the Secret and the wider population that does not. The text asks why a small proportion of the population earns most of the money and answers that this disparity is designed because certain people understand something others do not. Babylon stands behind that claim as an ancient precedent: prosperity appears as the outward consequence of privileged understanding, while the book’s introduction of the Secret promises to make that knowledge available to its readers.

As a result, Babylon is less a setting than a historical emblem. It anchors the book’s rhetoric of abundance in the distant past, links wealth with the application of universal law, and gives the law of attraction an imagined civilizational proof. Its narrative function is to make the modern teaching appear ancient, powerful, and repeatedly confirmed across time.