There are no accidents in the universe. Everything in the universe is governed by laws. There are physical laws, emotional laws, mental laws, and spiritual laws. By understanding these laws we can learn to operate in grace instead of karma.- Vlad, thirdmonk.net

Hermetic Initiates assert that Karma is not the primary law of consequences and destiny. It is not an active principle always at work readjusting Nature’s mistakes because nature simply does not make a mistake. Here are some basics of Hermetic thought regarding Karma I found while perusing some old texts:

• Karma is not an active principle; but on the contrary, it is a crystalized force. It is the picture gallery or cosmic play of Nature.
• Karma constitutes the scenery, essence and mental imagery of a person’s total past existence.
• The Karmic spheres of an individual’s existence exists as Astral life currents along which the soul travelled and which became crystalized forms. These are expressive of the actions and motives which prompted them, Therefore, our past Karma constitutes the Soul’s past history in the Astral light. It can be deciphered by the properly trained lucid and even mediumistic clairvoyants.
• Karma is the offspring of everything, or everything that possesses pictorial records of its past evolutions. It is by means of this Karma that the psychometric sensitive can read the unwritten past. Without Karma, the powers of Psychometry would be totally useless. However, they ca only deal with small Karmas. On a grander scale, the Karma of moons, planets, suns and systems exists. Races of men, species of animals, and classes of plants of plants also evolve special Karmas which constitute their Astral world.
• The harmonies and discords of Cosmic evolution generate their special Karma just as thoughts and emotions do.
• Karma is absolutely confined to the realms of the Astral light, and consequently is always subjective. Karma can only exist as long as the Soul which generates it is attached to the same planet. When the Soul leaves the planet, the Karma disintegrates. A Soul cannot carry its Karma around the Universe with it, since Astral light differs in quality and degree upon each orb.
• When the Soul enters the spiritual states of the Soul world (which the Buddhists term Devachan), the power of its earthy Karma can never re-attract it to earth. Its influence over the Soul is lost forever. The lower can never control the higher. To assert that the past fossilized Karma can re-attract the Soul from realms of spiritual happiness and re-project it into the mire of earth is to exalt matter to the throne of a Deity. This degrades pure Spirit to the level of a passive brute substance.

If Karma is the subjective outcome of innumerable laws and forces – is it utterly powerless to effect either good or evil?

Source: The Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge