The Emerald Tablet
by Jeffrey Pierce
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In today's daily paganism lesson, we referred to the mystical concept "As above, so below," as coming from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. I imagine that there are many of us who are asking, "Who in the heck is Hermes Trismegistus? And does the Emerald Tablet have anything to do with the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz?"

Hermes Trismegistus is an ancient deity (somewhere between 323 BCE and 146 BCE) where the people of the time took the Greek god Hermes and squished him together with the Egyptian god Thoth. For a time, the two gods were worshipped as one in the Temple of Thoth in Khmu (Egypt) which the Greeks referred to as Hermopolis.

No one is absolutely certain when the Emerald Tablet was written or who wrote it. However, the Emerald Tablet has been held in the highest regard for countless centuries by occultists and is the foundation of European alchemy. The translation that I prefer (the earliest text of the Emerald Tablet is in Arabic) was written by a French master alchemist who went by the pseudonym of Fulcanelli. No one knows exactly who this person was as he published several works in the early 1900s and then subsequently disappeared without a trace.

  1. This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:
  2. As below, so above; and as above so below. With this knowledge alone you may work miracles.
  3. And since all things exist in and emanate from the ONE Who is the ultimate Cause, so all things are born after their kind from this ONE.
  4. The Sun is the father, the Moon the mother; the wind carried it in his belly. Earth is its nurse and its guardian.
  5. It is the Father of all things,
  6. The eternal Will is contained in it.
  7. Here, on earth, its strength, its power remain one and undivided. Earth must be separated from fire, the subtle from the dense, gently with unremitting care.
  8. It arises from the earth and descends from heaven; it gathers to itself the strength of things above and things below.
  9. By means of this one thing all the glory of the world shall be yours and all obscurity flee from you.
  10. It is power, strong with the strength of all power, for it will penetrate all mysteries and dispel all ignorance. By it the world was created.
  11. From it are born manifold wonders, the means to achieving which are here given
  12. It is for this reason that I am called Hermes Trismegistus; for I possess the three essentials of the philosophy of the universe.
  13. This is the sum total of the work of the Sun.

The Emerald Tablet clearly speaks of the concept and flow of magick although it does so in a hidden, symbolic sort of manner. While I won't attempt to explain the various lines at this time, I may do so at a later date as most of the available commentary refers to its applications in alchemy, not magick.

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Originally published in Old Ways on November 24, 2010