The Emerald Tablet
The legend of Thrice Great Hermes Trismegistus, a Greek translation of the
Egyptian god of Knowledge Troth, has suffered from the slight detail that essentially
all of this, greatest store of wisdom has been lost. As a result, throughout
the Dark Ages, and up until recent times, lots of bogus alchemy and witchcraft,
and all manner of weird and crazy stuff has been passed off as "Hermetic Writings"
Although it may be dozens of hundreds of years old in some cases, it none the less
remains thousands of years more recent than any actual ancient wisdom, if indeed
there ever was any, except for one tiny scrap.
The Emerald Tablet seems to have survived, even though it too seems now lost to
the public.
The Emerald Tablet, the Tabula Smaragdina, may have survived longer
than most all else precisely because it seems it was quite literally carved in stone,
on a slab of green desert glass.
1) It is true without untruth, certain and most true:
2) that which is below is like that which is on high,
and that which is on high is like that
which is below; by these things are made the miracles
of one thing.
3) And as all things are, and come from One, by the
mediation of One, So all things are born
from this unique thing by adaption.
4) The Sun is the father and the Moon the mother.
5) The wind carries it in its stomach. The earth is
its nourisher and its receptacle.
6 The Father of all the Theleme of the universal world
is here.
6a) Its force, or power, remains entire,
7) if it is converted into earth.
7a) You separate the earth from the fire, the subtle
from the gross, gently with great
industry.
8) It climbs from the earth and descends from the sky,
and receives the force of things
superior and things inferior.
9) You will have by this way, the glory of the world
and all obscurity will flee from you.
10) It is the power strong with all power, for it will
defeat every subtle thing and penetrate
every solid thing
11a) In this way the world was created.
12) From it are born wonderful adaptations, of which
the way here is given.
13) That is why I have been called Hermes Tristmegistus,
having the three parts of the
universal philosophy.
14) This, that I have called the solar Work, is complete.
As Above So Below. By these things all are made one.
Many people might focus
on this second observation, that there is a oneness beneath all the strife and diversity
and difference and uniqueness of physical life here on Earth, and this is a worthy
avenue of philosophical investigation, one that especially benefits from the application
of mind altering drugs, I might add. However, it is the often overlooked first
statement,
"Above So Below," that most intrigues me, because it supports my
Animal House Theory of the Cosmos, that our Solar System is but an atom, our universe but
a molecule, and that we exist within the small intestines of some vast organism
to which a million years is but a fraction of a second, and under our fingernails
exist untold tropical oceans.
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