Emerald Tablet

Beginning from the first century BCE onwards, Greek texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, appeared in Greco-Roman Egypt. These texts, known as the Hermetica, are a heterogeneous collection of works that in the modern day are commonly subdivided into two groups: the technical Hermetica, comprising astrological, medico-botanical, alchemical, and magical writings; and the religio-philosophical Hermetica, comprising mystical-philosophical writings. These Greek pseudepigraphal texts found receptions, translations, and imitations in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Middle Persian prior to the emergence of Islam and the Arab conquests in the 630s. These conquests brought about various empires in which a new group of Arabic-speaking intellectuals emerged. These scholars received and translated the aforementioned wealth of texts and also began producing Hermetica of their own. By the tenth century, some Arabic-speaking Muslims had come to identify Hermes with the prophet Idris, thereby elevating the Hermetica to the level of other Islamic prophetic revelations. Until the early twentieth century, only Latin versions of the Emerald Tablet were known in the Western world, with the oldest dating back to the twelfth century. The older (eighth-/ninth-century and later) Arabic versions were rediscovered by Eric John Holmyard and Julius Ruska. It is believed to have been compiled in Arabic in the late eighth or early ninth century. The treatise bears the title Book of the Secret of Creation and the Craft of Nature. Some scholars consider it plausible that this work is a translation of a much older Greek or Syriac original, although no such manuscript is known. At the same time others think it is more likely that it was an original Arabic composition based on older materials. The Arabic text presents itself as a translation of a work by Apollonius of Tyana. Pseudepigraphal attributions to Apollonius were common in medieval Arabic texts on magic, astrology, and alchemy. If the Tablet originally hailed from a pseudo-Apollonian context, it could be considered a text of late antiquity, like other such works. This earliest known version reads as follows: The introduction to the Book of the Secret of Creation presents a narrative that outlines key philosophical and alchemical ideas. It explains that all things are composed of four elemental qualities—heat, cold, moisture, and dryness—drawn from Aristotelian theory. These elements and their combinations are said to determine the sympathetic or antagonistic relationships between beings. In the frame story, Balīnūs, a legendary figure known as the Master of Talismans, discovers a crypt beneath a statue of Hermes Trismegistus. Inside, he finds a tablet made of emerald, held by an old man seated with a book. The central part of the text is an alchemical treatise, notable for introducing—for the first time—the theory that all metals are formed from two basic substances: sulphur and mercury. This concept later became a foundational idea in medieval alchemy. Emerald was the stone traditionally associated with Hermes, while quicksilver was his metal and Mercury his planet. Mars was associated with red stones and iron, and Saturn with black stones and lead. People in antiquity thought of various green-coloured minerals—such as green jasper and even green granite—as emerald. The text of the Emerald Tablet appears in the Book of the Secret of Creation as an appendix. It has long been debated whether it is an extraneous piece, solely cosmogonic in nature, or whether it is an integral part of the rest of the work, in which case it could have had an alchemical significance from the outset. It has been suggested that the Emerald Tablet was originally a text of talismanic magic that was only later understood as being alchemical in nature. This may have been due to it having been divorced from its original context in the Book of the Secret of Creation; and instead having been commonly transmitted through the alchemical treatise containing the vulgate. of the beginning of the Guanzi section Tzu-Kung hypothesised to be the origin of the Emerald Tablet. Julius Ruska observed that the Tablet's cosmogony in the Book of the Secret of Creation seemed neither Islamic, Iranian, nor Christian. He speculated that it might reflect Chaldean, Harranian, or gnostic ideas from the regions northeast of Iran, along the Silk Road. Chang Tzu-Kung proposed an origin further east—as he believed Hermes Trismegistus to have been Chinese. He noted that Chinese aphorisms commonly hailed from legendary slabs and steles in caves and temples. Tzu-Kung produced a speculative Chinese rendition of the Tablet, which he based on John Read's vulgate translation.'' He then claimed the Tablet's origin to be a Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) Taoist text known as the Guanzi''. Joseph Needham rejected this theory as not yet having been sufficiently proved. Jabir ibn Hayyan Another early version of the Emerald Tablet is found in the Second Book of the Element of the Foundation () attributed to the eighth-century alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan. In this somewhat shorter version, lines 6, 8, and 11–15 as found in the Secret of Creation are missing. Other parts appear to be corrupt. It reads: Secret of Secrets (man. Berlin, Landberg 121). Another text of the Emerald Tablet is found towards the end of the tenth-century pseudo-Aristotelian work known as the Secret of Secrets. This entire treatise is framed as a pseudepigraphical letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great during the latter's conquest of Persia and is introduced via a number of letters between the two. It discusses politics, morality, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, medicine, and more. It reads: Ibn Umayl 's discovery story in a pyramid from manuscript Book of the Silvery Water and the Starry Earth. (man. Topkapı Palace Library, man. Ahmet III 2075). Similarly, an Arabic treatise called the Book of the Silvery Water and the Starry Earth by Ibn Umayl reproduces a version of the Tablet. This treatise was translated as . In this version of the frame story, an alchemical stone table is discovered, resting on the knees of Hermes Trismegistus in the secret chamber of a pyramid. However, this table does not contain the Tablet text which is repeated later in the treatise. It is instead inscribed with writing described as . Its "hieroglyphic" contents are then visually depicted together with an alchemical exegesis thereof. The literary theme of the discovery of Hermes' hidden wisdom can be found in other Arabic texts from around the tenth century. The introduction of the Book of Crates provides one such example. In the narrative a Greek philosopher named Crates is praying in the temple Sarapieion. While in prayer he has a vision of the ancient sage. It reads: == European medieval period ==

On the Secrets of Nature (man. Paris, Latin 13951). The Book of the Secret of Creation was translated into Latin'' in by Hugo of Santalla. This text does not appear to have been widely circulated. Its translation of the Tablet'' reads as follows: Secret of Secrets from (man. Oxford, Christ Church 99'').|209x209px|left The Tablet was also translated into Latin as part of the thirteenth-century translation of the Secret of Secrets () by Philip of Tripoli. This entire treatise has been called "the most popular book of the Latin Middle Ages". Its translation of the Tablet differs significantly from both Hugo of Santalla's version and the vulgate translation. In Roger Bacon's 1255 edition it reads: Vulgate A third Latin version can be found in an alchemical treatise likely from the twelfth century. This latter, most circulated version is called the vulgate, as it was widespread and formed the subsequent basis for all later editions and translations into European vernacular languages. It is found in an anonymous compilation of commentaries on the Emerald Tablet, translated from a lost Arabic text–variously called the Book of Hermes on Alchemy, the Book of Dabessus, or the Book of the Rebis. Its translator has been tentatively identified as Plato of Tivoli, who was active in . However, this is merely conjecture, and although it can be deduced from other indices that the text dates to the first half of the twelfth century, its translator remains unknown. Its translation of the Tablet reads: The translator of this version did not understand the and therefore merely transcribed it into Latin as telesmus or telesmum. This accidental neologism was variously interpreted by commentators, thereby becoming one of the most distinctive, yet ambiguous, terms of alchemy. The word is of Greek origin, from . The obscurity of this word's meaning brought forth many interpretations. In the Book of Hermes on Alchemy the cryptic telesmus line was left out entirely. The vulgate's final line referring to the operation of Sol is commonly interpreted as a reference to the alchemical Great Work. The Emerald Tablet was seen as a summary of alchemical principles, wherein the secrets of the philosopher's stone were thought to have been described. This belief led to its consequent popularity and the wide array of European translations of and commentaries on the text, beginning in the High Middle Ages and persisting to the present. Commentaries Herman of Carinthia was one of a few European twelfth-century scholars to cite the Emerald Tablet. He did so in his 1143 treatise On Essences, where he also recalled the frame story of the tablet's discovery under a statue of Hermes in a cave, from the Book of the Secret of Creation. Carinthia was a friend of Robert of Chester, who in 1144 translated the Book on the Composition of Alchemy, which is generally considered to be the first Latin translation of an Arabic treatise on alchemy. An anonymous twelfth-century commentator tried to explain the aforementioned neologism telesmus in the phrase by claiming it is synonymous with . The translator followed this claim with the assertion that a kind of divination, which is "superior to all others" among the Arabs is called . In subsequent commentaries on the Emerald Tablet only the meaning of secret was retained. On Minerals written around 1250 by Albertus Magnus comments on the vulgate Tablet. Roger Bacon translated and annotated the Secret of Secrets around 1275–1280. He thought it an authentic work of Aristotle and it greatly influenced his thought. He cited it constantly, from his earliest writings to his last. The most widespread commentary accompanying the text of the Emerald Tablet is that of Hortulanus. He was an alchemist, who was likely active in the first half of the fourteenth century, about whom very little is known except for what he states about himself in the introduction of the text. Hortulanus, like Albertus Magnus before him, saw the tablet as a cryptic recipe that described laboratory processes using "deck names". This was the dominant view held by Europeans until the fifteenth century. In his commentary, Hortulanus, again like Albertus Magnus, interpreted the sun and moon to represent alchemical gold and silver. Hortulanus translated "telesma" as "secret" or "treasure". From around 1420, the Rising Dawn introduced one of the earliest European cycles of alchemical imagery, combining complex metaphors with the motif of glass vessels. Its illustrations depict symbolic operations such as putrefaction, sublimation, and the union of opposites through figures like Mercury, the sun and moon, dragons, and eagles. These images reflect philosophical principles including "two are one" and "nature vanquishes nature". Drawing on late antique traditions preserved in Ibn Umayl's Book of the Silvery Water and the Starry Earth, the manuscript visualises the myth of the rediscovery of Hermetic knowledge, portraying hieroglyphic signs as divinely instituted symbols immune to verbal distortion. The Rising Dawn thus helped establish the Renaissance notion of alchemical imagery as a medium for transmitting original wisdom through visual, rather than textual, means. == Renaissance and early modernity ==

During the Renaissance, Hermes Trismegistus was widely regarded as the founder of alchemy and native to Babylon. He was thought to be a contemporary of Noah or Moses and his legend became intertwined with biblical narratives. One illustrative example of the belief that Hermes invented alchemy is found in the anonymous text Who Were the First Inventors of this Art, extracted from a gloss of the fourteenth-century Textus Alkimie. This text or a later French one, incorporating much of its narrative, influenced another discovery legend claiming the tablet (and its emblem) to have been discovered after the Biblical Flood in Hebron Valley. The narrative further evolved via Hieronymus Torrella's 1496 Splendid Work of Astrological Images. In it, Alexander the Great discovers a in Hermes' tomb while travelling to the Oracle of Amun in Egypt. This story is repeated in 1617 by Michael Maier in Symbols of the Golden Table, referencing a Book of Chymical Secrets attributed to, but likely not written by, Albertus Magnus. That same year, he published Fleeing Atalanta. It was illustrated by Matthaeus Merian the Elder, possibly with cooperation from his cousin Theodor de Bry, with fifty alchemical emblems, each accompanied by a poem, the score of a fugue, and alchemical and mythological explanations. Among them were ones depicting verses from the Tablet. The first printed edition of the Emerald Tablet appeared in 1541, in Of Alchemy. It was published in Nuremberg by Johann Petreius and edited by a certain Chrysogonus Polydorus. Polydorus likely is a pseudonym used by the Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander, who edited Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, also published by Petreius. This edition, which is similar to the vulgate version, is accompanied by Hortulanus' commentary. By the early sixteenth century, the writings of Johannes Trithemius marked a shift away from a laboratory interpretation of the Emerald Tablet, to a metaphysical approach. Trithemius equated Hermes' "one thing" with the monad of Pythagorean philosophy and the anima mundi. This interpretation of the Hermetic text was adopted by alchemists such as John Dee, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Gerhard Dorn. In 1583, Dorn published On the Light of Physical Nature by Christoph Corvinus. This Paracelsian treatise drew up a detailed parallel between the Emerald Tablet and the Genesis creation narrative. Emblem From the late sixteenth century onwards, the Emerald Tablet was often accompanied by a symbolic figure called . This figure is encircled by an acrostic in whose seven initials form the word . At the top, the sun and moon pour into a cup above the planetary symbol ☿ representing Mercury. Surrounding this mercurial cup are the four other planets, representing the classic association between the seven planets and the seven metals. Though, many of the extant copies of the emblem are not set in colour, it was originally polychrome—linking each planetary-metallic pair with a specific colour, thus rendering: gold–Sol-gold, silver–Luna–silver, grey–Mercury–quicksilver, blue–Jupiter–tin, red–Mars–iron, green–Venus–copper, and black–Saturn–lead. At the centre are a ring and a globus cruciger; at the bottom, the celestial and terrestrial spheres. Three charges represent, according to the accompanying poem, the three principles of Paracelsian alchemical theory: the eagle signifying quicksilver and the spirit, the lion signifying sulphur and the soul, and the star signifying salt and the body. Finally, two Schwurhands appear alongside the image, affirming the creator's veracity. The oldest known printed reproduction of this emblem is found in the Golden Fleece, attributed to Salomon Trismosin—likely a pseudonym employed by a German Paracelsian. Wherein the image was accompanied by a didactic alchemical poem in German titled (). This poem explained the emblem's symbolism in relation to the Great Work and the classical goals of alchemy: wealth, health, and long life. The emblem is largely derivative. The colours, symbols and associations are all found in different Paracelsian works from the same period and unlikely to be influenced by the Tablet itself. The association with the cryptic text might have served primarily as a legitimation for an artwork also meant to be read metaphorically. Additionally, the image first spread in the circle of Karl Widemann, a known Paracelsian mystifier. Initially, the image was presented alongside the Emerald Tablet as a merely ancillary element. However, in printed editions of the seventeenth century, the poem was omitted, and the emblem came to be known as the symbolic or graphical representation of the Emerald Tablet. The emblem proliferated quickly, was frequently reproduced, and gained narrative antiquity. From Ehrd de Naxagoras in his 1733 Supplement to the Golden Fleece came an example of such a narrative. In the aforementioned discovery legend a woman named Zora finds "a precious emerald plaque" engraved with this emblem in Hermes' grave in Hebron Valley. The emblem thus came to be conceptualised of as part of the esoteric tradition of interpreting Egyptian hieroglyphs. It also came to serve as an example of the Renaissance-Platonic and alchemical belief that "the deepest secrets of nature could only be appropriately expressed through an obscure and veiled mode of representation". Nuremberg edition ' Of Alchemy.|left The 1541 Nuremberg edition from Johannes Petreius' Of Alchemy—largely similar to the vulgate—reads: French sonnet translation In the fifteenth century an anonymous French version, set in verse, appeared. A revised 1621 sonnet version by reads: Enlightenment vol. 2 no. 1.|left From the dawning seventeenth-century Enlightenment onward, a number of authors began to issue challenges to the attribution of the Emerald Tablet to Hermes Trismegistus. Chronologically first among them was the former alchemist Nicolas Guibert. He believed the ancients had never mentioned alchemy by name and the practice of identifying gold and silver by the names of planets was an idea first advanced by Proclus. He argued, therefore, that the Emerald Tablet must be inauthentic. These attacks were supported by a rising spectre of doubt surrounding all things Hermetic, following a linguistic analysis by Isaac Casaubon, calling into question the authenticity of the Corpus Hermeticum and Hermes himself. The most prominent attack came from Athanasius Kircher in his Egyptian Oedipus. Kircher rejected the Emerald Tablet's attribution to Hermes Trismegistus, as it did not support his interpretation of hieroglyphs; he argued that the Tablet's "barbaric" Latin betrayed a much later, post‐classical origin. Additionally, he pointed out that no ancient Greek philosophers ever mention it—a silence he took as evidence of forgery. Further, he associated it with a group of alchemists he considered delusional and rejected the story of its discovery in Hermes' tomb as a pure figment of their imagination. He applied critical arguments he otherwise rejected—for example when defending the legitimacy of the Corpus Hermeticum—when the text in question conflicted with his aims. Kircher's critique was forceful enough to draw out a response from the Danish alchemist Ole Borch in his 1668 On the Origin and Progress of Chemistry. In which Borch sought to distinguish genuinely ancient Hermetic writings from later forgeries and to re‐value the Emerald Tablet as truly Egyptian in origin. Amid this climate of inquiry and doubt a 1684 tractate by deployed linguistic analysis—incorporating Hebrew—to assert that Hermes Trismegistus was not the Egyptian Thoth but the Phoenician Taaut—whom Tacitus identifies as Tuisto, the legendary divine progenitor of the Germanic peoples. The debate continued and both Borch's and Kriegsmann's treatises were reprinted (alongside many others) in Jean-Jacques Manget's Curious Chemical Library. The Emerald Tablet was still translated and commented upon by Isaac Newton, who rendered the recondite as "perfection". But the result of this age of upheaval and inquiry was the gradual decline of alchemy during the eighteenth century. The hardest blow to alchemy's legitimacy was the advent of modern chemistry and the work of Lavoisier—with the 1720s marking the turning point when alchemy lost the trust of the emergent chemical community. The emerging category of modern science fundamentally conflicted with the practical and theoretical traditions of alchemy. It left no room for alchemists within the new definition of the scientist, leading to a sharp decline in alchemical works after the 1780s. == Modernity and present ==

, from the 1909 Rider–Waite tarot deck, often thought to represent the concept of "as above, so below".|260x260px Esotericism and academia The Emerald Tablet continued to interest esotericists—and beginning in the 1850s and lasting up to the 1920s the newly emerging occultist current. In France the first occultist, Éliphas Lévi, considered it the most important magical text. Additionally, figures like Stanislas de Guaïta and Papus spent little time engaging with the broader Hermetic tradition but focused much of their efforts onto exegesis of the Tablet. In Italy Giuliano Kremmerz authored a long commentary on it. English scholars such as John Chambers initiated the academic study of the Hermetica. However, the most influential figure in this endeavor was George R.S. Mead. He began his examinations in the Theosophical Society, but broke with it in 1879. From thereon he developed a scholarly objectivity when engaging with the material while not concealing his personal occultist beliefs. The co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Helena Blavatsky produced exegetical interpretations of the Tablet. She also popularized a paraphrase of the second verse of the vulgate: "as above, so below". This use—along with that in the Kybalion—propelled it to become an oft-cited motto. Later in the twentieth century, it would rise to particular prominence in New Age circles. This led to its adoption as a title for various works of art. A figure also influenced by Blavatsky was the Dutch founder of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, Jan van Rijckenborgh. He used the Tablet to derive the crux of his own worldview and ascribed much antiquity to it. The world's most extensive collection of Hermetica is found in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, which was founded by a member of the Lectorium, Joost Ritman. Perennialists as a whole have largely kept their distance from Hermeticism and its receptions in Western esotericism. Two exceptions are the traditionalist Titus Burckhardt, who produced one of the best-known modern commentaries on the Tablet, and fellow traditionalist and founder of the UR Group, Julius Evola, who made the Tablet central to his 1931 The Hermetic Tradition. A prominent academic reception of the Tablet occurred in Carl Jung's psychology of alchemy. He saw it as the paramount text of alchemy and described Evola's The Hermetic Tradition as "a magisterial portrayal of hermetic philosophy". Jung had read and was familiar with the Arabic text of the Book of the Secret of Creation and the debates surrounding the text's age and original language. He focused his textual analysis mainly, however, on the Latin vulgate text. The Tablet's alchemical operations—most notably the "operation of the sun"—became, for Jung, powerful metaphors: the sun's "art" of creating gold is none other than consciousness splitting from a "primeval" archetypal source, working through the "prima materia" of the psyche, and reuniting to generate a transformed, individuated self. Arts and popular culture At the beginning of the twentieth century, alchemy fascinated the surrealist André Breton. He believed the aim of surrealism should be to ascertain the point within the mind where life and death, real and imaginary, past and future etc no longer seem contradictory. In the introduction of a 1942 essay, Breton directly referenced the Emerald Tablet's dictum "as above, so below" by invoking the image of a soaring bird and a lift descending into a mine-shaft clashing. The metaphor led up to his first commandment: "Never believe in the interior of a cave, always in the surface of an egg." Breton thereby employed an alchemical reading of the Tablet to bind dichotomous forces into a seamless whole. He saw Max Ernst, who claimed to have been born from an egg, as that very "alchemical egg"—his birth myth and his art as having fused celestial and chthonic forces into that single whole. Jorge Ben released the studio album A Tábua de Esmeralda ("The Emerald Tablet") in 1974. In it, he explored the theme of alchemy through tracks like "Os Alquimistas estão chegando Os Alquimistas," "Errare Humanum Est," and "Hermes Trismegisto e Sua Celeste Tábua de Esmeralda," using reiterated modal phrases that evoked a liturgical resonance. The album exemplified Ben's distinctive fusion of samba with elements of jazz and rock, shaped by his percussive, self-taught guitar technique and supported by musicians from across the spectrum of Música popular brasileira. Some Música popular brasileira-traditionalists saw this as a concession to the US garage rock-inspired style known as Jovem Guarda. Manfred Kelkel composed Tabula Smaragdina (Op. 24) between 1975 and 1977. Conceived as a ballet hermétique, the work aimed to unite his passions for esotericism, alchemy, and music. Kelkel sought to render sound and thought visible through graphic mandalas, which mapped zodiac signs, planets, and the four elements onto instruments, scales, and rhythms. During performance, twelve symbolic images were projected alongside a simplified conventional score—transforming each page of the work into both stage scenery and musical instructions. To structure the piece, Kelkel drew on sources such as Chinese trigrams, fractal geometry, medieval magic squares, and the harmony of the spheres. He created twelve successive movements, each named after a phase in the alchemical process—such as Nuptiae chymicae and Coagulatio—and each possessing its own emblem and formal rules. The result was a codified "metamusic", designed to awaken hidden cosmic and psychological resonances through structured, alchemical transformations. 's illustration used in Dark. In the 2010s German time travel television series Dark, the mysterious priest Noah has a large image of a graphic depiction of an emerald tablet, featuring the text of the Emerald Tablet, tattooed on his back. The image, which stems from Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom (1609), also appears on a metal door in the caves that are central to the plot. Several characters are shown looking at copies of the text. A verse from the 1541 Nuremberg version plays a prominent thematic role in the series and is the title of the sixth episode of the first season. ==Notes==