THE SMARAGDINE TABLET, or
THE EMERALD TABLET OF HERMES
TEXT OF THE TABLET
1 .True, without error, certain, and most true.
- That which is above is that which is below;
3 .And that which is below is that which is above,
4 .For the performing the miracle of the One Thing;
5 .And as all things were from One, by the mediation of One,
6 .So all things arose from this One Thing by adaptation.
7 The father of it is the Sun,
8 The mother of it is the Moon,
9 The wind carries it in its belly
10 The nurse thereof is the Earth.
11 This is the father of all perfection,
12 Or the consummation of the whole world.
13 The power of it is integral, if it be turned into earth.
14 Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire,
15 The subtle from the gross,
16 Gently and with sagacity.
17 It ascends from earth to heaven,
18 And again descends to earth:
19 And received the strength of the superiors and of the inferiors –
20 So thou hast the glory of the whole world.
21 Therefore let all obscurity flee before thee.
22 This is the strong fortitude of all fortitudes,
23 Overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing.
24 So the world was created.
25 Hence were all wonderful adaptations of which this is the manner.
26 Therefore am I called Thrice Great Hermes,
27 Having the Three Parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
28 Consummated is that which I have written
29 Concerning the operation of the Sun.
The Smaragdine Tablet
or
The Emerald Tablet of Hermes
A Study of the Text. Two lectures by MBM
November 30 and December 14, 1935
This “tablet” is unique in shortness, but also in finality. It stands tests. There are legends as to where it was found. Hebron? Syria? How old is it? The first printing of it was in the Latin works of Geber, the great Arabian mystic of the Eighth Century whose works were printed in Latin in Nuremberg in 1541.
Follow the idea of the tablet of Hermes for a moment. Hermes was the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god of wisdom. In old Egypt Hermes corresponds to what the Greeks injected into our later culture as the Logos doctrine. Not the cupbearer to Zeus. A humbler god: that is outer. But in the profundities we have to find the greater Hermes, who is the active Word pronounced by Deity.
In ancient Egypt that name was alliterated in many ways. The most famous is Thoth, or Tehuti, or the god of wisdom. He was the one who taught the Words of God’s wisdom to men, to initiates, to the teachers among men. And the name Hermes rather than Thoth or Tehuti has clung to this doctrine of the Word because the Greek language became the medium to our later culture. The oldest word spoken in the true Hermetic tradition are several chapters in the Book of the Dead.
Egypt is not the only place where this tradition is found. But there are various teachings unique to the Hermetic stock as derived from Egypt. That line of tradition has come to be known as the Hermetic tradition, and the books which in later years were written about it have come to be called the Corpus Hermeticum.
The tablet is not a “green stone”. That is a mystic allegory. The text was originally written on the luniferous ether, where those who know how to read it can read it. And the words spoken are known to the wise of all races and peoples.
The introduction to the Fourth Gospel is closest in tradition to the Logos tradition. But the teachings in the Hermetic traditions are Hermetically sealed, because written in a language which means little to those who have not learned to unravel it. It is not sealed to those who have learned the language.
Logos. Equals, or means, the Word of God made manifest. It was brought to our modern culture by the Greeks. But areas and races have at times proved better or worse as guardians for teachings. The Logosistic teachings of Egypt will come to the fore in this era, and others recede, including the dominance of Tibet.
The Logos teachings past through other hands than the Greeks. The Arabs became the leaders of human culture at one time and were actually the means of passing much of the wisdom through to a later Europe than at that first day when Greece began that movement. About 200 A.D. (probably refers to the Greek movement.) When the Arabs began the continuation of the passing on of this wisdom they added another type of mystical analogy. That is why you will again and again run into the Hermetic tradition as more or less identical with alchemy.
The Arabs, who really introduced modern science into our culture, knew much about the inward economy of substances. Not least of all, metals and certain plants. Hence they began to compare the secret teachings of Hermes with changes that could be made among metals, and thus garbed much of the teachings in the language of Alchemy.
Two schools from that time. Those who, by the mystery of the principle of correspondence, followed metals exclusively, the art and of course the science of transmutation of baser metals into gold; and those who, in the long line of the Hermetic tradition, followed the true law of using these analogies, by virtue of the principle of correspondence for something else.
Al chemy. Al, the. Chem, an ancient name of Egypt. In the old language it meant black, and was thus the word for both the land, with its famous black alluvial soil, and the black pupil of the eye. As there were riches in the black soil fertility beyond measure, so there was in the power of the eye; Egypt as the pupil of the eye of the world, as scene (seen) of the Corpus Hermeticum. As the pupil takes in the vision and conveys it to your nerves, and you recognize and organize what you see, to build up an intelligible world in the sense of sight; so, through the wisdom that was stored in Egypt, the analogous concept enters into the picture. The power of understanding; the background, organization, pattern, the integrity of the whole.
So alchemy is the seeing, through the black richness of Egypt, as you see through the pupil of your eye. The seeing came before chemistry, which is only out-seeing—substances, not their content.
So the long line of Wisdom, going back some say to Adam, humanity in its first stage. Secrets capable of being conveyed only to those who are prepared. Through all the other great Teachers.
Ecclesiastes. The last two chapters as (has) the Hermetic tradition. “Wisdom is better than strength.” That reverses orthodox values.
In other words, the Hermetic tradition is to be found everywhere.
The tablet stands in the line of the golden chain from the beginning………. presenting them to a small group. Stimulated. A goad. Though great things we cannot understand in their fulness, we can be goaded by them.
“True, without error.” Sets the key. Of the pneumenal world. Without error, without adulteration. Without redundancy, economic, not just without lies. Dealing with essence; highly economic, a characteristic of high, or cosmic speech.
“Certain.” Assured, fixed, definite, infallible, ultimates, final. It shows that the text comes from high sources. The Word of the Logos speaking.
“Most true.” The first and the last word (of line one) is true. Runs the range of involution and evolution. At the beginning and at the end is true. In between are certain things that are most certain, the things of the true world. Like the serpent with the tail in its mouth, which has brought up its tail to where its head once was. That place is now occupied by its tail. The great serpent Apep, whose voice (?) runneth through the whole length of the Tuat. So vast a design in this sentence, so economic, that it is at once extremely full, and again like a skeleton.
The next two lines, a link. Without that link the absolutes of the first sentence could not reach the areas that follow. The first line a prelude. The next two lines as a link, making a chain between the process which is presently to be described and the absolutes of the first sentence. “It is just in the relationship that life consists.” Without this bridge there could be no life for us.
The second line is the way of science, from the known to the unknown. The author of the text was speaking to the men of earth. Studies the immediate. By the shadow that the immediate throws forward he sets up a theory as to what is in the yet unknown territory.
Line 3. The reverse of the picture, and is the method of the mystic or the gnostic. Lines 2 and 3, the macrocosm and the microcosm. Based on a great principle, one of the seven cosmic principles, one of whose aspects we call correspondence.
What science is beginning to reveal to the material senses via the structure of the atom, has long been known as the axiomatic principle on which all things are formed. It is as old as creation. Analogous to the structure of the cosmos. Very important to the preforming of the miracle.
Performing of the One Thing. No one can perform the miracle of the One Thing without that knowledge. …… of the correspondence of all stages. This is not to be seen as an intellectual statement. But something so structural that it might be compared to the stresses and strains of a giant sky scraper. You must know the stresses and strains of the cosmic organism, and know them as truly as the builder of a sky scraper.
A miracle. Comes from a word that means wonder. Something that arouses wonder in you. Contrary to usual procedure. A miracle is something which has taken place that is contrary to the usual procedure. But to concede that the miracle is without laws is out of the concept of cosmic order. It is never an accident. A nexus, an overlapping of forces. Miracles to the lower man. The making of gold metal no longer a miracle. To the Arabs that was an illustration of something else which miracle of the One Thing.
The One Thing. In itself, a huge volume. One means singleness, coordination; not simplicity. Organization. An integer. Concerns man and is making a one out of him as against a million. The miracle of the One Thing is putting humpty-dumpty together, a thousand pieces into one.
“thing” In occult language you will often come across deity spoken of as Nothing. Means No Thing. Of course deity is not a thing. Man is one of the things of Creation. Many things as intermediate states. The sooner he accomplishes the miracle of the One Thing the better. “The whole Creation groaneth for the becoming of the sons of God.” For the accomplishment of the One Thing.
Egypt kept the tryst in ways peculiarly its own. But some of the lore is also found in other places. As Ecclesiastes; Romans 12. But nowhere is it told so compactly, yet so full and complete, as in this Emerald Text.
Why green stone (emerald)? In the old correspondence blue is the color of the mind. The color of spirit, like the color of the sun is golden. The blue and yellow make green.
Graven on stone. On that which stone has symbolized from ancient days, the eternal writing. These words are words out of the cosmic areas. Cosmic consciousness. And you must have cosmic consciousness to contact it. On those eternal substances are engraved the eternally true words. Someone has put these words into sounds that men’s mouths make; and so well that those who study these things deeply know that they are true.
Lecture II
Line 5. The process of both involution and evolution. The One became Two, the Three became Four, and so on. The Four became many. “By adaptation from the One”. Since of the supreme, and his mediations makes the changes.
Lines 5 and 6. Macrocosm and Microcosm. The microcosm imitated what the macrocosm has done within its own limited sphere.
“Adaptation” pliancy.
”Mediation.” Is the will. Implies Creation. Adaptation does not imply Creation. The microcosm works by adaptation. Volumes have been written on the philosophy of these two lines.
Line 7. The Sun is the father of the miracle of the One Thing. Father equals generator; that which incites action. The impulse continues, for the sun continues its relation to the earth. Energizes. The begetter of all life in earth. The sun maintains a permanent relation to the earth. In the sense that the sun is likened to the father we must see that the father relationship is a permanent one. Not just as with the male parents which can father a child in 20 seconds. In the Great Pattern the fatherhood remains permanent.
The sun in turn is an analog to spirit. The sun is the center of our universe not with the Cosmos. This spirit is father of the miracles. You have this power potentially, in that you possess spirit.
The mother of it, or the mother of the miracle of the One Thing is the moon. Analog to soul. You are possessors of souls, and at the same time you are souls. You lean now to one and now to another. A series of inward motions of the invisible man journeying toward the soul. Man invisibly makes motions. Those are mystic processes. Our text speaks of the moon as the (mother) of the miracle of One Thing.
It is necessary to bring the spirit into the position of father and soul of mother. They must become lovers who are permanently devoted. When you do the inward gestures that bring the sun into the position of father, and the soul of mother, you have gone a distance. “The wind carries it in its belly.” “The nurse thereof is the Earth.” Wind is associated with air, moving air. The concept of the mind. Belly, in the sense of container, matrix, the great cup, melting pot — the mystical cup in which the miracle is to be performed. Winds imply movements caused by rise and fall of temperature. They are in turn caused by the sun. Wind here does not mean earth thoughts but these movements which are derived from the sun. If there were no sun there would be no winds. Without the sun, as spirit, there could be no winds in whose belly the miracle is to be accomplished.
The Earth should serve, should do all those things that a nurse does.
In these four lines are the four elements: fire, water, air, earth. Body, psyche, mind, spirit. In their right relationship. It is not enough that your mind is on top, but it must become belly. It is not enough that the spirit, or sun, in you become conscious and move a little. It must be father. It won’t do to have the soul father. In various lives man may have had them in various relations: but for the accomplishment of the One Thing spirit must be father, soul, mother, mind, belly, or womb, in which the transformation must take place.
“This is the father of all perfection.” Here father includes the totality of the four mighty, forces. These four, operative, bring about the miracle of One Thing. These four are father, simultaneously. A normal swing. Shifts in octave.
Line 13. A little shift. “The power of it is integral, if it is turned into earth.” Here the text becomes more alchemical. We must freely, fully to accomplish this miracle, enter into the relationships of earth. If we do it, with the realization of the four preceding lines, then the work of earth is integral.
Integral. Ordinarily there is dismemberment in earth. If we enter into the activities of earth, with the preceding proposition of our four lines, what we do will become one-ifying, will make toward a One instead of toward a many. The more we have one objective the more things contribute to the oneness, in which alone do we find well-being. Then whatever you do in earth will aid toward the accomplishment toward the miracle.
Line l4. Now after it is turned into earth, the seed, you must separate the earth from the fire. The four elements, which before were used in their wide span, are repeated now in the small octave of earth. And first, the discrimination of the mind is turned to the separation, apprehension of itself and its self and separation. You separate first those apart. Also put the earth beneath your feet as a nurse. The first step you do is the separation of the faculties. It is necessary to understand the mighty differences that separate them, the spaces in between. The fire of your ambition and your material appetites. And many do not. You have not separated the fire from the earth in you in ordinary affairs.
Separate the subtle from the gross. Intangibles are the things you cannot apprehend with your five senses.
What are the gross and the subtle on other planes? In terms of human living or of substances? Substances of a plane and the life which inhabits it. You do it all right with faded flowers. You also have that life side. That is your first metaphysical subtlety.
The physical body has its corresponding subtlety, called the vital body. That is not a very subtle knowing. Our text does not say. It leaves that to you.
“Gently; with sagacity.” Gently has to do with control. Elimination of impulsiveness, headlong outbursts. No outbursts of anger or impatience; or the blues. If you have those you are not gentle; that is, not gentle with the “miracle of the One Thing.” It requires perfect control. The least little flaw in that coordination is not permitted in the engine.
Sagacity: Judgment wrought out of understanding. Discernment: born out of study; insight.
(next line) Heaven and earth as opposites. The widest concepts within which man has gone, can develop. The field in which the miracle will take place. Anything else than this span will not accomplish the miracle. If you rest only with the moon your miracle would not be accomplished. But you have to rise to the sun. So it ascends from earth to heaven, or the sun.
“Heaven.” A state of wellbeing, in which all your faculties are evolved. A reminder of what heaven really is — the vitality, resounding life, capacity, with all your faculties rounded. You have tasted it a little in reference to material things. The other things are more stimulating. Not sugary.
With that power, in this Miracle, one descends again to earth. Because you span again, in strength, in the Miracle, the thing you spanned before in the process of becoming — therefore in weakness. Something like an examination, in which you verify your knowledge, your understanding, your technic. But that is not all. “Blessed is the man that brought down heaven to earth, or lifted earth to heaven.” Jesus was an alchemist.
“Receives the strength of the superiors and the inferiors.” Such a one has a power within the range of heaven and earth. That is the Master.
So you have the glory of the whole world. Not the Cosmos. It is now (not?) strength, but glory. A super-octave on top of capacity. In the “strength” — that exuberance of which I spoke, we have a high point. But glory is an octave on top of that.
“You will propagate.” Earth becomes belly instead of nurse.
“Therefore let all obscurity flee before thee.” Rays out on many planes. Let darkness move from you. But let also the obscurity of the mixed state of the four in yourself flee before you. Now you know what is necessary. You no longer have an excuse.
Fortitude: active endurance, at a high level of effectiveness. Whatever barrier, this is capable of withstanding. Unmeasured resource.
“This” equals “It”, from before. So it leads back to the Miracle; that “overcomes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid.” Many octaves again. The life of the flower penetrates every particle of it, but you cannot see it. Also that life penetrates your body, and you cannot see it.
You have never seen your life. You learn to see it. This fortitude, this superlative, penetrates everything. It overcomes them. Not the worldly idea of power. The one who is working on this Miracle knows this is not the measure of things at all. It might even be a loss.
Humans have to acquire another measure of victory. They think now it means overcoming. It really means penetrating, and may not be visible to anyone at all. The most potent (patent?) illustration I can call to mind is that of Jesus. He penetrated. But he did not see it. (That is) one of the meanings of the cross. Victory — and I do not mean it in the religious sense. (Those who know the occult law can appreciate it as no religious type can.
“So the world was created.” The author comes back to the Beginnings. As the Great Architect produced all things with that Thing, your world, it was by these processes. And by these processes, reversed, can you accomplish that which makes you, a soul, but still a real god. You become of a stature that is called the “god plane”.
Hence we’re all wonderful adaptations.” And they are wonderful. But the world does not follow them. Or it sees them and is in that poignant sequence of Spitteler (Prometheus and Epimetheus) the gifts of Pandora, first seen as precious, until it is duffed: the handing on in you from day to day; and the gift of today becomes a nothing tomorrow.
Yet our text warns us: all wonderful adaptations of all things that were accomplished in this manner.
“Therefore am I called Thrice Greatest Hermes. Having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.” It does not mean that the author was necessarily Hermes. But those able, because of the Miracle, to tap the Cosmic Reservoirs, are of the Logos; and there they may tap the “three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.”
And the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world are body, soul and spirit. Not only yourself but the substance of all things which are called body; the indwelling breath of all things, which is called soul; and that regal life which is above both of these, called spirit. And the knowledge of these “three parts” will make anyone a Hermes, in the sense of our text.
Hence, a new name. (Names) according to what you do. You take names until you have your ultimate name. And the ultimate mystic name here is Thrice Greatest Hermes – the complete Initiate.
“Consummated is that which I have written concerning the operation of the sun.” Apparently could have said that with the line before; but it brings it back again to the nuclear motif of the whole drama. For the whole drama is the operation of the sun, – spirit. It operates on soul as soul on body. The sun, as the center of our world, consummates its work in the doing of what is included in our text. But it is not the close of the Cosmos. Therein is part of the further secret of the operation of the sun.
Our Miracle: the making of man into Cosmic stature. Until he has “three parts of the philosophy of the world.” But no one has the three parts except by the doing, for they are not intellectually attainable. Knowing involves the doing. Partners. Blessed (?) syzygy.