The Emerald Tablet, also known as the Smaragdine Table or the Tabula Smaragdina, is a compact and cryptic Hermetic text. The Tablet is of great significance to alchemists. It's found in European and Islamic writings and often translated.
READ: Cult of the Fire God - Bronze Age Quest Adventure
Despite its attribution to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, the text of the Emerald Tablet initially appears in early medieval Arabic writings. The oldest dates back to the late eighth or early ninth century.
READ: Lora Ley Fantasy Fiction - German Mythology Adventures
Emerald is the name given by Early Greeks and Egyptians to many types of stone including green jasper, green granite and nephrite jade. In the Middle Ages 'emerald' can refer to green glass. Emerald can confer a meaning such as precious, wondrous or rare.
Translated into Latin many times during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Emerald Tablet inspires a barrage of interpretations and commentaries. Medieval and early modern alchemists firmly link the Tablet to discovery of the philosophers' stone and creation of gold.
READ: Reiker For Hire - Victorian Detective Murder Mysteries
The aims of European alchemy are to find a panacea to heal all disease; an elixir of youth or immortality; and the transmutation of base metals like lead into noble metals gold and silver. The origins of alchemy are found in the metallurgy of the early Bronze Age.
Alchemy develops simultaneously in various countries without obvious contact. Different cultures influence its growth in certain directions.
Some want to live forever and others just want to be rich. Alchemy is often synonymous with magic. The story of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a maiden must spin straw into gold, has a strong alchemical parallel.
The Emerald Tablet gains popularity among nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists and esotericists, who embrace the phrase "as above, so below" (a contemporary rendering of the second verse of the Tablet) as a frequently cited motto.
Translation of the Emerald Tablet by Isaac Newton:
Tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracle of one only thing.
And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.
The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth. Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.
It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations where of the means is here in this.
Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.
Emerald is the stone traditionally associated with Hermes. His metal is mercury, and so is his planet. The Emerald Tablet has been found in various ancient Arabic works in different versions.
The oldest version occurs as an appendix in a treatise believed to have been composed in the 9th century. It's known as the Book of the Secret of Creation, Kitâb sirr al-Halîka in Arabic.
Although no Greek manuscript has been found, scholars suspect an original Greek text might have existed. Alchemical writers are fond of using pseudonyms as a way of disguising identities, sharing information amongst themselves and guarding secrets.
Another version:
Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!
That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one [thing].
As all things were from One. Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon. The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly, as Earth which shall become Fire.
Feed the Earth from that which is subtle, with the greatest power. It ascends from the earth to the heaven and becomes ruler over that which is above and that which is below.
Holmyard 1923
Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary Greco-Egyptian luminary figure based on the Greek Hermes, god of trade, wealth, luck, fertility, sleep, language, thieves and travel; and Egyptian Thoth, god of moon, math, scribes, creation. They both become gods of alchemy.