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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 3:14 pm
“The text presents an extremely concise formulation of the core teachings of Hermetic philosophy — a kind of Hermetic “creed.” According to one of the widely accepted interpretations of the Emerald Tablet, it contains the recipe for the alchemical Great Work — that is, the formula for creating the Philosopher’s Stone.
History
The Latin text of the Tablet was already known in the Middle Ages and was first published in 1541 in the treatise On Alchemy, signed by Chrysogonus Polydorus (possibly a pseudonym of Andreas Osiander). This Latin version was reprinted many times. Referring to later editions, it appears at the beginning of the 1926 monograph Tabula Smaragdina by historian and orientalist Julius Ruska, which remains the most reliable scholarly source on the Tablet to this day. Two Arabic versions of the Tablet have also been discovered, one of which appears in the writings of the alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan. E. J. Holmyard found this version in 1923 in Jabir’s Second Book on the Element of the Cosmos. Ruska worked with a different Arabic version of the Tablet from a book titled The Secret of Creation, attributed to Apollonius. This version was copied from an even older manuscript and was included in the instructional compendium Kitab Sirr al-Asrar (“The Book of the Secret of Secrets”), which is considered a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great.
English translation.
It is true, without falsehood, 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 accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.
And as all things were made from the One, by the meditation of One, so all things were born from this One Thing by adaptation.
Its father is the Sun, its mother the Moon;
The Wind carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse.
It is the origin of all perfection throughout the world.
Its power is complete if it be turned into Earth.
Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great ingenuity.
It rises from Earth to Heaven and descends again to Earth, thereby receiving the powers of both the Above and the Below.”
History
The Latin text of the Tablet was already known in the Middle Ages and was first published in 1541 in the treatise On Alchemy, signed by Chrysogonus Polydorus (possibly a pseudonym of Andreas Osiander). This Latin version was reprinted many times. Referring to later editions, it appears at the beginning of the 1926 monograph Tabula Smaragdina by historian and orientalist Julius Ruska, which remains the most reliable scholarly source on the Tablet to this day. Two Arabic versions of the Tablet have also been discovered, one of which appears in the writings of the alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan. E. J. Holmyard found this version in 1923 in Jabir’s Second Book on the Element of the Cosmos. Ruska worked with a different Arabic version of the Tablet from a book titled The Secret of Creation, attributed to Apollonius. This version was copied from an even older manuscript and was included in the instructional compendium Kitab Sirr al-Asrar (“The Book of the Secret of Secrets”), which is considered a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great.
English translation.
It is true, without falsehood, 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 accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.
And as all things were made from the One, by the meditation of One, so all things were born from this One Thing by adaptation.
Its father is the Sun, its mother the Moon;
The Wind carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse.
It is the origin of all perfection throughout the world.
Its power is complete if it be turned into Earth.
Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great ingenuity.
It rises from Earth to Heaven and descends again to Earth, thereby receiving the powers of both the Above and the Below.”