Emerald Tablet

The Emerald Tablet, the Smaragdine Table, or the Tabula Smaragdina is a compact and cryptic Hermetic text. It was a highly regarded foundational text for many Islamic and European alchemists. Though attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, the text of the Emerald Tablet first appears in a number of early medieval Arabic sources, the oldest of which dates to the late eighth or early ninth century. It was translated into Latin several times in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Numerous interpretations and commentaries followed.
Medieval and early modern alchemists associated the Emerald Tablet with the creation of the philosophers' stone and the artificial production of gold.
It has also been popular with nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists and esotericists, among whom the expression "as above, so below" (a modern paraphrase of the second verse of the Tablet) has become an often cited motto.
Beginning from the 1st century BC 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 developments brought about various Arabic-speaking empires in which a new group of Arabic-speaking intellectuals emerged. These scholars received and translated the before-mentioned wealth of texts and also began producing Hermetica of their own.
Until the early 20th century, only Latin versions of the Emerald Tablet were known, with the oldest dating back to the 12th century. The first Arabic versions were rediscovered by the English historian of science E.J. Holmyard (1891-1959) and the German orientalist Julius Ruska (1867-1949).
The Emerald Tablet has been found in various ancient Arabic works in different versions. The oldest version is found as an appendix in a treatise believed to have been composed in the 9th century, known as the Book of the Secret of Creation, Kitâb sirr al-Halîka in Arabic. This text presents itself as a translation of Apollonius of Tyana, under his Arabic name Balînûs. Although no Greek manuscript has been found, it is plausible that an original Greek text existed. The attribution to Apollonius, though false (pseudonymous), is common in medieval Arabic texts on magic, astrology, and alchemy.
The introduction to the Book of the Secret of Creation is a narrative that explains, among other things, that "all things are composed of four elemental principles: heat, cold, moisture, and dryness" (the four qualities of Aristotle), and their combinations account for the "relations of sympathy and antipathy between beings." Balînûs, "master of talismans and wonders," enters a crypt beneath the statue of Hermes Trismegistus and finds the emerald tablet in the hands of a seated old man, along with a book. The core of the work is primarily an alchemical treatise that introduces for the first time the idea that all metals are formed from sulfur and mercury, a fundamental theory of alchemy in the Middle Ages. The text of the Emerald Tablet appears last, as an appendix. It has long been debated whether it is an extraneous piece, solely cosmogonic in nature, or if it is an integral part of the rest of the work, in which case it has an alchemical significance from the outset. Recently, it has been suggested that it is actually a text of talismanic magic and that the confusion arises from a mistranslation from Arabic to Latin.
Emerald is the stone traditionally associated with Hermes, while mercury is his metal. Mars is associated with red stones and iron, and Saturn is associated with black stones and lead. In antiquity, Greeks and Egyptians referred to various green-coloured minerals (green jasper and even green granite) as emerald, and in the Middle Ages, this also applied to objects made of coloured glass, such as the "Emerald Tablet" of the Visigothic kings or the Sacro Catino of Genoa (a dish seized by the Crusaders during the sack of Caesarea in 1101, which was believed to have been offered by the Queen of Sheba to Solomon and used during the Last Supper).
This version of the Emerald Tablet is also found in the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Elementary Book of the Foundation) attributed to the 8th-century alchemist Jâbir ibn Hayyân, known in Europe by the latinized name Geber.
Another version is found in an eclectic book from the 10th century, the Secretum Secretorum (Secret of Secrets, Sirr al-asrâr), which presents itself as a pseudo-letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great during the conquest of Persia. It discusses politics, morality, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, medicine, and more. The text is also attributed to Hermes but lacks the narrative of the tablet's discovery.
The literary theme of the discovery of Hermes' hidden wisdom can be found in other Arabic texts from around the 10th century. For example, in the Book of Crates, while praying in the temple of Serapis, Crates, a Greek philosopher, has a vision of "an old man, the most beautiful of men, seated in a chair. He was dressed in white garments and held a tablet on the chair, upon which was placed a book [...]. When I asked who this old man was, I was told, 'He is Hermes Trismegistus, and the book before him is one of those that contain the explanation of the secrets he has hidden from men.'". A similar account can be found in the Latin text known as Tabula Chemica by Senior Zadith, the latinized name of the alchemist Ibn Umail, in which a stone table rests on the knees of Hermes Trismegistus in the secret chamber of a pyramid. Here, the table is not inscribed with text but with "hieroglyphic" symbols.
The Book of the Secret of Creation was translated into Latin (Liber de secretis naturae) in c. 1145–1151 by Hugo of Santalla. This text does not appear to have been widely circulated.
The Secret of Secrets (Secretum Secretorum) was translated into Latin in an abridged 188 lines long medical excerpt by John of Seville around 1140. The first full Latin translation of the text was prepared by Philip of Tripoli around a century later. This work has been called "the most popular book of the Latin Middle Ages".
A third Latin version can be found in an alchemical treatise dating probably from the 12th century (although no manuscripts are known before the 13th or 14th century), the Liber Hermetis de alchimia (Book of Alchemy of Hermes). This version, known as the "vulgate," is the most widespread. The translator of this version did not understand the Arabic word tilasm, which means talisman, 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 vague, terms of alchemy.
In his 1143 treatise, De essentiis, Herman of Carinthia is one of a few European 12th century scholars to cite the Emerald Tablet. In this text he also recalls the 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 Liber de compositione alchimiae, which is generally considered to be the first Latin translation of an Arabic treatise on alchemy.
An anonymous 12th-century commentator tried to explain the neologism telesmus in the phrase Latin: Pater omnis telesmi, lit. 'Father of all telesms' by claiming it is synonymous with Latin: Pater omnis secreti, lit. 'Father of everything secret'. The translator followed this claim with the assertion that a superior kind of divination among the Arabs is called Latin: Thelesmus. In subsequent commentaries of the Emerald Tablet only the meaning of secret was retained.
Around 1275–1280, Roger Bacon translated and commented on the Secret of Secrets, and through a completely alchemical interpretation of the Emerald Tablet, made it an allegorical summary of the Great Work.
The most well-known commentary is that of Hortulanus, an alchemist about whom very little is known, in the first half of the 14th century:
This text is in line with the symbolic alchemy that developed in the 14th century, particularly with the texts attributed to the Catalan physician Arnau de Vilanova, which establish an allegorical comparison between Christian mysteries and alchemical operations. In Ortolanus' commentary, devoid of practical considerations, the Great Work is an imitation of the divine creation of the world from chaos: "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 and the moon represent alchemical gold and silver. Hortulanus interprets "telesma" as "secret" or "treasure": "It is written afterward: 'The father of all telesma of the world is here,' that is to say: in the work of the stone is found the final path. And note that the philosopher calls the operation 'father of all telesma,' that is to say, of all the secret or all the treasure of the entire world, that is to say, of every stone discovered in this world.".
Starting from 1420, extensive excerpts are included in an illuminated text, the Aurora consurgens, which is one of the earliest cycles of alchemical symbols. One of the illustrations shows the discovery of Hermes' table in a temple surmounted by Sagittarius eagles (representing the volatile elements). This motif is frequently used in Renaissance prints and is the visual expression of the myth of the rediscovery of ancient knowledge—the transmission of this knowledge, in the form of hieroglyphic pictograms, allows it to escape the distortions of human and verbal interpretation.
During the Renaissance, the idea that Hermes Trismegistus was the founder of alchemy gained prominence, and at the same time, the legend of the discovery evolved and intertwined with biblical accounts. This is particularly the case in the late 15th century in the Livre de la philosophie naturelle des métaux by the pseudo-Bernard of Treviso: "The first inventor of this Art was Hermes Trismegistus, for he knew all three natural philosophies, namely Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal." This text influenced a discovery legend claiming the tablet to have been discovered after the Biblical Flood in Hebron valley which is connected with the image of the "Emblem of the Smaragdine Tablet" in the 1599 text Aureum Vellus.
It further evolves with Jérôme Torella in his book on astrology, Opus Praeclarum de imaginibus astrologicis (Valence, 1496), in which it is Alexander the Great who discovers a Tabula Zaradi in Hermes' tomb while travelling to the Oracle of Amun in Egypt. This story is repeated by Michael Maier, physician and counselor to the "alchemical emperor" Rudolf II, in his symbola aureae mensae (Frankfurt, 1617), referring to a Liber de Secretis chymicis attributed to Albertus Magnus. In the same year, he publishes the famous Atalanta Fugiens (Fleeing Atalanta), illustrated by Theodor de Bry with fifty alchemical emblems, each accompanied by a poem, a musical fugue, and alchemical and mythological explanations. The first two emblems depict a passage from the Emerald Tablet: "the wind has carried it in its belly; the earth is its nurse," and the explanatory text begins with "Hermes, the most diligent explorer of all natural secrets, describes in his Emerald Tablet the work of nature, albeit briefly and accurately."
The first printed edition appears in 1541 in the De alchemia published by Johann Petreius and edited by a certain Chrysogonus Polydorus, who is likely a pseudonym for the Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander (Osiander also edited Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, published by the same printer). This version is known as the "vulgate" version and includes the commentary by Hortulanus.
In 1583, a commentary by Gerard Dorn is published in Frankfurt by Christoph Corvinus. In De Luce naturae physica, this disciple of Paracelsus makes a detailed parallel between the Table and the first chapter of the Genesis attributed to Moses.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, verse versions appear, including an anonymous sonnet revised by the alchemical poet Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement [fr] in his work Traittez de l'harmonie, et constitution generalle du vray sel, secret des Philosophes, & de l'esprit universel du monde (1621):
However, from the beginning of the 17th century onward, a number of authors challenge the attribution of the Emerald Tablet to Hermes Trismegistus and, through it, attack antiquity and the validity of alchemy. First among them is a "repentant" alchemist, the Lorraine physician Nicolas Guibert, in 1603. But it is the Jesuit scholar and linguist Athanasius Kircher who launches the strongest attack in his monumental work Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652–1653). He notes that no texts speak of the Emerald Tablet before the Middle Ages and that its discovery by Alexander the Great is not mentioned in any ancient testimonies. By comparing the vocabulary used with that of the Corpus Hermeticum (which had been proven by Isaac Casaubon in 1614 to date only from the 2nd or 3rd century AD), he affirms that the Emerald Tablet is a forgery by a medieval alchemist. As for the alchemical teaching of the Emerald Tablet, it is not limited to the philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals but concerns "the deepest substance of each thing," the alchemists' quintessence. From another perspective, Wilhelm Christoph Kriegsmann [de] publishes in 1657 a commentary in which he tries to demonstrate, using the linguistic methods of the time, that the Emerald Tablet was not originally written in Egyptian but in Phoenician.
He continues his studies of ancient texts and in 1684 argues that Hermes Trismegistus is not the Egyptian Thoth but the Taaut of the Phoenicians, who is also the founder of the Germanic people under the name of the god Tuisto, mentioned by Tacitus.
In the meantime, Kircher's conclusions are debated by the Danish alchemist Ole Borch in his De ortu et progressu Chemiae (1668), in which he attempts to separate the hermetic texts between the late writings and those truly attributable to the ancient Egyptian Hermes, among which he inclines to classify the Emerald Tablet. The discussions continue, and the treatises of Ole Borch and Kriegsmann are reprinted in the compilation Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa (1702) by the Swiss physician Jean-Jacques Manget. Although the Emerald Tablet is still translated and commented upon by Isaac Newton, alchemy gradually loses all scientific credibility during the 18th century with the advent of modern chemistry and the work of Lavoisier.
From the late 16th century onwards, the Emerald Tablet is often accompanied by a symbolic figure called the Tabula Smaragdina Hermetis.
This figure is surrounded by an acrostic in Latin: Visita interiora terrae rectificando invenies occultum lapidem, lit. 'visit the interior of the earth and by rectifying you will find the hidden stone' whose seven initials form the word Old French: vitriol, lit. 'sulphuric acid'. At the top, the sun and moon pour into a cup above the symbol of mercury. Around the mercurial cup are the four other planets, representing the classic association between the seven planets and the seven metals: Sol/Gold, Luna/Silver, Mercury/Quicksilver, Jupiter/Tin, Mars/Iron, Venus/Copper, Saturn/Lead. It is unclear if the image was originally drawn using colours or not. The ones which do contain them are coloured as follows gold-sol-visita, silver-luna-interiora, grey-mercury-terrae, blue-tin-rectificando, red-iron-invenies, green-copper, black-lead-lapidem. In the center, there are a ring and a globus cruciger, and at the bottom, there are the spheres of the sky and the earth. Three charges represent, according to the poem, the three principles (tria prima) of the alchemical theory of Paracelsus: Eagle/Mercury/Spirit, Lion/Sulfur/Soul, and Star/Salt/Body. Finally, two Schwurhands accompany the picture attesting its creator's veracity.
The oldest known reproduction is a copy dated 1588-89 of a manuscript that was circulating anonymously at the time and was likely written in the second half of the 16th century by a German Paracelsian. The image was accompanied by a didactic alchemical poem in German titled Du secret des sages, probably by the same author. The poem explains the symbolism in relation to the Great Work and the classical goals of alchemy: wealth, health, and long life. Initially, it was only accompanied by the text of the Emerald Tablet as a secondary element. However, in printed reproductions during the 17th century, the accompanying poem disappeared, and the emblem became known as the Tabula Smaragdina Hermetis, the symbol or graphical representation of the Emerald Tablet, as ancient as the tablet itself.
For example, in 1733, according to the alchemist Ehrd de Naxagoras (Supplementum Aurei Velleris), a "precious emerald plate" engraved with inscriptions and the symbol was made upon Hermes' death and found in the valley of Ebron by a woman named Zora. This emblem is placed within the mysterious tradition of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the idea of Platonists and alchemists during the Renaissance that the "deepest secrets of nature could only be expressed appropriately through an obscure and veiled mode of representation".
Alchemy and its alleged "foundational text" continue to interest occultists. This is the case with the mage Éliphas Lévi: "Nothing surpasses and nothing equals as a summary of all the doctrines of the old world the few sentences engraved on a precious stone by Hermes and known as the 'emerald tablet'... it is all of magic on a single page.". It also applies to the "curious figure" of the German Gottlieb Latz, who self-published a monumental work Die Alchemie in 1869, as well as the theosophist Helena Blavatsky and the perennialist Titus Burckhardt.
At the beginning of the 20th century, alchemical thought resonated with the surrealists, and André Breton incorporated the main axiom of the Emerald Tablet into the Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1930): "Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of the spirit from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and the low, cease to be perceived as contradictory. However, in vain would one seek any motive other than the hope for the determination of this point in surrealist activity.". Although some commentators mainly see the influence of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in this statement, Hegel's philosophy itself was influenced by Jakob Böhme.
Like most other works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the Emerald Tablet is very hard to date with any precision, but generally belongs to the late antique period (between c. 200 and c. 800). The oldest known source of the text is the Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa (The Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature, also known as the Kitāb al-ʿilal or The Book of Causes), an encyclopaedic work on natural philosophy falsely attributed to Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15–100, Arabic: Balīnūs or Balīnās). This book was compiled in Arabic in the late eighth or early ninth century, but it was most likely based on (much) older Greek and/or Syriac sources. In the frame story of the Sirr al-khalīqa, Balīnūs tells his readers that he discovered the text in a vault below a statue of Hermes in Tyana, and that, inside the vault, an old corpse on a golden throne held the emerald tablet.
Slightly different versions of the Emerald Tablet also appear in the Kitāb Usṭuqus al-uss al-thānī (The Second Book of the Element of the Foundation, c. 850–950) attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, in the longer version of the Sirr al-asrār (The Secret of Secrets, a tenth-century compilation of earlier works that was falsely attributed to Aristotle), and in the Egyptian alchemist Muhammed ibn Umail al-Tamimi's (ca. 900 – 960) Kitāb al-māʾ al-waraqī wa-l-arḍ al-najmiyya (Book of the Silvery Water and the Starry Earth).
The Emerald Tablet was translated into Latin in the twelfth century by Hugo of Santalla as part of his translation of the Sirr al-khalīqa. It was again translated into Latin along with the thirteenth-century translation of the longer version of the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār (Latin: Secretum secretorum). However, the Latin translation which formed the basis for all later versions (the so-called 'Vulgate') was originally part of an anonymous compilation of alchemical commentaries on the Emerald Tablet variously called Liber Hermetis de alchimia, Liber dabessi, or Liber rebis (first half of the twelfth century).
The earliest known version of the Emerald Tablet on which all later versions were based is found in pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa (The Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature).
A somewhat shorter version is quoted in the Kitāb Usṭuqus al-uss al-thānī (The Second Book of the Element of the Foundation) attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan. Lines 6, 8, and 11–15 from the version in the Sirr al-khalīqa are missing, while other parts seem to be corrupt. Jabir's version was translated by Eric J. Holmyard:
A still later version is found in the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār (Secret of Secrets, tenth century).
The tablet was translated into Latin in c. 1145–1151 by Hugo of Santalla as part of his translation of the Sirr al-khalīqa (The Secret of Creation, original Arabic above).
The tablet was also translated into Latin as part of the longer version of the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār (Latin: Secretum Secretorum, original Arabic above). It differs significantly both from the translation by Hugo of Santalla (see above) and the Vulgate translation (see below).
The most widely distributed Latin translation (the so-called 'Vulgate') is found in an anonymous compilation of commentaries on the Emerald Tablet that was translated from a lost Arabic original. This alchemical compilation was variously called Liber Hermetis de alchimia, Liber dabessi, or Liber rebis. Its translator has been tentatively identified as Plato of Tivoli, who was active in c. 1134–1145. However, this is merely a 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.
The Vulgate version also differs significantly from the other two early Latin versions. A critical edition based on eight manuscripts was prepared by Robert Steele and Dorothea W. Singer in 1928:
Despite some small differences, the 16th-century Nuremberg edition of the Latin text remains largely similar to the vulgate (see above). A translation by Isaac Newton is found among his alchemical papers that are currently housed in King's College Library, Cambridge University:
In its several Western recensions, the Tablet became a mainstay of medieval and Renaissance alchemy. Commentaries and/or translations were published by, among others, Trithemius, Roger Bacon, Michael Maier, Albertus Magnus, and Isaac Newton. The concise text was a popular summary of alchemical principles, wherein the secrets of the philosophers' stone were thought to have been described.
The fourteenth-century alchemist Ortolanus (or Hortulanus) wrote a substantial exegesis on The Secret of Hermes, which was influential on the subsequent development of alchemy. Many manuscripts of this copy of the Emerald Tablet and the commentary of Ortolanus survive, dating at least as far back as the fifteenth century. Ortolanus, like Albertus Magnus before him saw the tablet as a cryptic recipe that described laboratory processes using deck names (or code words). This was the dominant view held by Europeans until the fifteenth century.
By the early sixteenth century, the writings of Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) 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 the time travel television series Dark, the mysterious priest Noah has a large image of the Emerald Tablet tattooed on his back. The image, which is 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 line from the Latin version, "Sic mundus creatus est" (So was the world created), plays a prominent thematic role in the series and is the title of the sixth episode of the first season.
In 1974, Brazilian singer Jorge Ben Jor recorded a studio album under the name A Tábua de Esmeralda ("The Emerald Tablet"), quoting from the Tablet's text and from alchemy in general in several songs. The album has been defined as an exercise in "musical alchemy" and celebrated as Ben Jor's greatest musical achievement, blending together samba, jazz, and rock rhythms.