Talk:Emerald Tablet

message: Whilst Thoth can be identified as the Egyptian Hermes. I find the often repeated claim that Hermes Trismegistus is a syncretism of Thoth and Hermes to be without firm foundation. Syncretism of Greek and Egyptian deities is available in the archeological record, such as Zeus-Ammon. However no such deity as Thoth-Hermes can be found especially as a precursor to Hermes Trismegistus. I'm not sure what you authors want to with this information since all someone has to do is cite someone else that's made the claim even though there are more writers these days rejecting the idea, as a hangover from the occult and magical speculations of earlier times.
It's time the preposterous idea was laid to rest!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.109.197 (talk) 14:08, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a very strange comment. Actually, the evidence is abundant, and documented by scholars of the highest standing. A survey of this evidence may be found in Bull, Christian H. 2018. The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Leiden: Brill, pp. 33-96. Admittedly, most of the evidence is literary in nature, but there also is some good archaeological evidence. Consider, e.g., Bull 2018, p. 34: "Ostraca found in the archive of Hor, in Saqqara around 168 BCE, by a stroke of good fortune yield both a Demotic and a Greek version of the epithet (Ḏḥwty pꜣ ꜥꜣ pꜣ ꜥꜣ pꜣ ꜥꜣ [i.e., "Thoth the great the great the great"], and μέγιστος καὶ μέγιστος θεός μεγάλος Ἑρμῆς [i.e., "the greatest and greatest great god Hermes"])". Apaugasma (talk) 16:04, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Thoth

message: The given translation seems to have been edited to sound more archaic. Eg. the persistent misuse of "ye" to mean "the" -- "ye" is a pronoun, and phrases such as "ye olde inn" are actually nonsense. A better version of the Newton translation can be found at http://www.alchemylab.com/isaac_newton.htm. Some sites, such as http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/emerald.htm, have a version identical to what was on this page, citing "Newton's Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus" by B.J. Dobbs as a source. I don't have access to this work, but if it's from 1988 as stated it's likely not in the public domain. I also find this version at other sites, all of which appear to have plagiarized a common source. For these reasons I am removing the version here and linking to the external pages. If I am in error, please note it here and feel free to revert. --[67.76.31.254] (Apprarently) 30 July 04
:No.  Late 17th/early 18th century English actually was *spelled* that way, although spoken with the 'th' sound.  See here here: it's a matter of orthography, not pronunciation.  The translation may have been quoted in a 1988 work, but the copyright on the text itself is surely expired after three centuries.
::Now, there might be an argument for the whole text not being appropriate to an encyclopedia article, archaic spelling and copyright are not, I believe, grounds for removal here.  --Bacchiad 19:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd oppose any such edit- it is so short it adds an incredible amount to the article. A similar example is the 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us' article, where the reproduced 'All your base' text is actually longer than the Tablet here- but remove the transcript, and the article is considerably more difficult to understand, and arguably less valuable. --maru 23:08, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem With Translation? 

message: The oldest documentable source for the text is the Kitab Sirr al-Asrar, a pseudo-Aristotelian compendium of advice for rulers authored by Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani in around 800 AD.
Either the date or the attribution (or both!) is incorrect.  Al-Jilani lived during the 1100s. Shimmin 14:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems this was based on some outdated info.  Should be fixed now. Correct book listed. Car Henkel (talk) 15:19, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonsense 

message: The "Historical overview of the tablet" link doesn't seem to work.  I cannot find the page through Google. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.21.164.74 (talk • contribs) 20:43, April 3, 2006  (UTC)
:It works now.  Perhaps the server was temporarily down. --Blainster 20:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken Link 

message: Concerning the discussion of the translations sounding archaic and being generally obscure, I am going to edit the article to include the translation from The Book of Aquarius. The author appears to understand the principles of the Emerald Tablet and provides a more up-to-date translation, but still keeping the original feel of it. If anyone has a problem with this please reply. There is a full commentary on the Emerald Tablet in The Book of Aquarius. I don't know whether the other contributors feel that a commentary would be useful to this article, or whether it might lean towards making the article bias. That is assuming that the commentary is bias. Let's discuss. Will Timony, Ph.D (talk) 07:47, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed.  Book of Aquarius = online, nonacademic webpage - falls under WP:NOTRS as previously discussed. Car Henkel (talk) 03:13, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ha! It amuses me that every time I mention BoAquarius you dispute it. But OK, I see your point. I'm getting into more academic reading on the topic anyway (which I always did, but I appear to be becoming more conservative), hope to contribute more from this side. I remember recently reading something about the first recorded version of Emerald Tablet, I'll try to find where that was and cite it here. Will Timony, Ph.D (talk • contribs) 07:49, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Translation 

message: Most of these seem to be to blogs, personal interpretations, etc.   Anyone object to getting rid of most of these?  Anyone have better suggestions? Car Henkel (talk) 03:20, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea, remove them. Will Timony, Ph.D (talk • contribs) 08:00, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links 

message: The translation is from the Kitāb sirr al-ḫalīqa and not the Kitāb ul-īḍāḥ li-Arisţūţālis fi'l-khayri'l-maḥd (Liber de Causis) as previously mentioned.
I changed the reference in the paragraph. Jyar (talk) 07:42, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic translation 

message: Personally, I think new students learning about occultism & Hermeticism should be given greater clarification about these two things, as they're separate & totally different from each other. The Emeral Tablet of Hermes is just a few paragraphs of text that was first translated by an Arab during the 10th or 11th century, as part of the translation movement, whereas the "13 Emeral Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean" is a 13-chapter, fictional work of New Age philosophy written by Maurice Doreal in 1939. Its contents are extremely different from that of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, as it's written mostly to teach the doctrine of Doreal's "Brotherhood of the White Temple" (a self-described occult school structured in a similar manner to Freemasonry, except for its own philosophy).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.194.12.221 (talk) 03:08, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: For us to discuss Doreal's work, we would need non-primary professional academic sources that describe it.  We don't engage in or use original research.  Ian.thomson (talk) 03:15, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

text: It seems like, confusion about which is which continues to be widespread, so I've stuck the "Emerald Tablets of Thoth" in again.  Wombat140 (talk) 11:44, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: If there are good wp:secondary sources explicitly discussing the relation of the Emerald Tablets Of Thoth The Atlantean to the Emerald Tablet, then a section about this might one day be added to the article body. Only if such a section exists would it be wp:due to add a sentence (and nothing more than a sentence!) to the lead. Since we have nothing like that for the moment, a hatnote linking to the Emerald Tablets Of Thoth The Atlantean is the best we can do, so I added that. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:33, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, it seems like, I hadn't thought of using that, that's a better idea. Wombat140 (talk) 15:26, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Emeral Tablet of Hermes vs. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean 

message: I’d love to get some other perspectives on this, but “The Alchemy Web Site”, which seems to be maintained by a single person of questionable web-design sensibilities, just does not strike me as a reliable source. I have removed the following section sourced from it.
—67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:26, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The design may belong to the mid 90s, but that site's owner is a recognized author in the field. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:35, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Also a major author of his own WP article . But if you think it satisfies WP:SPS and benefits the article, I wouldn’t object to restoring it. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:41, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: His attempted edits are not currently in the article. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:39, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

text: If you wanted to keep it out for the sake of brevity ok, but as stated above McLean is a good source. Could likely use another source link for the translation, but the "The Alchemy Website" link contains valuable further information. Aside: I did a major edit on Adam McLean a while back and the autobiographical content has been removed. Car Henkel (talk) 23:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  “The Alchemy Web Site” 

message: Nice to see you keeping an eye on this page! Bit surprised you reverted the image edit though -  seems much lower quality (though stronger contrast) than . Could you possibly give me some advice on how you made the call so I have a better idea of where to replace images with higher res ones and where not to in the future? Zeromonk (talk) 07:54, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Could be screen setting, but on my screen the image you used is faded compared to the easily seen crisp present image. It is also obviously from a book (notice the crease line up the middle), while the long-term image used on the page is also from a book but not obviously. Maybe other editors will comment, thanks for the ping. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:01, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: The existing translation was an unreadable jumble of words with no line breaks.  This is not how it appears in the referenced source, so I made a best effort attempt to clean it up and make it understandable for interested readers.  I did not alter any of the wording.  If someone with more experience can improve on this it would be great, I just think it’s important to have a copy of the translation here that is actually readable.
Keypusher (talk) 05:47, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newton’s Translation, Reformatted 

message: That was pretty obvious, but I thought I'd add a bit I found. I'm still not sure who he is, but it's  not a translation. He thinks it's a sort of shorthand, eg that Boy Store Bread" should be written out as "The boy went to the store and bought some bread".  Doug Weller talk 09:27, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ken Wheeler's translation I deleted as a copyright violation 

message: The feature at Medievalists.net by Selwood 2023 (direct link) contains several rather serious inaccuracies.
For example, Selwood regards the critical edition of the Emerald Tablet in Steele & Singer 1928, which is based on eight different manuscripts (see Steele & Singer 1928 p. 46/490), as a "transcription" of only one manuscript, MS Arundel 164. This leads him to the conclusion that Steele & Singer's 'transcription' "contains material errors". But as a critical edition Steele & Singer's text contains readings from other manuscripts, which renders the resulting text different from MS Arundel 164: this is of course a feature, not a bug.
Also, for some reason Selwood doesn't perceive that Mandosio 2004b (pp. 691–692) is simply a (duly cited and explicitly attributed) copy of Steele & Singer's 1928 critical edition. Instead, Selwood regards it as yet another 'transcription' containing 'errors' (as compared to MS Arundel 164). 
Finally, Selwood seems not to realize that the 'Vulgate' version of the Tablet in Steele & Singer's 1928 is part of an Arabic collection of alchemical commentaries variously called ,  or  (see Mandosio 2004b, p. 683). Steele & Singer 1928 p. 41/485 mention that it is "a translation made, probably early in the twelfth century, from an Arabic collection of explanations and commentaries on [...] the Emerald Table". Mandosio 2004b pp. 683–684 confirms that it is Latin translation of an Arabic commentary on the Tablet, adding that this version ultimately goes back on an Arabic commentary tradition taking the Sirr al-khalīqa/De secretis nature as its basis (though the translation is independent from the Latin translation of the Sirr al-khalīqa made by Hugo of Santalla). 
Now Selwood casually declares the Vulgate version edited by Steele & Singer as part of the  to be translated from the Sirr al-asrār/Secretum Secretorum (which he also misleadingly calls "a text thought to have been written by Plato’s student, Aristotle", apparently ignoring that this text is pseudo-Aristotelian), even though it is clearly very different from the actual version of the Tablet in the Secretum Secretorum. Selwood was likely confused by the fact that Albertus Magnus in his De mineralibus names the Vulgate version of the Tablet from the  as Secretum secretissimorum Hermetis, but as Caiazzo 2004 p. 702 notes, Albertus Magnus probably took this name from one ms. of the  which also uses it and in any case Albertus did not even know the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum at the time he wrote the De mineralibus (Steele & Singer, Mandosio, and Caiazzo all say that Albertus was using the version of the ; the name is simply a red herring that likely confused Selwood).
On top of all this it should be noted that Selwood 2023 is equivalent to a self-published source, and that he in no way is an expert on alchemy (see also his article here), which would render Selwood 2023 an unreliable source by Wikipedia's standards.
In other words, though it may perhaps be helpful to note in our article that Selwood published a transcription of Arundel MS 164 (not a 'corrected' one obviously), he should probably not be used for anything else. If there should be anything of interest in Selwood 2023, please look it up in more reliable sources and cite those instead. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:46, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Selwood 2023 

message: The 2022 Spanish animated film Tad, the Lost Explorer and the Emerald Tablet (and its video game and its musical play) features an emerald tablet as the macguffin.
However I have not found reliable sources about how the tablet is related to this tablet.
-- Error (talk) 17:13, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tad 

message: The current lead image is a 17th century artist's impression and certainly not how the tablet looked like. As such, it seems to be primarily decorative and has little encyclopedic value as the lead image, and might even mislead people not reading the description.
Perhaps an alternative can be agreed upon, or maybe having no lead image is the better option, per MOS:LEADIMAGE. Hypnôs (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The current caption very clearly says it's an imaginative depiction, and since it's a few centuries old it clearly illustrates the notability of the topic per MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. Given this, I don't really see a problem. However, there of course has never been any real tablet (it's a textual fiction), and since this might be misleading to some people I'm also not against not having a lead image. I guess I'm neutral on this one. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:28, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead image