The Emerald Tablet of Hermes

Tabula Smaragdina

The Emerald Tablet is thirteen sentences long. In those thirteen sentences it claims to contain the secret of the whole world. “As above, so below” is its most famous line — the basis of the Hermetic principle that the macrocosm and microcosm mirror each other, that the structure of the universe is reflected in the structure of the human soul, that to understand one is to understand the other.

Codex Digital EditionComing soonEdition currently in preparation

Edition036

FormatDigital PDF

Editorial statusIn review

TraditionHermetic Arts

Before you read

Context without the mythology.

Codex ISO separates the surviving evidence from later interpretation, so you can encounter the text without being told what to believe about it first.

01 / Historical context

Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Transmitted through Arabic alchemy in the 8th century. The most copied, translated, and suppressed text in the Western esoteric tradition.

02 / Why it matters

Newton translated it in secret. It is thirteen sentences. Here they are.

From / associated with the text

““That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.””

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Source before story.

We identify the edition, translation and surviving evidence; distinguish documentation from tradition; and state uncertainty rather than turning it into a sales claim.

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The Emerald Tablet of Hermes

Context without the mythology.

Source before story.

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