The Emerald Tablet
The secret of creation
The Emerald Tablet is a short and cryptic text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which became one of the foundational texts of European alchemy.
Its earliest known versions are in Arabic, notably at the end of the Book of the Secret of Creation attributed to Balinas, the Arabic name of Apollonius of Tyana, a work usually dated between the eighth and tenth centuries. According to the frame story, the tablet was found in a cave beneath a statue of Hermes, clutched in the hands of the dead sage. Latin translations circulated from the twelfth century onward.
The text consists of about a dozen sentences. Its best known line declares that what is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below, for the accomplishment of the miracle of the one thing. Medieval and Renaissance alchemists read it as a concealed account of their work, and it was reprinted and illustrated many times, as in Merian’s engraving.
No Greek form of the Tablet is known. It belongs to the long afterlife of Hermes in the Islamic world and in Europe. The title of the book in which it first appears, the Secret of Creation, is one the Order finds hard to resist.