#emerald tablet

[book-of-forbidden-knowledge]

[thesirenisles]

Pharaoh’s Dancers 🪄🐍

[tomoleary]

Stephen Barnwell “Heresy: Kingdom Come” 24 Aleph cards (1995) Source

[theoccultmentor]

As above, so below;

As within, so without;

As the universe, so the soul

- Hermes Trismegistus

[cryptotheism]

Hey What Is The Emerald Tablet Anyway?

The legend goes that someone, be it Apollonius of Tyanna, or Alexander the Great, or occasionally even the biblical figure Sarah, discovered a tomb. Sometimes the tomb is near the Palestinian city of Hebron, sometimes its not. Inside the tomb was the skeleton of legendary sage Hermes Trismegistus, and clutched in his arms was a mysterious tablet made of pure emerald. Inscribed in an ancient language, sometimes Aramaic, sometimes Phoenician, was a poem that contained all of his earthly and divine wisdom. 

Before we can discuss what we know about the Emerald Tablet, we must discuss its mangled and mysterious textual history. There is no emerald tablet. Or, more accurately, there is no singular emerald tablet. The likely earliest edition comes from the Kitab Sirr Al-Khaliqa, The Book of the Secrets of Creation, a 9th century text ascribed to Apolonius of Tyanna. The Arabic form of the tablet claims to be a translation from Syriac, which itself was a translation from classical Greek. This claim is considerably debated. Partially, because there are two more Arabic translations from the same period, which differ significantly. One from the Secretum Secretorum, and another from the Jabirian corpus, which is notably shorter and corrupt. 

Generally, when you translate an alchemical text from Greek to Arabic, your translation will have words associated with the Greek terminology. What all these Arabic emerald tablets have in common, is a lack of Greek alchemical terms. So while they are likely based on an earlier text, their origins are firmly in the Arabic world, most likely the Isma’ili esoteric circles. This goes even further. Europe knows the tablet via the Latin translation of the Secretum Secretorum, the most corrupt Arabic original. This formed the basis for centuries of dead-end attempts at decoding by western esotericists. 

So! We have no idea what the tablet means! Why are we talking about it?

The Emerald Tablet, today on patreon!

[krmayerillustration]

And as all things are & arise from One, by One Dreaming. So all unique things are born from this oneness by adaption.

[occvltswim]

اللوح الزمرذ

[nyxshadowhawk]

A fifteenth-century alchemical manuscript! It contains multiple texts. The first picture is of the Emerald Tablet, which I translated to practice my paleography skills. (It’s a lot easier when I know what it’s supposed to say.)