Tabula Smaragdina

The Tabula Smaragdina — the Emerald Tablet — is the short Hermetic text of uncertain origin (Greek original presumed, earliest extant versions in Arabic in the Kitāb Sirr al-Khalīqa of the eighth or ninth century) that became, from the Latin translations of the twelfth century onward, the single most quoted text of the Western alchemical tradition. Thirteen lines attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, setting out in compressed form the whole of the opus.

The canonical line — “That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing” — is the source of the microcosm-macrocosm doctrine in its alchemical form. The further movements of the text — the One from which all things proceed, the Sun as father and the Moon as mother, the Earth as nurse, the separation of the subtle from the gross, the ascent and the descent — supply the full schematic of the alchemical opus in thirteen lines. Jung cites the Tablet throughout [[jung-psychology-and-alchemy|Psychology and Alchemy]] and [[jung-mysterium-coniunctionis|Mysterium Coniunctionis]]. See hermes-trismegistus and alchemy.

Relationships

• hermes-trismegistus
• microcosm-macrocosm
• alchemy