tablets
The term ‘Tablet’ surfaces across the depth-psychology corpus in two primary registers, each bearing significant symbolic weight. The first and most persistent is the alchemical-Hermetic register, centered on the tabula smaragdina (Emerald Tablet) and its literary antecedents: the trope of the sacred inscription discovered upon a statue or within a tomb, found especially in Arabic alchemical literature such as Mohammed ibn Umail’s De chemia. Von Franz traces this motif from its likely Greek origins through its transformations in medieval Islamic alchemy, showing how the tablet’s inscribed surface concentrates all psychological attention—functioning, in Jungian terms, as a focal point around which dissociated psychic forces gather. Jung himself engages the leaden tablet in his analysis of Zosimos, where it figures within a visionary drama of punishment, sacrifice, and transformation. A second register is literary-erotic: Carson’s reading of Bellerophon’s folded tablet in the Iliad presents writing itself as a death-bearing sign, a medium that both conceals and transmits lethal meaning, anticipating psychoanalytic themes of the unconscious message carried unknowingly by the bearer. The I Ching’s jade tablet (gui) appears in Wang Bi’s commentary as a ritual object mediating between the human and divine orders. Across these registers, the tablet condenses archaic fantasies about preserved secret knowledge, the materialization of hidden truth, and the dangerous power of inscribed meaning.
I entered the tomb and found a statue with a tablet, on which was…, and then follows a kind of explanation. So in Senior’s time that had become a theme in literature. That is a parallel to the emerald tablet
Von Franz identifies the ‘found tablet in a tomb’ as a recurring alchemical literary motif—a parallel to the Emerald Tablet—whose variations encode successive transformations of the tradition’s secret knowledge.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
all the dissociated forces of thought and of the soul are now concentrated on what is on this tablet, i. e., round this the whole psychological attention is concentrated.
Von Franz interprets the alchemical tablet as a psychological symbol upon which all libidinal and cognitive attention converges, making it a representation of the Self as organizing center.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
I have painted for you the image of the tablet, and what the images are will be explained in my poem and afterwards you can look at the chapters and see what each figure meant.
The Arabic alchemical source presents the tablet as a visual-symbolic compendium of the opus whose meaning must be decoded through poetry and commentary, establishing its function as an esoteric pedagogical object.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
tablet, in De chemia, 109, 110, 111-114, 124 tabula smaragdina, 113-114
The index entry linking the tablet of De chemia with the tabula smaragdina confirms von Franz’s sustained treatment of these as related symbolic objects within the alchemical tradition.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
I saw a brazen man holding a leaden tablet in his hand. And he spoke with a loud voice, looking upon the tablet: ‘I command all those who are undergoing the punishment to be calm, to take each of them a leaden tablet, to write with their own hand’
Jung’s engagement with Zosimos’s vision presents the leaden tablet as an instrument of alchemical initiation and sacrificial transformation, its inscription inseparable from the punitive-purgatorial drama of psychic change.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
he wrote many life-destroying things [thumophtbora] on a folded tablet and bid him show it to Anteia’s father so that he might be destroyed… he is twice unwitting victim of the signs he carries.
Carson reads the Homeric folded tablet as the prototype of the unconsciously carried fatal sign, in which erotic desire is transposed into lethal written inscription and the bearer is destroyed by what he cannot read.
, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, 1986thesis
Emerald Table 68 materia
Abraham’s dictionary explicitly cross-references the Emerald Table as a primary alchemical concept alongside the sulphur-mercury theory, situating the tablet within the foundational theoretical apparatus of alchemical imagery.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998supporting
to report to the duke that he treads the path of the Mean he uses a gui [jade tablet].
Wang Bi’s commentary presents the jade tablet (gui) as a ritual object mediating sincerity and hierarchical communication, functioning as a material embodiment of moral rectitude in the Confucian-Daoist symbolic order.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
Votive Tablet from the Asklepieion. 4th century B.C. Athens
Campbell’s visual catalog includes a votive tablet from the healing sanctuary of Asklepios, positioning the tablet as a medium of sacred offering at sites where dream incubation and psychological cure intersect.
, The Mythic Image, 1974aside
Tablet of Cebes 295; Plutarch: different emotions respond differently 295
Sorabji’s index reference to the Tablet of Cebes in connection with catharsis locates this classical allegorical tablet within a broader philosophical tradition of emotional purification and moral instruction.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000aside