Trismagistus Thoth>Akhenaten> Apollonius-------Thoth>Phanes>Dionysus ----------Thoat>Buddha>Dattatreya[Conjoint Trimurti]----- Thoth>Seth>Khidr/Utnapitim

The Emerald Tablet

1. This is true and remote from all cover of falsehood
2. Whatever is below is similar to that which is above. Through this the marvels of the work of one thing are procured and perfected.
3. Also, as all things are made from one, by the [consideration] of one, so all things were made from this one, by conjunction.
4. The father of it is the sun, the mother the moon. The wind bore it in the womb. Its nurse is the earth, the mother of all perfection.
5. Its power is perfected. If it is turned into earth,
6. Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle and thin from the crude and [coarse], prudently, with modesty and wisdom.
7. This ascends from the earth into the sky and again descends from the sky to the earth, and receives the power and efficacy of things above and of things below.
8. By this means you will acquire the glory of the whole world,
9. And so you will drive away all shadows and blindness.
10. For this by its fortitude snatches the palm from all other fortitude and power. For it is able to penetrate and subdue everything subtle and everything crude and hard.
11. By this means the world was founded
12. And hence the marvelous conjunctions of it and admirable effects, since this is the way by which these marvels may be brought about.
13. And because of this they have called me Hermes Tristmegistus since I have the three parts of the wisdom and philosophy of the whole universe.
14. My speech is finished which I have spoken concerning the solar work

The Emerald Tablet is one of the most revered documents in the Western World, and its Egyptian author, Hermes Trismegistus, has become synonymous with ancient wisdom. His tablet contains an extremely succinct summary of what Aldous Huxley dubbed the "Perennial Philosophy," a timeless science of soul that keeps popping up despite centuries of effort to suppress it. The basic idea is that there exists a divine or archetypal level of mind that determines physical reality, and individuals can access that realm through direct knowledge of God.
The teachings of Hermes -- the Hermetic tradition -- is one of the oldest spiritual traditions in the world, and while no direct evidence links the Emerald Tablet to Eastern religions, it shares uncanny similarities in concepts and terminology with Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In the West, the tablet found a home not only in the pagan tradition but also in all three of the orthodox Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and many of the most heretical beliefs of the Gnostics are also openly expressed in it. Like the authors of the tablet, the Gnostics believed that direct knowledge of reality could be attained through psychological discipline and meditative exercises. They also shared a common view of the universe in which "All Is One," a pattern of creation and decay symbolized by the Ouroboros (the snake eating its own tail).
Without doubt, the Emerald Tablet was the inspiration behind many other esoteric traditions, including over 1,700 years of alchemy. Most medieval alchemists hung a copy of the tablet on their laboratory wall and constantly referred to the "secret formula" it contained. In fact, during the sixteenth century, Hermes Trismegistus was such a revered figure that there was a movement to have his teachings replace those of Aristotle in European schools.
Five hundred years later, the tablet's words are still held in the highest regard. "The Emerald Tablet is the cryptic epitome of the alchemical opus," noted Jungian analyst Dr. Edward Edinger, "a recipe for the second creation of the world." Ethnobotanist and consciousness guru Terence McKenna agrees, calling the tablet "a formula for a holographic matrix" that is mirrored in the human mind and offers mankind its only hope for future survival. "Whatever one chooses to believe about it," sums up John Matthews in The Western Way (Penguin 1997), "there is no getting away from the fact that the Emerald Tablet is one of the most profound and important documents to have come down to us. It has been said more than once that it contains the sum of all knowledge -- for those able to understand it."
However, there is one nagging problem with the Emerald Tablet: Nobody seems to know for sure where it came from, or who really wrote it.

Timeless Myths and Church Politics

Part of the problem trying to figure out the origins of the Emerald Tablet comes from the many legends that cloud its history. In one of the earliest of these fabled scenarios, Hermes was a son of Adam and wrote the tablet to show mankind how to redeem itself from his father's sins in the Garden of Eden. Jewish mystics identify the tablet's author with Seth, who was the second son of Adam. They credit him with writing the Emerald Tablet, which was taken aboard the ark by Noah. After the Flood, Noah supposedly hid the tablet in a cave near Hebron, where it was later discovered by Sarah, wife of Abraham. Another version describes Hermes giving the tablet to Miriam, daughter of Moses, for safekeeping. She allegedly put it in the Ark of the Covenant, where it remains to this day. Occult historians generally agree that the tablet was found in a secret chamber under the pyramid of Cheops around 1350 BC. Another interesting legend describes Hermes as a philosopher traveling in Ceylon in the fifth century BC. He found the Emerald Tablet hidden in a cave, and after studying it, learned how to "travel in both heaven and earth." This Hermes spent the rest of his life wandering throughout Asia and the Middle East teaching and healing. Oddly, the Hindu sacred book Mahanirvanatantra states that Hermes was the same person as Buddha, and each is referred to as the "Son of the Moon" in other Hindu religious texts.
Probably the only constant in all these legends is what the Emerald Tablet looked like. It is always described as a rectangular green plaque with bas-relief lettering in a strange alphabet similar to ancient Phoenician. It is made of emerald or green crystal, and the workmanship is exquisite. Caves, corpses, ancient Egypt, and secret wisdom are common themes in many of the stories.
The history of the tablet was further complicated when its alleged author became associated with the Corpus Hermeticum in the Middle Ages. The seventeen treatises of the Corpus expand on the principles of the Emerald Tablet and appear to be records of intimate conversations between Hermes and his disciples. For over three centuries, they were thought by the Catholic Church to be very ancient and held in the highest esteem. The church fathers believed the Corpus Hermeticum lent support to Christian doctrines, and the documents were required reading for European scholars. Images of Hermes adorned cathedrals all over Europe, and to this day, a giant fresco dominates the Borgia Apartments of the Vatican that shows Hermes, adorned with Hermetic symbols, walking in the company of Moses.
So it caused a great scandal in 1614 when Protestant scholar Isaac Causabon declared these documents forgeries written by "semi-Christians" sometime between 200 and 300 AD. He based his conclusion on a linguistic analysis that dated the writings to that era. For the next two hundred years, the Hermetic literature, which had been embraced by the early followers of Christ, was condemned by Christians everywhere. Although it was not officially part of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Emerald Tablet suffered the fate of all writings attributed to Hermes and went underground in a variety of secret organizations such as the Rosicrucians and Freemasonry.
The reverence with which these diverse groups continued to hold the Emerald Tablet is exemplified in the following paragraph from the Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry: "He who desires to attain the understanding of the Grand Word and the possession of the Great Secret, ought carefully to read the Hermetic philosophers, and will undoubtedly attain initiation, as others have done; but he must take, for the key of their allegories, the single dogma of Hermes, contained in his Table of Emerald." There are other more veiled references to the Hermetic tradition in Freemasonry. For instance, their sacred name "Hiram Ibif" refers to the first Hermes (Hermes Ibis or Thoth), who, according to Masonic tradition, arrived "in the year of the world 2670."
Today, most scholars agree that the Emerald Tablet is separate from or predates the Corpus Hermeticum and was probably the inspiration for them, and in this sense, the Corpus really does contain ancient writings. "In the mystic sense," summarized the nineteenth-century French scholar Artaud, "Thoth or the Egyptian Hermes was the symbol of the Divine Mind; he was incarnated Thought, the Living Word -- the Logos of Plato and the Word of the Christians. So the Corpus Hermeticum really does contain the ancient Egyptian doctrine of which traces can be discovered from the hieroglyphics which still cover the monuments of Egypt."

Thrice Greatest Hermes

However, the question still remains: Who really wrote the Emerald Tablet and when? New evidence started to turn up in the late nineteenth century, when new discoveries about Egypt and the deciphering of hieroglyphics suggested that the principles exposed in the tablet go back at least 5,000 years. Some scholars suggested the date of origin for the Emerald Tablet to be around 3000 BC, when the Phoenicians settled on the Syrian coast. Phrases from the tablet, including references to the One Mind, the One Thing, and the correspondences between the Above and the Below, were discovered in many Egyptian papyrii, such as Papyrus of Ani and the Book of the Dead (1500 BC), the Berlin Papyrus (2000 BC), and other scrolls dating between 1000 and 300 BC. One early Hellenistic papyrus known as An Invocation to Hermes might refer directly to the Emerald Tablet and its author: "I know your names in the Egyptian tongue," it reads, "and your true name as it is written on the Holy Tablet in the holy place at Hermopolis, where you did have your birth."
That "true name" is the same name that all the Egyptian records point to as the author of the tablet: Hermes. But this person appears to have a threefold identity, which is why in the Latin translations of the tablet, he is called "Hermes Trismegistus" or "Hermes the Thrice Greatest." If we follow the strict genealogical order in the Egyptian texts, Hermes is the son of the Agathodaimon, the great Thoth, who is the Egyptian god of all learning and hidden knowledge. According to those same texts, Hermes himself had a son, Tat, who was a scribe and lived in Alexandria around 250 BC. As mundane as all this sounds, there is something very disconcerting about the triple progression here. It descends from god to god/man to common man.
The Egyptians were the world's most accomplished esoteric symbolists, and it is possible that this triple descendancy is a clue to understanding the true nature of Hermes. Yet to unravel this clue, it is necessary to forsake the traditional archaeological approach. In the words of the tablet itself, we need to "separate the Earth from Fire, the subtle from the gross." Is it really possible to trace the origins of Emerald Tablet by moving to a higher level and following its spirit back through time? Could there be a grain of truth in the old legends that historians have ignored? In creating such a hyper-history, it is necessary to look at the psychology, philosophy, and beliefs of those associated with the tablet and the societies in which they lived.

Thoth: the First Hermes

There are tantalizing bits of evidence that suggest mysterious visitors came to Egypt over 12,000 years ago and brought with them a powerful spiritual technology, which they passed down to future generations in a time capsule of wisdom that became known as the Emerald Tablet. The Book of What Is In the Daat, the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian funerary texts, and numerous rebirth texts refer to a remote epoch known as the "Zep Tepi," a time before the Great Flood when the godlike beings came to earth and established their kingdom in Egypt. They included Thoth, the "god" of science and mathematics, who is said to have written the Emerald Tablet and hid it in a pillar at Hermopolis to preserve it through the coming world deluge.

Thoth, who most sources agree was the "first Hermes," is impossible to categorize intellectually because he transcends anything we normally think about gods and men. Usually depicted as a man with the head of an ibis (a wading bird with a long curved beak), this Egyptian neter (archetypal power) seems a simple personification of the powers of mind. He was said to be responsible for teaching men how to interpret things, arrange their speech in logical patterns, and write down their thoughts. As the inventor of hieroglyphics, Thoth instituted record keeping and founded the sciences of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. However, there are subtle clues in the many alternative names for this God of Thought that suggest he really represents the ultimate archetype of the Word of God (the One Mind) creating the universe.
Thoth is called the "Source of the Word," the one god without parents who precedes all others. He is the "Soul of Becoming" whose creative willpower fashions reality. "What emanates from the opening of his mouth," says an ancient Egyptian text, "that comes to pass; he speaks and it is his command." As the "Reckoner of the Universe," Thoth is the source of all natural law; as the "Shepherd of Men" and "Vehicle of Knowledge," he is the higher mind in man that provides inspiration and inner knowledge. According to the Ebers Papyrus, a 68-foot-long scroll on alchemy that is the oldest book in the world: "Man’s guide is Thoth, who bestows on him the gifts of his speech, who makes the books, and illumines those who are learned therein, and the physicians who follow him, that they may work cures." As the "Revealer of the Hidden" and "Lord of Rebirth," Thoth is the guide to alternate states of consciousness and initiator of human enlightenment. One of Thoth’s scrolls, The Book of Breathings, supposedly taught humans how to become gods through breath control.
Paradoxically, Thoth embodies the rational powers of the Sun as well as the intuitive, irrational energies of the Moon. The ibis is the Egyptian symbol for the heart, and, as "Recorder and Balancer," Thoth presides over the Weighing of the Heart ceremony, which determines who is admitted into heaven. Thoth is the final judge, who weighs individuals’ "true words," the innermost intent in all of our thoughts and actions.
Just before the Great Flood, Thoth preserved the ancient wisdom by inscribing two great pillars and hiding sacred objects and scrolls inside them. Egyptian holy books refer to these sacred pillars, one located in Heliopolis and the other in Thebes, as the "Pillars of the Gods of the Dawning Light." They were moved to a third temple where they later became known as the two "Pillars of Hermes." These splendorous columns are mentioned by numerous credible sources down through history. The Greek legislator, Solon, saw them and noted that they memorialized the destruction of Atlantis. The pillars were what the historian Herodotus described in the temple of an unidentified Egyptian god he visited. "One pillar was of pure gold," he wrote, "and the other was as of emerald, which glowed at night with great brilliancy." In Iamblichus: On the Mysteries, Thomas Taylor quotes an ancient author who says the Pillars of Hermes dated to before the Great Flood and were found in caverns not far from Thebes. The mysterious pillars are also described by Achilles Tatius, Dio Chrysostom, Laertius, and other Roman and Greek historians.
In summarizing all the ancient wisdom and preserving it, Thoth the first scribe can be considered the true author of the Emerald Tablet. As a god, Thoth is the archetypal Hermes, the Hermes above, the first of three incarnations of Hermes Trismegistus.

Akhenaten: the Second Hermes

The "second Hermes" arrives on the scene sometime after the Great Flood. According to the Ebers Papyrus, such a person actually lived during the Amenhotep dynasty, and there is only one person who seems to have promulgated the spirit of the Emerald Tablet during those centuries. It was Amenhotep IV, who ruled from 1364 to 1347 BC. Shortly after he took the throne, he suddenly changed his name from Amenhotep (meaning "Amen is Satisfied") to Akhenaten ("He Who Serves the Aten"). His name change signaled his break with the powerful priests of Amen to set up a new monotheistic religion that recognized the sun as the One Thing, the source of all creative energy. The new Egyptian supreme god, called the Aten or simply "the Disk," was never personified like previous gods but was thought of as an abstract energy. Pictures of the Aten show the Disk with rays coming down from heaven and terminating on earth in hundreds of tiny hands.
"The Aten is Radiant Energy personified," wrote one twentieth-century Egyptologist, "that is to say, an all-pervading reality of an immanent character. Akhenaten deliberately brushed aside the distinction between the god, maker of the solar Disk, and the solar Disk itself, the distinction between creative energy and created matter. The Disk was, like all matter that falls under our senses, but a visible manifestation of something more subtle, intangible, everlasting -- its essence. And the heat and light, the energy of the sun, was the manifestation of that One Thing of which the visible flaming Disk was yet another manifestation."
Some occult authors have dubbed Akhenaten the "Extraterrestrial King," and there is no doubt he possessed alien features. He had a thin face and a massive elongated bald head supported by a spindly neck, and his drooping shoulders, pear-shaped torso, lack of musculature, and scrawny legs certainly made him look like a space traveler. Akhenaten was also very androgynous in appearance, and respected scholars have accused him of being a homosexual or a woman masquerading as a man. Statues of Akhenaten have survived that show him naked with the breast of a woman and no male genitalia. It is known that this freakish pharaoh claimed one of the most beautiful women in the world as his bride, the lovely Nefertiti (whose family origins are still unknown to Egyptologists), and also shared the throne with a handsome young man by the name of Smenkhkare. Both of Akhenaten’s co-rulers shared the title "Beauty of All Beauties."
Although traditional history makes no mention of it, our hyper-history suggests that Akhenaten rediscovered the Emerald Tablet at the beginning of his rule as pharaoh. According to at least one ancient papyrus, without the writings of Thoth the larger pyramids could not be built, so a great search throughout Egypt was conducted until they were found. Whether or not he found the tablet, Akhenaten stands as a candidate for the second Hermes because he tried to apply the tablet’s principles and spread its spirit throughout his reign. Known as the heretic pharaoh, he espoused the revolutionary concept of "living in truth" and acting in natural accord with cosmic principles that the tablet called the "Operation of the Sun." He referred to this universal ideal as Maat, which meant the "real thing" or absolute truth, the original will of the One Mind. The agent of Maat was the One Thing, of which the physical sun, or the solar Disk, was the physical expression.
Akhenaten's Hymn to the Aten is considered one of the best pieces of Egyptian lyric poetry ever discovered, and several scholars have noted its similarity in spirit to Emerald Tablet. A few lines reveal Akhenaten's passionate belief in the One Mind: "How manifold it is, what You have made yet hidden from the face of man. Oh One God, like whom there is no other, You created the world according to your desire, while You were alone: all men, cattle, and wild beasts, whatever is on earth, going on its feet, and what is on high, flying with its wings."
The principle of "living in truth" permeated every level of Egyptian society under Akhenaten. Most noticeable was the sudden change in the stiff and lifeless style that dominated Egyptian art. For the first time, Egyptian reliefs and paintings portrayed natural subjects such as plants and animals in exacting detail, and traditional scenes of sterile Egyptian society were replaced by such ungodly behavior as Akhenaten kissing his wife or bouncing his daughters on his knee. In another striking break with tradition, Akhenaten ordered the abandonment of the old capitol of Thebes and built a new capitol city, Akhetaten ("Horizon of the Aten"), on a desolate stretch of land along the east bank of the Nile near the modern Egyptian city of Asyut. Scandalously, villas in the 60,000-population city were constructed without separate quarters for men and women, and women in particular were treated with more respect there.
Yet for the disenfranchised patriarchal priests, Akhenaten might as well have been from another planet. After just seventeen years of rule, Akhenaten and Nefertiti disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and it seems likely that the former priests of Amen did away with them. Akhenaten was well aware of the brewing unrest among the priests but never hesitated spreading the precepts contained in the tablet. By some indications, one of those that took his ideas to heart was a man of god by the name of Moses. According to Exodus, Moses had fled to the land of the Kenites, which is what the subjects of Akhenaten were called. In the open court of the time, it can be assumed that Moses would have conferred with the pharaoh many times on behalf of his people. In Moses and Monotheism (1939), Sigmund Freud was the first to suggest that Moses appropriated the pharaoh’s idea of one supreme god and brought the new religion to the Jews. Perhaps all the legends linking Moses and tablet are not so far off.
In any case, the heretic pharaoh was eventually replaced by a ten-year-old boy. His given name, Tutankaten ("Servant of the Aten"), was changed to Tutankamen ("Servant of Amen") after Akhenaten’s murder. The child pharaoh was tightly controlled by fundamentalist priests, who restored the capitol to Thebes, destroyed the city of Akhetaten, and erased all traces of monotheism from Egypt. Unlike the magnificent golden mummy of King Tut, the bodies of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were never found. Archeologist Sir Alan Gardner surmised that Akhenaten’s body had been "torn to pieces and thrown to the dogs." The only written references to the Aten after the Akhenaten's death were enigmatic allusions that associated the Disk with the great Sphinx on the Giza Plain.

Apollonius: The Third Hermes

Our hyper-history continues with the life of another Egyptian pharaoh, a Greek who became pharaoh when he conquered Egypt in 332 BC -- Alexander the Great. As pharaoh, he gained access to all the treasures of Egypt, including the whereabouts of Hermes’ (Akhenaten's?) tomb. Convinced it was his destiny to reveal the ancient secrets, Alexander immediately headed across the Libyan desert to an ancient temple at Siwa near where the tomb was located. According to Albertus Magnus and others, that is where Alexander found the Emerald Tablet.
Alexander took the tablet and scrolls he found in the tomb to Heliopolis, where he placed the scrolls in the sacred archives and put the Emerald Tablet on public display. Construction of the city of Alexandria to house and study the Hermetic texts was begun immediately, and he assembled a panel of priests and scholars to prepare Greek translations. According to esoteric historian Manly P. Hall, the mysterious Emerald Tablet caused quite a stir. One traveler, who had seen it on display at Heliopolis, wrote: "It is a precious stone, like an emerald, whereon these characters are represented in bas-relief, not engraved. It is esteemed above 2,000 years old. The matter of this emerald had once been in a fluid state like melted glass, and had been cast in a mold, and to this flux the artist had given the hardness of the natural and genuine emerald, by his art."
When Alexander left Egypt, it has been suggested that he took the original tablet with him and hid it for safekeeping before going on to conquer Babylonia and India. Meanwhile, copies of the tablet became primary documents at Alexandria, and according to some reports, scholars issued revised Greek translations in 290 BC, 270 BC, and 50 BC. Several papyrii in the British Museum mention a canon of Egyptian teachings that included the writings of Hermes that was still in existence at the time of Clement of Alexandria (around 170 CE). Fortunately, before Alexandria's libraries were destroyed in successive burnings by the Romans, Christians, and Muslims, copies of the Emerald Tablet had made their way into Arabia and from there eventually reached Spain and Europe.
After Alexander died from a fever on his return from India, his body was interred in a tomb somewhere in the Egyptian desert, although to this day, no one knows where. Yet someone did discover the hiding place of the Emerald Tablet. It is said that a brilliant Syrian youth named Balinas found it hidden in a large cavern just outside his hometown of Tyana in Cappadocia. It was Balinas who absorbed the tablet’s teachings and once again brought them to light in the Western world. The youth became known as Apollonius of Tyana (after Apollo, Greek god of enlightenment and brother of Hermes). Respected for his great wisdom and magical powers, Apollonius traveled throughout the world and eventually settled in Alexandria.
Unfortunately, Apollonius was a contemporary of Christ, and early Christians felt he was much too like their own Son of God. By 400 AD, every one of the scores of books Apollonius wrote in Alexandria and all of the dozens of temples dedicated to him were destroyed by Christian zealots. But Apollonius still stands as the third Hermes in our hyper-history, because he did more than any other person in the modern era to assure that the Emerald Tablet and its principles survived.
The earliest surviving translation of the Emerald Tablet is in an Arabic book known as the Book of Balinas the Wise on Causes, written around 650 AD and based on Apollonius’ Alexandrian writings. It also appears in the eighth century Kitab Sirr al Asar, an Arabian book of advice to kings. Another Arabic text, written by alchemist Jabir Hayyan around 800 AD, contains a copy of the Emerald Tablet and also gives Apollonius as the source. In all these texts, Apollonius describes finding the Emerald Tablet in the underground cavern in Tyana. He never claims credit for it, though he spent the rest of his life writing about it and demonstrating its principles to anyone who would listen.
What have we learned from our attempt at hyper-history? Can we even tell if the author of the Emerald Tablet was a man or a god? The answer down through the ages has always been both, and whether portrayed as man or god, Hermes is always the revealer of ultimate knowledge hidden to mankind. He is like a spirit who reincarnates through time to guide us in our struggle toward enlightenment. It is a tradition that goes all the way back to the first Hermes, the god Thoth, who was said to inspire people with direct perception of truth. "May Thoth write to you daily," utters the 3,500-year-old Papyrus of Ani.

3. The Secret Word of Hermes :

1. Truly, without deceit, certain and most veritable : 2. That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Entity. 3. And just as all things come from the One Entity, through the mediation of its One Mind, so do all created things originate from this One Entity through transformation. 4. Its father is the Sun. Its mother the Moon. The Wind carries it in its belly. Its nurse is the Earth. The origin of all the perfections of the world is here. Its force is entire, if it is converted into Earth. 5. Separate Earth from Fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great ingenuity. It rises from Earth to Heaven and descends again to Earth, thereby receiving the force of both things superior & inferior. In this way, you shall obtain the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly away from you. 6. This is a force, strong with all forces, for it overcomes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. 7. In this way the world was created. 8. From this will come many admirable applications, the means of which is in this. 9. Therefore I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. 10. What I have said of the operation of the Sun is finished."

3.1 Commentary.

1. Truly, without deceit, certain and most veritable :

Hermes affirms that the inscription on the Tabula is true. Why ? Are these teachings so extraordinary that one might conclude to have been deceived by them ?

Compare Jabir's : "Truth ! Certainty ! That in which there is no doubt !" with the first verse of the second chapter of the Recital : "This is the book then in which there is no doubt, a guidance to the godfearing." (Koran, 2:1).

Why doubt ? This becomes clear in the following verses, which summarize the basic tenets of the Tabula, which are indeed formidable.

2. That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Entity.

The expression "So above, so below. So below, so above." has rightly been called the "Hermetical postulate". It was part of Ancient Egyptian ontology, with its emphasis on the just unification of the dualities which characterize existence (cf. the rise & withdrawal of the Nile, the rise and setting of the Sun, chaos or "isefet" versus order or "maât", the sky versus the earth, the visible versus the invisible, the abode of destruction versus the heavens, the justified versus the damned, the Two Lands, the two crowns, the two staffs, etc.). Pharaon, the incarnation of the sky-god Horus and divine son of Atum-Re, the creator-god, was from "above" but existed "below". Because of his presence "below", the order of the world "below" was blessed by the gods & goddesses who existed as beings of light in the sky "above" but who accepted (only) Pharaoh's offerings from "below". Because of Pharaoh, the miracle of the One Egypt of the Two Lands was guaranteed "for millions of years" ...

The inherent conflicts between the elements were mediated by Pharaonic rule, i.e. the physical, divine manifestation on Earth of the celestial creator-god of the Sun, Re. Pharaoh was the son of Re, and he alone was ontologically able to address the deities directly and by doing so establish order, righteousness & truth in the Two Lands. In fact, all cult was done in his name. Hence, he unified the dualities and guaranteed that a relapse into Nun's primordial chaos (which was always lurking in the dark) would never happen. Left by itself, the world and humanity would surely destroy itself. Without Pharaoh, the order of being would return into the primordial chaos (the pre-creational ocean of Nun) out of which all sprang as the result of the self-creation of the Sun (cf. Atum-Re).

In the Tabula, the Pharaonic rule was replaced by the idea of a correspondence or natural sympathy between the terrestial and the celestial and vice versa. Hence, the binding factor of old (Pharaoh) is done with and replaced by Hermes and his "nous", the One Mind. That the world, with its divisions, variety and constant changes, does not seem to support such sympathetic reflections between macrocosmos and microcosmos, may well be the reason why Hermes affirms their verity and exhorts us not to doubt their possibility. For the force of forces (superforce) at hand, is invisible & subtle, not gross & material.

Indeed, there is no longer an outer monolith of unity (like Pharaoh), for the correspondences are meant to accomplish something, namely the miracles of unity themselves. Miracles were the outcome of supernatural activity, and so Hermes explains that his Tabula is a tool to perform miracles. These lie dormant in the subtle, invisible order of things, but are manifested (accomplished) by the hermetist.

As the performance of miracles is a magical feat, we may well say that the ideas explained here are a "magical formula" of the highest order (cf. the higher mysteries). They are called "theurgical acts", for miracles (contrary to magical feats caused by an individual will) are Divine and thus escape the will of the hermetist as such (his total annihilation makes him do what has to be done).

Theurgy is "of the One Entity" or the "One Thing", called by Paracelsus an invisible box full of great force and power (Philosophia Sagax, 1537). The outside of this set is the essence of the Divine which for ever transcends all elements of the set. As an ever-escaping horizon, this Face of God is veiled, and remains veiled. The essence is only for God to be in. Nothing can be said about this, except eternal silence.

"Tat : What then, father, can be called real in the supreme degree ? Hermes : He alone, my son, and none but He, who is not made of matter, nor embodied ; who is colourless and formless ; who is changeless and unalterable ; who ever is." - Strobaei Hermetica : Discourses of Hermes to Tat, Stobaeus 3. 11. 31, vol.iii, § 15, in : Scott, W. (edit) : Hermetica, Shamballa - Boston, 1993, p.389.

But the alchemist may find the superforce a work in nature herself. As the One Thing is everywhere (all things are in it), it can be transformed all the time and everywhere. Hence, the true goal of the Tabula is to inform its reader how this may be done. The crucial factor being the First Intellect, which is nothing less than the eternal "nous" of the One Thing. This Intellect is not unbegotten, neither is it begotten. It is "cause sui", i.e. autocreative, called "the Self-Begotten One", and identified with the true inner being (or essence) of each human being who dares to see the Self.

The theology of the Emerald Table is pan-en-theistic (from the Greek "pan en theos", "all in God"). The absolute (God) is not exclusively outside the universe (as in theism stressing transcendence), nor is It exclusively inside the universe (as in pantheism stressing immanence), rather God is both the unmanifest & the manifest, the hidden & the outer, the remote & the near, the un-saying & revealed, etc. For the pan-en-theist, the absolute is qua essence (apophatic, God-for-God) outside (implicate in, veiled by) the order of creation, i.e. truly transcendent (qua nature a priori pre-spatiotemporal) AND qua existence (executive, God-for-us) inside (explicate as, manifest in) the order of creation, i.e. immanent (qua Will a posteriori spatiotemporal). Hence, insofar as the Divine Will decrees, Divine revelation, miracles and salvations are possible.

Pan-en-theism is revealed in the text from the Nag Hammadi Codex (NH, VI.6), called The Eight Reveals the Ninth or Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. This title, instead of implying the pre-creational "Ogdoad" of Hermopolis and the "Ennead", or a family of Egyptian gods & goddesses, are in fact astrological.

In the Alexandrian view, the universe was conceived as a sevenfold, each strand being ruled by a planet : Saturn, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars & Jupiter (this is the qabalistic sequence, from 10.Malkuth to 4.Chesed - note that Saturn is attributed to Malkuth). The planetary sequence varies, giving rise to many conflicting systems of correspondences (another planetary sequence is : Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Sun).

The "eighth" is the abode were "each one receives what is his" (NH, VI.55.18-19), and the beings who hymn the Father in the Poimandres (tract I of the Corpus Hermeticum), are identical with the souls and the angels of the "Eighth". It is the realm of the Begotten One who rules the inferior Hebdomad and stays above the Seven Ousiarchs.

Above the Ogdoad, is the "kingdom of powers" of the Self-Begotten One. Finally, above the Ennead dwells the Unbegotten God, "who rules over the Kingdom of Power" (NH, VI.55.24-26). Hence, the Egypto-Alexandrian model was a tenfold (cf. the Pythagorean decad and the Ennead + Pharoah constellation of old).

The Unbegotten One is out of reach, but the Self-Begotten One (First Intellect or Mind of the One Thing) is the essence of one's own true Self (and culmination of the white tincture - cf. infra).

Pan-en-theism is fundamental to understand the Egypto-Alexandrian heritage, neo-Platonism (Plotinus, Proclus), Jewish qabalah as well as Islamic Sufism (especially that of Ibn'Arabî).

In the theology of Memphis, Ptah is the One Thing (Unbegotten One) who creates everything by uttering divine words in the form or image of Atum (the Self-Begotten One), who splits and creates the gods & goddesses (the powers ruling creation). In this scheme, the "Eighth" is absent.

With the advent of Christianity, pan-en-theism was rejected and replaced by a radical transcendent theism, with the result that the physical world (and with it, all things natural) was, as it were, driven out of the "divine plan" and its function attributed to an evil demiurge (as in Christian Gnosticism), to an eternal power of evil (as in Persian Manicheism) or to "the prince of the world" (as in Roman Catholicism). Hence, in these theologies of radical transcendence, no natural inquiry was possible without somehow offending God. This explains the reluctance with which the hermetic teachings were integrated in the theology of the Christian West, which oversimplified all matters theological (we find traces of it in the "symbolical" theology of ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite and we know that it influenced the Greek fathers of the church).

In the Sufism of Ibn'Arabî, we learn of "things" in two states : the thingness of fixity and "wujûd" (or "sheer being"). The word "thing", the most indefinite of the indefinites, may be applied to everything. But, as this word may also be used in reference to ALLAH, although Ibn'Arabî -not to be discourteous- rarely calls The God "The Thing". But, if ALLAH had named Himself "Thing" (a name He did not mention in the Koran as being one of the "Most Beautiful Names") he could have been called "The One Thing".

The phrase "One Entity" ('ayn wâhida) is coined by him to refer to "wujûd" itself and to contrast the oneness of being with the multiplicity and manyness of the things. Although the cosmos is a multiplicity, it goes back to the "One Entity". Hence, "One Thing" or "One Entity" implies the absolute in its absoluteness, i.e. as the essential unity of sheer being, the "Face of ALLAH" ...

The "miracles" (plural) of the One Entity are hence the many manifestations of the One. Hermes turns matters around. Instead of focusing on manyness (so that the One Entity is the sole miracle), he starts with the fundamental unity of all being (called the "One Entity"). Hence, each and every thing is a miracle, for do they not seemingly suggest the manyness of existence instead of its fundamental unity ? How can manyness be something other than a miracle, if on a fundamental level unity is a fact ? Is this not the path to the paradoxical and wonderous perplexity of the "station of no station" to which Ibn'Arabî concluded ? The implicate unity of all in all contrasts with the explicate variety of all against all. The series of "independent" things are the miracles performed by the One Entity.

The Hermetical postulate makes us realize that fundamental unity (above) and superficial plurality (below) interact, for every individual thing is a miracle of the One Entity, which underlines them all, and the One Entity is expressed in every individual thing, which -as we learn- may realize this fundamental unity of being as the strongest force ever (the one superforce uniting & transcending all other forces).

3. And just as all things come from the One Entity, through the mediation of its One Mind, so do all created things originate from this One Entity through transformation. 

To understand what is implied here, three theologies are helpful : the theology of Memphis found on the Shabaka Stone, the "logos" as "second God" in the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Divine Names of ALLAH in Sufism, in particular, the philosophy of mysticism of Ibn'Arabî.

In the Ancient Egyptian theology of the creative verb, Ptah created all things by thinking the divine words in his mind and uttering them through his tongue. Between Ptah-on-the-Great-Throne (i.e. the Great One Alone) and the created things stands the mind of Ptah. In this mind, divine words appear and when these are pronounced, the whole of creation unfolds. The major divine word Ptah thinks and utters is "Atum-Re", the creator-god, in whose "image" or "form" Ptah made everything.

Ancient Egyptian theology remained dependent on mythical & pre-rational thought (and thus never realized the rational form, except for a brief period under Akhenaten). In the Hellenized Judaism of Philo, we arrive at a rational exposition of the distinction between God and the "logos" or "word". The latter is conceived as a "second God", responsible for the creation of the universe.

In neo-Platonism, this would trigger the ternary : being-for-itself (monos), being-in-relation (proodos) and being-in-return (epistrophe), which would influence the IVth century articulation of the Nicene dogma of the Trinity of Father, Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit.

In Hermetism, God is the Unbegotten One (being-for-itself), the One Mind of the Logos (cf. Plato's "world of ideas") is the Self-Begotten One, Enneadic "First Intellect"), thought to have created the universe (cf. the "Christos Pantokratos" in Byzantine theology) through his "holy word". The latter "... is the son of God coming from his Intellect" (Poimandres), i.e. the Begotten One.

In Hermetism, the triad reads as :

1. God, the Unbegotten One, the essence of being, the Decad ;
2. the First Intellect, the Self-Begotten One, the Mind of God, the "Ninth" ;
3. the holy word or son from the First Intellect, the Begotten One above the Seven Governors, the "Eighth".

In Sufism, ALLAH wants His hidden treasure to be known. The essential unity of being (Decad) and the oneness of existence ("Ninth") are distinguished (Ibn'Arabî calls this "the most holy emanation"). The former being the ineffable essence of the absolute, whereas the latter is associated with the 99 Divine Names, which are the attributes of the absolute qua absolute. Everything is rooted in them and emanates from them (the so-called "holy emanation"). This happens "in the cloud", which is nothing other than the "Eighth", containing the essence of the created world.

Taken together, these Divine Names constitute the all-comprehensive name "ALLAH", "The God". With this name, the ongoing createdness of the universe is affirmed.

The One Entity is known to Its creation as the One Mind, which contains the "noetic" root of every individual thing that exists (cf. Plato, Spinoza). This Divine Mind (the attributes of the One Entity) allows all things to be transformations (adaptations, modi) of the One Entity :

1. the One Thing, or the totality of all things (creation, world, universe) plus the essence of being, the One Thing as It Truly Is, which is ineffable (the principle of being) ;
2. the One Mind, or the Oneness of the Divine Names which Self-express in many particular forms (the relationality of being) ;
3. the many things, or the plurality of expressions of existence, locus of the continuous theophany under the ægis of the holy Begotten One (the return of all actual things to their root in the Self-Begotten One Mind of the Unbegotten).

In its neo-Platonic form, this structure was recuperated by the theologians of Constantine, to form the Nicene trinitarian concept of the "One God", which is still the cornerstone of the Catholic concept of God today :

1. the Father : the good, heavenly and unique principle of absoluteness and transcendence ;
2. the Son : the unique divine and human son of the heavenly Father (Christ), who, as "logos", creates the universe and, as Saviour, mediates between humanity & the Father ;
3. the Holy Spirit : the love between Father & Son sets an example, is a comforter and a spiritual guide for Christians to return to the "house of the Father".

4. Its father is the Sun. Its mother the Moon. The Wind carries it in its belly. Its nurse is the Earth. The origin of all the perfections of the world is here. Its force is entire, if it is converted into Earth.

The "enantia" or elemental "opposites" inherent in the created order figure as a paradigm in Empedocles (cf. De Generatione et Corruptione, 330a30). Antinomic reality is structured as four elements : Fire and Air were the active elements and both warm (Fire was dry and Air was moist), whereas Water and Earth were passive and both cold (Water was moist and Earth was dry). In Ionic philosophy, they were viewed as the "arche" of the universe (Water for Thales of Milete, Air for Anaximenes of Milete and Fire for Heraclitus of Ephese).

In Ancient Egypt, these four elements were explicit in the cosmogony of Memphis, as well as in astronomy & ritualism. The foundation of creation was the primordial water before creation (cf. "Nun"). Creation was initiated by the emergence of the primordial hill (earth out of water) struck by a beam of the Sun (fire), which petrified (cf. the "Benben"). This caused the division between heaven and earth (air separating the two). Moreover, the Sun (fire) was considered as the subtlest of the elements for responsible for light (cf. the word "pyramid", from the Greek "pyr" or "fire"). The four elements were placed at the cardinal points of the horizon around the sacred objects (temples, thrones, coffins). They played a central role in ritualism and were called the "Sons of Horus" (Air in the East, Fire in the South, Water in the West and Earth in the North). In Christian times, these associations were projected upon the four evangelists (Luke as the Angel of Air -Aquarius-, Mark as the Lion of Fire -Leo-, John as the Eagle of Water -Scorpio- and Matthew as the Bull of Earth -Taurus-, but other correspondences have been suggested).

In the Tabula, the elements are used to describe the process which allows one to operate the miracles of the One Entity. As everything is a transformation of this One, the spiritual process is described in terms of physical realities, which is the method of alchemy. Indeed, the transformation of lead (Saturn, Earth) into gold (Sun, Fire) is not to be understood as the making of gold out of the gross "prima materia" represented by coarse lead. Physical realities are used as physical means to append or affix processes of a psychological & spiritual nature. The alchemist is thus somebody who performs the miracles of the One Entity in his or hers own consciousness, but who describes this process in terms derived from chemical events. Indeed, as the miracles are at work everywhere, why not standardize certain physical things (like metals) and their co-relative events (purification, mortification, evaporation etc.) to create what seems the language of a physical science, but which actually is a means to describe (in physical terms) what happens in the subtle, psycho-spiritual (inner) world of the alchemist.

That alchemy (also translated as "al-chem", "from Egypt", the "black" land) was rooted in Ancient Egyptian magical practices should not surprise us. In the "Ritual of Opening the Mouth" (used in the Old Kingdom and later to give live to the mummy), the Egyptian priests infused life in a cult statue. Here we see the principle described in the Tabula at work : a physical object (of clay, wood or stone), representing a natural law (a deity), is given "life" by associating it with a complex set of mythical, pre-rational and proto-rational patterns of thought, emotion and actions. Object (the physicality of the statue) and subject (its meaning for those who worship it) are fused. Complex incantations and rituals guaranteed that the physical statue triggered a co-relative spiritual state of consciousness. Once done, the "ka" (double) or "ba" (soul) of the deity in question could come down from the sky to dwell in the statue and assist those who offered to it. If these offerings stopped, the double or soul withdrew and the statue was "abandoned" by its deity ... (in the short reign of Akhenaten, it was said that the deities had left Egypt as a whole, for Pharaoh had ordered to stop all offerings, except those to his sole god, the Aten).

Sun and Moon (called "the lights" in astrology) are essential symbols. They form a bi-polar unity. The former being the radiant, creative, active, fatherly, pure & noble side, the latter the reflective, assimilative, passive, motherly, sullied & common side. The Moon was seen (by Aristotle) as a barrier between the "harmony of the spheres" and the sublunar chaos (on Earth). The "mysterium coniunctionis" (cf. Jung), involved (a) the purification of the Lunar current (usually done by negating all things physical & emotional), (b) the liberation of the subtle kept captive by the Earth, and finally (c) the harmonization of the purified lower Lunar ego with the radiant Higher Solar Self.

The Sun is the father of the One Entity. At face value, this statement entails a contradiction, for the One Entity is bornless and hence fatherless as well as motherless. The level of consciousness symbolized by the Sun is the only one in which the One Entity is revealed (as One Mind). It represents the end of the alchemical process and can therefore be equated with the Hermetic Ennead, the Self-Begotten First Intellect. To enter into the "way of immortality" (NH VI.63.10-11), a rite of regeneration is necessary. Its central mystery being the vision of oneself. In the 13th tract of the Corpus Hermeticum (CH) we read : "Father I see the All and I see myself in the Intellect.", which, in the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth, returns as : "I see myself." (NH VI.58.8). This Enneadic Vision "is rebirth" (CH, XIII.13).

"No doubt for the Hermetic writer this luminous power is nothing but the Divine Intellect. It consists in divine self-contemplation and manifestation of oneself to oneself. Whoever sees himself by the power of the Intellect tends to become himself and to get assimilated to the Self-Begotten man. Then he can also see the source of the Unbegotten One." - Mahé, J-P. : A Reading of The Ogdoad and the Ennead, in : van den Broek, R. & Hanegraaff, J. (editors) : Gnosticism and Hermetism from Antiquity to Modern Times, State University of New York Press - New York, 1998, p.84.

The accomplishment of the miracles of the One Entity (the true object of the Tabula)  is caused by the Sun, the Moon, the Wind and the Earth. Fire, Water, Air and Earth represent the creational sequence. This was also the case in Jewish mysticism, for in the qabalah (based on Greek number-symbolism), the four worlds are associated with the "Name" (YHVH) and with the four "cosmic elements" : Atziluth to Fire (Y, the father), Briah to Water (H, the mother), Yetzirah to Air (V, the son) and Assiah to Earth (H, the fallen daughter). To create anything, the One Entity, through mediation of its One Mind, moves from the subtle (Fire) to the gross (Earth). This is a downward movement, away from the essence of the One Entity towards its most gross transformations (cf. "exitus a Deo"). The most subtle (Fire) is thus converted into Earth. Then, and only then, is the miraculous force of unity entire, for only then does the One Entity, through mediation of the One Mind and a variety of transformations of its force, indeed prevail in everything, albeit in different forms, substances or existing things.

This is the affirmation of the omnipresence of the miracles of the One Entity. Indeed, if the (final) transformation of the One Entity into Earth were not, then the force of creation would not be everywhere and thus not be entire. It would be absent from the lowest plane of existence, which is exactely what both Manicheism as Christianity maintained. In contrast, the Egypto-Alexandrian model included all of existence in its concrete conceptualizations of the Divine, i.e. both the One Entity, Its One Mind and its myriads of elemental transformations according to the laws of Fire, Water, Air & Earth. In the theologies of Ancient Egypt (with the exception of Amarna religion), pre-creation itself was deified, for everything emerged out of the primordial chaotic ocean of Nun, the "father of the gods". Nowhere is the Divine absent, except as essence to its creation (cf. "Deus absconditus").

Sun and Moon represent the red and white tinctures respectively. These are stable stations of consciousness (rather than volatile states) accomplished by the alchemist, i.e. the person who executes the operation of the Sun and perfoms the "Magnum Opus". Sun and Moon are the two foci of the ellipse of initiated consciousness. Before initiation, the Moon eclipses the Sun, and consciousness exists in the illusion of its own circular solitude and isolation. The eclipse can only occur because of the Earth. Ignorance results when consciousness is exclusively informed by what enters via the senses, cut off from what comes down from the higher and hence more subtle transformations of the One Entity, called the "invisible", the "unseen", the "occult", i.e. the human soul & spirit.

The Tabula defines the formula given here as "the operation of the Sun", showing that the ultimate goal of Hermetism is the making of the Red tincture, the "stone of the philosophers", the "burning water" of incombustible Sulphur ... The white elixir is said to convey long life, health, beauty & peace (liberation or illumination), but not eternal life, creativity & wisdom (realization or deification). The white elixir being the culmination of the "lower mysteries" (witchcraft, magic), the red stone that of the "higher mysteries" (theurgy, or the synthesis of magic & mysticism).

The word "perfections" translates the Greek "telesma" or "rite" ("teleoo" means "to bring to an end" and "to initiate into the mysteries"), also found in the word "talisman", a physical object whose subtle vehicle (or etheric double) is a condensation of a spiritual state of consciousness. All these meanings are implied here :

1. the superforce accomplishing the miracles of the One Entity, according to the laws of the operation of the Sun, brings everything to its natural end, i.e. towards its completion, i.e. its return to the One Entity ;
2. the spiritual states of Sun and Moon can be fixated on the physical plane, enabling physical consciousness to rise more quickly above the gross vibrations of the lowest stratum of the universe ;
3. the control of this telesmic superforce, goes hand in hand with initiated consciousness, Lunar as well as Solar. In the former case, the white elixir has been prepared, enabling consciousness to remain focused on the Sun while existing in the gross & heavy Saturnine transformations of the One Entity (the physical world). In the latter, the philosopher's stone has been found, and consciousness abides in a state which has a continuous spiritual openness, leading to the unshaken spirit of the Divine Presence (cf. the "Shekinah" in qabalah).

5. Separate Earth from Fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great ingenuity. It rises from Earth to Heaven and descends again to Earth, thereby receiving the force of both things superior & inferior. In this way, you shall obtain the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly away from you.

Here, the working-principle of the telesmic operation is described : the separation of the subtle (Fire) from the gross (Earth).

To understand what is intended, one should realize that according to Hermetism, Earth (or Saturnine Salt), conscious identity (or Solar Sulphur) and cognition (or Mercury) are distinguished. Salt is related to the conditions of the physical plane (the body), with its gross and inert qualities. In this unpurified state, Salt pulls consciousness down, leading to materialism, spiritual poverty and overall unhappiness. The Solar element is eclipsed by the Lunar one. This type of consciousness is associated with "vulgar" Sulphur, for it burns quickly but leaves a dirty and unwholesome residue. When reflective activity is undertaken in this state, the sullied mind produces rational thought at the expense of all other modes of cognition (lower -instinctual- as well as higher -intuitive-). This is Mercury chained to the laws of Salt, which is the condition of the "homo normalis", an educated animal (bestial characteristics holding light captive and abusing it to serve the ends of the ego and the body).

The goal of Hermetism being the liberation of Mercury from Salt, i.e. the elimination from thought of everything which makes it gross, inert and materialistic. This is done by seeking the incombustible part of Sulphur, i.e. becoming conscious of the totality of one's being, which is represented by the Sun. Ultimately, this total consciousness liberates vulgar Mercury from Salt, realizing the "burning water" of "philosophical Mercury". This is firmly attained when the red tincture has been successfully prepared.

The two major steps feature in this process of separating the subtle out of the gross, namey the making of the white and red tinctures. The white tincture is preceded by the preparatory "black work" (black chaos), the putrefaction of the vulgar qualities of consciousness (the separation of the elements of the gross). The entanglement of Mercury with Salt being very strong, Hermes suggests to separate them gently and with great ingenuity. Why ? More than one initiate who tried to make the tinctures wrote that the alchemist has to fail and start the work all over again. This may happen several times.

Indeed, if traces of dirt are left without consciousness having noticed this (because not all shadow elements of one's personal unconscious have been thoroughly made conscious after the first putrefactions, which is nearly always the case), the inertness of Salt is such, that the whole operation of separation if cancelled, or worse, that consciousness -because of this drawback- abruptly aborts the operation and then falls back to a state which is even more wretched than before. Why ? Is physical life not more difficult to bear after one has failed to break its chains, and this especially when one has caught a few glimpses of true freedom ? Indeed, in the beginning, consciousness is often emersed by the flashes of light stemming from its own incombustible Sulphur. This may already happens after the first putrefactions. Mercury rises a little and joy is felt. But, many putrefactions are needed before all traces of dirt have been made conscious. Salt is not immediately purified and residual dirt causes Mercury to drop. He who experienced heaven, suffers more from its absence than he who thinks that the world stops at the end of the street. Thus violent putrefactions will likely cause a drawback, chaining consciousness to Salt in a way which opposes any further attempt to free Mercury. To separate Mercury from Salt gently & intelligently, will allow the aspirant to return to his putrefactions even after several failures.

When the destructive components have burned long enough, so that thought (Air), will (Fire), affect (Water) & body (Earth) are purified, the "fifth element" or "quintessence" emerges. This is the reflection of the light of the Sun by Mercury, which produces the white tincture. The Moon (ego) does not eclipse the Sun (Self), and this distinction between ego and Self causes consciousness to break away from its particular, localized, circular apprehension of itself and the world. Heliocentricity leads to an elliptical awareness of body, ego-mind & Self, and to a universalizing consciousness.

Compared with vulgar Mercury, the white tincture gives freedom, power and strenght. In this station, the conditions of Salt do not influence consciousness fundamentally. The negatives of this world do not affect one's inner peace. This is a major attainment. However, the white elixir is unstable. Continuous attention is needed to produce it, and special conditions have to be implemented to succeed in doing so. The tincture is not a "stone", i.e. a stable spiritual state. Compared with vulgar Sulphur, the white elixir is extremely stable and powerful. But this is relative. Indeed, the absence of a totalizing consciousness (in the uninitiated) is replaced by a continuous alertness and an effective shielding from all possible sources of negativity (the unpurfied Salt still present in one's physical environment). Hence, those unable to make the red tincture, are forced to reduce the efforts needed to make the white elixir. At best they are hermits, but they may also become part of so-called "spiritual organizations", which offers them a framework to protect them from too much interactions with the sullied world. This problem increases with time, for the aging of the physical body calls for more and more controls to avoid unnecessary loss of energy and the stabilization of habits (albeit wholesome ones).

The red tincture is nothing less than the realization of the "Sun behind the Sun", i.e. the fact that in the heart of one's soul (in the core of who one really is) the spirit abides. This spirit is conceived as the unbreakable, self-sufficient unity of incombustible Sulphur, philosophical Mercury and purified Salt.

The last phase of the operation of the Sun touches upon the direct experience of the Divine, i.e. mysticism. The directness of this experiences implies that it is not mediated. No images or symbols of external things are used. The  "stone of the philosophers" is not a stone. It is nothing as "all possibility", i.e. the unlimited set of all virtualities. This is called "a stone", because this ultimate consciousness is stable, unborn and unchanging as such. One enters it as it enters in one. Once there (which is nowhere) it is never left. Hence, no special care to maintain this station is necessary.

The accomplished miracles encompass two movements : the already discussed downward movement from Fire to Earth ("exitus a Deo") and the upward movement from sullied to purified ("reditus in Deum"). The first is creational & universal, the second is anthropological and individual. In this way, the telemic force receives from all things (inferior as well as superior). Hence, it unites the division between "above" and "below", which enables one to obtain the glory of creation itself (cf. Pharaoh uniting the "Two Lands"). As all has been encompassed, no obscurity is left. Everything has been brought under the ægis of the Solar Light.

6. This is a force, strong with all forces, for it overcomes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. 

Again, as the "telemic force" is at work in both the inferior (solid) and superior (subtle) strands of creation, nothing can rule it and it rules all. When it has ascended into heaven and descended into Earth, it becomes the strongest of all things. It is the superforce.

7. In this way the world was created.

The operation of the Sun is the paradigm of the creative process. All creative minds move through this sequence :

1. isolate & name the gross, unclean traces of consciousness (the effect of impure Salt on Sulphur and Mercury) and separate its elements (the black work) ;
2. purify body, consciousness and mind to allow Fire to escape Earth (breaking one's conscious identification with all forms of vulgarity) ;
3. realize and maintain a liberated Mercury (aware of Salt but able to shield itself from it and reverse the past negative effects it had & has - the white work) ;
4. realize a direct experience of the inner unity between one's innermost Self and the universal Divine Spirit which is hidden in its core (the red work).

8. From this will come many admirable applications, the means of which is in this.

All these principles can be used in a multiplicity of "words" or strands of creation. In the qabalah, four worlds are identified (corresponding with the four letters of the Name "YHVH"). The practical applications which ensue when the operation of the Sun is used in each of these worlds are called "admirable".

9. Therefore I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. 

The mineral, vegetal & animal kingdoms are the "natural" part of creation. With humanity, the "cultural" is introduced, implying choice & free will, cogitation & creativity (novelty, originality, ingenuity, intuitiveness). The author of the Tabula claims gigantic proportions for himself. Hermes is therefore the archetype of Hermetism. The use of the word "philosophy" is justified, for the teachings of the Tabula are clearly Alexandrian & neo-Platonic (Pythagorean).

10. What I have said of the operation of the Sun is finished."

To place the definition of the process dealt with in this Tabula at the end of the text, is more than just a literary device. For the essence of the telemic process is only revealed at its end (cf. "alpha et omega"). Perfection is a matter of finality. Because the end of the matter depends on the One Entity and its One Mind, one is perfected in the way of Hermes, by the presence of his stone, the "benben" of everlasting life or the "emerald" of the philosophers (for the Sûfî's, "emerald" symbolized the cosmic soul).

3.2 Concluding remarks.

Egypto-Alexandrian Hermetism, the art of Kemet, was the intellectual realization of the élite of Egypt, i.e. the native priesthood and the few Greeks who seriously investigated the Egyptian mysteries, teachings & temple ritualism (men like Pythagoras, Democritos and Plato). In the House of Life of more than one medium to large temple-complex, ancient manuscripts could be found, and although the rich spiritual literature of the Middle & New Kingdoms was available, the forms of the Old Kingdom were revered and copied.

Under the Ptolemies, funerary practices were kept in place and the syncretic bull-god Serapis, created during the early Ptolemaic period, became the state god. He existed as "Osorapis" (Osiris + Apis) prior to Ptolemy I Soter coming to the throne, and represented the synthesis of the two major aspects of Ancient Egyptian religion, namely (a) perpetual existence thanks to rituals, embodied by Osiris and (b) a Pharaoh to offer Maât to his father Re, embodied by the Apis bull of Ptah of Memphis, the mythical place of origin of the Dynasties (cf. Menes), Residence and place of coronation of Pharaoh. For Ptolemy I Soter, "Osorapis", now called "Serapis", was the quintessence of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. Moreover, he could easily be fused with the major Greek gods such as Zeus, Helios, Dionysos, Hades (Pluto) and Aesculapius or Hermes.

Hermetism linked with protection (cf. the old definition of "heka" or "magic"), the funerary rituals, healing & wisdom. Later, "Hermes Trismegistos" became the archetype of those initiated in the new syncretic teaching, which contained a Egypto-Alexandian grand philosophy (i.e. total picture of being) and a myriad of rituals and magical procedures to make nature bow to the telemic will of the adept (as it had done for Pharaoh). All kinds of practical techniques were incorporated. These teachers understood the importance of conveying information through activity & movement. Hence the use of dialogue to conceptualize the intellectual message (the use of dialogue as a literary device was used for the first time in the Middle Kingdom, namely in the dialogue between a desperate man and his soul). Plato's choice for the exclusive use of this literary device may well be the result of his study of the earliest form of Egypto-Alexandrian thought.

Another important feature of this early Egyptian form of Hermetism was its ability to internationalize the deities by the notion of "correspondence". The concrete contexts in which he deities functioned were compared, and similarities were sought and found. In this syncretism, the mythical and pre-rational background (which had made Amarna fail) is weakened, if not absent. The absent relapse into the geosentimentality of the nomes and their "tribal" temple, allowed a broader proto-rational perspective to emerge. This is not yet a universal religion based on rational principles (for polytheism is not superceded), but it surely (and this more than had been the case in the New Kingdom) called for an imperial concept of the deities, albeit limited by concrete factors, such as the deification of the "Basileus", and the cultic worship of the Hellenistic political rulers ...

This limitation was the last remnant of the "old world". It explains why the religions of the "old Mediterranean" never fully realized the rational stage of cognitive thought. Even Akhenaten, who realized that there can only be One Sole God, and who stood at the treshold of reason, had allowed his own deification to limit his "natural philosophy". Early Hermetism is not a rational philosophy yet. The divine Hermes, as well as the projection of subjective states & stations on physical objects & their properties, point to proto-rational thought.

Nevertheless, the basic categories of mysticism are found in the Tabula. We know that the Corpus Hermeticum influenced the Greek Fathers (cf. the "Orientale Lumen") and their conceptualization of the "scala perfectionis". The stages of the telemic process also form a triad : purification (the black work), illumination (the white work) & deification (the red work). In Jewish, Christian & Sûfî mysticism, the latter is not an ontological change from human to Divine (as had been the case in the "old world"), but rather a Divine spiritual unity which exists in one's innermost consciousness, calling for an enhanced ethical awareness, vivid compassion & unconditional charity towards all beings.