The Emerald Tablet
The Teaching
True, without falsehood, certain and most true: that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for the performance of the miracles of the One Thing.
And as all things are from the One, by the mediation of the One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation.
It ascends from the Earth to the Heaven, and again it descends to the Earth, and receives the force of things superior and inferior.
By this means thou shalt have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from thee.
Commentary
‘As above, so below’, the Hermetic axiom that collapses the division between spiritual and material, macrocosm and microcosm. This is the same insight as the Fibonacci sequence: the same pattern appears at every scale, from galaxies to nautilus shells.
The Stoics called this the Logos, the rational principle that permeates and structures all levels of reality. John’s Gospel maps Christ onto this same Logos. The Tao is the Chinese name for the same principle.
‘It ascends from Earth to Heaven and again descends’, this is the eternal cycle of manifestation and return that every tradition describes: the Tao’s ten thousand things returning to the root, the Upanishadic Atman returning to Brahman.