Tabula Smaragdina
The Tabula Smaragdina (emphasizes tábula smarágdina, Latin for "emerald table") is a text traditionally attributed to Hermes Trismegistos , which forms the philosophical basis of Hermetics and is considered the basic text of alchemy .
The tabula is one of the most famous texts in alchemical and hermetic literature. The idea of a connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm is reflected in the roughly twelve dark, allegorical sentences . What is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below, an eternal miracle of the One.
The oldest surviving text version can be found in the appendix to an Arabic manuscript from the 6th century. Translated into Latin in the 12th century, the tabula was commented on and received by many alchemists in the Middle Ages and increasingly in the Renaissance . Even after the emergence of modern natural sciences in the modern era and the increasing discrediting of alchemy, their fascination, at least for occultists and esotericists, has remained unbroken to the present day.
Legends of the discovery of the tablet
According to legend, the text - written on two columns or panels made of emerald - was found under a statue of Hermes in the tomb of Hermes, which is said to have been in the Great Pyramid of Cheops . In other versions it is said that Sarah , the wife of Abraham , discovered the tablets in the tomb of Hermes in the Hebron Valley in the hands of Hermes' body.
Sources and texts
Around the 3rd or 2nd century Greek-language writings appear in Hellenistic Egypt, which are attributed to the mythical author Hermes Trismegistos, owner of secret knowledge and author of difficult to access texts. These texts are summarized with astrological , magical , medical and religious-philosophical content under the title Corpus Hermeticum . In one of the oldest parts of the corpus, the Kore Kosmu (“pupil of the world”, see Hermetics ), a dialogue between Isis and Hermes Trismegistus , it is mentioned that Hermes “engraved everything he knew into a stone that he did and which all descendants should look for in order to obtain the knowledge. ”The hermetic tradition was preserved in Egypt through the Christian-Coptic, Byzantine and up to the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, only Latin translations of the tabula were known, until the English historian Eric John Holmyard (1891–1959) and the orientalist Julius Ruska discovered the first versions in Arabic.
Page from the Secretum secretorum (Kitâb Sirr al-asrâr) . Arabic manuscript
Tabula Smaragdina, edition Chrysogonus Polydorus, Nuremberg 1541
Dutch translation, 1657
Arabic manuscripts
From the Emerald Tablet twenty Arabic translations have been handed down from the Middle Ages. The oldest version is in the appendix to the treatise Secretum secretorum , namely in a copy of 825. The Greek mystic Apollonios of Tyana appears as the author under his Arabic name Balînûs . The thesis advocated by some authors that there was an original Greek text is probable, but has not yet been confirmed by finding the original text. The assumption of Apollonius as the author is untenable, but was accepted as certain until the Middle Ages.
Latin translations
The Liber de secretis naturae was first translated from Arabic into Latin at the beginning of the 12th century by the translator Hugo von Santalla, who worked at the court of the Bishop of Tarazona . However, this version was hardly received because of the limited distribution of the manuscript.
The second, abbreviated Latin translation from 1140 with the title Secretum Secretorum comes from Johannes Hispalensis or Hispaniensis ; it was followed in 1220 by a longer partial translation by Philip of Tripoli. This book became one of the most famous medieval manuscripts ever. A third Latin translation is contained in an alchemy treatise that was probably written in the 12th century. The original handwriting of this text has not been preserved; only copies from the 13th and 14th centuries have survived. This version, also called vulgata , is the most widely used of the Liber Secretorum.
Latin text and German translations
- Latin text, Nuremberg 1541
- VERSIO TABULAE SMARAGDINAE HERMETIS
- Qualis ea Vulgo Latino Idiomate, e Phoenicio expressa circumfertur.
- VERBA SECRETORUM HERMETIS TRISMEGISTI
- 1. Verum, sine mendacio, certum et verissimum.
- 2. Quod est inferius, est sicut (id) quod est superius, et quod est superius, est sicut (id) quod est inferius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius.
- 3. Et sicut omnes res fuerunt ab uno, meditatione unius: sic omnes res natae fuerunt ab hac una re, adaptione.
- 4. Pater ejus est Sol, mater ejus Luna; (5) portavit illud ventus in ventre suo; (6) nutrix ejus terra est.
- 5 (7). Father omnis thelesmi totius mundi est hic.
- 6 (8). Vis (Virtus) ejus integra est, si versa fuerit in terram.
- 7 (9). Separabis terram ab igne, subtle a spisso, suaviter, cum magno ingenio.
- 8 (10). Ascendit a terra in coelum, iterumque descendit in terram, et recipit vim superiorum et inferiorum. (11) Sic habebis gloriam totius mundi. Ideo fugiat (fugiet) a te omnis obscuritas.
- 9. Hic (Haec) est totius fortitudinis fortitudo fortis: qua vincet omnem rem subtle, omnemque solidam penetrabit.
- 10 (12). Sic mundus creatus est.
- 11 (13). Hinc adaptiones erunt mirabiles, quarum modus est hic.
- 12 (14). Itaque vocatus sum Hermes Trismegitus, habens tres partes Philosophiae totius mundi.
- 13 (15). Completum est quod dixi de operatione Solis.
- Translation of the Tabula Smaragdina, Geneva 1702
- Real translation
- The Hermetic Smaragd = table in German out of Phoenician.
- Constitution of the Secret Arts of the Hermes Trismegist
- 1. True / beyond all knowledge / certain and true I say:
- 2. The creatures here below join those up there / and these in turn join them / so that with their whole hand they can bring something for it / so full of miracles.
- 3. And just as everything arose out of one through some of the Creator's words: So all things are now also born out of this single thing through the arrangement of nature.
- 4. His father is the sun / and his mother the moon; the air carries it as much as it does in your womb; but his suckling is the earth.
- 5. This thing is the origin of all perfection of things in the world.
- 6. Its strength is most perfect / when it has returned to the earth.
- 7. Then separate the earth finely from one another / if it was in the apartment / and make its thickness ever more subtle and subtle by the aid of the most lovable thing in the world.
- 8. In summary. Rise through great understanding from earth to heaven / and from there back into earth / and bring the power of the upper and lower creatures together / so you will achieve glory for all the world: Then hero will no longer be a contemptible state around you.
- 9. This thing is too strong in all strong things; then it wants to overcome the most subtle thing as well as penetrate the hardest and densest.
- 10. At this stroke everything is created what the world understands.
- 11. Then miraculous things can be wrought / when it is done in such a way.
- 12. And because of this I have been given the name Hermes Trismegistus / because I have all three parts of the wisdom of this whole world.
- 13. This is said of the masterpiece of chemical art.
- New translation by Hans-Dieter Leuenberger, 2006
- 1. True, true, no doubt in it, sure, reliable!
- 2. Behold, the top comes from the bottom, and the bottom from the top; a work of miracles by one man.
- 3. How things were all created from this raw material through a single process.
- 4. His father is the sun, his mother the moon; the wind carried him in his belly, the earth fed him.
- 5. He is the father of magic works, the guardian of miracles, perfect in powers; the reviver of lights.
- 6. A fire that becomes earth.
- 7. Take away the earth from the fire, the fine from the gross, with care and art.
- 8. And in him is the power of the ruler and the ruler. In this way you become the ruler of the highest and the lowest.
- Because the light of lights is with you, that is why darkness flees from you.
- 9. With the power of the forces you will master any fine thing, you will penetrate into any gross thing.
- 10. According to the origins of the big world, the small world arises, and that is my glory.
- 11. That is the creation of the small world, and according to it the scholars proceed.
- 12. That is why I have been called Hermes the Triple.
Translations, comments, reception
Commentaries from the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
The tabula and its legendary discovery are mentioned for the first time in literature by the astrologer and translator of Arabic texts Hermann von Carinthia in the tract De essentiis of 1143. Albertus Magnus mentions them around 1256 in De Rebus Metallicis et de Mineralibus . Between 1275 and 1280, Roger Bacon translated and commented on the Secretum secretorum .
A common comment comes from the hand of an unknown alchemist named Hortulanus (= the gardener), who lived in the first half of the 14th century.
From 1420 text excerpts in Latin were circulating as manuscripts , including the illuminated manuscript Aurora consurgens . One of the illustrations shows the discovery of the tabula in a chapel-like building. The board bears alchemical symbols, black eagles armed with bows and arrows aim at the scholar and his students. In the theory of the elements, the eagles represent the volatility of the element air, which is assigned to Hermes , and as Claudius Ptolemy explains in his astrological basic work Tetrabiblos , the first dean is ruled by Mercury under the sign of Sagittarius .
Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment
The year 1462 marks the foundation of the Platonic Academy in Florence by Marsilio Ficino . On behalf of Cosimos de 'Medici , Ficino not only translated the writings of Plato and thus made them accessible to the Latin-speaking scholars of his time, he also translated a Greek version of the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin, which was published in 1471 under the title Pimander, Mercurii Trismegisti liber de sapientia et potestate Dei Marsilio Ficino interprete Asclepius, ejusdem Mercurii liber de voluntate divina L. Apuleio interprete was printed. Ficino's translation created the basis for a broader discussion of humanists , naturalists and physicians with the hermetic world of thought. Ficino dated the corpus to the times before Plato; he considered the texts to be a very old theological source. In his estimation, the philosophy embodied by Plato was just as old as the Christian religion, which dates back to Moses and the prophets, and he did not see the two in contradiction to one another.
During the Renaissance, the idea of Hermes Trismegistus as the founder of alchemy prevailed, i.e. at the same time that the legend of the discovery of the tabula spread and was mixed with stories from the Bible, such as B. in the case of the treatise Livre de la philosophie naturelle des métaux (1574) by Bernhardus Trevisanus . The alchemists consider Hermes Trismegistus to be the founder of their science and the one who is the owner of all knowledge about the cosmos, the world of minerals, plants and animals.
Wilhelm Christoph Kriegsmann wrote his treatise on the Tabula Smaragdina in 1657.
The legend of the discovery of the tablet and its attribution to a mythical Hermes Trismegistus persisted into the 18th century. In connection with his preoccupation with alchemy, Isaac Newton translated the text into English and wrote a commentary on the tabula in the late 1890s.
19th and 20th centuries
In 1869 the extensive book The Alchemy of the Doctor and Private Scholar Gottlieb Latz was published in Bonn , in which a chapter is dedicated to the tabula. The book has been reprinted again and again, the latest edition was published in 2010 by Nabu-Press, an Internet publisher. It has been translated into English and Dutch and to this day it enjoys an unbroken interest from esotericists, followers of occult teachings and those interested in the history of alchemy. The spiritualist and founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Blavatsky, goes into detail on the emerald tablet in her book Isis Unveiled , as does the Swiss Sufi researcher and follower of a Philosophia perennis , Titus Burckhardt .
In the early 20th century, alchemy found renewed interest among some exponents of surrealism . André Breton adopted some of the axioms of the Tabula Smaragdina in his second “Surrealist Manifesto” from 1930. James Joyce parodies the first sentence of the Tabula in Finnegans Wake : From the English translation of “That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below, to perform the miracles of the one thing ”will in Joyce“ The tasks above are as the flasks below, saith the emerald canticle of Hermes and all's loth and pleasestir, are we told, on excellent inkbottle authority "
The first movement of the tabula was also discussed by CG Jung as part of his extensive alchemical studies . The sentence "It rises from earth to heaven and in turn it descends to earth, and it receives the power of the upper and lower." Is one of many alchemical descriptions of the opposites and their union discussed in his Mysterium Coniunctionis - here as Concept of ascent and descent as a process of uniting the forces of the lower with those of the upper. Jung understands the symbolism of “up and down” psychologically as “emotional realization of opposites, which gradually leads or should lead to a balance between them”.
21st century
In the German Netflix production Dark , the engraving from 1610 and especially the phrase “Sic mundus creatus est” play a prominent role as the name of a conspiratorial secret organization.
Reception in music
- Manfred Kelkel: Tabula Smaragdina. Ballet hérmétique , for piano, choir and orchestra, op. 24, 1975/77.
- Yan Maresz : Tabula Smaragdina , for mixed chamber choir a cappella , 2004.
- Werner Parecker : Tabula Smaragdina. The four elements . Oratorio for three organs, large orchestra, choir and soloists. 2015.
See also
Text editions and translations
- Didier Kahn (ed.): Hermes Trismegiste: La table d'émeraude et sa tradition alchimique . Paris 1994. (Aux Sources de la Tradition.)
-
Carsten Colpe , Jens Holzhausen (Ed.): The Corpus Hermeticum German. Translation, presentation and commentary in three parts ,
- Vol. 1: The Greek treatises and the Latin “Asclepius” , translated and introduced by Jens Holzhausen, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1997 (Clavis Pansophiae, Vol. 7.1), ISBN 3-7728-1530-8 ;
- Vol. 2: Excerpts, Nag Hammadi texts, testimony , translated and introduced by Jens Holzhausen, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1997 (Clavis Pansophiae, Vol. 7.2), ISBN 3-7728-1531-6 ;
- Vol. 3: History of research and ongoing commentary . With a contribution on hermeticism of the 16th to 18th centuries by Wilhelm Kühlmann, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (Clavis Pansophiae, Vol. 7.3), ISBN 3-7728-1820-X (part of the volume not yet published)
literature
- Julius Ruska : Tabula Smaragdina. A contribution to the history of hermetic literature. Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1926. ( PDF full text with handwritten comments and corrections by the author ). (Basic scientific work on the tabula.)
- (Abridged excerpt: Alexander's Treasure , based on p. 73 ff.)
- Michael Frensch : The Tabula Smaragdina. A hermetic consideration . In: Hermetika 4/1983, (17) 18-24; 5/1984, 11-20; 6/1984, 10-18.
- Ulrike Seegers: Transformatio energetica. Hermetic art in the 20th century. From representation to the present of hermetics in the work of Antonin Artaud, Yves Klein and Sigmar Polke. Diss. Stuttgart 2002 (published 2003). (therein pp. 37–39 on Tabula Smaragdina.) PDF
- Joachim Telle : Tabula Smaragdina, in author's lexicon , Volume 9, 1995, Sp. 567-569
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quod est inferius, est sicut (id) quod est superius, et quod est superius, est sicut (id) quod est inferius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius .
- ↑ Seegers 2003. p. 37.
- ↑ Journal des Savants , 1709. Source of quotation
- ↑ See Hemetic writings, The Virgin of the world , sentence 3.
- ↑ Eric J. Holmyard: The Emerald Table In: Nature , No. 2814, Vol. 112, 1923, pp. 525-526; Julius Ruska :: Tabula smaragdigna. A contribution to the history of hermetic literature. 1926.
- ↑ Kahn 1994 and Ursula Weisser: The book about the secret of creation . 1980.
- ↑ Le Liber De secretis naturae du Ps. Apollonius de Tyane, traduction latine par Hugues de Santalla du Kitæb sirr al-halîqa. Edited by Françoise Hudry, in: Chrysopoeia 6, pp. 1–154.
- ↑ Exemplaire de la bibliothèque nationale , (Manuscrits occidentaux, inv.Latin 11118 vers 1220), accessed on May 17, 2019.
- ↑ Kahn 1994. P. 19, p. XIX
- ↑ From: JJ Manget: Bibliotheca Chymica Curiosa . Geneva 1702, Volume I, p. 380ff. Quoted from Ruska: Tabula Smaragdina. P. 9f.
- ↑ Hans-Dieter Leuenberger : That is esoteric. P. 64f. See: Text: illuminati.ch. accessed on May 17, 2019
- ↑ Antoine Calvet L'alchemy médiévale est-elle une science chrétienne? Dossiers you GRIHL
- ↑ Sources alchimiques - présentation de Didier Kahn des textes alchimiques numérisés de la BIUM
- ^ Roger Bacon, Opera hactenus inedita , fasc V: Secretum Secretorum cum glossis et notulis , Ed. by Robert Stelle, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1920.
- ^ Antoine Calvet Alchimie- Occident médiéval in Dictionnaire critique de l'ésotérisme sous la direction de Jean Servier. P. 35.
- ↑ Essai d'interprétation alchimique des miniatures du mss de Zurich, 2008
- ↑ Printed in: ' Opuscule tres-excellent de la vraye philosophie naturelle des métaulx, traictant de l'augmentation et perfection d'iceux… par Maistre D. Zacaire ,… Avec le traicté de vénérable docteur allemant Messire Bernard, conte de la Marche Trevisane , sur le mesme subject. (Benoist Rigaud, Lyon 1574). Scan online
- ^ Isaac Newton: Tabula Smaragdina Hermetis Trismegistri Philosophorum patris, published by Dobbs, BJT: The Janus Face of Genius, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, pp. 274–275
- ↑ Gottlieb Latz: Alchemy, that is the doctrine of the great secret means of the alchemists and the speculations that were attached to them. Published by Bonn self-published in 1869. (digitized version)
- ^ HP Blavatsky Isis Unveiled Theosophical University Press. 1972. pp. 507-514.
- ^ Titus Burckhardt: Alchemy . London 1967. pp. 196-201
- ↑ see e.g. For example, the comments by the French Latinist and translator Jean-Marc Mandosio on André Breton's preoccupation with alchemy in: Dans le chaudron du négatif. Paris 2003, pp. 22-25.
- ^ André Breton: Manifestos of Surrealism. Reinbek b. Hamburg 1986.
- ↑ (FW 2.2.263)
- ↑ CG Jung, Collected Works. Zurich 1958–81. Vol. 14, l, § 281-290.
- ↑ CG Jung, Collected Works. Zurich 1958–81. Vol. 14, l, § 290.
- ↑ World premiere in Kiel, September 6, 2015 .