What As Above So Below Really Means in Hermetic Philosophy

The phrase "as above, so below" is not in the Emerald Tablet. Not in the Latin, not in the Arabic, not in any surviving version of the text it is credited to. It is a paraphrase from the late nineteenth century, and Helena Blavatsky did more than anyone to put it into circulation. The older wordings survive, and they can be read. That is what this video does. The oldest documentable source of the Emerald Tablet's text is the Kitab sirr al-khaliqa, the Book of the Secret of Creation, compiled in Arabic in the late eighth or early ninth century and credited to Balinas, the Arabic form of Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius did not write it. The false attribution is not disputed. Its opening line says that the uppermost is from the lowermost, and the lowermost is from the uppermost. That is a claim about origin. The Latin vulgate, from the twelfth century, says something else: Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius. That which is above is LIKE that which is below. Sicut means "as" or "like". It is a comparison, not a derivation. So the two oldest versions do not agree with each other, and the modern four-word slogan makes neither claim. Three different beliefs wearing one sentence. Also covered: Hugo of Santalla's translation around 1145 to 1151, the anonymous vulgate that became standard, Philip of Tripoli's version inside the Secret of Secrets, and Isaac Newton's own handwritten translation in Keynes MS 28, where he rendered the obscure term telesmus as "perfection". And the correction most viewers will not have heard. The seven Hermetic Principles, including the Principle of Correspondence, come from The Kybalion, published in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society and signed by "Three Initiates". Scholars identify William Walker Atkinson as the author, among them Philip Deslippe, Nicholas Chapel, Richard Smoley and Mitch Horowitz. The seven are not in the Corpus Hermeticum, which Marsilio Ficino finished translating in 1463 and which was published in 1471, and they are not in the Emerald Tablet either. The Kybalion also quotes an ancient book of the same name throughout. No such book has been found. None of this is a debunking. It is a question about which of the three claims you have been using. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Phrase Is Not in the Text 1:00 What It Is Taken to Mean Now 1:50 There Is No Tablet 3:09 The Oldest Source Is Arabic 4:01 The Vault, and Who Tells the Story 5:18 The Uppermost Is From the Lowermost 6:13 Three Roads Into Latin 7:25 Sicut, the Word That Changes It 8:13 Two Wordings, Two Different Claims 8:59 Why the Difference Licenses Different Things 10:20 Newton Copies It Out by Hand 11:02 Where the Four-Word Version Came From 11:54 1908, and a Book Called The Kybalion 13:00 The Three Initiates Are Not Three 13:55 The Seven Are Not Ancient 15:09 What Is Left When the Slogan Goes 15:59 Which of the Three Were You Quoting ───────────────────────────── More in this series: The Real Meaning of the Law of Cause and Effect →    • The Real Meaning of the Law of Cause and E...   The Real Meaning of the Law of Polarity →    • The Real Meaning of the Law of Polarity   The Real Meaning of the Law of Rhythm →    • The Real Meaning of the Law of Rhythm   The Real Meaning of the Logos in Hermetic Philosophy →    • The Real Meaning of the Logos in Hermetic ...   The Bruce Codex and the Books of Jeu Explained →    • The Bruce Codex and the Books of Jeu Expla...   What the Sun Means in Alchemy and Why It Is Not the Sun →    • What the Sun Means in Alchemy and Why It I...   Subscribe if you would rather be told what a text says than what it can do for you. ───────────────────────────── #EmeraldTablet #Hermeticism #Kybalion