ISBN 978-0-9560289-1-4

The Emerald Tablet, Smaragdine, the Tabula Smaragdina, The Emerald Table, is the most ancient and influential text in the alchemical canon. It is supposed to have been written by Hermes Trismegistus himself, and its basic precepts go back at least four thousand years, some would say much further. 

As it stands today, the text may be no older than the early christian era, but there seems to be an undeniable conceptual link connecting the earliest Egyptian writings with later Classical, Neo-Platonist, Hermetic and Gnostic exegesis; which, in turn flows directly into the literature of alchemy. 

The universal alchemical maxim, 'as above, so below', describing the interrelated harmony of microcosm and macrocosm (the Individual and the Cosmos), is taken from the Emerald Tablet, and this succinct, philosophical tract purports to contain, in abstract, all the essentials of The Great Work of Alchemy. 

What I've attempted here is an overview of the text, with a stanza for stanza commentary, and reference to prominent alchemical illustrations directly relating to it. It's far from exhaustive, if such a thing were even possible. This is alchemy's primrary document, the influence of which resonates constantly throughout alchemical literature and practice, and beyond, so I have certainly done no more than graze the surface. All I can say is that I would have been grateful for such an introduction when I first encountered Tabula Smaragdina, and I hope it will serve as a useful stepping-stone for other like-minded seekers. 

Excerpt from commentary on stanza 2:

Rubric II is known as The Orientation Rubric, because it establishes the philosophical standpoint upon which the rest of the text is based. This is the alchemists' creed in a nutshell. 'As above, so below'. An axial correspondance between the alchemist and heaven; the terrestrial and the divine; the physical realm and the ineffable world of Spirit and Soul.

It also introduces another fundamental concept; that of the primordial 'One', source of all apparent multiplicity. This multiplicity is only apparent, because everything originates and follows its natural course as part of this indivisible unity. The 'One' is the source ofeverything. 'Ab unum, per unum, ad unum.' (From one, through one, to one.) Call this 'evolution' if you wish. 

The One Mind, the Creative Essence, acts on the One Thing, the potential state of matter, which has no form until it is manifested in physical shape. This rubric can also be seen as relating to the creation of the material world.  

In the laboratory, the One Thing is the adept's Prima Materia, which, raw and undeveloped as it is, yet contains the divine seed.

On another, but essentially related, psycho-spiritual level, the Prima Materia is the adapt's Self, which though confused, unenlightened and out of balance, contains the potential for refinement and elevation, through the holy power of imagination.

ISBN 978-0-9560289-2-1

My full, working involvement with alchemy began in the early 80s, and has continued unabated ever since, but it was never a wholly conscious decision. Wispy memories from school science lessons, subliminal hints, unrecognised dreams, plus a couple of synchronicities; all these preceded full awareness that Alchemy was a path I wanted to actively explore. 

In ALCHEMY BY NIGHT I describe that psychic evolution, selecting two remarkable dream sequences and two significant visions to demonstrate how the Opus manifested itself in my particular case. There are as many paths to the mountain-top as there are those who wish to climb, and my personal route has been very much that of the lone-adept. By which I mean that I was predominantly guided by a combination of my own dreams, the community of books, and a pragmatic application of the insights thus acquired. There was no-one else to whom I could turn for help. 

This is psycho-spiritual alchemy, usually a step or two ahead of the seeker's conscious mind, and feedback I've received from some readers suggests that, as well as providing insights into alchemical ideas and their connection to collective states of consciousness, it also demonstrates that the alchemical way is open to anyone who is motivated, sincere and equally open to what it has to offer. 

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

Alchemy plays a fundamental part in my life and has been doing so for the best part of a quarter century. What still astonishes me, despite all my subsequent reading, is the fact that I was dreaming quite specific alchemical symbols at precisely the relevant times in my development, long before I’d even begun to think of expanding on that third form summary of The Secret Art. The dreams were impressive, insistent, specific, but it was still several years, and a synchronicity or two, before I recognised them as alchemical and began exploring them in that context. 

The more I read, the clearer it became that I was not alone in encountering these surprising parallels. Marie-Louise von Franz recounts how she felt when she encountered one of her own recent dreams, recorded in almost every detail in a mediæval latin manuscript. She thought she was in danger of going mad! As Carl Jung says: ‘These things are not just rare curiosities, and anyone who wishes to understand the symbolism of dreams cannot close his eyes to the fact that the dreams of modern men and women often contain the very images and metaphors that we find in the mediaeval treatises.’

ISBN 978-0-9560289-5-2 

'Behind all there is a definite scheme of numbering. There is a twelve and a ten and a seven and a three and a One.'

So says the Corpus Hermeticum - The Secret Sermon on the Mountain. In this booklet I've approached alchemy through an expanding and contracting net of numbers. Taking in the fundamental influences of Hermeticism and Platonic cosmography, counting up or down, and exploring a world of arcane belief and ancient wisdom, it explores neo-Platonism, mediaeval cosmogony, astrology, music, numerology, gematria, Islam, Qabalah, magic squares, and a great deal more. 

Excerpt from the Introduction:

An Alchemical count-down could, in theory, proceed from mulitiplicity to Oneness, or in the other direction, from Unity to variety. In fact, any alchemist would consider the work incomplete if either of these directions were to be omitted. ..... Therefore, in producing this booklet I had to make a choice. I eventually settled on beginning with the ineffable One and the formless Chaos of physical origins, neither of which are firmly located in measurable space, and counting up through the numbers in logical order.

In practice, of course, the sequence would not be so numerically consistent. For example, no sooner have we left the transcendant Oneness than we are, potentially, faced by the four letters of the unspeakable Tetragrammaton, and an exalted form of the tria prima. There are then nine spheres of angels, twelve zodiacal houses and seven planetary spheres before we reach planet Earth and its four elements.

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ISBN 978-0-9560289-8-3 

Note: The purpose of this booklet is to present a variety of alchemical images, and dreams, many of which are my own, but without going into too much unecessary personal detail, I refer anyone interested in a fuller development of such material to my ALCHEMY BY NIGHT (2009) ISBN 978-0-9560289-2-1 in which my own dream sequences involving the Raven, the Key, and two related alchemical visions, are described and expounded in context and at length.

'Individuals still experience the revelations and visions that were so instrumental in the creation and development of alchemy, and understand them in terms similar to those of the ancient and medieval alchemists.' 

Jeffrey Raff 

Any student of dreams is, in effect, a researcher into their own vibrant, but largely hidden personal language, a geographer of inner landscapes; and it is certainly true, as Jeffrey Raff states, that alchemical imagery still occurs frequently in contemporary dreams; regardless of whether or not the dreamer is acquainted with alchemy or not. 

Excerpt from Chapter 1: 

..... Ancient, contemporary, regenerative - art, mystical science, philosophy, life-path, psycho-spiritual system - alchemy embraces body, soul and spirit, the physical, metaphysical and eternal aspects of existence, and to what degree these elusive constituents are mixed and refined will depend entirely upon the individual practicioner.

..... every dreamer is, to some extent, a dealer in alchemical wares, whether they recognise this or not. Alchemical symbols do not stand apart from the symbolism of dreams in general, and obscure and strange as some of these images may seem at first glance they soon become not only comprehensible, but also startlingly relevant, for contemporary personal exploration and development. In order to knowingly participate in these eternally recurring cycles of growth and change you need only to be a dedicated student of yourself and your place in the cosmic scheme. Or, if this sounds too grandiose, then you simply have to be self-aware, open, curious, honest, persistent and patient. But you can start from where you are. You already have everything you need in order to begin. 

ISBN 978-0-9560289-9-0 

‘The extraction of the Elements’, writes Bernard de Trevisan, ‘is a certain Composition of Blacknesse, Whiteness, Yellowness and Redness’. 

The purpose of this booklet is to investigate each of the traditional four stages of the opus, in turn ..... but it must be said that this quadripartite arrangement, related to the four Elements, Humours etc., is only one of many such schemes, some numbering two, seven, ten, twelve or more divisions. This is not as contradictory as it might at first appear. The broad sequences of The Work are generally acknowledged, and, once the main development is understood, the various sub-sections will be recognised as simply theoretical alternative divisions which may be adopted according to taste or interpretation. 

Excerpt from Chapter 1: 

'The stages followed the pattern, first black, then white, next citrine, and finally blood red, and in that order only. But in between these colours all the colours of the rainbow were generated. These various colours were often referred to as the peacock’s tail. If the main colours were out of order then this was a warning of error in the experiment.'

- Lapidus. David Curwen

ISBN 978-0-9560289-4-5 

'The Mutus Liber is without any doubt the work most highly to be recommended to all seeking initiation into alchemy.' 

-Armand Barbault. 1960's. (Gold of a Thousand Mornings) 

Excerpt from the Introduction:

The title, often translated as The Mute Book, would be better understood as ‘The Wordless, or Symbolic, Book’ because although there are few words it is very far from being mute. It speaks in the universal language of symbol and visual metaphor, and can therefore be understood on more thanone level .....

..... Mutus Liber is a paradox, and this fact must be assimilated from the start. For the literal-minded and unimaginative, such as Carrington Bolton, quoted on page iv, it will indeed represent ‘the height of absurdity’, whereas for Magaphon (Pierre Dujols de Valois), ‘Mutus Liber is a book like all others and can be plainly read, once one has the grille.’ Certainly Canseliet and Armand Barbault openly acknowledge it as an infallible guide to practical alchemy. But Eli Luminosis will have none of this, complaining that such‘chemical minds’ are unable to see beyond their furnaces and retorts, ‘to grasp the sense of those silent images beyond mineral substances.’ This does not prevent him from claiming to ‘offer practical directions’ on how to put its message into practice.

The beauty of it is that they are all wrong; and they are all right.

ISBN 978-0-9560289-7-6 

How did, or do, alchemists view the myths of the classical world; Actaeon, Orpheus, Jason, Herakles, the peccadillos of Zeus, or the feats of Perseus and Bellerophon? They are copiously illustrated, and allegorical interpretation is universal, ingeniously reflected back to the challenges and achievements of the Great Work. So, in this booklet I explore the Olympian pantheon, and some of the many heroic exploits presented in alchemical sources. Gods and goddesses, fighters and lovers, winners and losers; they are quite a company! 

Excerpt from the introduction: 

In the heyday of European Alchemy - roughly from the twelfth to the seventeenth century - there is a veritable explosion of vividly illustrated publications, and this is hardly surprising because the alchemical imagination, whether avowedly ‘extrovert’ or determinedly ‘introvert’ (practical or psycho- spiritual), and the two categories are rarely unmixed, naturally expresses itself by means of symbolism and allegory. .... It is therefore unsurprising to find alchemical texts lavishly illustrated with episodes from myth and legend, and the predominant source of these is the classical world of Greece and Rome. There are good historical reasons why this should be the case, but our interest in this booklet is the mythic images themselves, and what they may have represented to the alchemists who employed them.

ISBN 978-0-9935462-0-4

Twenty-two exquisitely coloured illustrations make Splendor Solis (1582), one of the most beautiful alchemical manuscripts in existence. There are seven accompanying treatises, purporting to provide all the necessary information for the creation of the Philosophers' Stone, but this is not a lab handbook, nor is it intended as such. The entire manuscript can be viewed on the British Library website, and translations of the text are readily available on the internet, so what I've done here is to consider each picture in considerable detail, bringing out some of the many layers of possible interpretation. 

Excerpt from the introduction: 

It is no exaggeration to say that Splendor Solis represents the acme of alchemical illustration. There are twenty copies extant, of which the 1582 British Museum (Harley 3469) manuscript is the crowning glory. .... it is not overtly a chemical guide, despite it’s claim to describe ‘the hidden mystery of the old philosophers, as well, as all that nature requires to clearly accomplish the whole work’. Its place is in the library rather than the laboratory. The minutely detailed pictures give immediate delight, but closer inspection reveals layer after layer of suggestion, veiled references, associations, parallels and hints. There are mythological and biblical scenes, so subtly presented they are easy to miss; vibrant depictions of human affairs with an eerily immediate snapshot quality; and the depictions of birds, beasts, insects and flowers are masterfully observed from the life. Botanists, ornithologists and entomologists could have a field day with this work; and I wish they would.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been called 'the golden age of religious hermeticism' (Jean Dagen), a period when alchemy was the greatest passion of the age, and when some of its most prestigious texts were printed. It was also the age of Shakespeare. Alchemy was everywhere in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, and it is not a question of whether Shakespeare was aware of it or not, but to what degree it permeated his thought and writings. In this short book I have explored the significanceof Hermeticism, neo-platonism and the ideas of Paracelsus in the intellectual world of Shakespeare's contemporaries; and more particularly, its influence on Shakespeare himself, and on his work. Together with a brief summary of the major Renaissance figures who contributed to the popularity of Hermetic Alchemy, I have considered five plays (King Lear, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Cymbeline and The Tempest), together with the poems, in order to bring out the alchemical imagery and thought. 

Excerpt from Heavenly Alchemy: 

The English language itself, as spoken by Shakespeare's contemporaries, was barely two hundred years old. It was a time of exciting and disturbing change, and as the old sureties began to waver thinking people looked around for something to replace them. Hermetic alchemy, with its Neoplatonic concordances and astronomical symmetry, and Paracelsian medicine, less theoretical and remote than Galenic practice, seemed to promise a profounder spiritual recourse, pre-dating all the strife, intolerance and persecution thrown up by the Reformation and Counter- Reformation and, in addition, to hold out the hope of combining true Christianity with expanding scientific knowledge.

ISBN 978-0-9935462-6-6

I have developed this extended visualisation over the years, sometimes building it consciously, but often allowing it to create itself intuitively. All the details have alchemical significance but it is not necessary to know them in order to enjoy the inner journey. The Platonic solids are paired with the elements they usually represent, and all the different creatures are alchemically consistent, but the entire sequence is my own, and I lay no claim to any other authority than my personal experience.

The chakras are in the order in which they are traditionally situated in the body, Fire preceding Air. This is different from the way they are arranged in general, where Fire is the fourth Element.

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Contact: paulcowlan@gmx.net