The Emerald Tablet!

Let's get into it. But wait, first...

Full Confession - I'd recorded this episode already and as I did the audio edits, I wasn't happy with this episode. It had great information, an interesting story and a powerful message but was buried in a tangle of crossed wires. You see, the provenance of the Emerald Tablet is complicated. And a pissing match over who claims to be the culture that originally found and deciphered is still ongoing, almost a thousand years later. Like an ancient game of telephone, each telling of the discovery of the mystical tablet gets more and more grandiose, and further from the truth. 

Then there's the text itself. As poetic as it is convoluted. There are phrases, nuggets of gold in the prose that ring true to me. I'm sure you will find truth in passages, too, and your interpretation of this whole thing? It's as legitimate as the droves of men that have whittled their lives away to the finding of that truth, and maybe even profiting off of it. 

Let's get into it. The Emerald Tablet, take two. Done my way and offered in love.  

The Emerald Tablet a Modern Meme

I first learned of the Emerald Tablet from Robert Simmons' book, The Alchemy of Stone. He and his wife own a crystal and jewelry shop and in the late 1970s copied versions of the Emerald Tablet one were making the rounds in a sort of secret way among crystal shop owners. It caught his attention then, and his telling of this reminded me of that chain mail thing that happened during the same time period, late 70s. Households received letters that contained a chocolate chip cookie recipe and an explanation, the writer saying they'd asked Mrs. Fields for their cookie recipe and that they were charged some $500 for it. So to enact a sort of cookie revenge, or get the most value out of the hefty price, they copied the recipe and mailed it out to everyone they knew. The recipient of the recipe was asked to do the same in turn. It was a nice, non-threatening piece of chain mail.

But back to the Emerald Tablet. Simmons only said that it seemed to hold ancient wisdom, Hermetic teachings, that somehow relayed how to create the secrets of alchemy, and the HOLY GRAIL of alchemical pursuit? The creation of the philosopher's stone!

I got curious and started digging into sources online to find out about the emerald tablet.

Show Sources and Materials

The Alchemy of Stone by Robert Simmons

Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus

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