New Acropolis Presents: The Emerald Tablet I - Historical Context Lúcia Helena Galvão 2019 Hello! Goodevening! We came here today to talk about a very interesting document.
It was my intention some time to speak with you about the Emerald Tablet. First, because it is one of the sources of the Kybalion, that book, from the last century, of unknown authorship, about which I have talked so much with you. That book is based on the Emerald Tablet and documents from the Corpus Hermeticum.
In other words, one of the most recognized things associated with Hermeticism is this tablet. With 13 sentences, 13 laws. So I wanted to make a summary and some comments about them.
But before we talk about the Emerald Tablet, I wanted to explain my intention and, secondly, how I am going to divide this exposition. I'm a philosopher at a school called New Acropolis. What we are doing here is a philosophical lecture.
There is nothing metaphysical, what I do is a good search for sources. That is, the content brought has a bibliography or my reflections based on a bibliography. There is nothing extraordinary.
Secondly, it is important to show you, those who know more about the history, that the Emerald Tablet and some of the documents attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, for a long time they were seen as a medieval fantasy, invented by alchemists. Today, in history and official historiography, there are already those who are beginning to discover older texts from Egypt itself. And they make quotes very similar to those in these documents.
Several inscriptions were discovered, several authors. So, among scientists and historians, there is already a dissent in relation to this idea, that these Hermetic teachings came from the early Middle Ages invented by alchemists. There are already those who claim an Egyptian origin for all this.
I think it's a wonderful thing and a very big step forward. It is logical that things pass through the hands of human beings and undergo adulterations. But certainly the original idea, the essence of them came from Egypt.
It looks like the profile of civilization, it has to do with the ideas that were used and lived there. So I think it's interesting for us to review, especially for those who don't know. I've been asked where the stone of the Emerald Tablet is.
It has lore in several languages, i. e. a confusion with the Rosetta Stone.
In fact, the Emerald Tablet, as an object in itself, is mythical, it has never been seen. It was probably a mythical invention, a symbolic creation. What we have is the transcription of it by authors from various places and moments in time.
We will clarify all these doubts. I'm sure it will be helpful for you to see Kybalion's father or grandfather or great-great-grandfather. The origins of this tradition.
We'll see that the Kybalion didn't take everything from the Emerald Tablet. He also took some things from the hermetic, from the Corpus Hermeticum. Anyway, a lot of misconceptions that may be in the air.
And that in this chat, which I hope will be pleasant for you, we will try to clarify. Let's go? Let's move forward together.
. . The image of the Emerald Tablet.
I put this image to show you how popularized it is. It's how you imagine it would be, that it would have been found in a cave. Or in a tomb in Hebron and would have been rescued by who knows, there are many possibilities, historical characters.
. . Each civilization practically claims it for itself.
Anyway, many versions. This board, which is a board with a low relief, a green, emerald stone, as we see it represented by figures on the internet, it does not exist as a physical object. It was never documented or seen by anyone who left it clearly stated.
There are characters who say that, passing through Egypt, they would have seen something similar. But semi-anonymous characters, there is no official historian who has said: "I saw the emerald stone, I saw the Emerald Tablet". Now as a symbol, I insist, I am a philosopher, as a symbol it has as much value as if it were a physical object.
Including value due to the fact that it is emerald, this is a symbol. It all means something. And I'm going to try to clear that up for you.
So she would have been found in some unknown location and would be written in a language resembling ancient Phoenician. It is believed to be an early version of the languages used by the Phoenicians. And the date some put 1200 BC Today there are those who place the Emerald Tablet at 36 thousand years BC I'm not going to make any guesses about that.
I have no vision through time to identify. For me if it had been written last week it would have equal value. I would like to pass on to you this criterion of a philosopher.
If something is good, just, true, it may have been written yesterday and has as much value as if it were 36,000 years old. It may have been said by João da Silva; it has as much value as if it had been said by Pythagoras. As long as we have criteria to evaluate whether these things lead man towards the fullness of the human condition.
That is, a lot of speculation sometimes complicates things more than it properly validates. Nothing will take away from us the obligation to have discernment. That is, if it is 36,000 years old, it could be a 36,000-year-old legend.
If it was written yesterday it could also be a legend or it could be something true. There is no specification that saves us from having discernment. So I like these traditions because I look and see meaning.
I remember, I already told you this, that someone asked me: "Why do you believe in the Kybalion? " I said, "Because I open my window every morning and I see the seven laws in front of me. " And one day I'll make a recording of just that for you: of the seven laws of Kybalion that I see from my window.
And these 13 principles of the Emerald Tablet are no different and that's why I believe in them. So let's talk a little more, get to know her a little better. The question of origin is quite complex, and there are even those who say that it is not from Hermes Trismegistus.
You will see several versions. The official version, i. e.
the most accepted version, begins by identifying Hermes, saying secret words of Hermes and ending with him identifying himself and saying: "That's why I'm called Hermes Trismegistus. " You're going to see dozens of versions. The most accepted is this one, where he identifies himself at the beginning and at the end.
We'll see that there are other traditions that don't even believe that this work came. . .
by Hermes Trismegistus. The version I will use is the one in which he identifies himself. Look, I made a compilation of many versions.
And with a little guidance from Helena Blavatsky and other authors I trust to arrive at a consensual version, with greater acceptance and greater credibility. Well, Semitic monotheisms in general attribute to themselves, in some way, a relationship with the Emerald Tablet. For a very clear reason: she constantly talks about the idea of unity.
This idea of unity is sometimes associated with monotheism, of a single god. When in fact they are not identical ideas, but were often associated. So you will see, for example, that the Jews, they often claim that the tablet was written by Seth, who is the son of Adam.
And that would have been passed down to Noah. And Noah would have saved it in his ark and then hidden it in a cave near Hebron, where she would have been found someday. Or they say that a son of Abraham, named Hermes, would have passed to his sister Miriam, who placed it in the Ark of the Covenant, where it remains to this day.
This is a Jewish version; we will see ahead that the Arabs also think it's from their prophet, that it would have been Enoch and would have the same function as Hermes. He would be a pontiff between heaven and earth, a prophet who ascended to heaven and descended to earth. You will see that all peoples who practiced alchemy.
. . And the alchemy among the Arab peoples was very strong, very special, have a relationship with the Emerald Tablet and with hermeticism.
And in a way they establish a connection between this tablet and their own tradition. Which obviously it has with all the traditions, with all those who used it. Some say it was Apollonius of Tyana, who is a contemporary teacher of Jesus.
And they make a whole story to show that he would have written it. There are those who attribute it to an Atlantean origin of thousands of years. There are many versions.
Let's talk about just a few of them. We will see for example that Freemasonry argues that the Emerald Tablet would have been written by Hiram Abif, that builder of Solomon's Temple. Wise, who would have been a great architect of Solomon's Temple.
It is said that, in the tenth century BC, Solomon asked King Hiram of Tire to to trade with him some agricultural goods with cedars. So that he could build the temple. This king Hiram, glad to participate in that building, he would have sent not only the cedars, but also a young man of exceptional talent who would be Hiram.
Hiram Abiff means the father Hiram; Abiff is respectful treatment. And that father Hiram would have been a sage, who together with a whole fraternity of young builders, who joined him, would have designed, architected and helped build Solomon's Temple. In the end he would have been killed and brought back to life by King Solomon himself.
This is one of many versions that are released, particularly within the Masonic version. Hiram Abiff is said to be the son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali. Helena Blavatsky says that this issue of the widow's son is a symbol, because the widow would be wisdom.
That wisdom that has been abandoned by human reason. So the widow's son would be a symbol of a being who is the son of wisdom. Anyway, there are many versions and many elements that are not relevant to us.
Continuing. . .
There are ancient texts and we are going to quote many of them. . .
But it seems that older versions with elements of the Emerald Tablet comes exactly in the Arab world; It's a bunch of very complicated names to pronounce. So I'm going to use just the first one for you, forgive me, which says the following: that the older version would be from the Kitab Sirr al-Khaliqa wa Sanat alTabia. Which would be a document from 650 AD After that comes two more equally unpronounceable names.
And finally, in 1140 a work called Secretum Secretorum: The Secret of Secrets. This one is curious and deserves a special comment. This work remains accessible to this day.
and throughout the Middle Ages it was regarded as a document of exceptional value. It was believed that the basis of it would have been a letter written by Aristotle to Alexander, during his invasion of Persia, where Aristotle would teach, among many other things, the secret of good government, of the good ruler. Obviously historical research has shown that this has nothing to do with Aristotle.
Today this work is published with pseudo Aristotle as author. because it was titled like that, but evidently it doesn't have all that antiquity. But throughout the Middle Ages or most of it, one sees that people believed that this was really Aristotle's work.
There was a lot of recognition there. It quotes various parts of the Emerald Tablet. We have some Arabic documents, the oldest of them from 650 AD, which already has good stretches of the Esmeralda Table.
That is, they are the first sources that were known until then. The Latin text was translated exactly from this Secretum Secretorum, by a citizen named John of Seville. Well, the Secret of Secrets is an Arabic encyclopedic treatise from the 10th century.
It would have been written around this time; You can find it in pdf on the internet. A complex thing, with many rules, It is a treatise that deals with various subjects, and is therefore encyclopedic. Finding the elements of the Emerald Tablet there is not so easy.
But they are there and it is a relatively old and widespread source. Well, now let's talk a little about Hermes Trismegistus. For those who have watched our series on Kybalion, I have spoken about him several times.
You will realize that it is a very controversial biography. Because it does not exist, a priori, nor the proof that it existed. They try to identify him with several other historical characters.
There are those who say that he had several disciples, who received his own name. as a way of perpetuating tradition. That is, there is only one way for you to believe that the historical figure of Hermes Trismegistus existed: for the weight of the work he left behind.
In general, the footprint is the size of the walker. So I don't believe that so much information came out of nowhere. Even if it's a compilation of popular myths, because what he talks about is not popular knowledge.
Now it's gone one man, gone several men, what real name he had, it is not possible to know. The dates are controversial because there are those who say that he was a contemporary of Abraham. Others place him as Moses' master.
I brought you an image of the cathedral of Siena, where he is shown teaching Moses. Many people believed in this version. That is, the date of its existence would have been between 1,500 to 2,500 BC In the region of Ninus, in ancient Egypt.
So there's not much to know what his true identity was, I don't even know if it's that important. The fact is that he left behind an admirable work, which even today has much to teach us. The day we understand it, we will learn even more.
Today what we can capture is very little, but it is worth dedicating ourselves to understanding it. One of the things that is interesting to notice is the deification of the character Hermes Trismegistus. Whether in Egypt as Thoth, or as Hermes in Greece, either later as Mercury in Rome.
One of the interesting things is when he enters the Greco-Roman world, which takes a form similar to Greco-Roman mythology, the Greeks make an adaptation, because for the Greek mentality an ibis-shaped god didn't make much sense, it was another culture. They no longer had a symbolic vision as profound as Egypt, then they adapt a symbol to the conditions of their culture, which is interesting and valid. And they begin to place them in the hand of the god Hermes or Mercury, different from the one he had back in Egypt, who walked with a staff from the head of Anubis.
Then he starts to walk with a staff that is called the caduceus of Mercury, which shows two intertwined snakes forming three circles, that would represent the three worlds in which man lives. Somatic/concrete world, psychic world and the noetic or spiritual world. That is, the stick shows the sense of the god.
His idea is to communicate heaven and earth. This god, whatever name he had, his mission was to be a communicator, a pontiff. The messenger of the gods.
This has been conserved all this time. He has always been portrayed as either Djehuty or Thoth, like Cynocephalus, like Ibis, like Hermes or Mercury, he was the messenger of the gods. He who communicates heaven and earth, the concrete world, adds it to the spiritual world, the nous.
Through the centering of the human psyche. What the Greeks would call "know thyself". So this idea of a pontiff is preserved in all the traditions who treat of Hermes either as a man or as a god.
Well, the first time Thoth is mentioned, who is known, because we have to know that Egypt is a process and not a story. It is not uncommon for us to open the journalistic news today and see the discovery of a new tomb. Sometimes already desecrated, sometimes not, some original things are still being discovered.
That is, Egypt is still in the process of being discovered in our historical moment. In 2019, 21st century, we are still discovering Egypt. So one cannot say "it was such a thing"; we can say "the latest findings point to such a thing".
You will see in Egypt's early dynastic period, around 2920 BC, the third king of this dynastic period already spoke about Thoth. And there were already quotations, we will bring some of them, speaking of documents, sacred books of Thoth. That is, there was already reference to the existence of the god and to works written by the god.
At a time approaching the third millennium BC These are documents that are there today for research, for knowledge. Sometimes you find quotes from books, but closer there are already fragments of books which cite parts very explicitly related to, for example, the Corpus Hermeticum. So let's see that Thoth was represented with the name of Djeuti, mainly in Egypt.
He is represented either as an ibis or as a cynocephalus, which is the baboon. Usually the ibis is represented to solar Thoth, who speaks of divine things, and the cynocephalus representing the lunar Thoth, who speaks of human things. As if the two complemented each other.
I brought you an image of the weight of the dead man's heart, where you will see Thoth appear twice: there at the top of the scale, which is in the form of a baboon, of a cynocephalus, and beside it the scribe in the form of an ibis. That is, two representations of him measuring human accomplishments and comparing them with the laws of heaven. As Confucius would say, "comparing the shadows of the earth with the laws of heaven".
Two representations, but always the same thing: communicating human acts with divine laws, a bridge. You will see him with these two representations still within the Egyptian world. Another thing that is interesting.
. . Check out this version, I found it the most curious of all, which associates Thoth with India.
And not just to Jewish or Masonic traditions, but to India. It is said that Hermes was not the creator of the tablet, but a disciple of the tablet, that for some reason he would have gone to India, to Sri Lanka, Ceylon, the insular part next to India, where he would have discovered this tablet in a cave and would have brought it to Egypt. It is curious, whatever the reasons for this attribution, which historically I don't know if it's very likely to have occurred.
But the fact is that the relationship with Sri Lanka, with Ceylon, which is one of the bases, for example, of Indian epics like Ramayana, which has Sri Lanka as its base of ope rations, was the land of Ravana. The fact of relating these two cultures, which had such deep knowledge, it is very interesting. Also in the story of Apollonius of Tyana relates.
There we have two cradles of very important traditions of humanity. I don't know if one is related to the other, but I know that the two say very profound things. Now one thing is certain: Greece, indeed, suffered direct influences from both.
Both Egypt and India and this is very clear and described even by Cicero. What is always said about Thoth is that he was a god who had achieved the power of healing. Exactly because he had his head in heaven and his feet on earth.
Then he knew the origin of evils and could bring healing to the material world. He knew where the law was born and found the midway point where it had been corrupted. He was very closely associated with the idea of healing, to the cause of the problems, the cure that works on the cause in the subtle planes.
Which is very interesting and will be related later, already in the Ptolemaic period, with the god Serapis. That it would be a hybrid of Osiris and the ox Apis. The union of these two, which gives the god of medicine.
Well, we'll see too, in the reign of Djet, the third king of the first Thinite dynasty, we will see representations of the sacred ibis, thanks to Thoth. This is one of the oldest moments we have. One of the oldest documents we have is the Narmer Palette, who would have been, historically speaking, the grandfather of this Djet.
Then we are in a very remote Egypt, we are in 2980. And we have representations of Thoth as an ibis. Continuing.
. . Exists in 1950 BC, around this 12th dynasty, first hermetic work that was discovered, which is the "Book of Two Paths", which already speaks of knowledge, healing formulas and divination associated with the god Thoth.
You see, this is a document that exists, it would be transcribed on the Westcar papyrus. That is, it exists and already makes an attribution of knowledge associated with Thoth in 1950 BC By the 18th dynasty, the statues of the vizier Amenhotep were quoted as well, of the god Thoth, their teachings even quoted a book written by Thoth. There is a phrase here, which was taken from the statue of Amenhotep, in the Temple of Amun at Karnak, which reads as follows: "I was initiated into the god's book, I saw Thoth's glorifications and penetrated his secrets.
" This is said in 1398 BC, in the 18th dynasty, Statue of Amenhotep. Another thing that is interesting. .
. In 1995 a book by Thoth was discovered, that has been studied by Egyptologists and that book would be from the Ptolemaic period. A series of speeches, a bunch of fragments, about 40, of discourses between Thoth and a being identified as "the man who seeks the truth".
Their dialogue suggests things very similar to our so-called "Emerald Tablet". That is, I'm just adding sources so that you have an idea. The Egyptian historian Manetho, which is one of the sources cited as the origin of information about Egypt, spoke of 36,525 books attributed to Thoth.
Of course, this number could be merely a symbol. But Clement of Alexandria, in the sixth book of his Stromata, speaks of 42 books that were used by priests Egyptians and that they would be books written by Thoth. It's a lot of people talking about it, many quotes from various times in history.
Many good people relied on this, carried out serious studies that we will see in a moment. Just a foundation so that we don't think we're working with fantasies. There are many historical foundations behind it, we will even see the Gnostic manuscripts of Nag Hammadi, that bring several excerpts from the Emerald Tablet.
That is, manuscripts probably from the 3rd or 4th century. They are concrete documents. And they make several mentions of the Emerald Tablet.
Well, we are going to fundamentally find two types of instructions. Here I committed an extreme audacity, which is to imagine the texts of the Hermetica, Asclepius, Pymander, the Emerald Tablet and have more or less an idea of two fundamental lines, that exist in the work of Hermes Trismegistus. The first of these would be the relationship capacity between Heaven and Earth.
The demonstration that we can read the sky through its shadows on earth. Which is nothing more than the principle of correspondence: "What's above, there's below". Reading the symbols of the Earth as one of the ways to know the laws of Heaven.
And the second, the demonstration of how man can transcend circumstances, not to be a product of circumstances and rise again to the sacred, to the Divine. These two intentions pervade all that remains of Hermes Trismegistus. And these are two mega intentions and very well expressed, in a somewhat nebulous and symbolic way, but repeatedly expressed throughout the work.
From what was left of the work because it was probably much more than what we have today. Well, at the end of the second century, we have authors like Athenagoras and Tertullian who quote his work. At the time of Middle Persian, 3rd century, there is also Emperor Shapur I, who makes reference in his works.
Anyway, many people talk about excerpts, make references to excerpts from the Esmeralda Table. And sometimes even from all principles with a slightly different wording. The Coptic translations of the Hermetica, as I said, are at Nag Hammadi.
A historical document found in a temple in 1945, that is, a recent date. I brought it to you and I will not go into details, just a survey of ancient works, in which various excerpts from the Emerald Tablet were present. And then there's stuff of everything that is date.
Pyramid Texts, Book of the Dead, Book of Amduat, Book of Earth, Chester Beatty Papyrus, Jumilhac Papyrus, Book of Thoth, Setne Cycle, The Myth of the Eye of the Sun, Amenemopet's Instructions, Stela Metternich, The Book of Plutarch -Isis and Osiris. I mean, a lot. we have a big puzzle with pieces scattered everywhere.
Well, here it was a fabrication, but in all these places was it a fabrication? It is hard to deny that these authors were looking to the past, they weren't talking about something very recent. And some of these documents are also very old.
Commentators, throughout history, from Saint Alberto Magno, in the thirteenth century; Alquindi, the Arab, great polymath; Roger Bacon, who was also a Christian priest, in the 13th/14th century; Isaac Newton, I even brought you a sentence of his talking about this: "I'm a skeptic by nature, but I have no choice but to offer subjective support for the claim that the Emerald Tablet has transformative properties. There are other things besides the transmutation of metals that no one has mastered, but which they understood. " You see, Isaac Newton is considered today the greatest scientist in history.
Albert Einstein had a picture of Isaac Newton on his wall. Without a doubt it is a respectable name. And that was his opinion of the Emerald Tablet.
Besides him we have Helena Blavatsky; Fulcaneli, the mysterious one, who nobody can say exactly when he lived or who he was; Carl Jung, who writes a book called Psychology and Alchemy and also within the Red Book itself makes interesting statements about it, among many others. Many references to how much you learned from this Emerald Tablet and the Hermetica as a whole. And notable, respectable men who left a memorable work for history.
So we're not talking about a fantasy. One other thing, before entering the text and already concluding my historical research, that was much bigger than that. This was just the tip of the iceberg, but I wanted to show you the grounds, security.
To realize that we are not talking about any imaginary nonsense. I would like to speak to you about the symbolism of the emerald itself. Guys, imagine that a civilization that works with the symbolic, in the intensity with which Egypt worked, the fact that these teachings are recorded, are made in low relief on an emerald board, even if that emerald tablet never existed.
. . The fact that they put that name means that there is something in the emerald, that relates to content; this seems pretty obvious that name was not random.
Emerald is a stone is very symbolic throughout history. I read a lot, there are many references, I'll talk about some of these references. But one of the things that seems obvious to me, that goes back a long way in time, it is a perception that we cannot say when the first man had, but it must have been very old.
. . that when you mix pigments, when you mix something like yellow with something like blue, you get green.
This is obvious. I don't know who was the first man who came to the conclusion! That blue associated with the sky and yellow associated with the earth is also a very old reference.
And when you mix those two together, you have a pontiff. As if it were a color that relates the sky to the earth. This within alchemy, medieval sacred architecture was a constant.
But probably in earlier traditions as well. The emerald is reported in several traditions. Why the emerald?
Probably because she is invested with the deepest green color and which embodies this attribute: to be the perfect bridge between heaven and earth. So we'll see, for example, the hermetic tradition sometimes speaking of the so-called "diadem of Lucifer" this fallen angel, that in his combat with Michael the archangel, would have fallen to the earth and as he fell he had a large emerald on his forehead, that would have been broken and half of it would have fallen into the world. According to this tradition, he remains with only half of the emerald, like a third eye in the middle of the forehead.
That half of the emerald would have allowed him to see only half of reality, that is, only the concrete world. And that would make him a being turned to the concrete world. Hence your problem.
You will see many Christian Gnostics saying similar things, that is, he would be a being who creates an illusory world and preserves it isolated from the spiritual world. Because he only sees half of reality, he lost half of the emerald. There are several tales and legends that say that this half of the emerald, which fell into the world, it would have been raw material for the construction of two very old and very symbolic artifacts.
One of them, obviously, the Emerald Tablet, that would have been built on this huge piece that fell to earth. And the other, the Holy Grail, which would also be a chalice carved in emerald of that central eye of Lucifer's forehead, when he fell to earth and broke free. These two artifacts have the same quest as the original emerald, that is, to communicate heaven and earth.
The Grail is nothing more than a representation of the three worlds. And the Emerald Tablet contains the necessary teachings so that man can tread this path safely: to unite Heaven and Earth. Then you will also see.
. . in India, the reference to the eye of Shiva, which is the third eye, is also related to this same idea as the eye that was in the center of Lucifer's forehead, that is, an eye that allows one to see the spiritual world, whereas the dual vision would see a dual, material world.
If you could make a bridge between these two worlds. Indian and Tibetan traditions speak of another eye, which is called the open eye of Dangma, which would be the eye of the purified soul, which is capable of seeing both worlds as well. Capable of moving from spirit to matter with lucid and clear vision.
And knowing, as the biblical tradition says, to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, because he knows the kingdom of Caesar and knows the kingdom of God. So several elements, see how interesting, the emerald there also has to be studied for us to understand the intention of who put that name on the board, even if it is only a symbolic name. That is, the study of symbolism is something that demands a lot, but it also gives us, in a generous way, many possibilities of vision of life.
Recently some of you have been following the Psychological Conquest of Evil series, the last reading I did was exactly from an Indian purana, which is the Kalika Purana, which speaks of the story of Shiva, based exactly on his need to go through suffering necessary to be able to build a bridge between heaven and earth, not forgetting either world. This is an original, primitive document, from India, the Kalika Purana; he is talking more or less of the same idea. That same third eye, Shiva is the bearer of the third eye, it was necessary to open it.
And at the same time have dual vision, which allows you to see the Earth at the same time. I brought you something interesting, that I had already heard about, but I went after it to research; I found it in the Red Book, from Jung. Jung cites, both in his book Psychology and Alchemy, as in the Red Book, cites Egyptian traditions and cites the Emerald Tablet.
He talks about a very interesting dream that I would like to share with you; that he makes reference in the interpretation of this dream to the Emerald Tablet. I brought you a sentence by Jung, which I found very interesting; he says the following: "No tree grows to heaven without its roots reaching hell. " That is, this need for the axis of the world, the "axis mundi", that trunk that unites the Earth with its crown, the Sky, at its roots.
No tree can reach Heaven without sinking its roots into the Earth. In other words, the more inside, the more outside. The more we understand about the world, the more we have a correct reference to understand of the metaphysical world.
We make a bridge between the two worlds, because as hermeticism itself says the map of the heavens is projected onto the earth for those who can read. Jung will tell you this: he says it was just after Christmas 1912, he had a dream that he was in a place that was some kind of a wonderful department of a castle, who in that place was sitting with his children at the edge of a table. A beautiful table made of a large green stone.
And that suddenly, when they were there, in that wonderful, open place, a wonderful courtyard, a white bird appears, very beautiful. And it lands on the table and he asks his children that they don't come close so that it doesn't take off. Then suddenly, when he least expects it, that bird turns into a child, a beautiful girl, who goes out playing with his children.
Soon afterwards it returns and becomes a bird again and takes flight, but before that she tells him the following: "Only in the first hour of the night can I become human, while the male dove is busy with the 12 dead". Interesting, isn't it? And then takes flight.
Just in the first hour of the night, that is, 7 pm is considered the first hour of the night, "I can become human, while the male bomb is busy with the dead 12". He makes several interpretation possibilities of this, until you come to the conclusion that it has a lot to do with with symbolism of the Emerald Tablet, with symbolism of the emerald itself. See well: the male and the female, the male dove probably associated with human reason.
The human reason, which in those 12 hours of the night will dedicate to sleep, she falls asleep, she dedicates herself to the 12 dead, to his memories, what is engraved in his oneiric consciousness. And at that moment our female dove rises, which is our intuition, our divine vision; in the first hour of the night, it then brings these intuitions, these visions, from the spiritual plane to the concrete plane; it transforms a bird of the sky into a being of the earth. When our rationalist control lowers a little, when will he dedicate himself to to the world of the dead, when he falls asleep, something of intuition awakens in us.
And that intuition, when touching the Emerald Tablet, the green board, she transforms from a celestial being into a terrestrial being. It decodes our intuitions into something human, into something concrete, into something of the world. That is, if the Emerald Tablet is the bridge, through which the bird turns into a girl, whereby the laws of heaven become facts of earth, always as an intermediary, always as a point of connection.
While the male dove dedicates itself to the 12 dead, i. e. at 12 o'clock at night when she lowers her vigilance and let intuition awaken.
This was the subject of much reflection on his part; Jung was a great admirer of medieval alchemy and drew from it many symbolic teachings. I found this very beautiful, I made a point of sharing. Continues in the next lecture with an Outline Interpretation of the Emerald Tablet.
New Acropolis is an independent, non-profit, international philosophical movement based on Culture, Philosophy and Volunteering. There are hundreds of schools all over the world. Find one near you, we look forward to your visit!
