Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation [Paperback]

THE EMERALD TABLET - an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings - has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit.

This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

What Is the Emerald Tablet?
In recent years, fictional accounts about the rediscovery of ancient spiritual insights have become overnight bestsellers. These stories strike a chord in people weary of a commercialized world in which endless materialistic striving seems to be the highest aspiration. As we approach the new millennium, many of us are fed up, eager to move toward a more spiritual culture on earth. But what if there really were an ancient Science of Soul designed for achieving spiritual perfection in very specific and comprehensible steps whose only goal was to accelerate the evolution of mankind’s spiritual nature? Not only does such a science exist, it is based on a single document that could be over 12,000 years old. According to ancient Egyptian papyri, mysterious visitors who came to Egypt before the Great Flood brought with them a powerful spiritual technology, which they passed down to future generations in a time capsule of wisdom molded out of a single piece of emerald or green crystal. Called the Emerald Tablet, it was translated into Greek by Alexandrian scholars and actually put on display in Heliopolis around 330 BCE. My initiation into the lore of the tablet came while I was still a graduate student at the University of Vienna. In the seventeenth century, Vienna and Prague served as the European center for the study of alchemy, and thousands of alchemical manuscripts were written there. I spent untold hours paging through those arcane treatises, trying to figure out what the alchemists were talking about and searching for the meaning of the bizarre drawings that illustrated their ideas. I soon learned that the common source for all the practical and metaphysical work of the alchemists was an ancient and enigmatic Emerald Tablet. My research into the origins of the tablet took me throughout Europe and down a path that led all the way back to ancient Egypt. Along the way, I uncovered previously unknown versions of the Emerald Tablet and made some amazing discoveries, including an encrypted chemical formula within the tablet and direct evidence of its connection with the Grail legends. Gradually, I became convinced that our mystical and religious visions originate in a hidden reality that the Emerald Tablet not only describes but shows us how to access. As we enter a new cosmic cycle, that hidden reality is being witnessed by increasing numbers of honest and intelligent people in mystical and paranormal experiences, but which are, in fact, glimpses of another side to reality that modern civilization has rejected and tried to ignore. The Emerald Tablet works on many levels and instructs us in a world view that encompasses all the different facets of reality -- not just our everyday world and the two cultures of science and religion that dominate our society, but also the ineffable forces that control our physiological, psychological, and spiritual development. I believe, as did the ancients, that the Emerald Tablet is a divinely inspired document that contains an important message -- something wonderful -- for all of mankind. What is the Emerald Tablet, really? In simplest terms, it is a scientific document containing a formula that actually works with something we perceive as metaphysical in nature and thus presents a Spiritual Technology for the human race. It shows mankind how to consciously work together with the forces of evolution and gives individuals the opportunity to transform themselves outside the inherently imperfect and artificial structures of schools, church, and government. The Emerald Tablet offers each one of us the chance not only to directly participate in the quantum leap in consciousness that can safely lead us into the Third Millennium but also to do so as real people true to ourselves and in accord with the Soul of the universe.