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those who could not with their own intelligence discover that missing substance or
process were not qualified to be entrusted with secrets which could give them control
over great masses of humanity and likewise subject to their will the elemental forces of
Nature.

THE EMERALD TABLE OF HERMES

The oldest and most revered of all the alchemical formulæ is the sacred Emerald Tablet
of Hermes. Authorities do not agree as to the genuineness of this Table, some declaring it
to be a post-Christian fraud, but there is much evidence that, regardless of its author, the
Table is of great antiquity. While the symbol of the Emerald Table is of special Masonic
import--relating as it does to the personality of CHiram (Hiram)--it is first and
fundamentally an alchemical formula, relating both to the alchemy of the base metals and
the divine alchemy of human regeneration.

In Dr. Sigismund Bacstrom's collection of alchemical manuscripts is a section devoted to
the translations and interpretations of this remarkable Tablet, which was known to the
ancients as the Tabula Smaragdina. Dr. Bacstrom was initiated into the Brotherhood of
the Rose Cross on the island of Mauritius by one of those unknown adepts who at that
time called himself Comte de Chazal. Dr. Bacstrom's translations and notes on the
Emerald Tablet are, in part, as follows, the actual text being reproduced in capital letters:

"The Emerald Table, the Most Ancient Monument of the Chaldeans concerning the Lapis
Philosophorum (the stone of the philosophers).

"The Emerald Table furnishes the origin of the allegorical history of King Hiram (rather
Chiram). The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Hebrews in what concerns Chiram have taken
their knowledge from one and the same fountain; Homerus, who relates this history in a
different manner, followed that original, and Virgil followed

Click to enlarge
THE KEY TO ALCHEMY ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS.
From Kircher's Œdipus Ægyptiacus.

The priests of Egypt not only used the scarab as a symbol of regeneration but also discovered in its habits
many analogies to the secret process whereby base metals could be transmuted into gold. They saw in the
egg of the scarab the seed of the metals, and the above figure shows the path of this seed through the
various planetary bodies until, finally reaching the center, it is perfected and then returns again to its
source. The words in the mall spiral at the top read: "The spiral Progress of the mundane spirit." After the
scarab has wound its way around the spiral to the center of the lower part of the figure, it returns to the
upper world along the path bearing the words: "Return of the spirit to the center of unity."