What does 'as above, so below' mean?
How one line from an alchemical text became the licence to join the body to the cosmos.
The line comes from a short text called the Emerald Tablet.The oldest surviving copies are Arabic manuscripts of the 8th or 9th century.A Latin translation in the 12th century carried it into Europe.It is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, who was not a real person.
Its original setting is alchemy.The text is a short set of instructions about transforming metals, and this line sits inside it.It was read as saying that the order of the heavens and the order of the earth resemble each other.
Red-pill material uses the line as a method.A number found in the body is looked for in the sky, and a shape found in the sky is looked for in scripture.When the same thing turns up in all three, they are declared to have been one thing.
The trouble is that the line is a premise, not evidence.Begin from 'things that resemble each other are connected' and resemblances will always be found.Numbers and shapes are everywhere.
This site sorts these moves into six kinds.Puns, number matching and shape matching are three of them.
Read further
- Three Axes, One MapPower, cosmos, body. The red-pill picture is built from bridges linking these three