As above, so below is called an occult maxim. The word occult means “hidden,” and the word maxim means “truth,” or “underlying principle.” When Witches seal a circlecasting, sacred space, or a spell, they will often say the words “As above, so below. This circle (or this spell) is sealed. So mote it be.” That’s great, but what does this mean? The words As above, so below stem from the mystery traditions that we talked about under the Alchemy category, and specifically from an amazing piece of work called the Emerald Tablet.
As with all things ancient, we have an excellent mystery that goes along with the first mention of written information about alchemy. The credo of the alchemical adepts (As above, so below) supposedly came from an inscription found on an emerald tablet in the hands of a mummy in an obscure pit by the pyramid of Giza, discovered by none other than Alexander the Great. The information was supposedly written on an emerald tablet with a pointed diamond.14 The emerald was linked to Mercury, and you can see now where the Hermes-Mercury-Thoth association comes into play. The document is called the Emerald Tablet and if you read the words carefully you will slowly understand a large chunk of the mystery traditions, including Witchcraft.
The Emerald Tablet
The following translation of the Emerald Tablet is a modern translation by J. F. Ruska.15 Remember that I told you how the Witch’s Creed relates to alchemy? Do me a favor and page back to the Creed (in part 1, Wiccan Rede/Witch’s Creed), read it, and then read the following translation of the Emerald Tablet.
1. In truth certainly and without doubt whatever is below is like that which is above, and whatever is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing.
2. Just as all things proceed from One alone by meditation on One alone, so also they are born from this one thing by adaptation.
3. Its father is the sun and its mother is the moon. The wind has borne it in its body. Its nurse is the earth.
4. It is the father of every miraculous work in the whole world.
5. Its power is perfect if it is converted to earth.
6. Separate the earth from the fire and the subtle from the gross, softly and with great prudence.
7. It rises from earth to heaven and comes down again from heaven to earth, and thus acquires the power of the realities above and the realities below. In this way you will acquire the glory of the whole world, and all darkness will leave you.
8. This is the power of all powers, for it conquers everything subtle and penetrates everything solid.
9. Thus the little world is created according to the prototype of the great world.
10. From this and in this way, marvelous applications are made.
11. For this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistus, for I possess the three parts of wisdom of the whole world.
12. Perfect is what I have said of the work of the sun.
As you can see, the tablet is a bit like a riddle. What is “it” referred to in its contents? “It” is thought.
Changing Thought Into Form
Some magickal people (and historians, too) feel that the idea of changing thought into form began in ancient Egypt during its Greek reign,16 with a fellow named Hermes Trismegistus, who was most likely not a real person, but a collection of people involved in the study of alchemy. He may even have been Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great and helped to conquer most of the known world at the time. Despite the fact that we have no clue who the author might be, Hermes Trismegistus (meaning “wisdom three times the greatest”) is known as the father of occult wisdom (though there is now debate that the first alchemists were women). Further writings on the subject seem to be a product of Greek settlers in Egyptian territory who migrated to that area at the beginning of the reign of the Greek pharaohs (as opposed to the native Egyptian peoples). This group of Greeks recognized their own gods in the Egyptian deities, matching their god of wisdom (Hermes) with that of the Egyptians (Thoth), the divine inventor of magick, of writing, and of the spoken word.17
Man or woman as the creator aside, the resulting teachings were called hermetic philosophy, or hermeticism. The idea of the philosopher’s stone (a legend that stated there was a material that could turn metal into gold, yet the material itself would remain unchanged—see Alchemy) might have been an allegory, meaning the mastery of mental forces could change anything. Now, at this point you might be saying, “Excuse me, Silver, but history bores me to tears. I hate it in school, and I’m certainly not too thrilled with reading about it here. I wanna do the fun stuff!” Me too! After teaching the Craft to hundreds of students over the past fifteen years, I discovered that if the student (that’s me too, by the way) doesn’t learn about the building blocks of any magickal study, then half the power waiting at their fingertips will be lost. Regardless of what religion or spirituality you follow, the axiom of As above, so below will apply, and has several meanings, depending on your idea of how the universe ticks. For some, it means As in heaven, so it is on earth. You’ve probably heard that statement if you’ve had any sort of Bible study or gone to Sunday school. What heaven decrees, occurs on earth. For others, it means that the invisible and visible are all manifestations of the divine. Everything is one. What happens on the visible plane (right in front of your nose) occurs on the invisible one (spiritual places of the unseen), and vice versa. There is no dividing line between “what runs the universe” and “human beings.” We are God, and God is us, and the material world is an expression of the spiritual one. When Einstein shocked the world by proving that energy and mass are equal, identical, and interchangeable, the old mystery teachings of the ancients found new vigor and have continued to grow. Why? Because now science and spirituality meet on common ground. The ancient conclusion that the same laws operated in the world of Spirit and in the material world was now validated. Basically it means: What happens here, happens there; and what happens there, happens here.
The Witchcraft practiced today is, to put it bluntly, a bunch of old ideas and practices melded into a new form. It is a mixture of ancient occult philosophy, folk practices of various cultures, and a very old (but sturdy) belief that God is both male and female, not specifically one or the other. Yes, major portions of the Craft predate Christianity. Yes, the Craft is a nonviolent way of belief. Yes, the Craft does its level best to be nonjudgmental. All of these things are true, but in trying to form new dogma (uh oh), some individuals become a bit cranky when they realize modern Craft isn’t exactly like it was a hundred, three hundred, or five hundred years ago, nor do they understand that a great deal of the modern “gelling processes” for this faith are direct results of archeological study, overactive romanticism, and the falsified hierarchy put forth by various Inquisitions’ record keeping. The product of all this—what you practice today—is a positive one that seeks to find the best within, and then share that exciting relationship with god/dess through our words and actions involving others.
Change is necessary for the growth of spirituality. If our religion became stagnant, it would die. For example, the standard Wiccan tools on the altar were called the Four Elemental Weapons over a hundred years ago by a group called the Golden Dawn, which incorporated Christian, Pagan, and Judaic teachings, among other things, in its lodges. There is no doubt that the Golden Dawn helped preserve alchemy as a major point of reference, as well as brought alchemical language into common awareness.18 Just as in the Golden Dawn material, we see elements of the Kabbalah, the Tarot, astrology, and various pieces of Freemasonry in today’s Craft environment. To be honest, it is highly unlikely that ancient peoples set up their altars precisely the way Wiccans do today, with precisely the same tools, which accounts for the differences of tools and their placement in various Craft traditions. For example, in the Black Forest Tradition, you only use your tools through the first level of study. From the second level on, you are expected to know how to work without them, which tells you that the Wicca of today carries a great deal of the mental arts within its teachings, just as the esoteric sciences did thousands of years ago. If we have so many differences among us, how could anything possibly work? Unity through our diversity is one of the strongest elements in modern Wicca and, surprisingly enough, it was also a tune sung at the turn of the twentieth century with the Theosophical Society (the influence of Madame Blavatsky and her crew of political and bourgeois dabblers). It is because we are different and that we can honor those differences among ourselves that we survive. Individuals that cannot honor those differences are breaking the “An’ it harm none” code, and therefore are not truly practicing the Craft of the Wise.
This doesn’t mean that goddess worship didn’t exist, or that there weren’t matriarchal and matrifocal (women-centered) ancient religions,19 nor does it mean that the Craft you practice today is invalid. The maxim As above, so below (as well as others you’ll study in the future) does tell us that Wicca carries with it into the twenty-first century a heavy coil of very old, very ancient, golden energy.
There is another meaning that goes along with the “as above” statement, and this deals with astrology. As an astrologer myself, I can tell you that the movement of the planets and the position of the stars in the heavens do indeed reflect available energies that we can use or ignore. It is said that the stars do not compel, they impel, meaning that we have free will to use the available energy—or not. I mention astrology because many Witches are also practicing astrologers, although not all astrologers are Witches or even magickal people. Most Witches know at least the meanings of the planets and how they can be used in magick, and they can follow the phases of the moon for magickal workings. If you choose the path of a ceremonial magician, or the path of the Druid, you will find it necessary, in time, to turn your studies to astrology.
As above, so below also relates to Craft terminology that includes the words invocation, raising power, and the cone of power. In these three magickal operations you are focusing upward (in a spiritual sense), sending your thoughts into the spiritual realm. The change you desire occurs on the spiritual planes first, before it can settle into the material one where you are (As above, so below). This is why most people experience a delay in their magickal workings. To get what you want, change must occur. Sometimes the changes are minor (adjustments, really) and so the work seems smooth and quick. Other times the changes you are asking for are much bigger, and several things must happen above as well as below for the working to reach its desired conclusion.
For example, if you want to improve your grades and cast a spell to help you do that, then you must actually study (the mind), and get enough sleep (the body), or the magick won’t work. If you want a spell to be more beautiful, then you must remember that beauty begins on the inside, and your behavior and what you think has everything to do with how you appear on the outside to other people. That’s the mind part. Being clean, like bathing and using deodorant and making sure your hair is clean and combed, is the body part. Working to include your belief in god/dess is the spiritual part. In anything magickal, the physical, mental, and spiritual must all run on the same race track for you to be the winner. They must all be focused on that checkered flag of success.
This is why magick is seen by some as too much work. In the beginning, when you are first learning, it is hard to focus. Let’s say you did a spell for good grades, and you brought your books home with the intention of studying for a test tomorrow, but then Tom calls and since you’ve got the hots for him, you might spend an hour on the phone, and then that hour marches into the second one. When you look at the clock you realize that it’s bedtime and you haven’t studied for that test tomorrow. If you stay up and study, then you’ll be exhausted tomorrow and barely pass, or you say, “The heck with it,” and cram in the morning. Either way you’ve just taken some of the oomph (or all of it) out of your spell. You did all that work to make the changes in the spiritual realm, but you ignored the physical one. When the weekend comes, you dutifully bring all of your books home, intending to learn as much as you can, but then the family goes out to dinner, there’s the football game you simply can’t ignore because Tom is there and you certainly can’t miss that. On Saturday you work at the convenience store from ten to six, and then Marsha picks you up to go to the movies, and after that you stop at Sandra’s house for pizza. By Sunday maybe you have to work again, or go somewhere with your family, and then you can’t possibly miss the car show over at the fairgrounds (Tom said he was going, too)—and so ends the vicious circle, with you staring at that pile of books on Sunday night thinking, “Tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow.” You know what they say about tomorrow—it never comes. Hey, don’t feel guilty, we’ve all done it. Procrastination on the earth plane will blow a hole in your spell or ritual faster than anything else—just ask me.
The same difficulty arises when I teach students magickal material. They get so far, then life sort of takes over and off they go, not realizing until later that they have missed golden opportunities because they have shoved their magickal studies aside.