As above, so below

"As above, so below" is a popular modern paraphrase of the second verse of the Emerald Tablet, a short Hermetic text which first appeared in an Arabic source from the late eighth or early ninth century.

Following its use by prominent modern occultists such as Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891, co-founder of the Theosophical Society) and the anonymous author of the Kybalion (often taken to be William W. Atkinson, 1862–1932, a pioneer of the New Thought movement), the paraphrase started to take on a life of its own, becoming an often cited motto in New Age circles.

[3] Among historians of philosophy and science, the verse is often understood as a reference to the supposed effects of celestial mechanics upon terrestrial events.

[11] The occultists who were responsible for the popularization of the paraphrase generally understood it in the context of Emanuel Swedenborg's (1688–1772) doctrine of the correspondence between different planes of existence, a strongly elaborated version of the classical macrocosm–microcosm analogy.

Generally writing from a perennialist perspective, Blavatsky associated the phrase with a number of historically unrelated thought systems such as Pythagoreanism, Kabbalah and Buddhism.

It is also that of the Buddhist philosophers, who, in their still more abstract metaphysics, inverting the usual mode of definition given by our erudite scholars, call the invisible types the only reality, and everything else the effects of the causes, or visible prototypes—illusions.

[14]There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies.

"[15]The spirit of a mineral, plant, or animal, may begin to form here, and reach its final development millions of ages hereafter, on other planets, known or unknown, visible or invisible to astronomers.

For, who is able to controvert the theory previously suggested, that the earth itself will, like the living creatures to which it has given birth, ultimately, and after passing through its own stage of death and dissolution, become an etherealized astral planet ?

[16]Though retaining the interpretation of the phrase in terms of Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondence, it was somewhat more closely associated with the philosophical mentalism (the primacy of mind as the active cause of things) of the ancient Greek Hermetica by the anonymous author of the Kybalion (1908, 'Three Initiates', perhaps William W. Atkinson, 1862–1932).

But this will not do, because THE ALL cannot transfer or subtract a portion of itself, nor can it reproduce or multiply itself— in the first place there would be a taking away, and in the second case a multiplication or addition to THE ALL, both thoughts being an absurdity.