The Emerald Tablets of Thoth are a set of thirteen esoteric texts, plus two supplementary tablets, published in 1939 by Maurice Doreal under the title The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. The text presents itself as the teachings of Thoth, an Atlantean priest-king said to have founded Egypt, and it describes the Halls of Amenti, cycles of light and darkness and a series of "keys" to wisdom, magic, time and space. Mainstream scholars regard it as a twentieth-century work of esoteric literature rather than a recovered ancient artifact, while the older and much shorter Hermetic Emerald Tablet (the Tabula Smaragdina) is a genuine medieval text at the root of Western alchemy.
Few texts are as widely quoted and as widely confused. "As above, so below" is repeated in yoga studios, physics lectures and video captions, usually with no idea which tablet it came from. Billy Carson's Compendium of the Emerald Tablets brought Doreal's text to a new generation of readers, and the questions that followed deserve an answer that respects both the tradition and the historical record.
Three texts that share one name
People mean three distinct things when they say "Emerald Tablets", and most of the confusion online comes from blending them.
The first is the Hermetic Emerald Tablet, known in Latin as the Tabula Smaragdina: a single short text of roughly a dozen lines, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, surviving in Arabic from around the eighth or ninth century and in Latin from the twelfth. This is the tablet that alchemists from the Middle Ages through Isaac Newton treated as the foundation of their art.
The second is The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, the 1939 book by Maurice Doreal. It is far longer, written in a poetic and prophetic register, and organised into thirteen numbered tablets plus supplementary material; historians of religion place it within the American esoteric movements of the 1930s.
The third is Billy Carson's Compendium of the Emerald Tablets (2019), not a new translation but a 444-page, tablet-by-tablet commentary on Doreal's text connecting it to sacred geometry, the Merkaba, Egyptian temple science and modern physics. The claims made for one of these three do not automatically transfer to the others.
What the Hermetic Emerald Tablet actually says
The Hermetic Emerald Tablet is a compact statement of the unity of the cosmos, best known for the line usually rendered "that which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the one thing." It goes on to describe a single substance whose father is the sun and mother the moon, which ascends from earth to heaven and descends again and so gains "the glory of the whole world."
Its earliest known appearance is in Arabic, in the Kitab Sirr al-Khaliqa ("Book of the Secret of Creation"), attributed to Balinas, the Arabic name for Apollonius of Tyana, and usually dated to the late eighth or early ninth century. In that framing the tablet is discovered in a crypt beneath a statue of Hermes, held by a seated figure. Latin translations followed in the twelfth century, and from there the Tabula Smaragdina became a fixture of European alchemy. Isaac Newton made his own English translation, now among his alchemical papers at King's College, Cambridge.
Two points matter when comparing this to Doreal's book. The Hermetic tablet concerns transformation, unity and correspondence; it does not mention Atlantis, Amenti or the founding of Egypt. And while it is presented as the wisdom of Hermes, the manuscript evidence points to composition in the early Islamic world, drawing on older Greek Hermetic ideas, not to a physical emerald slab from Egyptian antiquity.
Who Thoth was in ancient Egypt
Thoth, called Djehuty in Egyptian, was the god of writing, wisdom, measurement and the moon, depicted with the head of an ibis or as a baboon. He served as scribe of the gods and records the verdict in the weighing of the heart in the Book of the Dead. His cult centre was Khemenu in Middle Egypt, which the Greeks called Hermopolis, "the city of Hermes", because they identified Thoth with their own god of writing and messages.
That identification is the bridge between Egyptian religion and the Hermetic tradition. In the Greco-Egyptian world of the last centuries BC and the first centuries AD, Thoth-Hermes became Hermes Trismegistus, "thrice-great Hermes", the supposed author of the philosophical and magical writings known as the Hermetica: the Corpus Hermeticum, the Asclepius and the Emerald Tablet all travel under his name. So when Doreal's text names its author "Thoth the Atlantean", it draws on a genuinely ancient association, even if the Atlantean biography attached to that name is its own. For the Egyptian context in depth, the [Ancient Egypt hub](/topics/ancient-egypt) collects the site's articles on temple science, the pyramids and the gods of the Nile.
Where the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean come from
The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean were published in 1939 by Maurice Doreal, the pen name of Claude Doggins, who founded the Brotherhood of the White Temple in Colorado in 1930. Doreal wrote that the tablets were slabs of an emerald-green material created by alchemical transmutation, engraved in Atlantean characters, and that he had translated them before they were returned beneath the Great Pyramid. He offered no physical evidence, and none has surfaced since.
Mainstream scholarship treats the book as twentieth-century esoteric literature. Its concerns, including Atlantis, cycles of light and dark and the "Children of Light", sit within the Theosophical currents of the early 1900s, and the frame story of a hidden text recovered from the Great Pyramid echoes the older Arabic legend of the Hermetic tablet found in a crypt. Nothing in the text can be dated to antiquity by the usual methods, and no Egyptologist has accepted it as an Egyptian or pre-Egyptian source.
None of this settles whether the book is valuable. Many readers, Billy Carson among them, argue that the tablets encode a coherent metaphysical system regardless of when they were written down. That is a different claim from "these tablets are 36,000 years old."
What the thirteen tablets teach
The thirteen tablets move from the story of Thoth to a set of "keys", each covering one dimension of the inner path. The first, "The History of Thoth, the Atlantean", tells of the fall of Atlantis, the survival of the Temple of Light on the island of Undal, and Thoth's voyage to found a colony in Khem, the text's name for Egypt. The second, "The Halls of Amenti", describes a realm beneath the Earth where the Children of Light dwell and where the flower of life is said to burn, with an entrance associated with the Great Pyramid. The third, "The Key of Wisdom", is a series of ethical and practical instructions on how to live, speak and lead.
Tablets four to seven widen the lens: "The Space Born" and "The Dweller of Unal" describe Thoth's cosmic origins and the being who watches over Atlantis, "The Key of Magic" sets out the struggle between light and darkness inside the human being, and "The Seven Lords" introduces the cycles and the beings who govern them. Tablets eight to thirteen turn to the keys proper: the Key of Mysteries, the Key of Freedom of Space, the Key of Time, the Key to Above and Below, the Law of Cause and Effect and the Key of Prophecy, and finally the Keys of Life and Death. Two supplementary tablets, on Atlantis and on the "Secret of Secrets", close the set.
Recurring themes hold the collection together: that light and darkness are both present in every human and the aspirant chooses between them; that death can be postponed or chosen consciously; that the Great Pyramid concentrates and directs energy; and that the human being is a miniature of the cosmos, so "as above, so below" becomes an instruction for meditation rather than a statement about metals. In an interview on this site about [the first emerald tablets](/author-of-the-compendium-of-the-emerald-tablets-billy-carson-reveals-about-the-7-emerald-tablets), Carson walks through the opening tablets in this sequence, describing how the survivors of Atlantis left in the boat of the Master and how, in the Halls of Amenti, Thoth is freed from ordinary death and "picks his own moment."
How old are the Emerald Tablets
The two texts have very different ages: the Hermetic Emerald Tablet can be traced in manuscripts to the eighth or ninth century AD, with Greek roots that may be a few centuries older, while Doreal's Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean is a book from 1939.
The claim that the tablets are roughly 36,000 years old comes from Doreal's own preface, which says that Thoth ruled Egypt for tens of thousands of years and that the tablets date to around 36,000 BC. It is a statement the text makes about itself, not a finding of archaeology. The earliest securely dated Egyptian writing belongs to the late fourth millennium BC, and the Great Pyramid to the reign of Khufu in the twenty-sixth century BC. The 36,000-year date is best presented as the tradition's claim, and in Carson's work as one he explores and takes seriously, rather than as established fact.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson's position is that Doreal's tablets are best read as a compressed manual of consciousness, and his Compendium of the Emerald Tablets is built to decode them line by line. Rather than arguing about provenance, Carson separates each tablet, restates its message in plain language and connects it to systems he considers related: the Flower of Life and other sacred-geometry figures, the Merkaba meditation, Egyptian temple and pyramid design, and concepts from modern physics such as the holographic model of the universe. In his reading the keys are practical, and Atlantis and Amenti are frameworks for understanding the layered nature of reality.
He has described the book as a journey with Hermes from Atlantis to Egypt, with the aim of learning "the key to spiritual realization" along the way. The Compendium has become a reference point for people studying the Flower of Life and Merkaba practice, and it is a [long-standing recommendation on this site](/the-compendium-of-the-emerald-tablets-by-billy-carson-a-must-read-for-this-vacation-season) for readers new to the material.
The work is available directly as the Compendium of the Emerald Tablets, and for a second layer of commentary there is the companion volume, Mysteries of the Forbidden Emerald Tablets. Carson's reading assumes the tablets are meaningful; it does not require them to be ancient, and it is presented as interpretation, not as archaeological evidence.
Watch, read and go deeper
The full text streams on 4BK TV as the [Compendium of the Emerald Tablets audiobook](/watch/compendium-of-the-emerald-tablets-audio-book), which follows the tablets in order with Carson's commentary. For a concise walkthrough before reading, rel="noopener">Carson's video on the Emerald Tablets
Frequently asked questions
Are the Emerald Tablets of Thoth real?
No physical Emerald Tablets of Thoth have ever been examined or verified. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean is a real book, published in 1939 by Maurice Doreal, who said he translated it from green tablets he was permitted to see. Scholars treat it as a twentieth-century esoteric work; Billy Carson and many others study it for its teachings regardless of origin.
What is the difference between the Emerald Tablet and the Emerald Tablets of Thoth?
The Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina) is a short Hermetic text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, surviving in Arabic from around the eighth or ninth century and in Latin from the twelfth; it is the source of "as above, so below" and a cornerstone of alchemy. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean is a much longer 1939 work in thirteen tablets that tells the story of Thoth, Atlantis and the Halls of Amenti. The two have separate histories.
Who is Thoth, and why is he linked to Hermes?
Thoth was the ancient Egyptian god of writing, wisdom and the moon, shown with an ibis head or as a baboon, and served as scribe of the gods. Greeks in Egypt identified him with Hermes, which is why his cult city Khemenu became Hermopolis; from that fusion came Hermes Trismegistus, the figure credited with the Emerald Tablet.
What does "as above, so below" mean?
The phrase is shorthand for the Emerald Tablet's statement that what is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below. In alchemy it meant that the same laws govern the heavens, the earth and the laboratory; in the Doreal tablets and Carson's commentary it means the human being mirrors the cosmos.
Is the Compendium of the Emerald Tablets a translation?
No. Billy Carson's Compendium of the Emerald Tablets (2019) is a 444-page commentary on Doreal's English text, tablet by tablet, linking each passage to sacred geometry, the Merkaba, Egyptian temple science and modern physics. A companion volume, Mysteries of the Forbidden Emerald Tablets, extends it, and an audiobook version streams on 4BK TV.
Sources and further reading
- Maurice Doreal, The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean (Brotherhood of the White Temple, 1939)
- Billy Carson, Compendium of the Emerald Tablets (2019) and Mysteries of the Forbidden Emerald Tablets
- Julius Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der hermetischen Literatur (1926)
- Brian P. Copenhaver (trans.), Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge University Press, 1992)
- Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times (Cornell University Press, 2007)
- Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames and Hudson, 2003), entry on Thoth
