What does “as above, so below” mean?

“As above, so below” is the short form of the second line of the Emerald Tablet, the most quoted line in alchemy. In Isaac Newton’s translation it reads: “That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.” It means that the same pattern runs through everything, the heavens and the earth, the world and you: change what is inside, and what is outside follows.

The whole line

The phrase people repeat is a shortening. The line goes on to say why above and below are alike: they work ‘to do the miracles of one only thing’. They are not two worlds, but two sides of one.

Where it comes from

It is line 2 of the Emerald Tablet, fourteen lines said to have been carved on a green stone by Hermes Trismegistus. The Tablet reached Europe through Arabic books around the 1100s.

How the alchemists used it

For the alchemists it explained their whole art. If the metals in the earth mirror the planets in the sky, and the work in the flask mirrors the work in the worker, then changing one changes the other. Each of the seven metals had its planet: gold the Sun, silver the Moon, iron Mars, quicksilver Mercury, tin Jupiter, copper Venus and lead Saturn.

What it means in you

Rise to see your life from higher up, then come back down and live it. Line 8 of the Tablet says: “It ascends from the earth to the heaven & again it desends to the earth and receives the force of things superior & inferior.” ‘Insight is not meant to lift you away from life, but to bring something better back into it.’

In the tarot

A famous picture of the idea is the Magician in Waite’s tarot of 1910: his right hand raises a wand towards heaven and his left points to the earth. Waite wrote that the gesture ‘shews the descent of grace, virtue and light, drawn from things above and derived to things below’. The Magician, in Esbat’s tarot card meanings.

In Lead to Gold

Day 5 of Gate 8, Sublimation, is built on this line, and the whole Tablet is in the app’s Library with notes in plain words.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Lead to Gold: Shadow Work, on Google Play

The alchemists’ Great Work, made into ten quiet minutes a day: twelve gates, a private journal, and a line of wisdom from the old masters. Free to download, for Android.

Get it on Google Play

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