The True Meaning of “AS ABOVE SO BELOW” Misquoted and Misunderstood. A Summary of Alchemical Theory, Part 3 of 5

A favourite saying of the alchemists was, “What is above is as what is below.” In one of its aspects this saying meant, “processes happen within the earth like those which occur on the earth; minerals and metals live, as animals and plants live; all pass through corruption towards perfection.” In another aspect the saying meant “the human being is the world in miniature; as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm; to know oneself is to know all the world.”

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Link to Part 1 of 5 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWw6jZKh4wA
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Every man knows he ought to try to rise to better things, and many men endeavour to do what they know they ought to do; therefore, he who feels sure that all nature is fashioned after the image of man, projects his own ideas of progress, development, virtue, matter and spirit, on to nature outside himself; and, as a matter of course, this kind of naturalist uses the same language when he is speaking of the changes of material things as he employs to express the changes of his mental states, his hopes, fears, aspirations, and struggles.

The language of the alchemists was, therefore, rich in such expressions as these; “the elements are to be so conjoined that the nobler and fuller life may be produced”; “our arcanum is gold exalted to the highest degree of perfection to which the combined action of nature and art can develop it.”

Such commingling of ethical and physical ideas, such application of moral conceptions to material phenomena, was characteristic of the alchemical method of regarding nature. The necessary results were; great confusion of thought, much mystification of ideas, and a superabundance of views about natural events.

When the author of The Metamorphosis of Metals was seeking for an argument in favour of his view, that water is the source and primal element of all things, he found what he sought in the Biblical text: “In the beginning the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Similarly, the author of The Sodic Hydrolith clenches his argument in favour of the existence of the Philosopher’s Stone, by the quotation: “Therefore, thus saith the Lord; behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious corner Stone, a sure foundation. He that has it shall not be confounded.” This author works out in detail an analogy between the functions and virtues of the Stone, and the story of man’s fall and redemption, as set forth in the Old and New Testaments. The same author speaks of “Satan, that grim pseudo-alchemist.”

That the attribution, by the alchemists, of moral virtues and vices to natural things was in keeping with some deep-seated tendency of human nature, is shown by the persistence of some of their methods of stating the properties of substances: we still speak of “perfect and imperfect gases,” “noble and base metals,” “good and bad conductors of electricity,” and “laws governing natural phenomena.”

Convinced of the simplicity of nature, certain that all natural events follow one course, sure that this course was known to them and was represented by the growth of plants and animals, the alchemists set themselves the task, firstly, of proving by observations and experiments that their view of natural occurrences was correct; and, secondly, of discovering and gaining possession of the instrument whereby nature effects her transmutations and perfects her operations. The mastery of this instrument would give them power to change any metal into gold, the cure of all diseases, and the happiness which must come from the practical knowledge of the supreme secret of nature.

an excerpt from THE STORY OF ALCHEMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY BY M. M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.