Table of Contents
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis William Hauck is an internationally known authority on spiritual and mystical experiences. One of the worlds few practicing alchemists, he writes and lectures on the stages of personal transformation to a wide variety of audiences, including scientists, business leaders, and Christian and New Age groups. A professional member of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute for Noetic Sciences, he is a translator of old alchemy manuscripts and the author of several books dealing with mystical and paranormal experiences, including Haunted Places: The National Directory (Penguin). Hauck resides in Sacramento, California, and maintains a website at www.AlchemyLab.com.
ARKANA
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
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First published in Arkana 1999
Copyright Dennis William Hauck, 1999
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:
The Alchemy of a Voluntary Society by Stephan Hoeller (Quest Books, 1992). By permission of the publisher.
Opening to Inner Light by Ralph Metzner. By permission of the publisher, Jeremy P. Tarcher, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Spiritual Breakthroughs in Sex by Dell Sokol appearing in Enlightened Sexuality edited by Georg Feuerstein (Crossing Press, Freedom, CA, 1989). By permission of Dell Sokol.
Interview with Franois Trojani by Joseph H. Rowe, Gnosis Magazine, Summer 1996, No. 40. By permission of Joseph H. Rowe.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hauck, Dennis William.
The emerald tablet : alchemy for personal transformation / Dennis William Hauck.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-15718-3
1. HermetismHistory. 2. Hermes, Trismegistus. I. Title.
BF1611.H455 1999
135.45dc2I 98-30840
http://us.penguingroup.com
Introduction
In recent years, fictional accounts about the rediscovery of ancient spiritual insights have become overnight best-sellers. These stories strike a chord in people weary of a commercialized world in which endless materialistic striving seems to be the highest aspiration. As we approach the new millennium, many of us are fed up, eager to move toward a more spiritual culture on earth. But what if there really were an ancient Science of Soul designed for achieving spiritual perfection in very specific and comprehensible steps and whose only goal was to accelerate the evolution of mankinds spiritual nature?
Not only does such a science exist, it is based on a single document whose origin is lost in legends that go back over 10,000 years. Called the Emerald Tablet because it was moulded out of a single piece of emerald or green crystal, it carries a powerful message full of hidden meaning and prophetic depth. According to some reports, the wondrous tablet was translated by Alexandrian scholars and actually put on display in Egypt around 330 B.C.E. One of the most mysterious documents ever put before the eyes of man, the Emerald Tablet has been described as everything from a succinct summary of Neoplatonic philosophy to an extraterrestrial artefact or gift from Atlantis. The text is written in extremely generic terms and is the uncredited inspiration for many of our spiritual and religious traditions. Its most obvious legacy is at least seventeen centuries of alchemy, a period in which some of the most creative minds in the world delved into the intertwined mysteries of matter, energy, soul, and spirit.
My initiation into the lore of the tablet came while I was still a graduate student at the University of Vienna. In the seventeenth century, Vienna and nearby Prague served as the European centre for the study of alchemy, and hundreds of alchemical manuscripts were written there. I spent untold hours paging through those arcane treatises, trying to figure out what the alchemists were talking about and searching for the meaning of the bizarre drawings that illustrated their ideas. I soon realized that the common source for all the practical and metaphysical work of the alchemists was the Emerald Tablet. My research into the origins of the tablet took me throughout Europe and down a path that led all the way back to ancient Egypt. Along the way, I uncovered previously unknown versions of the Emerald Tablet and made some amazing discoveries, including an encrypted chemical formula within the tablet and evidence of its connection with the Grail legends. Gradually, I became convinced that our mystical and religious visions originate in a hidden reality that the Emerald Tablet not only describes but shows us how to access.
As we enter a new cosmic cycle, that hidden reality is being witnessed by increasing numbers of honest and intelligent people in mystical and paranormal encounters but which are, in fact, glimpses of another side to reality that modern civilization has rejected and tried to ignore. The Emerald Tablet works on many levels and instructs us in a world view that encompasses all the different facets of realitynot just our everyday world and the two cultures of science and religion that dominate our society, but also the ineffable forces that control our physiological, psychological, and spiritual development. I believe, as did the ancients, that the Emerald Tablet is a divinely inspired document that contains an important messagesomething wonderfulfor all of mankind.
However, the multiple layers of meaning and interpretation built into the tablet make it anything but simple for the uninitiated to work with. The intuitive approach adopted here guides the reader through the tablets many mysteries until it comes alive, so he or she can directly experience the magic of its principles and apply them successfully. This book is a personal testimony to the power of alchemy as well. Using examples from my own life and from those of other people both famous and unknown, I have attempted to expose the hidden but constant alchemy of our lives.
The material in this book is organized into three parts. The first section is dedicated to a true understanding of the ancient message contained in the Emerald Tablet. Through examples of persons who, over the ages, have unleashed the tablets powers, each part of the document is scrutinized to reveal its complete meaning. Then the entire content of the tablet is envisioned in a single remarkable engraving from the early seventeenth century. In the second part, the recipe upon which all alchemy is based, the Emerald Formula, is revealed and elaborated on with specific techniques on how to apply each step. The goal is for the reader to personally experience the renewed energy and amazing synchronicities unleashed by transmuting the lead of ones innermost being into gold. The final part of this book scrutinizes what the Emerald Tablet tells us about our future and about how we came to be where we are now. We will examine the alchemy of the millennium as well as the meaning of increased sightings of the Stonean emerging pattern being reported throughout the world.
