The operation of the sun, with the Emerald Tablet under it
The Sun and the Moon as the central motif, with the Divine, the Angel and the Wing, the Heavens, the Triangle and the Pyramid, and the Bird in a secondary part. From Musaeum Hermeticum.
What is happening
The plate, 1678 “VERBO DOMINI FIRMATI SUNT COELI, ET SPIRITU ORIS EJUS OMNIS EXERCITUS EORUM, Psalm. 33.”
The Book of Psalms “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth:”
The plate, 1678 “SPIRITUS DOMINI REPLEVIT ORBEM TERRARUM: OMNIA SATIANTUR BONITATE TUA DOMINE: AVERTENTE TE FACIEM, TURBANTUR: AUFFERS SPIRITUM EORUM, ET DEFICIUNT ET IN PULVEREM SUUM REVERTUNTUR: EMITTIS SPIRITUM TUUM ET CREANTUR: SIC RENOVAS FACIEM TERRAE: GLORIA TUA IN SECULUM. Psalm. 104.”
The Book of Psalms “But if thou turnest away thy face, they shall be troubled: thou shalt take away their breath, and they shall fail, and shall return to their dust. Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate numbers its Psalms 33 and 104. The Douay Rheims the archive quotes numbers the same two verses 32 and 103, being one behind through the middle of the book. Same words, two countings.
The plate, 1678 “M. Merian fecit.”
Symbolica, 2026 Both Matthaeus Merian the elder, who died in 1650, and his son of the same name signed plates M. Merian. This book was first printed in 1625 and this copy is the enlarged printing of 1678, so the signature names the hand and not the year, and the archive leaves it at that.
Key · 6 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 5
The picture
A rayed sun filling the sky with the Name in it, a lettered disc of years and principles hung below, a triangle of four fires at its centre, winged heads between, and two named birds on the ground. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
One sun fills the sky and the rest of the sheet hangs off it. Its rays are cut as long spikes to the edge of the plate, the four Hebrew letters of the Name stand in a clear oval at the top where no ray crosses, and a crowd of winged heads packs the space between the Name and the disc hanging below.
That disc is a text as much as a picture. Its outer ring names three years in a row, “ANNVS VENTORVM. ANNVS SOLARIS. ANNVS STELLATVS”, the year of the winds, the solar year and the starry year, with the twelve signs beyond and a field of stars. Three rings inside it carry mercury, sulphur and salt, and each ring is cut into thirds so every substance gets three grades: philosophical, bodily and common mercury; fixed, aethereal and combustible sulphur; central, elemental and earthly salt.
At the dead centre, a triangle with a line round it: “Quatuor Ignes ad opus reperuntur”, four fires are found for the work. Under the engraving the printer set the Emerald Tablet entire, headed “SMARAGDINA HERMETIS TABVLA”, and gave one sentence of it larger capitals than the rest: “SIC MUNDUS CREATUS EST.” Thus the world was created. The tablet’s last line then closes the sheet: “Completum est quod dixi de Operatione Solis.” What I have said of the operation of the sun is complete. A picture of a sun, and under it a text that ends by naming the operation of the sun. Nobody on the sheet joins the two, and the printer put them on one page.
Above the tablet the letterpress cites two Psalms, and both are about breath. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth”, and then “Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.” The plate numbers them 33 and 104 where the Douay Rheims numbers them 32 and 103.
On the ground, two more faces are held up by hand, and in both cases two pairs of hands are on them at once. A naked man with a sun and a crescent on his chest holds a sun-face between himself and a collared lion on the left; a woman in a starry cloak holds a moon-face between herself and a stag-headed man in a tunic on the right. Both figures also hold chains that run up to the disc, so the thing in the sky is tethered to the people underneath it.
The engraver cut two words into the ground, one at each side: “Phoenix. Aquila.” Each sits over a bird lying flat with its wings spread under the globes the figures stand on. Neither the engraving nor the tablet under it says which is which, or why there are two.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
In plain words One sun fills the whole upper half of the sheet, its rays cut as long spikes to the edge of the plate. Under it, on the ground, two more faces are held up by hand: a sun-face on the left and a moon-face on the right, each passed between two figures.
The plate, 1678 “Completum est quod dixi de Operatione Solis.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate's Latin, put into English here: what I have said of the operation of the sun is complete. The sentence ends the Emerald Tablet, and the picture above it is a sun. Nothing on the sheet says the one is a drawing of the other, and the two sit on the same page.
God shown, or pointed at. Look for what stands where a face would be: a name in a cloud, a circle above the top of a diagram, a ring of verses, a sign over a head.
In plain words At the top of the sun, in a clear oval the rays do not cross, stand the four Hebrew letters of the Name. Nothing else on the plate is given that much empty space.
Symbolica, 2026 The archive prints the Name as the four letters the plate cuts and does not vocalise it. The same four letters sit at the centre of the Trinity on FIGURA I of this set.
The mark of an errand rather than a nature. Note whether the wings are open, folded, or given to the figure by someone else.
In plain words Winged heads crowd the space between the Name and the disc, packed close and overlapping, with two small figures in their own roundels either side. The plate names none of them and gives them no ranks, which is what FIGURA I of the same set exists to do.
Symbolica, 2026 Observed and left unread. Neither the engraving nor the letterpress under it names these heads or sorts them, and the archive does not import the names from the first plate of the set.
A diagram of everything, drawn so that a person can be found inside it. Note where the human figure stands in the scheme.
In plain words The disc is written in rings. The outer one names three years in a row, the year of the winds, the solar year and the starry year, with the twelve signs beyond them and a field of stars. Inside that, three more rings, one for mercury, one for sulphur and one for salt, and each of the three is divided into thirds with a different grade named in each third.
The plate, 1678 “ANNVS VENTORVM. ANNVS SOLARIS. ANNVS STELLATVS.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate's Latin, put into English here: the year of the winds, the solar year, the starry year.
The plate, 1678 “Mercurius Philosophorum. Mercurius corporeum. Mercurius Vulgaris. Sulphur Fixum. Sulphur Aethereum. Sulphur Combustibile. Sal Centrale. Sal Elementorum. Sal Terrenum.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate's Latin, put into English here: the mercury of the philosophers, bodily mercury, common mercury; fixed sulphur, aethereal sulphur, combustible sulphur; central salt, the salt of the elements, earthly salt. Three substances, three grades apiece, and nine names on one disc.
The short text the whole tradition quotes, and the one sentence of it everybody knows. This collection holds it four ways: printed entire, carved into a rock, split across two obelisks, and held out in a hand.
In plain words At the centre of every ring sits a triangle with signs inside it and a line of writing round it: four fires are found for the work. Under the engraving the printer set the Emerald Tablet entire, headed as such, and its last sentence names the operation of the sun.
The plate, 1678 “Quatuor Ignes ad opus reperuntur.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate's Latin, put into English here: four fires are found for the work.
The plate, 1678 “SMARAGDINA HERMETIS TABVLA. VErum, sine mendacio, Certum & verissimum: Quod est inferius, est sicut quod est Superius, & quod est Superius est sicut quod est inferius ad perpetranda miracula Rei Unius.”
The plate, 1678 “SIC MUNDUS CREATUS EST.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate's Latin, put into English here: the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. True, without falsehood, certain and most true: what is below is as what is above, and what is above is as what is below, to accomplish the miracles of the one thing. And, in the larger capitals the printer used once: thus the world was created.
The plate, 1678 “ab hac Una Re Adaptatione. Pater Ejus est Sol, Mater Ejus Luna.”
The plate, 1678 “Nutrix ejus Terra est. Pater omnis Telesmi totius mundi est hic. Vis ejus integra est”
What rises and what comes back down. Note whether the bird is flying, caught, or paired with a second one.
In plain words Two birds lie along the bottom of the plate, one at each side, and the engraver cut a name into the ground above each: Phoenix on the left, Aquila on the right. Both are drawn the same way, heads raised and wings spread flat under the globes the figures stand on.
The plate, 1678 “Phoenix. Aquila.”
Symbolica, 2026 The plate labels the two birds and says nothing else about them. Which stands for what is not written on the sheet, and the archive leaves it unread rather than borrowing a reading from somewhere else.
Also carrying the Sun and the Moon
59 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
Where the detail is the subject
the Divine · the Angel and the Wing · the Heavens · the Triangle and the Pyramid · the Bird
Each of these is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about each.
In the same series
Record
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