Few phrases from the ancient world have traveled as far as “as above, so below.” Behind those four words lies a tradition connecting philosophy, religion, astrology, alchemy, and one of humanity’s oldest questions: what relationship exists between ourselves and the universe around us?
“As above, so below.”
Today the phrase appears everywhere from books on philosophy and esotericism to artwork, jewelry, tattoos, and popular culture.
Its underlying idea seems deceptively simple.
The small reflects the large.
The earthly reflects the celestial.
The individual can somehow reveal something about the greater universe of which it is a part.
But the history behind the phrase leads into a much older and more complicated intellectual world — one centered around the mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus.
Who Was Hermes Trismegistus?
Hermes Trismegistus was not an ordinary historical author.
He was a legendary figure created from the meeting of Greek and Egyptian religious traditions.
The Greeks associated their god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth. Both were connected in different ways with writing, knowledge, language, wisdom, and the transmission of hidden or divine information.
From this cultural fusion emerged Hermes Trismegistus — Hermes the Thrice-Great.
Over time, an enormous body of philosophical, astrological, magical, and alchemical literature became associated with his name.
To later readers, Hermes could appear to be an ancient sage possessing knowledge reaching back toward the earliest civilizations.
His authority became immense.
And the tradition associated with him became known as Hermeticism.
The Hermetic Texts
Among the most important surviving Hermetic writings is the collection now called the Corpus Hermeticum.
These texts were composed in the intellectual environment of Greco-Roman Egypt during the first centuries of the Common Era.
They emerged from a world where cultures met.
Greek philosophical traditions interacted with Egyptian religion and other currents of thought circulating throughout the Mediterranean world.
The subjects discussed in the Hermetic writings are equally expansive.
God.
The cosmos.
The human mind.
Nature.
Creation.
Knowledge.
The relationship between humanity and the divine.
Rather than presenting a single organized doctrine, the texts often take the form of philosophical conversations in which Hermes instructs students about the nature of reality.
At their center is a recurring fascination with connection.
Human beings are not presented simply as isolated creatures occupying an indifferent universe.
They exist within a larger cosmic order.
Understanding oneself therefore becomes connected with understanding that order.
The Emerald Tablet
The famous phrase “as above, so below” is associated not directly with the Corpus Hermeticum, but with another text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus: the Emerald Tablet.
The Emerald Tablet is remarkably short.
Yet few texts of comparable length have produced such an enormous symbolic legacy.
Its earliest known forms survive through the medieval Arabic tradition, and versions were later translated into Latin and circulated throughout Europe.
One of its central statements describes a correspondence between what is above and what is below.
The familiar English phrase “as above, so below” is a later condensation of that idea rather than a literal ancient four-word quotation.
But it captures the concept extraordinarily well.
What happens on one level of reality can correspond to what occurs on another.
The greater world can be reflected in the smaller.
The cosmos and the individual can be understood as connected rather than completely separate.
That principle became enormously influential in later Hermetic and alchemical thought.
The Microcosm and the Macrocosm
One of the most enduring expressions of this idea is the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm.
The macrocosm is the greater universe.
The microcosm is the smaller world — particularly the human being.
The individual becomes, symbolically, a universe in miniature.
This idea appeared in different forms throughout ancient and medieval philosophy and was not exclusive to Hermeticism. But Hermetic thought provided especially fertile ground for it.
The movements of the heavens could correspond with earthly events.
The structures of nature could correspond with structures within humanity.
Transformation occurring within matter could correspond with transformation occurring within the self.
The universe became a system of relationships.
And symbols became one way of expressing those relationships.
Lost and Rediscovered
Hermetic writings did not remain continuously influential in Western Europe.
For centuries, many of the Greek texts that would later compose the Corpus Hermeticum were largely unavailable in the Latin West.
That changed dramatically during the Renaissance.
In the fifteenth century, manuscripts containing Hermetic texts reached Florence, where they attracted the attention of Cosimo de’ Medici.
Cosimo commissioned the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino to translate them from Greek into Latin.
Ficino completed his translation in the 1460s.
The timing mattered.
Renaissance scholars were already intensely interested in recovering ancient Greek philosophy and literature. The Hermetic writings appeared to offer something extraordinary: wisdom attributed to an ancient Egyptian sage who was believed at the time to have lived in remote antiquity.
Renaissance readers did not yet know that the surviving philosophical Hermetic texts had actually been written much later.
To them, Hermes Trismegistus appeared to represent a source of extremely ancient wisdom.
The effect was profound.
Hermeticism and the Renaissance
The rediscovery of Hermetic writings entered a Renaissance culture already fascinated by humanity’s relationship with nature and the cosmos.
Hermetic ideas influenced discussions surrounding philosophy, astrology, magic, religion, and the dignity and potential of human beings.
The universe could be imagined as interconnected and meaningful.
Nature contained relationships waiting to be understood.
The human mind occupied a remarkable position because it possessed the ability to contemplate both itself and the larger cosmos.
These ideas did not replace Christianity or classical philosophy in Renaissance Europe.
Instead, they became part of a much larger intellectual conversation in which ancient traditions were being recovered, translated, compared, and reinterpreted.
Hermeticism became one of those recovered voices.
A Symbol That Outlived the System
Centuries later, historical scholarship fundamentally changed our understanding of the Hermetic texts.
They were no longer regarded as writings from the earliest age of Egyptian civilization.
Their historical origins could be placed within the much later world of Greco-Roman Egypt.
But something interesting happened.
The symbolism survived the correction.
“As above, so below” continued to circulate.
The relationship between microcosm and macrocosm continued to inspire philosophers, occultists, alchemists, artists, writers, and later generations interested in symbolic traditions.
The idea proved more durable than the historical assumptions that once surrounded it.
Perhaps that is because its central image remains so compelling.
Look at the universe.
Then look at yourself.
Look at the enormous.
Then look at the minute.
Look at patterns in nature and patterns created by human beings.
Again and again, we discover relationships between things that initially appear separate.
As Above, So Below
Hermeticism emerged from a world where Greek and Egyptian traditions met and where philosophy, religion, astronomy, and ideas about nature had not yet been divided into the categories we recognize today.
Its symbols traveled far beyond that world.
Hermes Trismegistus became the legendary voice of hidden wisdom.
The Emerald Tablet became one of alchemy’s most famous texts.
And a statement about correspondence became four words recognized centuries later:
As above, so below.
The phrase survives because it expresses an idea larger than any single tradition.
That the part may reflect the whole.
That the small may reveal something about the large.
And that humanity has always looked for connections between the world within and the universe beyond.
Symbols Worth Wearing.