From bottom to top
huile sur toile, 100×100 cm
“What is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below,” teaches the second proposition of the Emerald Tablet. Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the “thrice great,” a mythical philosopher whose earliest references date back to the second century BC in the writings of scholars from the city of Alexandria, Egypt, then occupied by the Greeks, the Emerald Tablet itself is believed to have been written around the third century AD. For Hermes Trismegistus, this unknown figure who exists only for those who have heard of him, is the resurgent myth of the founder of Hermeticism (this initiatory knowledge), the bearer of a revelation that incorporates that of the god Thoth of ancient Egypt and will develop through Kabbalah and alchemy over the centuries, while Neo-Platonic Christians will make him a sort of prophet of the Christic epiphany. The thought of analogy is at the heart of the alchemical dream. From bottom to top, the snail dribbles in the sky like a shooting star.
