Unveiling the Mysteries of the Emerald Tablet with Andrew Clawson

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Hey, I'm Luke. I'm an author of archeological Adventure novels. I traveled the world looking for stories to put into my books and to share with you right here on the adventure story. Podcast. Today I'm joined by Andrew Clawson, a bestselling, thriller, and adventure novelist who has woven this tantalizing mystery into a high stakes adventure.

Andrew's action packed books, including the Parker Chase series, the Turn Novels. And the Harry Fox Adventures. Take readers on high stakes journeys through history uncovering conspiracies that echo far into the present. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today.

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So what is the story behind it and why do you think the Emerald Tablet has fascinated people and fascinated you to, to make it the subject of one of your books?

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So I can give you a quick overview of what I found out during my research, and then you're gonna have to make up your own mind about it from there. So the idea of the Emerald tablet really is more of an idea as opposed to an actual artifact. It has been described in various stories as a green tablet or some type of jade tablet usually has writing on it, and that writing is a recipe of some kind.

Now, where did it all start? Nobody really knows, but the general consensus is. It all began with this mythical figure known as Hermes Tris, Magus and Hermes. I dunno about that last name, but Hermes is a combination of the Greek God, Hermes and the Egyptian God thought. And this kind of came together over time.

This idea then became associated with Alchemy, and eventually it arrived at there is a tablet with some sort of alchemical information on it, and nobody's really sure what it is. Maybe they're turning lead into gold. Maybe it's something else, but it's more of an idea than an actual physical object.

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That's the general consensus now, or at least the most popular version of this story. And the what it can produce, if you put all the right stuff together is something called the greatest power. What's that? Nobody really knows. It's open for interpretation, so it's great for stories, you know, it includes instructions like.

This sends from the earth to the heavens and then becomes ruler over the world. That which is above and that which is below. Now what does that mean? I have no idea, but it's a good place to start a story. I'll tell you that much.

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It doesn't say exactly what the thing is, but it really allows the imaginative amongst us to play with that in our stories.

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And one way to do that was through assigning these characteristics to certain ideas or objects and trying to explain things that were unexplainable. So to me, I think from what I believe and what I've come to see, this is as much of an idea as it is an object and people can interpret it as they will.

It's a great story though.

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Uh, this Emerald tablet idea, you could kind of, it was malleable and you could bold it to what you want it to be. For example, what pops up again, time and time again, especially when you get into, I'm sure you're familiar with the idea that people would turn, lead into gold. That was the mm-hmm. Alchemist, holy grail.

You know, they wanted to obviously get rich quick, uh, and they were always just one step away from being able to do it. If they could only find that last idea or that last secret ingredient, it would work. And that became the Emerald tablet that we understand today, at least in the most popular versions of the myth.

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Kind of in a tangential manner. I saw a documentary on the Tomb of Sakara in Egypt. It's a necropolis, thousands of years old. There are all sorts of ancient kings buried there. They came from the Egyptian time, pharaohs and things of that nature. And there was a reference in one of the tombs related to turning lead into gold.

Uh, and it was written on the wall of a tomb, I thought, huh? Egyptians were into that too. I didn't realize that. That's pretty cool. So I started researching that and learned more about the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God toth, which I think that's how you say it. And it kind of led to this idea of, well, you know what, this emerald tablet's more of a modern I.

eption, and by modern, I mean: 1500

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Persia just around the Mediterranean a bit further into the Middle East. No one seems to go there, and yet it's got some of the oldest civilizations in existence.

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Mega Baes lived around 450 years before BCE, and he was associated in history with the King Zees, which a lot of people were probably familiar with from the movie. 300. This was ESS the second. There were a lot of these ES guys. It's a pretty popular name. I'm sure you could probably think of some king's names that they, you see over and over again, like King Louis the 15th or whatever in France.

So ESS and mega advisors were part of the Persian Empire. Also the Ate Empire. And what I wanted to do was explore what if their version of the Emerald tablet. Existed back then, what would it be? Because again, it's more of an idea. Uh, and one thing that I thought that was neat was, this is actually true in all of history since humankind began gathering in villages, tribes, city states, and empires, none of those have exceeded the size of the Persian Empire when measured as a percentage of the world's population at the time.

In other words, in terms of how many people were alive at any given point in history, there's never been a greater empire that controls a portion of that population than the Persian Empire. That's

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One of these great sort of empires with lots, did lots of fighting with lots of armies and whatever. Yeah.

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And the idea of somebody possessing that amount of power, it was tantalizing. And I thought, if anybody's gonna be able to figure out what this really means, it's probably those guys. 'cause they're gonna have all the resources they would ever need.

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Artifacts or even civilizations themselves in that part of the, of the world that we are yet to discover. And that's the thing that gets me excited as a writer, certainly.

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They don't know what else is out there. So they're, today, digs are ongoing and they're finding new tombs and nobody knows what's waiting under the sand for us to recover. So. You know, I think we both find that fascinating and, and the what if aspect of what's coming next.

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So it's very, very different to what it looks like today. So it's quite conceivable when my. Writer's mind that there could have been life in the, in the, the wildes of the Sahara Desert in those times that have become buried under the sand. And because it's a desert now, no one thinks we even look there.

It's no one scanning it with the lidar systems or whatever else that we are using in other parts of the world because it's so vast, you wouldn't even know where to start looking.

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Mm. You know the thoughts that there are just completely undiscovered and unknown civilizations way to be found. Which if I had to guess, I would say that's certainly true. What we could learn from them is just incredible and it's fertile ground for. Making up stories, which we like to do.

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Right. Yeah, I, I think that's true. So, so getting away from the, from the Sahara and Persia and these sorts of places, or, or maybe, maybe, maybe not. If you could go on an expedition like this with your characters or in the style of your characters, where would you go? What would be your, your chosen place?

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There are too many things that can eat you and kill you out there. True that. So it wouldn't be there for, forget that stuff. Uh, I truly think that it would be interesting to uncover what we've been talking about so far to kind of dive into the deserts where. People originally came from where there are thousands upon thousands of years of history, and as you go down, you're gonna find different civilizations and the remnants of that.

So I would say I would either go to Egypt and explore there, or I would like to go to probably around Rome and Italy, because even though it's still, you know, you have modern room, modern Italian cities, once you dig down. Maybe a hundred feet into the ground. That's what Rome is built on top of. Rome is built on top of Rome, so I'd like to go there and see what's down beneath it.

I think that would be pretty cool.

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I know you've written all over the place, Greece and Ancient Egypt and these sorts of places. Is there, is there a place that just sort of has its claws in you?

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So the history, the legends, the manner of thinking, the stories we tell, they all came over from the European part of the world. And that goes back all the way to the Vikings and to Charlemagne and then before that to Alexander the Great. And that area I think provides. The most fertile soil from in which to plant our seeds of stories and then grow from there.

It, it's a personal preference. I know that the you, you know, I know your stories. You have a vast geographic range you cover and what you write, and I think that's awesome. But I think that the most interesting stories, to me at least, and it probably stems from what I read growing up as a kid, you know, like King Arthur stories, things of that nature come from the European areas like France, Germany, England, places like that.

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Other people, their, their records aren't quite as well, kept quite, are quite as accessible, I suppose.

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Another one I would say, I remember reading La Morte de Artur, which was the origin for the Arthur stories. I thought that was fascinating in terms of the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table blending the mysticism of that time with the semi factual history. There probably was some guy named Arthur, or chances are he was a Roman Britain.

But just the idea that back then the world was waiting to be discovered. Uh, so I'd say. The written word as much as the movies that we see, honestly, kids books. Like if you remember the Nancy Drew inventors, they were little detective novels. Uh, they're pretty popular here in America, I don't know, seven, five years ago.

Uh, those were, those were part of them. Those are the main ones. I'd say also, of course, the Mummy stories, you know, not necessarily the Brendan Frazier movies, but the idea that. Mixing the monsters from back then with the actual history of these great vast empires that existed that we didn't know a whole lot about until recently.

Just really a, a kind of a bubbling stew of other stories.

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And if you need more adventure in your life, and let's be honest, who doesn't? You might like to join the Adventure Society. This weekly newsletter is your ticket to travel with me, share real world adventures, and find out. First, when a new story or season of this podcast drops, Luke Richardson, author slash Adventure Society is where you need to go to sign up for all of that adventurous goodness.

And if you are a fan of adventure stories like the one we've told today, check out my books@lukerichardsonauthor.com bon voyage. Enjoy the adventure and I'll see you next time.