This ancient phrase – a real occult classic – is attributed to the “Emerald Tablet“, a bit of lost (or invented) arcana that was of great interest to an eclectic series of early alchemists, philosophers and scientists including Aleister Crowley and Issac Newton, who produced the canonical English translation. AASB succinctly encapsulates the idea that “man is the counterpart of God on earth; as God is man’s counterpart in heaven” – and since God and man are one and of each other’s invention, then so are the real and the imagined.
To me this phrase is a more elegant way of saying “everything is connected” (Barry Commoner), and a reminder that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Arthur C. Clarke).
Listen closely to the ether of which we are made.