In this episode of The Adventure Story Podcast, I'm joined by Andrew Clawson, bestselling author of thrillers and adventure novels, for a captivating deep dive into the enigmatic Emerald Tablet. 

We explore the tablet's myth, tracing the mysterious artifact’s journey through time—from its rumored roots in ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology to its influence during the Persian Empire.  

Andrew reveals how this powerful symbol of alchemy and ancient wisdom has inspired his storytelling, and how it weaves into the plots of his gripping novels. We also discuss undiscovered ancient civilizations and their influence on adventure storytelling! 

The Emerald Tablet by Andrew Clawson is available here. Here's what it's all about:  

An ancient Persian relic. A message etched in stone. A deadly quest across the globe to reveal the forbidden truth. 

Recovering ancient relics for the Italian mob can be deadly. When Harry Fox narrowly outwits a thieving artifacts dealer to escape with his life, he quickly discovers he came away with more than he bargained for. The stone tablet with a strange tale etched on it tells of lost knowledge from the cradle of civilization – the ancient Persian Empire.  

If Harry Fox thought hunting artifacts for the mob was dangerous, he has no idea what’s in store as he hurtles toward disaster to uncover the truth behind the Emerald Tablet. 

Takeaways: 

• The Emerald Tablet is a legendary idea more than a real artifact, tied to alchemy and mysterious ancient wisdom. 
• Its most famous line is “As above, so below,” hinting at a link between the cosmos and the human soul. 
• It was likely written in Arabic around the 6th–8th century and later translated into Latin, fueling Renaissance interest in alchemy. 
• It blends Egyptian, Greek, and Islamic thought, showing how ancient cultures influenced one another. 
• Though short, the tablet’s dense symbolism has inspired centuries of mystical, philosophical, and scientific interpretations. 

Got a Story Idea? 

If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you! 

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A missing Picasso... A master thief... A thrilling race against time! 

When a priceless Picasso disappears in Paris, legendary thief Bernard Moreau is the prime suspect. But as two unlikely allies—Eden Black and Adriana Villa—hunt him down, the chase turns deadly. It’s a race through the shadowed streets of Paris, where every twist is as unpredictable as the city itself. 

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Mentioned in this episode:

Join us on the trail of the Knight's Templar

www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour For the first time ever, we're inviting you to join us on one of our adventures. And what better place to start than one of my favourite destinations… Portugal. But we’re not just going for the beaches and the wine, we’re following in the footsteps of one of history's most enigmatic organisations... the Knights Templar. We're going on the trail of the Templars in Portugal! Over five days and four nights, we'll guide you from the winding streets of Lisbon to the hilltop castle of Almourol, the sacred halls of Tomar's Convent of Christ, and the enchanting esoteric grottoes of Quinta da Regaleira—the very place that inspired my book The Templar Enigma. www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

Ancient secrets, lost knowledge, and a mysterious tablet said to contain the key to alchemy, immortality and the very fabric of the universe.

For centuries, scholars, alchemists and conspiracy theorists have chased the legend of the Emerald Tablet.

But what if its secrets were hidden not in medieval Europe, but deep in the heart of the ancient Persian Empire?

Hey, I'm Luke.

I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.

I travel 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 best selling 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.

Oh, I'm excited to be here.

Look, I'm great.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, you're very, very welcome.

So the Emerald Tablet, this is what I'm excited to talk about because I have to confess, I don't know very much about this.

So it'll be really interesting to pick your brains and no doubt get inspired by what you're going to say.

I've read it's one of the most mysterious artifacts in history.

So what is the story behind it?

And why do you think the Emerald Tablet has fascinated people and fascinated you to make it the subject of one of your books?

So I think you are not alone in not knowing much about this because from everything I've read, not many people know much about it at all and kind of make up their own version.

So I can give you a quick overview of what I found out during my research and then you're going to 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, Trismegistus and Hermes, I don't know about that last name, but Hermes is a combination of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth.

And this kind of came together over time.

And 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, 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.

So sort of on the heels of the philosopher's stone and all of that sort of stuff.

Yes, yes.

This goes back to obviously the Egyptian times, thousands of years ago.

But the first time of the actual Emerald Tablet comes from an Arabic text in the 8th century.

So obviously these ideas were around for a thousand or two thousand years before anybody actually wrote down Emerald Tablet.

The Arabic texts were then translated into Latin and it disseminated across the world to.

Until what we have today is this idea that it does contain an alchemical recipe.

That's the general consensus now, or at least the most popular version of the story.

And 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 ascends 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.

Absolutely right.

And I love how these, a lot of these legends are so open ended, aren't they?

As you say, a great power, a bright light, something.

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

It does really.

And it, you know, it ties back to a time when I think people were really struggling to define the world and understand the world around them, you know, usually.

And obviously from the times of the pyramids of the original, the great empires in Egypt to what some people call the Dark Ages when people were really just struggling to make sense of the world.

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.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

So it's not a physical thing to be found, you know, it's not like the Holy Grail or like what we imagine the Holy Grail to be.

It's more of a recipe, a thing, a way of life.

Perhaps, yes.

I think that something it did for folks who would.

Would reference this is it served as a source of inspiration.

This Emerald Tablet idea.

You could kind of.

It was malleable and you could mold it to what you want it to be.

For example, it 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 alchemist holy grail.

You know, they wanted to obviously get rich quick, 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.

I see.

So how did you come about this legend?

Cause you obviously this has inspired you to pick up the pen and write that first book in this.

It is the first book in your series, isn't it, that involves this?

It's one of the first ones, yes.

Yeah, it's the first one that deals with an ancient artifact.

So the second overall.

Yes, one of the first one.

It came to my attention, honestly, kind of in a tangential manner.

I saw a documentary on the tomb of Saqqara in Egypt.

It's a necropolis thousands of years old.

There are all sorts of ancient kings buried there that 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.

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 Thoth, 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 conception.

And what I thought was, it would be neat if I could tie this idea of the Emerald Tablet as an object to an ancient dynasty from the Persian Empire, not even the Egyptians.

I said, no, let's go with the Persians.

They've got some interesting stuff going on there.

Yeah.

So you tied them together.

And tell me, why did you choose ancient Persia?

Because I think that's a really interesting period in history.

I think it's a part of the world as well that we don't often visit in our stories.

Egypt is always visited in adventure stories.

It seems to be Very, very popular.

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.

Yes, no, that's a great point.

So, you know, in terms of how we talked about the Emerald Tablet, we went back to a Persian general named Megabyzus, and he's a real God and his tomb does exist, and it is incredible.

Megabyzus lived around 450 years before BCE and he was associated in history with the king Xerxes, which a lot of people are probably familiar with from the movie 300.

Well, this was Xerxes II.

There were a lot of these Xerxes guys.

It's a pretty popular name.

I'm sure you could probably think of some kings names that you see over and over again, like King Louis XV or whatever in France.

So Xerxes and Megabyzus were part of the Persian Empire, also the Achaemenid 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.

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, cities, 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.

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

That's mad, isn't it?

And you wouldn't even think about that.

You'd think of the Romans or you'd think of, I don't know, the Mongols or something like this, wouldn't you?

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

Yeah, yeah, it was wild.

And it was all, you know, I think a lot of it stems from, you know, the Middle east being the cradle of civilization, the cradle of humanity.

Most people sprang from around there before they emigrated elsewhere, but they had control over the most people in the history of the world.

And the idea of somebody possessing that amount of power, it was tantalizing.

And I thought, if anybody's going to be able to figure out what this really means, it's probably those guys, because they're going to have all the resources they would ever need.

Yes, I agree with you.

And there must be undiscovered 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.

Oh.

So part of when I was watching that documentary about Saqqara, they're still uncovering tombs in there.

It's kind of like the Valley of the Kings in Egypt where they found Tutankhamun's tomb.

They don't know what else is out there.

So 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 the what if aspect of what's coming next.

Yes, absolutely.

This is something I'm researching for my next book, in fact, which will be set in the Sahara, because 10,000 years ago or something like this, that area was very tropical and had lots of forest.

So it's very, very different to what it looks like today.

So it's quite conceivable in my writer's mind that there could have been life in the wilds of the Sahara Desert in those times that have become buried under the sand.

And because it's a desert now, no one thinks to even look there.

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

Well, and then to carry on that point, you know, what if somebody like General Megabyzus conquered them and these people didn't have any written records, so nobody has any idea what's there.

You know, the thoughts that there are just completely undiscovered and unknown civilizations waiting to be found.

Which, if I had to guess, I would say that's certainly true.

What we can learn from them is just incredible.

And it's fertile ground for making up stories, which we like to do.

Yeah, absolutely right.

Yeah, I think that's true.

So getting away from the Sahara and Persia and these sorts of places, 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 chosen place?

Well, I can tell you it wouldn't be the jungle because it is too wet.

There are too many things that can eat you and kill you out there.

True that.

It wouldn't be there for.

Forget that stuff.

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 going to 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 Rome, modern Italian cities, once you dig down maybe 100ft 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.

That's true.

There's gotta be some secrets there, you know, and we're not even getting into the Vatican archives, which is a podcast for a different day.

That's the truth.

Absolutely right.

Absolutely right.

You've mentioned a few there.

Do you feel like there's a particular era that you continue to return to with your writing?

I know you've written all over the place.

Greece and ancient Egypt and these sorts of places.

Is there a place that just sort of has its claws in you?

I think that the area around Europe.

So in your part of the world, I think that is the most fascinating place because for me, at least a lot of folks, Americans came from Europe.

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's a personal preference.

I know that you, you know, I know your stories.

You have a vast geographic range you cover in 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.

Yeah, I can understand that.

I think there's a rich history in this part of the world that's.

It's also well documented, as you've said.

I think it's much more difficult if you start looking at history of, as we've described, civilizations that aren't around anymore or have been assimilated by other.

Other people.

Their records aren't quite as well kept, quite as accessible, I suppose.

Yes.

And finally you sort of mentioned it there like you're an adventure story writer.

What Books, movies or legends or travel or places sparked your imagination into this sort of adventure story realm.

Well, the first one I think is the most obvious.

The Indiana Jones movies are of course one of them.

Gotta be.

I think you and I are probably on the same page there.

I remember sitting watching those with my dad as a kid, being scared to death when Molran pulled that guy's heart out.

But the sense of exploration was.

Was incredible.

Another one, I would say, I remember reading La Mort D Arthur, 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.

Chances are he was a Roman Britain, but just the idea that back then the world was waiting to be discovered.

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 adventures, they were little detective novels.

They're pretty popular here in America.

I don't know, 75 years ago those were part of them.

Those are the main ones, I'd say.

Also of course, the mummy stories, not necessarily the Brendan Fraser 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 kind of a bubbling stew of other stories.

Love that and absolutely right.

And I can see a lot of similarities between us both there in terms of the things that have inspired us.

Yeah.

Andrew, tell us where we can find you and your books online.

So just my website.

Andrewclassen.com Amazon I have all the audiobooks out there anywhere books are sold, but just my website's the best place online.

That was fantastic, Andrew, thanks so much.

My pleasure, Luke.

Thanks for having me.

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