"That which is Above is equal to that which is Below."
โ The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
There is a deeper truth hidden in those words than most realize. For if everything is One in its origin โ if all life springs from the same divine source โ then enmity is not reality. It is a story. A story that was told to us, that we swallowed without tasting, and that we then passed on to our children as if it were an heirloom.
This article is about the people โ and the animals โ who refused to believe that story.
You were born on one side of a wall. Your mother pointed to the other side and whispered: "That's where the others live." At school you learned that those others thought differently, believed differently, smelled differently. On the news you saw images that confirmed it. Friends you loved repeated the story. Politicians built the wall higher with every speech.
You have never met that person on the other side. But you already know what they're like. Or do you?
Part I โ Humans
In 1983, a Black jazz pianist walked into a bar in Maryland. His name was Daryl Davis. After his performance, a white man began enthusiastically talking about his music. They got into a conversation. They laughed. They drank together.
At the end of the evening, the man confessed: "I am a member of the Ku Klux Klan."
Davis faced a choice. Answer hatred with hatred. Or remain curious. He chose the latter. He began seeking out KKK members โ not to confront, not to convert, simply to ask: "How can you hate me if you don't know me?" He listened. He let them speak. He kept coming back.
Over the years, more than 200 KKK members laid down their robes โ some gave him their robes as a parting gift. Davis never asked anyone to give up their membership. He simply did what his enemies didn't expect: he treated them as human beings.
Every man who hung up his hood had once learned to hate from his father, his community, his culture. He had rarely or never truly gotten to know a Black person. The enmity was not his own. It had been implanted in him โ and could be removed by something as simple as a conversation, a meal, a musical evening.
In 2007, Abir Aramin was shot dead by an Israeli soldier. She was ten years old and was buying candy after school. Her father Bassam was a former Palestinian fighter who had spent years in an Israeli prison.
In the same decade, Rami Elhanan lost his daughter Smadar in a suicide bombing. Rami, an Israeli graphic designer, had held her dying in his arms.
They met each other in The Parents Circle โ an organization of Israeli and Palestinian families who had all lost someone in the conflict. Today, Bassam and Rami travel the world together. They stand together on stages. They sleep at each other's family homes.
Bassam says: "I didn't choose to lose my daughter. But I chose what I did with my pain afterward."
Rami says: "I could hate. Or I could understand. Hatred heals nothing."
Even the deepest wound โ the loss of a child โ need not become cement for eternal enmity. If these two men can find each other, what is our excuse for lesser grievances?
Imagine spending 27 years in a cell. That the man who defended the system that imprisoned you now sits across from you at a negotiation table.
Nelson Mandela had every right to hate. He chose forgiveness โ not out of weakness, but as the most powerful act he could perform. In 1990, Mandela and F.W. de Klerk truly met each other for the first time, as human beings. Neither was the lie that the other had been taught about him. Together they led South Africa past the brink of civil war โ peacefully. In 1993, they received the Nobel Peace Prize together.
De Klerk was not a born monster. He was a product of his environment. And Mandela, shaped by imprisonment and injustice, found within himself the strength to look beyond that environment to the human being.
It is December 25, 1914. The First World War is five months old. Trenches cut through the Belgian landscape like scars.
And then the unthinkable happens. German soldiers begin singing Christmas carols. They light candles along the trench edge. British soldiers hear it from the mud on the other side.
One by one, men climb out of their trenches. They walk toward each other in no man's land. They shake hands. They exchange cigarettes and food. Some play football together. For twenty-four hours they ceased fire โ of their own accord, without orders โ because they realized that the man on the other side was also a son, also a father, also someone who was cold and longed for home.
Enmity is an order from above. Humanity is what remains when you ignore that order and simply look at the person standing before you.
Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and Richard I of England were each other's arch-enemies on the battlefield. And yet: when Richard fell ill during the siege, Saladin sent his own personal physician to him. They exchanged letters full of mutual respect. After the Third Crusade, they reached an agreement allowing Christian pilgrims to visit Jerusalem safely.
Two men who were supposed to kill each other in the name of God found, in the same humanity that God had placed in both of them, a bridge.
Even on the battlefield, surrounded by centuries of religious indoctrination, these two men could recognize an equal in the other. Because humanity is older than any religion, any ideology, any wall that people build.
Enmity is nothing more than forgetting who stands before you.
Who in my life do I regard as "the other"? Have I ever truly met that person? Or have I built my image of them from the words of others?
Part II โ The Animals
There is something that children know that adults forget. There is something that animals know that humans forget. Namely: if you grow up together, there is no enemy.
On an African wildlife farm in Zimbabwe, a lion cub grew up alongside a small dachshund. The lion had lost his mother. The dog had not yet developed his fear.
They played together. They slept together. The lion grew big. The dog stayed small. And yet: not a single moment of aggression. Only recognition. This is my brother. This is my friend.
Biologically speaking, the lion should have understood: this small creature is food. But biology is not the only thing that counts. A bond had been forged in the early, formless time โ before the lion learned what "prey" was. That bond proved stronger than instinct.
Enmity must be learned. Love is the ground state โ what remains when you leave out the learning.
In 1969, two Australians, John Rendall and Ace Berg, bought a lion cub at Harrods in London. They named him Christian. They raised him in their apartment, played with him in the garden of a nearby church.
But a lion cannot stay in London forever. They sent Christian to Africa, to a rehabilitation program. A year later, they flew back. Everyone told them: "He won't recognize you. He's a wild lion now."
They went anyway.
When Christian saw them approaching from afar, he began to run. Not to attack. To greet them. He jumped on them. He pressed his great head against their faces. He embraced them โ literally โ while his pride looked on.
The memory of love had survived a year of wildness. Decades later, the video went viral on YouTube and moved millions of people to tears.
โถ Watch: Christian the Lion โ Full Story (YouTube)Christian had learned everything a lion needs to learn to survive in Africa. But the bond forged in the early, innocent time was indelible. A year in the wild could not erase what was inscribed in the core of his being. That is what the Hermetic tradition calls "the soul": the unchangeable core that remains when everything that has been learned is shed.
After the tsunami of 2004, a young hippo calf was found on the Kenyan coast, completely alone. His mother had been swept away by the waves. In the wildlife reserve, he immediately attached himself to a 130-year-old giant tortoise named Mzee.
Owen followed Mzee everywhere. He slept beside him. Mzee โ who normally avoids all approach โ let him be. A motherless child had found comfort in the most unlikely figure imaginable.
Despair does not seek its own kind. It seeks presence. Warmth. Continuity. The "enmity" between a hippo and a tortoise does not exist in nature โ it only exists in our heads when we think in categories. The animals thought in feelings.
There is no animal that has filled the human imagination with more fear than the shark. Decades of films, news reports, and warnings have created one image: a cold, mechanical killing machine without feeling.
Ocean Ramsey decided to test the story herself. She stepped into the water โ not once, but thousands of times. With tiger sharks, great whites, bull sharks โ without a cage, without a weapon. Queen Nikki is a tiger shark over five meters long that lives off the coast of Hawaii. Ocean Ramsey has known her for more than twenty years โ she was there when Queen Nikki was still young.
"Fear exists where knowledge is absent. And knowledge only exists when you dare to come close โ not with a weapon, but with attention."
โถ Watch: Ocean Ramsey โ YouTube channelThe shark you fear does not exist in reality. It exists in a movie theater from 1975, in news that magnifies the worst. Queen Nikki is not a monster. She is an old lady who has been swimming in the same sea for more than two decades alongside a human who loved her.
Where others used dominance โ sticks, fear, commands โ Kevin Richardson chose something his colleagues found absurd: he treated the lions as equals. He learned their language. He studied their eyes. He slept beside them. Today he is a recognized member of 39 lions on a private wildlife reserve outside Pretoria.
But what truly moves is the hyenas. If there is one animal that humanity has collectively decided to hate โ ugly, ominous, cowardly โ it is the hyena. In dozens of cultures, the hyena symbolizes evil itself.
Richardson went to live among them. And the hyenas leaned against him and let him rub their bellies.
"A lion is not a possession. It is a conscious being. You must pay attention and build your bond like in any relationship."
โถ Watch: Kevin Richardson โ Lion Whisperer TVThe hyena that is feared in every fairy tale is in reality an intelligent, social animal with a rich family structure and a deep capacity for bonding. The ugliness was a story. And Kevin Richardson was the one who dared to refute that story โ not with words, but by simply going to sleep among them.
In a traveling circus in Siberia, a black leopard cub was born. On the seventh day, her mother refused to feed her any longer. Victoria, a Russian woman, took Luna to her apartment โ together with her rottweiler Venza.
Step by step. Scent by scent, glance by glance. Until one day the moment that made millions of people around the world gasp: Luna and Venza, side by side on the couch. Luna licks the rottweiler's fur clean. Venza rests his head on Luna's black flank.
Now they are inseparable. They play in the Siberian snow. They sleep together.
โถ Watch: Luna the Pantera โ YouTube channelLuna never learned that they were supposed to be enemies. That is the key word: she never learned it. Enmity must be learned. Love is the ground state โ what remains when you leave out the learning.
The Synthesis โ What Humans and Animals Teach Us Together
What do they all have in common?
The Black man who embraced KKK members. The two fathers who lost their daughters to the same war. The soldiers who stopped shooting on Christmas Day. The lion who recognized his people after a year in the wild. The hippo who found comfort in a tortoise.
They refused to believe what they had been told about the other. They stepped through the wall of words, images, stories, fears, and conditioning โ and they looked at what was truly there.
And what was truly there?
A being. With a heart. With a need for connection. With the same ground of being as themselves.
The Hermetic Core
The Hermetic tradition teaches us that the world of forms โ the world of names, categories, borders, enemies, and allies โ is merely a reflection of a deeper reality.
In that deeper reality, all is one.
The spark that burns in you also burns in your enemy. The intelligence that moves you also moves them. The divine force that the universe breathes out, breathes both of you out.
Enmity is not the language of the Soul. It is the language of the Personality โ shaped by fear, by group, by repetition. Every time a human โ or an animal โ breaks through that layer and truly sees the other, they prove something fundamental:
Love is not something people do despite their nature. Love is their nature. Everything before it is conditioning.
Is there someone in your life you consider an "enemy"? As "the other," as "impossible," as "fundamentally different from me"?
How well do you truly know that person?
And how much of what you think you know have you experienced yourself โ and how much did you receive from others who also never crossed to the other side?
The wall exists. But it is built of words. And words can be silenced.
The greatest enemy of humanity is not the other. It is the illusion that the other exists.
โก Want to go deeper?
This article is part of the Hermetic Course on HermeticWisdom.org. Discover how the Eternal Flow from Sumer to Hermes has carried this same lesson through all great traditions.