philosophers' stone

The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1771.

The philosopher's stone (Latin: lapis philosophorum) is a legendary alchemical substance, supposedly capable of turning base metals, especially lead, into gold (chrysopoeia); it was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality.

For a long time, it was the most sought-after goal in Western alchemy, meditated upon by alchemists like Sir Isaac Newton, Nicolas Flamel, and Frater Albertus.

The Stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection, enlightenment, heavenly bliss, theophany and of the Christ. The discovery of the philosopher's stone was known as the Great Work.^[1]

Names

Numerous synonyms were used to make oblique reference to the stone, such as "white stone" (calculus albus, identified with the calculus candidus of Revelation 2:17 which was taken as a symbol of the glory of heaven^[2]), vitriol (as expressed in the backronym Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem), also lapis noster, lapis occultus, in water at the box, and numerous oblique, mystical or mythological references such as Adam, Aer, Animal, Antidotus, Antimonium, Aqua benedicta, Aqua volans per aeram, Arcanum^{[disambiguation needed]}, Atramentum, Autumnus, Basilicus, Brutorum cor, Bufo, Capillus, Capistrum auri, Carbones, Cerberus, Chaos, Cinis cineris, Crocus, Dominus philosophorum, Draco elixir, Filius ignis, Fimus, Folium, Frater, Granum, Granum frumenti, Haematites, Hepar, Herba, Herbalis, Lac, Melancholia, Ovum philosophorum, Panacea salutifera, Pandora, Phoenix, Pyrites, Radices arboris solares, Regina, Rex regum, Sal metallorum, Salvator terrenus, Talcum, Thesaurus, Ventus hermetis.^[3] Many of the medieval allegories for the Christ were adopted for the lapis, and the Christ and the Stone were indeed taken as identical in a mystical sense. The name of "Stone" or lapis itself is informed by early Christian allegory, such as Priscillian (4th century), who stated Unicornis est Deus, nobis petra Christus, nobis lapis angularis Jesus, nobis hominum homo Christus.^[4]

History

Middle Ages

The 8th-century Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (Latinized as Geber) analyzed each classical element in terms of the four basic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. Fire was both hot and dry, earth cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air hot and moist. He further theorized that every metal was a combination of these four principles, two of them interior and two exterior. From this premise, it was reasoned that the transmutation of one metal into another could be affected by the rearrangement of its basic qualities. This change would presumably be mediated by a substance, which came to be called al-iksir in Arabic (from which the Western term elixir is derived). It is often considered to exist as a dry red powder (also known as al-Kibrit al-Ahmar الكبريت الأحمر—red sulphur) made from a legendary stone—the philosopher's stone.^[5][6] Jabir's theory was based on the concept that metals like gold and silver could be hidden in alloys and ores, from which they could be recovered by the appropriate chemical treatment. Jabir himself is believed to be the inventor of aqua regia, a mixture of muriatic (hydrochloric) and nitric acids, one of the few substances that can dissolve gold (and which is still often used for gold recovery and purification).

In the 11th century, there was a debate among Muslim chemists on whether the transmutation of substances was possible. A leading opponent was Avicenna (Ibn Sina), who discredited the theory of transmutation of substances:

According to legend, the 13th-century scientist and philosopher Albertus Magnus is said to have discovered the philosopher's stone and passed it to his pupil Thomas Aquinas, shortly before his death circa 1280. Magnus does not confirm he discovered the stone in his writings, but he did record that he witnessed the creation of gold by "transmutation".^[8]

Renaissance to Early Modern period

The 16th-century Swiss alchemist Philippus Paracelsus believed in the existence of alkahest, which he thought to be an undiscovered element from which all other elements (earth, fire, water, air) were simply derivative forms. Paracelsus believed that this element was, in fact, the philosopher's stone.

The Alphabeticall Table (an index) to the 1658 edition of Sir Thomas Browne's encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica includes the entry, 'Philosopher's Stone, not imposssible to be procured'.

A mystical text published in the 17th century called the Mutus Liber appears to be a symbolic instruction manual for concocting a philosopher's stone. Called the "wordless book", it was a collection of 15 illustrations.

Alchemical process

The Tabula Smaragdina is the oldest document^[9] which provides a "recipe" for the creation of the Stone. According to this description, which was taken as the basis of numerous later works, the procedure consists of seven stages:

1. solutio or liquefactio, the "dissolution" or "liquidation" of the materia prima

2. putrefactio, also nigredo, a "blackening" or a descent into the nether sphere in which the materia becomes black or putrid. This stage is symbolized by the raven and by the burial of a dead body in the earth.

3. albedo or "lightening", the putrid or blackened substance is made white or pure once again, symbolized by the transition of the raven into a white dove.

4. citrinitatio or "yellowing". The materia must be re-enriched by "philosophical milk" or lacta philosophica, the completion of which is indicated by the assumption of a yellow colour, symbolized as cauda pavonis or peacock's tail.

5. destillatio, or "reddening", symbolized by a red dragon

6. coagulatio or fixatio, a coagulation or solidification of the materia

7. tinctura, the completion of the lapis

Other sources name twelve stages, the first seven corresponding to those above, but with an added five steps following the production of the tinctura:

1. calcinatio (solidification by fire, ruled by Mercury),

2. putrefactio or mortificatio (purification by decay of the impure components, ruled by Saturn),

3. sublimatio (sublimation of the materia into volatile form, symbolized by a chalice or a raven's head on which a little white bird is sitting, ruled by Jupiter)

4. solutio (symbolized by the "silver queen" riding a griffin, ruled by the Moon)

5. distillatio (ruled by Venus)

6. coagulatio (symbolized by hieros gamos, by an androgynous figure or a combination of a unicorn and a stag, ruled by Mars)

7. extractio (ruled by the Sun)

8. digestio

9. ceratio

10. fermentatio

11. multiplicatio

12. projectio, the final transmutation of the base metal into gold.^[10]

Alchemists once thought a key component in the creation of the stone was a mythical element named carmot.^[11][12]

Psychoanalytical interpretation

Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung is notable for his re-interpretation of alchemy in psychoanalytical terms.^[13]

Jung travelled to India in 1937. He took with him a book on alchemy, and during his stay in India, following a dream concerning the Holy Grail, he began to develop the idea that alchemy should not be seen in terms of proto-scientific chemical experiments, but in terms of mysticist or animist meditation on nature. Jung aimed at recovering a natural philosophy or worldview of pagan Classical Antiquity which had been lost or suppressed during the Christian Middle Ages, but which had survived in the transformed guise of alchemy. In psychoanalytical terms, Jung understood the quest for the philosopher's stone (as the quest for the holy grail) as an allegory of the process of Individuation, mirroring a destillatio and purificatio of the individual soul. The central stage in this process is a hieros gamos, a "sacred marriage" of opposing principles, expressed as light vs. dark, spiritual vs. material, celestial vs. chthonic, etc.

Jung concluded that orthodox Christian theology with its Trinity of three male, celestial, spiritual aspects of the divine could not represent this process without including a female, chthonic aspect as a fourth element. He recognized that this was present, at least in folk Christianity, in the form of Marian veneration, and in the Christain mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme. While Jung recognized the central importance of Christian mythology to Western culture, and the Western collective subconscious, he deplored the marginalization of the female within official Christian dogma, especially compared to his impression of Hinduism where goddesses are omnipresent and the hieros gamos is ubiquitous in the representation as the Shivalingam. Marian veneration was only officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1950, with the dogmatic proclamation of the Assumption of Mary, a decade after Jung developed his theory. Roman Catholic Mariology remains in motion, with a possible dogma on Mary's status as Co-Redemptrix under discussion.

See also

References

1. ^ Heindel, Max, Freemasonry and Catholicism, ISBN 0-911274-04-9
2. ^ Salomon Glass, Johann Gottfried Olearius, Philologia sacra: qua totius Vet. et Novi Testamenti Scripturae tum stylus et litteratura, tum sensus et genuinae interpretationis ratio et doctrina libris V expenditur ac traditur ^, imp. J. Fred. Gleditschius (1743)
3. ^ listed e.g. in W. Schneider, Lexikon alchemistisch-pharmazeutischer Symbole, Weinheim 1962.
4. ^ Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum t. XVIII, p. 24, cited by C. G. Jung in Roots of Consciousness.
5. ^ Ragai, Jehane (1992), "The Philosopher's Stone: Alchemy and Chemistry", Journal of Comparative Poetics 12 (Metaphor and Allegory in the Middle Ages): 58–77 
6. ^ Holmyard, E. J. (1924), "Maslama al-Majriti and the Rutbatu'l-Hakim", Isis 6 (3): 293–305 
7. ^ Robert Briffault (1938). The Making of Humanity, p. 196-197.
8. ^ Julian Franklyn ans Frederick E. Budd. A Survey of the Occult. Electric Book Company. 2001. p. 28-30. ISBN 1843270870.
9. ^ it is unclear if the text originates in the Middle Ages or in Late Antiquity, but it is generally assumed to predate 1150, when Gerard of Cremona translated it from the Arabic (Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, vol. 3/1)
10. ^ H. Biedermann, Lexikon der magischen Künste (1998), p. 407
11. ^ Burt, A.L. 1885. The National Standard Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of Literature, the Sciences and the Arts, for Popular Use p. 150. Available online.
12. ^ Sebastian, Anton. 1999. A Dictionary of the History of Medicine. p. 179. ISBN 1-85070-021-4. Available online.
13. ^ C.G.Jung, Studien über alchemistische Vorstellungen, Collected Works, vols. 13, 16 (1995).

External links

• The Philosopher's Stone by Edward Kelly