Gold And Eternal Life: The Legend Of The Philosopher’s Stone

According to historian Tara Nummedal, alchemy goes back to the first few centuries AD in Greco-Roman Egypt, a time full of new craft traditions, Greek philosophy, and temple magic. Together, these elements helped form the diverse tradition of alchemy, which focused on the transformation of matter, Nummedal says. This was the seedbed from which Islamic alchemy and European alchemy both grew.

According to historian Arthur Greenberg, the Greek-Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis was the first person to write about the Philosopher’s Stone. Writing around 300 AD, he described a substance called the Cheirokmeta, which later readers believed could transmute base metals into gold.

Many authors do not refer to the Philosopher’s Stone as a stone at all, but rather as a powder, a liquid tincture, or a substance concealed in the formation of the Earth. Others treat it as a process rather than an object.

The Philosopher’s Stone had one primary function, which was the ability to convert base metals, iron, lead, tin, and copper, into silver and gold. For many years, alchemists experimented with various combinations of materials in hopes that they would come up with just the right formula to make that happen.

But gold wasn’t alchemists’ only goal. Certain alchemists were convinced that when purified, the philosopher’s stone would become a panacea, able to cure all ills, reverse the aging process, and even extend one’s lifespan indefinitely. Some even argued that the stone possessed the power to heal not just the body, but also the spirit.

For many alchemists, the search for the stone was known as the Great Work, an endeavor intended to bring about perfection in base materials as well as in the alchemist doing the work. Some viewed the purification of metal by fire as analogous to the parallel purification of the alchemist’s soul.

Another concept that was popular among many medieval Islamic and European alchemists was that the Philosopher’s Stone could be made from a mixture of natural compounds such as sulfur and mercury. Differences in purity, qualities, and proportions were supposed to determine which metal would form at the end. A red stone would be associated with gold, whereas a white stone would be associated with silver.

Another method for making the stone was to place the base material in a pear-shaped glass vessel called the vase of Hermes, or the philosopher’s egg, and heat it. Adherents of these traditions were also looking for changes in color: black for the death of the old, white for purification and the white stone (silver), and red for the red stone (gold).

Once alchemy became established in Egypt, the Philosopher’s Stone concept was exported to the Islamic world over the next five centuries. Nummedal says that several terms still found in chemistry today, such as alkali and alcohol, were derived from Arabic when they came into European languages.

Europeans didn’t get their hands on the Arabic alchemical texts until the 12th century. By then, fascination with the stone had taken off and spread rapidly throughout Europe, even reaching university campuses, where scholars conducted experiments for hundreds of years up to the 17th and 18th centuries.

A few Christian alchemists equated the Philosopher’s Stone with the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Nummedal describes, such authors held that if nature was able to undergo the process of being subjected to fire, disintegrated, and then reconstituted, as Christ had done, then one might produce a stone that, like Christ, could redeem base metals.

The spread of printing and the growth of literacy during the 15th and 16th centuries helped to circulate speculation about the Philosopher’s Stone further throughout Europe. Some apothecaries, miners, and other people whose work involved contact with metals and nature began to experiment on their own, as did certain princes and patrons who were rich enough to support the continued activities of professional alchemists.

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the world’s most famous scientists, spent much of his life secretly working on the Philosopher’s Stone. He composed or copied over a million words on alchemy, as he tried to understand how transmutation worked, collecting alchemical manuscripts in the process.

Robert Boyle, the founding father of modern chemistry, spent years trying to study the properties of mercury and change the properties of metals. In 1678, Boyle published an account of a supposed “anti-elixir” that would make gold decompose. He also supposedly thought the stone might contain secrets that allowed contact with spirits.

Anna Maria Zieglerin, a German alchemist, declared that she could manufacture the elusive substance during the latter part of the 16th century. She gave Duke Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel several formulas for making the stone, which included Lion’s Blood, a golden oil. After she couldn’t make the stone, she was arrested and tried for various offenses ranging from fraud to murder. She was executed in 1575.

A similar fate befell Georg Honauer. In 1597, he failed to deliver on his promise to Duke Friedrich I of Wurttemberg that he would be able to turn masses of iron into gold. He was hanged on an iron gallows erected expressly for the purpose, said to have been plated with gold.

A Parisian public scribe named Nicolas Flamel was born in France about 1330. There is no record of Flamel showing any interest in alchemy while he lived, though more than a century after his death in 1418, stories and books emerged attributing alchemical achievements to him. A still-later story suggests he got his knowledge of alchemy from a very old book, and that the source of his actual wealth was the fact that he had secretly made the Philosopher’s Stone.

The famous alchemist and doctor Paracelsus desired to heal patients. He therefore helped push the alchemists of Europe away from making gold and toward healing. Instead of viewing alchemy as a way to become rich, he viewed it as a way to practice the highest form of medicine, all the while creating new medicines.

The alchemists may not have discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, but they did contribute real techniques, recipes, and knowledge that would later be used in chemistry. Their work helped develop methods of distillation and knowledge involving acids, salts, and metals.

In 2022, researchers at Manchester, Tsinghua University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered that chemically reduced graphene oxide was able to recover gold from waste solutions with just one-billionth of a percent gold content. Some media outlets jokingly suggested that this was equivalent to the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, even though the graphene oxide was recovering already-existing gold rather than generating new gold.

This content was created with the help of AI.