Alchemy: Ancient and Modern / Being a Brief Account of the Alchemistic Doctrines, and Their Relations, to Mysticism on the One Hand, and to Recent Discoveries in Physical Science on the Other Hand; Together with Some Particulars Regarding the Lives and Teachings of the Most Noted Alchemists

by H. Stanley Redgrove

The Philosopher’s Stone.

§ 23. The alchemist strove to assist Nature in her gold-making, or, at least, to carry out her methods. The pseudo-Geber taught that the imperfect metals were to be perfected or cured by the application of “medicines.” Three forms of medicines were distinguished; the first bring about merely a temporary change, and the changes wrought by the second class, although permanent, are not complete. “A Medicine of the third Order,” he writes, “I call every Preparation, which, when it comes to Bodies, with its projection, takes away all Corruption, and perfects them with the Difference of all Compleatment. But this is one only.”[35] This, the true medicine that would produce a real and permanent transmutation, is the Philosopher’s Stone, the Masterpiece of alchemistic art. Similar views were held by all the alchemists, though some of them taught that it was necessary first of all to reduce the metals to their first substance. Often, two forms of the Philosopher’s Stone were distinguished, or perhaps we should say, two degrees of perfection in the one Stone; that for transmuting the “imperfect” metals into silver being said to be white, the stone or “powder of projection” for gold being said to be of a red colour. In other accounts (see [Chapter V.]) the medicine is described as of a pale brimstone hue.

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[35] Of the Sum of Perfection (see The Works of Geber, translated by Richard Russel, 1678, p. 192).

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Most of the alchemists who claimed knowledge of the Philosopher’s Stone or the materia prima necessary for its preparation, generally kept its nature most secret, and spoke only in the most enigmatical and allegorical language, the majority of their recipes containing words of unknown meaning. In some cases gold or silver, as the case may be, was employed in preparing the “medicine”; and, after projection had been made, this was, of course, obtained again in the metallic form, the alchemist imagining that a transmutation had been effected. In the case of the few other recipes that are intelligible, the most that could be obtained by following out their instructions is a white or yellow metallic alloy superficially resembling silver or gold.