Secret_History

40 The Secret History of the World
these pursuits, but they toss out the objective of the alchemists as just a pipe
dream. Nevertheless, there are interesting stories there, some so deeply curious
that the mind cannot grapple with the implications, and they are immediately
discarded as too fantastic for serious consideration. I want to recount a few of
them here so that the reader who is not familiar with the literature might be
sufficiently intrigued to do research on his/her own.
But first, a short discussion of the “Philosopher’s Stone”. This is the goal of the
Alchemist; a fabled substance that can not only transmute metals into gold, but can
heal any illness, banish all sickness from a person’s life, and confer an extended
lifespan, if not immortality, on the body. At least, that is how it is described. That
may or may not be a “cover story”.
It was thought that, by a lengthy process of purification, one could extract from
various minerals the “natural principle” that supposedly caused gold to “grow” in
the earth. In an anonymous 17th Century alchemical text, The Sophic Hydrolith,
this process is described as “purging [the mineral] of all that is thick, nebulous,
opaque and dark”, and what would be left would be a mercurial “water of the
Sun”, which had a pleasant, penetrating odor, and was very volatile.
Part of this liquid is put aside, and the rest is then mixed with a twelfth of its
weight of “the divinely endowed body of gold”, (ordinary gold won’t do because it
is defiled by daily use). This mixture then forms a solid amalgam which is heated
for a week. It is then dissolved in some of the mercurial water in an egg-shaped
phial.
Then, the remaining mercurial water is added gradually, in seven portions; the
phial is sealed, and kept at such a temperature as will hatch an egg. After 40 days,
the phial’s contents will be black; after seven more days small grainy bodies like
fish eyes are supposed to appear. Then the “Philosopher’s Stone” begins to make
its appearance: first reddish in color; then white, green and yellow like a peacock’s
tail then dazzling white; and later a deep glowing red. Finally, “the revivified body
is quickened, perfected and glorified” and appears in a beautiful purple.
This and many similarly obscure and crazy sounding texts are the bulk of
Alchemical Literature. It occurred to me early on that these texts were a code, and
so I persisted in reading many texts of this kind and searching for clues there and
in the stories of the alchemists themselves. It was in reading the anecdotes about
so-called Alchemists that I became convinced that there was, indeed, something
very mysterious going on here.
For example: In 1666, Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, physician to the Prince of
Orange, writes of having been visited by a stranger who was “of a mean stature, a
little long face, with a few small pock holes, and most black hair, not at all curled,
a beardless chin, about three or four and forty years of age (as I guessed), and born
in North Holland.”
Before I finish the story, it needs to be pointed out that Dr. Schweitzer, who was
the author of several medical and botanical books, was a careful and objective
observer and was a colleague of the philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. Schweitzer was
a trained scientific observer; a reputable medical man, and not given to fraud or
practical jokes. And yet, what I am about to describe is, in modern understanding,
impossible.