The Philosopher’s Stone

“Alchemy is a rainbow bridging the chasm betwen the earthly and heavenly planes, between matter and spirit…Alchemy, the royal sacerdotal art, also called the hermetic philosophy, conceals, in esoteric texts and enigmatic emblems, the means of penetrating the very secrets of Nature, Life, and Death, of Unity, Eternity, and Infinity.  Viewed in the context of these secrets, that of gold making is, relatively speaking, of little consequences; something comparable to the super-powers (siddhis) sometimes obtained by Great Yogis, which are sought not after for their own sake, but are important by-products of high spiritual attainment.”

~Stanislas Klossowski de Roya - Alchemy, the Secret Art

It is often said, that philosophy is the art/science/study of the question…It seeks not to dogmatize and formulate concrete dogma, more than it strives to frame the “Question” in such way that the answer is an intuitive and rational construct issuing from the individual…perhaps as a result of study, yet in spite of it.  The Question of which I speak is Itself the Answer, but neither comes through intellect or intuition alone, rather their fusion.

 In Path of Alchemy: Energetic Healing & the World of Natural Magic (Pathways to Enlightenment) by Mark Stavish, it says that:

 Alchemy helps us to understand the fundamental unity of the cosmos and our place in it by weaving together the various occult disciplines into a cohesive whole.

1. Alchemy is ideal for the solo practioner with limited time who does not have acces to, or is reluctant to join, esoteric groups.

2. Alchemical products can be stored-and their ability to induce deeper meditative insights, lucid dreams, and spiritual initiations can be repeated-without any loss in strength or potency.

3. Alchemical products are helpful even if the recipient does not believe in energetic healing, magic, or other forms of esotericism.

Thus comes the Idea  of the Philosopher’s Stone….he further says:

“In the West.., These diverse traditions were amalgamated in an attempt to discover the process for creating the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Stone of the Wise.

Said to confer the ability to transmute base metals into gold, prolong life, and cure all diseases, the Philosopher’s Stone was a mineral creation made most famous by the fourteenth-century French alchemist Nicholas Flamel and his wife, Peerenelle.  With it, it is said, they created the Elixir of Immortality and were seen alive three hundred years after their recorded deaths.  While the kind of mineral work the Flamels undertook is beyond the scope of this text, a few simple experiments with the considerably easier and less dangerous herbal work of alchemy will demonstrate why many thought these extraordinary claims about the Flamels to be true.

This idea of a Stone–or of an actual physical object as a means of bringing about dramatic changes in health and, above all, the spiritual consciousness of an individual–is the basis for most  experiments in all three kingdoms the alchemist will progressively work through.  Anyone familiar with the idea of talismans, or ritually charging objects such as liquids or metals for a specific purpose, already has a sense of how an alchemical tincture or Stone functions.

Yet, the Philosopher’s Stone is not simply viewed as some physically manipulated object that one used towards an end…It was the Summum Bonum, the Highest Good, the goal of all humanity, the “Healing of the Rift.”  The Oracle at Delphi spake “Know Thyself”…this is the Philosopher’s Stone, the Summum Bonum…this is the Healing of the Rift.

~The Knowing

“The conceptions of life and the world which we call ‘philosophical’ are a product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called ’scientific’, using this word in its broadest sense. Individual philosophers have differed widely in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered into their systems, but it is the presence of both, in some degree, that characterizes philosophy.

‘Philosophy’ is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain.

Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge-so I should contend-belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy.

 Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind and what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal?

Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? If there is a way of living that is noble, in what does it consist, and how shall we achieve it?

Must the good be eternal in order to deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is inexorably moving towards death? Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but their very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion.

The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy.”

~Bertrand Russell - History of Western Philosophy