Note on the history of Alchemy

Note: this text is extracted from Book VII, chapter 35.

“The king gave the order to introduce him, and the lad was introduced, and after blessing the king he bowed before him and sat down. And he made this representation: ‘King, by a certain device of powder I know how to make always excellent gold out of copper. For that device was shown me by my spiritual teacher, and I saw with my own eyes that he made gold by that device’. When the lad said this, the king ordered copper to be brought, and when it was melted the lad threw the powder upon it. But while the powder was being thrown an invisible Yakṣa carried it off, and the king alone saw him, having propitiated the God of Fire”

The history of alchemy, or the pretended art of transmuting the base metals into noble ones, has occupied sages from the time of the Alexandrian Greeks in the early centuries of the Christian era. This eternal longing after wealth through the medium of so-called scientific research gave rise to the term “philosopher’s stone,” which possessed the wonderful property of converting everything into solid gold. It was in searching for this treasure that Botticher stumbled on the invention of Dresden porcelain manufacture; Roger Bacon on the composition of gunpowder; Geber on the properties of acids; Van Helmont on the nature of gas; and Dr Glauber on the “salts” which bear his name (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 971).

In India the legends connected with the “philosopher’s stone” are many and varied. Crooke (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 15) tells one of the great Candra Varma, who was born of the embraces of Candrama, the moon-god, who possessed the power of converting iron into gold. Laliya, a blacksmith of Ahmadābād, made an axe for a Bhīl, who returned and complained that it would not cut. Laliya, on looking at it, found that the blade had been turned into gold. On questioning the Bhīl, he ascertained that he had tried to sharpen it on what turned out to be the philosopher’s stone. Laliya, by possession of the stone, acquired great wealth, and was finally attacked by the king’s troops. At last he was obliged to throw the stone into the Bhadra river, where it still lies, but once some iron chains were let down into the water, and when they touched it the links were converted into gold.

For another legend see Jarrett, Ā’īn-i-Akbarī, vol. ii, p. 197.

The literature and bibliographies on alchemy are, of course, very great, and cannot be given here. It will suffice merely to draw attention to a few general articles and the chief of the bibliographies.

A useful introductory article is that by H. M. Ross in the Ency. Brit.,. vol. i, pp. 519-522, while fuller articles are those by E. Riess, Carra de Vaux,. and T. Barnes in Hastings’ Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. i, pp. 287-298. Reference should also be made to Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (see Indices in each volume under “Alchemy” and “Philosopher’s Stone”); and Lewis Spence, Encyclopædia of Occultism, 1920, pp. 232-233. For bibliographies of works on alchemy see Lenglet du Fresnoy, Histoire de la Philosophic Hermétique. Accompagnée d’un catalogue raisonné des écrivains de cette science, Paris et La Haye, 1740 (see particularly vol. iii); Hermann Kopp, Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Culturgeschichte, 2 Thle, Heidelberg, 1886; H. C. Bolton, Catalogue of Works on Alchemy and Chemistry exhibited at the Grolier Club, New York, 1891; J. Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica, Glasgow, 1906; and A. E. Waite, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, 2 vols., London, 1894. To this latter author I am indebted for several of the above references.

We shall meet with the “philosopher’s stone” again in the Ocean of Story, Chapter XLIII.—n.m.p.