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Perfect wisdom consists in the knowledge of God and his Son, in the understanding of the holy scriptures, in self knowledge and in knowledge of the great world and its Son, the Magnesia of the philosophers or the Philosopher’s Stone. Only the pure may enter the temple of wisdom, only the worthy are intrusted with the secrets, the profane, however, must stay away.
The alchemists represented the philosopher’s stone, the red tincture, as a pelican; for by its projection on the baser metals it sacrificed itself and, as it were, gave its blood to tincture them. Keep well this mantle of honor.” It is interesting that dream parallels can support us in both directions on the path of hermetic interpretation.
The red substance is the philosopher’s stone, called also our king, red lion, grand elixir, etc. The after work is a subsequent elaboration by which the stone is given still more power, “multiplied” in its efficiency. We have spoken just now of the main work and the after work.
I bade him write down that ‘ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν αὐλός.’ He said that he would do so, and went home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening back to Athens, I arrived behind the philosopher’s chair as he was inditing the ‘αυλός.’ “Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down.
If he could win a witch of the right sort, perhaps she could teach him the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life, and show him the locality of the Fountain of Youth, so that he could take the wrinkles out of himself and his friends, at the cost of only a short journey by rail-road.
There takes place, so to speak, a universal gratification of all wishes. Mythologically we should expect that the hero thrown up from the underworld, should have brought with him the drink of knowledge. This is actually the case, as he has indeed gained the thing whose constitution is metaphorically worked out in the whole story, that is, the philosopher’s stone.
George Ripley describes the subject of the philosopher’s stone as follows: “For as of one mass was made the thing, Right must it so in our praxis be, All our secrets of one image must spring; In philosophers’ books therefore who wishes may see, Our stone is called the less-world, one and three.” Dichotomy also appears, mercury and sulphur, which can then generally be rendered soul and body.
That problematic medium, which was to serve to tincture or transmute the baser metal or its mercury to silver or gold, was called the Philosopher’s stone. Here came in the idea of a universal medicine. Alchemy desired indeed to produce in the Philosopher’s Stone a panacea that should free mankind of all sufferings and make men young.
Previously only the head of the lion is gold, his future. Later he becomes a red lion, the philosopher’s stone, the king in robe of purple. The lion that must die is the dragon, which the dragon fighter kills. Thus we have seen it in the mythological parallel. It is now very interesting that the alchemistic symbolism interchanges the same forms. We shall see that again.
Johann Isaak Hollandus, is not to be understood of common lead ... but of the lead of the philosophers.” And in Hollandus himself we read: “In the name of God, Amen.—My child, know that the stone called the Philosopher’s Stone comes from Saturn. There is none so poor in this world that he cannot operate and promote this work.
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