WHAT IS THE REAL STORY OF THE QUEST FOR THE SORCERER’S STONE?

It was a legendary, rufescent stone, with magical powers. It helped create the Elixir of Life, which made its drinker immortal. And it transmuted any metal into pure gold. The Sorcerer’s Stone has a special place in the Harry Potter Universe, created within the fiction by Nicolas Flamel, a real-life 14th and 15th century Parisian scribe and manuscript-seller. Harry’s first battle against Lord Voldemort centered around the Stone during the 1991–1992 school year. Voldemort tried to steal the Stone for his own ends but was thwarted and his return to power postponed.

Once the Stone was secured, Dumbledore discussed its future with Flamel. The pair decided to destroy the Stone, with Flamel admitting he had enough Elixir left to set his affairs in order before he and his wife could contentedly die, after living for over 600 years. And yet, five years after the Stone’s destruction, Harry wondered if as great a wizard as Voldemort might find another Stone. Perhaps the one created by Flamel was not unique. Besides, Voldemort was easily magically gifted enough to make his own. But what of the real-life quest to make a Philosopher’s Stone?

The Magnum Opus

Alchemy is an ancient, and often secret, practice with roots the world over. Its study has occupied numerous philosophical beliefs, spanning thousands of years and countless different cultures. The persecution of many of its practitioners meant that alchemical traditions often adopted the habit of symbolic and cryptic language, which makes it hard to find links between the various alchemical cultures.

But, three main strands of alchemy can be identified. The alchemy of China and its sphere of cultural influence; the alchemy of India and the Indian subcontinent; and Western alchemy, which developed around the Mediterranean, and whose hub has shifted over the millennia from Greco-Roman Egypt, to the Islamic world, and lastly to medieval Europe. It may be that the three strands share a common ancestor, and have greatly influenced one another, but much variation in their traditions can also be seen. Western alchemy developed its own philosophical system, which shares some symbiosis with various Western religions.

Mention of the Stone itself can be found in writing from the beginning of the 4th century A.D. The Greek alchemist and Gnostic mystic, Zosimos of Panopolis, wrote one of the oldest known books on alchemy, called Cheirokmeta, Greek for “things made by hand.”

Various recipes for the Stone exist, echoing the different cultures from which they came. Generally speaking, the recipe for the creation of the Stone followed an alchemical method known as The Magnum Opus, or The Great Work. Depending on the culture, the Opus describes work on creating the Stone, which passes through a sequence of color changes: nigredo (a blackening), albedo (a whitening), citrinitas (a yellowing), and rubedo (a reddening). The origin of the sequence can be traced to Zosimus and beyond. The Opus had a variety of alchemical emblems attached to it—birds such as the raven, swan, and phoenix were used to symbolize the sequence’s progression through the colors. In practice, the alchemist would see the colors in the laboratory. For instance, nigredo could be seen as the blackness of rotting, burnt, or fermenting matter.

Base Metals to Gold

So, for many centuries, the Philosopher’s Stone was the most coveted ambition in all of alchemy. The Stone had a long history. The ancient Greek atomist Empedocles was the creator of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements: earth, air, fire, and water. For Empedocles, these basic elements became the world of phenomena, full of contrasts and oppositions.

Through experiment he showed that invisible air was also a material substance, and proposed the order of the ancient elements as earth, water, air, and fire. Each element was above the other, tending if disturbed to return to its place in the natural order of things. Empedocles also held that opposite properties, such as love and hate, were material tendencies that mechanically mixed and divided in a continuous process. These ideas bear a similarity with the Yin and Yang dualism of ancient China. Though probably independent in origin, Chinese dualism also held that two principles, such as fire and water, male and female, forge to form other elements. In Chinese, these were metal, wood, earth, and through further fusion the ‘ten thousand things’ of the material world.

In this cosmogony, Empedocles forged a theory of everything. His worldview describes the separation of elements, the formation of ocean and earth, of moon and sun, and of atmosphere. Even further, he accounts for the biogenesis of plants and animals, and for the physiology of humans.

This elemental philosophy was also the alchemists’ creed. Gold itself, along with the baser metals, such as mercury and lead, consisted of the elements of fire, air, water, and earth. So, it followed that, if you changed the proportions of those constituent elements, base metals could be transformed into gold. Gold was superior to the other metals as it was believed the very nature of gold meant it contained a perfect balance of all four elements.

Why Gold?

But why gold? Today, there are 86 known metals. But in ancient times, only seven metals were known: gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, and mercury. We know them now as the Metals of Antiquity, and they would have been familiar to the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Of these seven metals, gold was the one that captured the human imagination and continued to do so for thousands of years.

Gold doesn’t tarnish. It keeps its color. And it doesn’t crumble. Gold seemed indestructible to ancient cultures. And yet it could also be easily worked. A single ounce of gold can be beaten to a thin sheet of gold metal 90 meters square.

Up until the year 1850, scarcely 10,000 tons of gold had been mined in all human history. One polar bear weighs around a ton, so it’s the same weight of gold as 10,000 polar bears. That might sound like a lot, but this is all of human history we’re talking about. Put another way, a blue whale weighs about 100 tons, so it’s the same amount of mined gold as 100 blue whales, in all of history. You can see why someone might want to get their hands on more.

An Alchemist at Work

A good example of an alchemist at work is famous British physicist, Isaac Newton. In 16th and 17th century Europe, there were many who came to the courts claiming they possessed the secret to the Philosopher’s Stone. So, throughout the continent, alchemists were employed by princes and nobles in the hunt for alchemical gold. For the alchemist, this situation was hugely profitable. A duke or a prince could be drained of substantial amounts of money during these hunts.

But alchemists didn’t seek the Stone simply out of greed. Gold symbolized the highest state of matter. It personified human renewal and regeneration. A ‘golden’ person was resplendent with spiritual beauty, and would always triumph over the latent and lurking power of evil. The basest metal, lead, represented the sinful and unrepentant person, who was easily overpowered by the forces of darkness.

Like other alchemists, Newton searched ancient scripts for recipes. One such recipe, which Newton called ‘The Net’, was found in the writings of Ovid, the poet from the reign of the Roman emperor, Augustus. In his poem The Metamorphosis, Ovid tells the story of the god Vulcan finding his wife Venus in bed with the god Mars. According to the myth, Vulcan made a fine metallic net, captured the lovers within it, and hung them from the ceiling for all to see.

Now, in alchemy, Venus, Mars, and Vulcan stand for copper, iron, and fire. So, for the likes of Newton, the myth becomes an alchemical recipe. And Newton indeed managed to synthesize a purple alloy, known as ‘the Net’, which was believed to be a step towards the Philosopher’s Stone.

By recreating these recipes, modern scholars have found that Newton’s alchemy included key elements of modern science—experiments that could be repeated and validated. And other members of the Royal Society were also alchemists. In many ways, alchemy was a secret practice of investigating the natural world.