Is the Philosopher's Stone Real? Examining the Evidence

The question is older than the answer. The question is whether the philosopher’s stone is “real.” The answer, of course, depends on what is meant by “real,” and the different meanings of the word produce different answers. In the strict, literal sense in which modern science would use the term, the stone has never been demonstrated to exist. No one has produced a substance that can literally transmute base metals into gold, cure all diseases, and confer physical immortality. But the question is more interesting than the simple yes-or-no answer suggests, and the evidence can be examined in several different ways: the historical record of claimed transmutations, the alchemical theory, the modern physics of transmutation, and the symbolic and psychological reality of the stone (Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy, 2013; Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 2004; Priesner, Geschichte der Alchemie, 2011).

The historical record

The alchemical literature is full of claims that the philosopher’s stone has been produced and that transmutations have been successfully performed. The most thoroughly documented early modern claim is the case of Johannes van Helmont, the Flemish chemist and physician. In 1618, according to van Helmont’s own account, a stranger appeared at his laboratory, gave him a small piece of the philosopher’s stone, and vanished. Van Helmont used the stone to convert a quantity of mercury into gold, which he himself assayed and confirmed. Van Helmont’s case is the most credible of the early modern transmutation claims, but it rests on the testimony of a single witness and on the assay of a single piece of gold. Principe and Newman both note the case as “documented but not independently verified” (Principe, 2013, pp. 196-200; Newman & Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, 2002, pp. 60-65). The honest reading is that van Helmont saw what he saw and reported it honestly, and the honest reading is also that the report does not constitute proof.

The legend of Nicolas Flamel is the most famous of the medieval transmutation legends. According to the legend, Flamel succeeded in preparing the stone in 1382, and he and his wife Pernelle used the stone to fund charitable works and to achieve personal immortality. The Flamel case is legend rather than history, and the immortality claims are clearly mythical. The case of the mysterious “Baruch” — probably Samuel Baruch, a Jewish alchemist working in the seventeenth century — was reported by the Moravian polymath Johann Ferdinand von Hoch. Baruch allegedly performed a transmutation before Emperor Ferdinand III, and the gold produced was tested and confirmed by court assayers. The Baruch case is less well documented than the van Helmont case, and the details are uncertain (Principe, 2013, pp. 200-201).

The alchemical literature itself is divided on which, if any, of these cases should be believed. The serious modern historians — Principe, Newman, Kahn, Priesner — treat the cases as data about what alchemists believed happened, not as data about what actually happened. The data are real. The transmutations are not.

The alchemical theory

The alchemical theory of the philosopher’s stone is a serious attempt to understand the composition and transformation of matter, and the theory deserves to be read on its own terms. The theory held that all metals are made of the same principles — mercury and sulfur in the Jabirian and Latin medieval tradition, mercury, sulfur, and salt in the later Paracelsian tradition — in different proportions, and that the differences among metals are differences of degree rather than of kind (Principe, 2013, pp. 88-95; Newman, 2004). The theory is wrong in its specific predictions, and the alchemists who worked within it were not cranks or charlatans. They were serious natural philosophers operating within a sophisticated theoretical framework, and the framework was the dominant theory of metallic composition for most of the period from Jabir to the late seventeenth century.

The theory makes three specific predictions about the philosopher’s stone and its powers. The theory predicts that the stone should be a substance that can convert base metals into gold, that the stone should be a substance that can cure all diseases, and that the stone should be a substance that can prolong life indefinitely. None of these predictions has been confirmed by modern science. But the theory also makes predictions that have been confirmed. The theory predicts that matter is unified at some level, that the differences among substances are differences in the proportions of basic constituents, and that the basic constituents can be rearranged to produce different substances. All three predictions have been confirmed by modern chemistry, and the alchemists’ vision of the unity of matter has been vindicated in a form they could not have anticipated. The alchemists were wrong about the stone, and they were right about matter.

The modern physics of transmutation

The modern physics of transmutation is, in one sense, a vindication of the alchemical project, and the vindication is worth taking seriously. The modern physicist can transmute one element into another by means of nuclear reactions, and the modern physicist has produced small quantities of gold from other elements in the laboratory. The transmutation the alchemists sought is, in principle, possible (Segrè, Enrico Fermi: Physicist, 1970; Principe, The Scientific Revolution, 2011).

But the modern transmutation is not the alchemical transmutation. The alchemists believed that the transmutation could be accomplished by a small amount of a perfected agent, the philosopher’s stone, acting on a large quantity of a base metal. The modern physicist accomplishes the transmutation by bombarding the base metal with particles in a particle accelerator, or by exposing the base metal to a flux of neutrons in a nuclear reactor. The cost of the modern transmutation is enormously greater than the value of the gold produced, and the alchemists’ vision of an economical transmutation has not been realized. The modern transmutation is real transmutation, however. The atomic number of the element is changed, the properties of the substance are changed, and the substance is genuinely converted into a different element. The alchemists’ claim that the differences among substances are differences of composition has been confirmed, and the alchemists’ claim that the composition can be changed has been confirmed in a way they could not have anticipated.

The symbolic and psychological reality

The alchemists’ philosopher’s stone is also a symbolic and psychological reality, and the reality deserves a hearing on its own terms. The Jungian reading of the stone, developed by Carl Gustav Jung in Psychology and Alchemy (1944) and Mysterium Coniunctionis (1956), treats the stone as the symbol of the integrated self, the goal of the process of psychic integration that Jung called individuation. On the Jungian reading, the stone is “real” in the sense that it is a genuine symbol of a genuine psychological reality, and the alchemist who has made the stone has achieved a genuine integration of the personality.

The Jungian reading is not a reduction of the alchemical tradition to psychology. The alchemists were natural philosophers, religious thinkers, and laboratory practitioners, and they integrated all three dimensions in their work. The Jungian reading does show that the alchemical tradition has a depth of psychological meaning that the literal reading misses, and the psychological depth is real. The stone is a symbol of the human aspiration to integration, perfection, and the recovery of the original unity of the self with the cosmos, and the symbol captures something genuine about the human condition. The symbol is a real symbol, and a real symbol is a real thing, in the only sense in which a symbol can be real.

The contemporary practice

A small but persistent community of contemporary practitioners continues to work with the philosopher’s stone in some form, and the community is worth knowing about. The modern spagyric revival, the Hermetic orders, and the various modern schools of alchemy all include practitioners who claim to produce the stone in some form, usually as a medicinal or spiritual preparation rather than as a literal transmutational agent. The modern practitioners are not claiming to break the laws of modern chemistry. They are claiming to recover a traditional practice that has been neglected or forgotten, and the claim is a different kind of claim from the literal alchemical claim.

The claims of the modern practitioners are not subject to the same kind of verification as the claims of the historical alchemists, and the asymmetry is part of what makes the modern revival interesting. The modern stone is a symbolic and practical preparation, and the question of its “reality” is a question about the meaning of the symbol and the value of the practice. The question is a different question from the historical question about whether van Helmont or Baruch actually transmuted mercury into gold.

The honest answer

The honest answer to the question of whether the philosopher’s stone is “real” is that the answer depends on the sense of “real.” The stone is not real in the literal sense in which modern science would use the term. The stone is real in other senses: it is a real symbol of a real psychological and spiritual reality, a real goal of a real contemplative practice, and a real part of the cultural and intellectual inheritance of the modern world. The alchemists were wrong about the possibility of literal transmutation, and they were right about the value of the symbol and the importance of the practice. The stone remains a powerful symbol of the human aspiration to integration, perfection, and the recovery of the original unity of the human being with the cosmos. The stone is real as a symbol and as a goal of practice. The stone is not real as a literal substance. The alchemists would have wanted both claims to be true, and the most useful answer to the question, in my view, is to hold both at once.