In search of the philosopher's stone: the formula for turning metal into gold

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The philosopher's stone exists and information about it has survived to this day. According to Russian historians, the undeciphered artifact (the Dunstan manuscript) is the answer to the mystery of the ancient alchemists. It is worth recalling that the philosopher's stone is not a cobblestone or a crystal, by this concept medieval alchemists meant a certain formula capable of turning metal into gold. Has not modern researchers already managed to get closer to solving this mystery?

The secret of the philosopher's stone has been kept under our noses for over 100 years. Surprisingly, modern historians are sure that the main formula of medieval alchemy is hidden in an undeciphered artifact (Dunstan's manuscript).

Until recently, researchers believed that the manuscript contained a recipe for the elixir of eternal life written by Saint Dunstan of Canterbury himself, but historians are ready to refute this hypothesis.

The original title of this book is Dunstan's Book. Dunstan is an English saint who lived in the 10th century. Accordingly, the book of Dunstan suggested that this is an unknown work of a saintly person, containing some intimate secrets that relate to alchemy.

"A heavy viscous powder of the color of saffron" is how the famous Dutch scientist Jan Baptista van Helmont describes the Philosopher's Stone in one of his works. In his presence, the court alchemists of King Rudolph II, Edward Kelly and John Dee, demonstrated their abilities.

In his memoirs, the son of John Dee claims that this was really true, when he was little, he saw how this gold was poured into molds and then allowed to play with it.

It is believed that the very last alchemists and mediums John Dee and Edward Kelly, who were in the service of Rudolph II, were the last who could read Dunstan's cipher code.

One rainy day, Edward Kelly appeared at the house of John Dee and reported that in one of the ancient monasteries in England he found a book and in this book, which, according to his words, dated back to the 12th century, there is a code with which it is possible to make brown powder (tincture) and this powder is able to turn any metal into gold.

Was Kelly able to decipher the manuscript and create the tincture on his own? Historical evidence indirectly confirms that Kelly could have succeeded in working on the recipe.

In exchange for the promise of Edward Kelly to get Rudolph II gold, he gave him two small castles. After unsuccessful attempts, Kelly was imprisoned, and after 3 months John Dee receives a letter stating that Kelly was killed in the cell.

After the mysterious death of Edward Kelly in 1597, the treasury of Rudolph II also significantly grew heavier by 8.5 tons of gold bars, and as for the tome, it surfaced only in 1912 in the London antiquary store Voynich and since then the artifact has been called the Voynich manuscript …

Today the manuscript is kept at Yale University and is considered indecipherable.

With the manuscript, everything is not so simple and for about 80-90 years there has been a kind of International Olympiad, among professionals and amateurs, who will be the first to solve it.

In the Olympiad of codebreakers, radiocarbon analysis won out and, to everyone's disappointment, it turned out that the parchment on which the manuscript was written was only 500 years old. Scientists agreed that Edward Kelly was a genius mystifier, and the manuscript of St. Dunstan is his best creation, as well as a medieval fake, a set of meaningless signs, but if this is so, then where did the letters from the alphabet supposedly invented by the medieval alchemist come from? all over the world? Or maybe these signs are not so meaningless?

At the moment, researchers continue to decipher the manuscript, and there is even an opinion that 64 characters have already been solved, but all the details have not yet been disclosed. It is only known that the part that we managed to decipher describes the relationship of a certain red stone with objects and plants.

It is not hidden that the "Book of Knowledge" written in the 1st century AD by the great Bukharian physician Abu Ali Hussein ibn Sina, better known in the West as Avicenna, greatly helped in deciphering the manuscript. There is an assumption that the Dunstan manuscript is one of the disappeared notebooks of Avicenna, where the alchemist describes his laboratory experiments with a certain chemical compound called the Holy Grail.

The Grail in many sacred stories is presented as a stone, which, like the chalice, is endowed with some unusual abilities (heals diseases, bestows immortality and turns base metals into noble ones).

It is known that at the end of his life Avicenna unexpectedly declared alchemy a pseudoscience and burned a number of his works. Wasn't that red powder from the coded manuscript that scared him so? After all, who owns his secret also owns the whole world!

In his writings on metaphysics, the Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza also mentioned the Philosopher's Stone. The scientist believed that he should be looked for in a book written in the language of secret symbols, with the help of which alchemists hide their knowledge from the curiosity of the uninitiated. Perhaps Spinoza meant precisely the Dunstan's manuscript that has survived to this day.