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The English philosopher Sir Thomas Browne in his spiritual testament Religio Medici (1643) identified the religious aspect of the quest for the philosopher's Stone when declaring: The smattering I have of the Philosophers stone, (which is something more than the perfect exaltation of gold) hath taught me a great deale of Divinity.
Thomas Charnock (1524/1526–1581) was an English alchemist and who devoted his life to the quest for the Philosopher's Stone. [1] His unpublished notebooks are useful, not just for an understanding of Elizabethan attitudes towards alchemy in general, but for the insight they give to Charnock's life and thoughts.
Alchemy was a series of practices that combined philosophical, magical, and chemical experimentation. One goal of European alchemists was to create what was known as the Philosopher’s Stone, a substance that when heated and combined with a non precious metal like copper or iron (known as the “base”) would turn into gold.
In alchemy, the Magnum Opus or Great Work is a term for the process of working with the prima materia to create the philosopher's stone. It has been used to describe personal and spiritual transmutation in the Hermetic tradition , attached to laboratory processes and chemical color changes, used as a model for the individuation process, and as ...
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Multiplication is the process in Western alchemy used to increase the potency of the philosopher's stone, elixir or projection powder. It occurs near the end of the magnum opus in order to increase the gains in the subsequent projection. George Ripley gives the following definition of multiplication: [1]
The filius philosophorum (Latin for "the philosophers' child", i.e. made by the true students of philosophy) is a symbol in alchemy. In some texts it is equated with the philosopher's stone ( lapis philosophorum ), but in others it assumes its own symbolic meanings.
Frontispiece from The Hermetical Triumph. The Hermetical Triumph: or, The Victorious Philosophical Stone. is an alchemical text published in London in 1723 by P. Hanet. It is subtitled "A Treatise more compleat and more intelligible than any has been yet, concerning The Hermetical Magistery".