History Ch_The Real Sorcerers Stone
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00:00An ancient secret linked to sorcery and black magic, hidden in strange images and mystifying
00:09code, said to be a source of ultimate power, limitless wealth, even immortality.
00:17Was it all an elaborate myth, or are there scientific truths concealed within these ancient
00:22manuscripts, a formula that will finally reveal the real sorcerer's stone?
00:40The legends are many.
00:42A mysterious stone, said to possess incredible power, but did it ever really exist?
00:50American audiences first heard of it in a best-selling book and movie called Harry
00:54Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
00:57But it was first known in Britain and the ancient world as the Philosopher's Stone.
01:02I imagine it was called the Sorcerer's Stone in America, partly because it has echoes of
01:08Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but also because it has a link with magic, with sorcery.
01:18In the ancient world, a philosopher was a seeker of wisdom, a powerful sage who endeavored
01:24to unlock the secrets of the natural world.
01:28The Philosopher's Stone was said to be the key.
01:33For thousands of years, the search for the stone would obsess the civilized world.
01:38No object except the Holy Grail would become more legendary.
01:44The first accounts of the Philosopher's Stone date to around the time of Christ.
01:50But it is clear from the way they are written that the stone had long been known throughout
01:54the ancient world.
01:56The earliest mention of it I've managed to unearth is a treatise attributed to Maria
02:04the Jewess.
02:06That's probably from somewhere between 1 and 300 A.D.
02:10And she's already talking of the Philosopher's Stone and its efficacy in transforming base
02:17metals into gold.
02:20A way to make gold, the most precious of metals, a dream that dated back a thousand years earlier
02:27to the Greek myth of King Midas, who turned anything he touched into gold.
02:32The Midas touch, an idea that still fascinates today.
02:36Think about a person who could make gold.
02:38They could rule the world.
02:40They could tear down all the social and political structures that have been built up simply
02:45by being able to produce massive amounts of money out of lead or iron or copper.
02:52But the Philosopher's Stone was said to have one other, even greater power.
02:57The effect of the Philosopher's Stone on the human body, supposedly, was that it could
03:01extend human life to its utmost extent.
03:04It could potentially make the holder of the Philosopher's Stone immortal.
03:11A single substance that could grant whoever possessed it both unlimited life and limitless
03:16wealth.
03:17But what exactly was the Philosopher's Stone?
03:23The definition of the Philosopher's Stone is also extremely obscure.
03:27It is often said the stone is the most common thing on earth and the most rare.
03:33It's everywhere and nowhere.
03:35It's the most difficult thing to do, yet it's child's play.
03:41Though described in ambiguous terms, it is clear that the stone is not really a stone.
03:47It is not something that can be found by adventurers or unearthed by treasure hunters.
03:52It is instead something that must be created by seekers of knowledge and men of science.
03:59The Philosopher's Stone is not a solid, rocky substance, but a compound substance that would
04:06have been a kind of almost a liquid or a gel.
04:10The commonest description is that it's an unusually heavy red powder or sometimes a
04:19red stone or a red globule.
04:23But you also encounter it as a yellow, waxy material, perhaps something like amber.
04:32It is the philosophers of the Middle East, writing in the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries,
04:37who claim that some among them have found the secret.
04:41They claim to know the ingredients for making the compound that is the Philosopher's Stone
04:47and to have mastered the dangerous processes needed to combine them.
04:53It is around this time that another word begins to be used for these seekers of the stone.
04:59Alchemists, a word with Greek and Arabic origins.
05:04It is after the start of the Crusades in the 1100s, with the increased movement between
05:10East and West, that tales of the Philosopher's Stone first reach Europe.
05:15They are found in the ancient Jewish, Egyptian, and Greek texts translated by the Muslim scholars
05:22who make alchemy part of their scientific studies.
05:25The Arabs led the world at that time in the development of mathematics, in alchemy, and
05:31in medicine.
05:33They had the greatest doctors in the world at that time and the best medical schools.
05:40The idea of the Philosopher's Stone soon captures the imagination of European scholars.
05:46Armed with fresh translations of these Eastern texts, they begin their own quest to produce
05:51the stone, but it will be a quest veiled in secrecy.
05:56In all the ages in which alchemy was practiced, it was regarded as what in medieval times
06:03was called a mystery.
06:04It is a craft that you learned by apprenticing yourself, and not something whose secrets
06:10were to be broadcast.
06:13Like the Freemasons of the era, the medieval alchemists used symbols and coded words that
06:19baffle scholars to this day.
06:21People pick up a book of alchemy from the early modern period and it just seems like
06:25mumbo-jumbo.
06:26It's full of symbolism and pictures and strange little glyphs, and what we have to remember
06:33is that alchemy comes to us through a craft tradition.
06:38People in the craft tradition had ways of maintaining the secrecy of their skills, secrecy
06:43of their knowledge.
06:44They did this by using symbols, by using a specialized language.
06:50While many alchemists recorded step-by-step formulas for making the compound known as
06:55the Philosopher's Stone, the ingredients they used remain shrouded in symbolism.
07:01The problem is that many of these experiments involve materials that are not explicitly
07:08defined.
07:09They're given names, but we don't have a correspondence for what those names are.
07:14For instance, a green lion swallowing the sun, well this really means that there's
07:21an acid which is dissolving sulphur.
07:25You have a peacock inside a flask, the peacock's tail represents an iridescent color which
07:33alchemists believe forms in their flasks just before they produce the red elixir or the
07:39Philosopher's Stone.
07:44Those who have studied these alchemical accounts believe that one of the ingredients used to
07:48make the Philosopher's Stone is mercury, either in its pure form or modified in some
07:54way.
07:56The other ingredients are the subject of a continuing debate, but it is clear that whatever
08:01the mixture, it must be repeatedly purified and transformed by fire.
08:08You also go through different phases which are indicated by different colors.
08:12You start off with black, which then moves into white, then into yellow, and then finally
08:19into red.
08:20When you've reached the red stage, that is imminent before the production of the Philosopher's
08:26Stone.
08:27And it changed its essence and its substance so many times that in a way it now contained
08:34all essences, all substances, all transformations, and that's why people believe that the Philosopher's
08:41Stone, once it was achieved, would then have the possibility of transforming anything it
08:46touched instantly, because it held within its compound all of the transformative processes
08:53in the natural world.
08:56It is the promise of this ultimate power that makes the search for the stone so tempting
09:01and so perilous.
09:04Trying to find the Philosopher's Stone, the secret of transmuting the metals, was so difficult
09:09that in absolute desperation there might be some alchemists out there that appealed to
09:14supernatural agencies like demons in order to get that kind of knowledge.
09:21Over the centuries, seekers of the stone will pore over ancient texts, consult rabbis, sages,
09:27and even angels.
09:29They will ingest poisons, risk madness, face imprisonment, exile, and disgrace.
09:36But a few, it will be rumored, will actually succeed.
09:46A sorcerer's stone that changes lead into gold, an elixir that can bestow immortality.
09:54Today they are the stuff of fantasy, consigned to fictional realms where wizards weave magic
09:59spells. But for 300 years, through the late 1600s, during the golden age of Western alchemy,
10:07these objectives seemed logical and attainable.
10:11Actually science and magic, at least in the early stages of civilization, were not as
10:18disparate, were not as distinct as we now think they are.
10:23If you think about it critically, in magic you take a series of objects and produce something
10:31totally unexpected from them. In science, you can be doing very similar looking things.
10:39It is early European scientists of the 13th century, men known as alchemists, who take
10:44up the quest for the philosopher's stone.
10:47This mysterious compound, they believe, can be made into an elixir of immortality or added
10:53to base metals to produce gold. Though their goal sounds supernatural, they have solid
10:59scientific reasons for believing it is possible.
11:04In working with metals, it's very easy to change one or two of the properties. For example,
11:09we can take copper and make it yellow like gold or white like silver. We can change the
11:14hardness and softness of metals. So alchemists naturally made the extension. If we can change
11:19one or two of the properties, can we change all the properties?
11:24If we do this right, if we choose the right ingredients, if our conditions are right,
11:29then we can take a mixture of something else and apply a particular material to it and
11:36make something that really is gold.
11:41The alchemists call the concept transmutation, a process they see at work all around them.
11:48If we look at nature around us, it's dynamic. Things are always turning one thing into another.
11:53So grape juice turning into wine and then into vinegar. Or in the organic world, caterpillars
11:59turning into butterflies. So if this sort of change is normal in the natural world,
12:05why shouldn't it be in the world of minerals as well?
12:08The ancients had the belief that this was also true of things that grew in the earth.
12:13That is to say that base metals might slowly in the earth turn into more noble metals,
12:21might turn into gold.
12:23Just as you could maybe speed it up by putting a plant in a pot on a windowsill, you could
12:28speed up the process by taking metals, minerals, putting them in a pot using a steady heat,
12:35maybe a higher heat than would be experienced in the center of the earth, and essentially
12:40just speeding up what was a natural organic growth process.
12:47If alchemists could, with the help of the philosopher's stone, speed up the aging process
12:53by which they believed lead matured into gold, then logically they should be able to slow
12:59that aging process as well.
13:02What brings it all together is a desire to manipulate time.
13:09In the alchemical mind, this same purification process that could make lead into gold could
13:15also create longevity, even immortality.
13:20Just as it could remove the impurities of the metal and perfect them into gold, so too
13:24some European alchemists thought that the philosopher's stone could be a powerful medicine,
13:29that it would remove the impurities and the imbalances from our bodies and restore us
13:33to perfect health.
13:34The transmutation of gold was simply a sign that they had been successful in their work,
13:40which was to transform nature, but also to transform themselves, and ultimately to attain
13:47immortality.
13:49It is alchemists who create the prototype of the modern laboratory in order to combine
13:54and heat the chemicals required to create the philosopher's stone.
13:58It is a time-consuming and dangerous process.
14:04First of all, alchemy constantly uses quicksilver, mercury, as one of the materials that goes
14:12into the making of the philosopher's stone.
14:16There are a lot of hazards of working with mercury.
14:20One is that it can cause personality changes and mental aberration.
14:24It does have a certain toxicity.
14:26If you inhale the vapors, it can make your teeth fall out and give you the shakes.
14:30They had furnaces that were within their labs, and those furnaces used charcoal, so there
14:36was always the hazard of carbon monoxide poisoning.
14:41Creating the elixir of life, the liquid form of the philosopher's stone, required mixing
14:46a potion of heavy metals that the alchemist himself would ingest, intentionally or not.
14:52They would handle these chemicals not only without precautions, but without even any
14:56knowledge that they were noxious or toxic.
15:01In the pursuit of the great elixir of life, they were, in fact, damaging their health
15:06and probably shortening their lifespan by decades.
15:11But for those seeking the philosopher's stone, there were dangers outside the lab as well.
15:18The true alchemists were not generally interested in broadcasting even their successes very
15:23far aboard, because of the danger of kidnap and of torture to get their secrets out of them.
15:29If the secret of the philosopher's stone got out, they could manufacture an untold amount
15:36of precious metals and destabilize not only the currency market in their own country,
15:41but in the entire world.
15:43It's one of the reasons why alchemy is illegal in most early modern states.
15:48Most monarchs don't want alchemists running around doing their own thing.
15:54Was the danger real?
15:56Many of those who believed it was found their proof in the works of a very ordinary person,
16:01one who would become famous to both medieval monarchs and modern readers of Harry Potter
16:05and Da Vinci Code.
16:08He was a humble 15th century bookseller named Nicholas Flamel.
16:13Flamel was one of the great success stories in alchemy.
16:17He's one of the few alchemists where you hear, maybe he did it.
16:21Maybe he actually made the philosopher's stone.
16:32Throughout history, hundreds of scholars and scientists would search for the secret of
16:36the philosopher's stone.
16:38Some were the greatest minds of their time, Roger Bacon, the father of modern chemistry,
16:44and Sir Isaac Newton among them.
16:46But none would fire the public imagination more than a humble 14th century bookseller
16:52named Nicholas Flamel.
16:54Though he is mentioned in popular fictional works like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and
16:59Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, to medieval readers he was a real, if mysterious,
17:04person.
17:05So I was actually with an octogenarian alchemist in Paris some years ago.
17:12He showed me this book, which actually was a copy of a book attributed to Nicholas Flamel.
17:20Scientific and alchemical writings attributed to Flamel turn up in books published in the
17:251500s that are thought to be compilations of earlier works.
17:30Though his scientific contributions in these tomes are minor, Flamel himself becomes larger
17:35than life in the hands of modern, best-selling fiction writers.
17:39In The Da Vinci Code, Flamel is said to be a Priory of Scion leader.
17:45In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, he is cast as the alchemist partner of headmaster
17:50Albus Dumbledore.
17:54Both authors were no doubt inspired by the same book, a volume on hieroglyphical figures
17:59that was published in Paris in 1612.
18:04Claiming to be a copy of Flamel's own long-lost composition, it describes his search for the
18:09Philosopher's Stone some three centuries earlier.
18:13It is this account that will be woven into a larger and enduring mythos.
18:18His story has all the elements that would make a great movie.
18:24Born near Paris around 1330, as a young man, Flamel makes a living as a public scrivener,
18:31copying and authenticating letters and documents.
18:34Over time, he builds a modest business, buying and selling manuscripts.
18:39But his story and his fate change abruptly when he buys a mysterious book.
18:45It consisted of 21 leaves, three times seven, both magical numbers.
18:52On these leaves were inscribed mostly figures rather than writing, but figures that clearly
19:01linked the book to the alchemical writings.
19:06It will turn out to contain nothing less than the formula for creating the most powerful
19:11substance known to medieval man, the Philosopher's Stone, a compound and a catalyst that can
19:17transform lead into gold and produce an elixir said to extend life itself.
19:25Flamel studies the book for more than 20 years, trying to decipher the coded symbols and arcane
19:30writing, but he has little success.
19:33Some of the writing in the book was Hebrew, and he wanted to get an interpretation of
19:38this book desperately.
19:41However, at that time in France, there were not very many Jews.
19:44They'd been expelled.
19:48Sometime around the year 1378, Flamel undertakes a pilgrimage to Spain, home to both a large
19:54Jewish population and a long alchemical tradition.
19:59On the way back, he meets a former rabbinical sage and physician, to whom he shows a page
20:05from the mysterious book.
20:07It is, he says, a copy of the original Book of Abraham.
20:17It takes years, but using the translated page as a guide, Flamel, aided by his wife, eventually
20:24decodes the book's recipe for making the Philosopher's Stone.
20:29According to the account contained in hieroglyphical figures, Flamel successfully used the stone
20:34to create silver in 1382 and gold soon afterwards.
20:39Finally, he succeeded.
20:43He made substantial quantities of gold, according to his own account.
20:47To many readers, there seemed to be proof to back up this claim.
20:52Though he was a poor scrivener, Flamel eventually constructed several buildings, one of which
20:58still stands today in Paris.
21:00And a biography published in 1761 included a list of the sizable bequests he made to
21:06the poor, taken from public documents.
21:10He opened poor houses around Paris and spent a lot of money on feeding the poor and helping
21:15the poor.
21:17For those who read Flamel's surviving works, and the book alleged to be his own narrative
21:21of his alchemical successes, this was proof that he had indeed used the Philosopher's
21:26Stone to create gold, only to give it all away.
21:30People thought that he had succeeded because all of a sudden this poor Parisian scrivener
21:36or clerk has all this money.
21:40Where did the money come from?
21:42Alchemy could be an explanation for otherwise unexplainable wealth.
21:46But his money didn't come from alchemical transmutations.
21:49It came from very clever real estate speculations and from the fact that his wife came from
21:54two previous marriages with considerable inheritance.
22:01Flamel was said to have survived into his 80s, no mean feat in the medieval times.
22:06He commissioned his own tombstone, decorated with strange symbols, sometime around the
22:11year 1410.
22:14His death was thought to have occurred soon after.
22:18But rumors later began to circulate that he had used the Philosopher's Stone to prolong
22:23his life and had faked his death to protect the secret.
22:27It was a story bolstered by the fact that several new books bearing his name were published
22:32long after his supposed demise.
22:34These showed up in the 16th and 17th centuries.
22:37Whoever wrote them, however, just put Nicholas Flamel's name on it because he had become
22:41a famous figure mythologically for alchemy by this time.
22:46And some of them were probably just written by booksellers or cobbled together by booksellers
22:50trying to get a good seller.
22:54But some, then as now, believe the rumors and cling to any evidence that the Philosopher's
23:01Stone might be real.
23:04In the 1500s, that belief will be put to the test when one of the most powerful crowned
23:09heads of Europe brings dozens of alchemists to his court with instructions to find, once
23:15and for all, the secret of the Philosopher's Stone.
23:19In the frenzied search that results comes mystic tales of angels and a coming apocalypse,
23:25along with more earthly whispers of fraud, torture, and wife-swapping.
23:35Throughout the medieval period and what is called the early modern era of the 16th and
23:3917th centuries, the most powerful people in Europe kept a close eye out for those who
23:45might have the power to create the Philosopher's Stone.
23:49The substance was seen as a potential wild card, something that might influence the constant
23:54wars and discord between countries or bolster threats from within.
24:00The kings and cardinals, nobles, and popes were all interested in alchemy, firstly because
24:05it was the mainstream science at the time, but also, of course, it gave the great prospect
24:10of untold riches, and they wanted to have the riches for themselves.
24:16Though European rulers frequently outlawed the practice of alchemy altogether, there
24:21was always one exception, the alchemist who worked for them.
24:26Most monarchs really are not adverse to the idea of alchemy itself, they're just adverse
24:32to alchemy falling into the hands of the wrong people.
24:35So a crown-sponsored alchemist was a great asset.
24:41No monarch was more interested in alchemy than Rudolf II von Habsburg, Emperor of the
24:46Holy Roman Empire, King of Bohemia and Hungary.
24:50Prone to melancholy, Rudolf was drawn to alchemy, perhaps as a cure, or simply because it relieved
24:57the tedium he found in affairs of state.
25:00Now Rudolf is known to have been very interested in alchemy.
25:03Not only did he acquire several books on the topic, but also he engaged himself in
25:11alchemical transmutation.
25:13He was the Holy Roman Emperor, who was meant to represent the interests of the Vatican,
25:18and in fact was more interested in pursuing forbidden knowledge, occult knowledge.
25:26In the mid-1500s, Rudolf began inviting alchemists to his court.
25:31As many as 200 passed through his royal estates at Prague, where he conducted his alchemical studies.
25:37He gathered together some of the greatest minds of Europe and made Prague the intellectual
25:42and cultural center, and set up laboratories throughout the Prague Castle.
25:49It's probably fair to say that if you were an alchemist in that period of time, in late
25:5416th century, early 17th century, a visit to the Habsburg was certainly something that
25:59would improve your career.
26:01He oftentimes went down to his workshop that was located right there at the castle.
26:07The fact that Rudolf, who is at this time the emperor, would engage in alchemical practices
26:15seemed to many people to be below his status.
26:17What is a prince doing in a workshop?
26:20He's supposed to be the head of state.
26:23Among those drawn to his court was John Dee, a respected Cambridge scholar in the English
26:29court of Elizabeth I.
26:31Dee, like many scientific minds of the time, had a strong interest in alchemy and the power
26:37of the Philosopher's Stone.
26:39It would come to dominate his life.
26:42Dee's interest in the Philosopher's Stone began, as far as we can tell, way back when
26:46he was an undergraduate at Cambridge University, when he began an extensive reading program
26:52in the great classic works of alchemy.
26:55He read Flamel, and he came to believe at this point that alchemy had the potential
27:01to unlock the secrets of how the world was put together.
27:07But by 1580, Dee still had no successes to record.
27:12And for Dee, this seems to have been the moment when he began to cast around for a better,
27:17more reliable way to learn about the natural world.
27:21And it was at that moment that he felt God reveal to him a new path.
27:27Dee set aside his alchemical beakers and crucibles and picked up what was known as a scrying
27:33crystal.
27:34There was a widespread belief in early modern Europe that shiny objects could be stared
27:40into by someone who was uniquely sensitive to picking up sort of the messages that were
27:46reflected there.
27:48What Dee discovered, much to his chagrin, was that he was not one of those sensitive
27:53people.
27:56For the process to work, Dee needed a partner.
28:00He had to rely on a technician, another person who could see in those shiny objects.
28:07And he had a number of these technicians that are called scryers.
28:12The one that he seems to have had for the most time was Edward Kelly, a man of very
28:16murky origins that we don't know all that much about.
28:20Some claim that Kelly had several assumed names and that his ears had been mutilated,
28:26something that in medieval times may have indicated a conviction for counterfeiting
28:30or fraud.
28:31But he also had a knowledge of mysticism and alchemy, something the scholarly Dee would
28:36have responded to.
28:39Dee was either extremely gullible or Kelly was very cunning, but probably both.
28:46He certainly insinuated himself into Dee's family and became his irreplaceable assistant.
28:56During marathon scrying sessions, Dee fills page after page with the angelic messages
29:02Kelly relays.
29:04What happens is that the scryer describes seeing a great plane of crystal, and on that
29:11surface of crystal there are letters inscribed, and an angel stands on the sort of floor of
29:17crystal with a stick and spells out their message to Dee.
29:24Sometimes in English, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in a completely different angelic
29:30language.
29:31So this was an enormously time and labor intensive activity, and it's not something anybody
29:38would have taken on unless they truly believed that it had the power to reveal very deep
29:45and very profound secrets about the natural world.
29:51And the angels don't disappoint.
29:54Through Kelly, they reveal to Dee an incredible vision of the future.
29:59The angels tell Dee and Kelly that after a period of seven years of study and revelation,
30:05they will be able to produce the Philosopher's Stone.
30:09The Philosopher's Stone that he and Kelly will produce in their laboratory will not
30:14just be a medicine, will not just be something that can perfect the natural world, but will
30:19actually bring about the long-awaited apocalypse, will bring about the transformation of the
30:26world and usher people into the land of peace and plenty, a second paradise on earth.
30:35It is in the midst of this great work that Rudolph II invites Dee and Kelly to his court
30:40in Prague.
30:42But just before they leave, the relationship between the two men begins to deteriorate,
30:48shaken by an especially disturbing message from the angels.
30:52The angels tell Dee and Kelly that one of the things they need to do in order to make
30:57the Philosopher's Stone is that they have to share all things between themselves equally,
31:04and this even includes their wives.
31:06But a few days later in his diary, Dee notes down, pactum factum, the pact is real, which
31:15indicates that the two men did swap their wives and did actually physically consummate
31:21their relationship.
31:24The consummation of the pact seems to have broken an already strained relationship.
31:31Kelly's interests were more and more turning to alchemy.
31:35He wanted to spend more time in Rudolph II's laboratories and less time in Dee's room looking
31:42into a crystal ball.
31:45The pair's sponsor, Rudolph II, also begins to distance himself from Dee's angelic interaction.
31:53Rudolph really became concerned about the association with demonic magic.
32:00Maybe he was now engaging in something that crossed the line from natural magic and moved
32:04into demonic magic, and as a result he actually banned John Dee from his court, but not before
32:11finding out what he could from him.
32:14In 1589, Dee and his wife return to England.
32:18There, the seven-year deadline, the date by which the angels had promised the great secret
32:22of the stone would be revealed, comes and goes.
32:27Dee writes, all is false.
32:31All of the promises that the angels have made to me are nothing.
32:35The end of the world is not coming.
32:37His fondest hopes about what alchemy and what angels can do to bring about a new world of
32:44peace and prosperity have come to absolutely nothing.
32:49In despair, Dee burns reams of his angel transcripts and abandons his quest for the philosopher's
32:55stone.
32:57Meanwhile, in Prague, Kelly's star rises.
33:02He claims that he alone possesses the key to transmutation.
33:07He's given a title.
33:08He's given access to the laboratory spaces.
33:12He's given his own assistance for the very first time.
33:15People begin to whisper that he's found the philosopher's stone and that he's mounting
33:20up a huge store of riches.
33:24Did Kelly withhold this last secret from Dee, or was it all just an elaborate fraud designed
33:30to fool King Rudolph?
33:31Either way, Kelly will pay a high price for his claim.
33:42By the 1500s, the printing press helped spread the word about the philosopher's stone.
33:48Over the next century, dozens of eyewitness accounts began to appear, telling of an alchemical
33:54process that can change ordinary metals into gold.
33:58One of the things in the 17th century that developed was the increase in the number of
34:03accounts of transmutation, that is, transmutation histories.
34:07Many of these transmutation demonstrations were often accompanied by a medallion that
34:14had been cast by the alchemist, and these have been retained, so we have actual pieces
34:21of these transmutations.
34:25Were these witnesses finally seeing proof of the existence of the philosopher's stone,
34:30or something else?
34:32They had all kinds of very ingenious tricks.
34:35They would do a fake transmutation, and that was usually accomplished on a small scale
34:43by such means as having crucibles with two bottoms, one of which would melt away to release
34:50gold that was hidden in the bottom, or using a wand to stir the mixture with, which would
34:56again melt away and deposit some gold.
35:00Anyone who has seen a good modern magician knows how easy it is to dupe people.
35:07But even those who were skeptical couldn't come right out and say so.
35:13Oftentimes there might be a demonstration at a castle in front of persons that would
35:18be of importance.
35:20What happens is you have persons whose dignity and whose status cannot be assuaged, that
35:27that person's truth-saying ability is beyond reproach.
35:32One of the difficulties, if you're a skeptic, is on the one hand you could claim, okay,
35:38the person didn't really do a proper transmutation.
35:42But if indeed the emperor had seen that transmutation, in effect it would be almost like calling
35:47that emperor a liar.
35:49And there are social constraints about doing such a thing.
35:52It is during this period that phony alchemists made a living by claiming to possess the stone
35:58and selling portions of it to gullible buyers, then skipping town.
36:03But there were other, more elaborate ruses, often perpetrated at the expense of kings
36:08and emperors.
36:10The script would go as follows.
36:12That was my last piece of the philosopher's stone.
36:17This is a work that takes months, if not years, to perfect.
36:21I'm going to have to live at your court.
36:24I'm going to need this material, that material, the other material.
36:27I'm going to have to get assistance and so on.
36:31And so the game would be prolonged for an extended time.
36:36Some of these alchemists got away with it for extended periods and then picked up their
36:41tents and left quietly.
36:44Others exhausted the patience of their patron and would be imprisoned, tortured, executed
36:53for their failure to produce.
36:57This may have been the fate of wife-swapping alchemist Edward Kelly, who continued working
37:02in the lab of Rudolf II von Habsburg.
37:06He may have been too good of an alchemist for his own good, because people begin to
37:10whisper that he's found the philosopher's stone and that he is mounting up a huge store
37:16of riches in his own private bank accounts.
37:20He was imprisoned.
37:21And whilst in prison, Rudolf tried to extract from him the secrets of the philosopher's
37:27stone, or at least his agents tried to do that.
37:31Kelly's actual fate remains the subject of debate.
37:35He tried to escape and it seemed that he broke one, first one leg and then the other.
37:41Some people say he was pushed.
37:43Some people believe that Rudolf II concocted the story of Kelly's tragic death to cover
37:48up the fact that he'd actually fled Prague to parts unknown with his alchemical secrets.
37:55What we know is that we don't hear anything more of Edward Kelly after that time at Rudolf's court.
38:03Rudolf himself also may have had cause to regret his involvement with the quest for the stone.
38:09For decades, rumors persisted that the emperor was driven to madness, either because of his
38:14obsession with alchemy or because he sampled the toxic potions himself.
38:20So there's been some serious questions about his mental health, although it's hard to attribute
38:25that really to alchemy.
38:28He suffered from inherent melancholy, which today we would call manic depression.
38:34His obsessive search for the philosopher's stone did, in a way, end in a personal disaster
38:40because he had failed to find it, I think only increased his depression.
38:47By 1606, Rudolf had lost his throne.
38:51Found unfit to rule, he was replaced by his brother.
38:55Alchemy's reputation would soon go into decline as well.
39:00The backlash against alchemists came from various civic authorities or even national
39:06authorities banning the practice of alchemy.
39:09It was really more a secular backlash against citizens being defrauded.
39:17After the Renaissance, alchemy began to be called chemistry.
39:21Though both words were drawn from the same Greek root, keio, chemistry eventually became
39:25the more popular term and was, in the end, a way for scientists to distance themselves
39:30from the rumors of fraud and black magic that still swirled around alchemy.
39:38Down to about the end of the 17th century, the words alchemy and chemistry were synonymous.
39:42They were used largely interchangeably.
39:45It only comes later, in the 18th century, that the two split into pretty much their
39:50modern meanings.
39:52People began to decouple alchemy from chemistry and began to associate chemistry with the
39:58kinds of assaying and weighing and quantitative methods and also the interest in qualities
40:05of chemicals from alchemy, which they now started to speak of as only the transmutatory
40:11art of turning base metals into gold.
40:15There is a kind of artificial divide between alchemy and chemistry.
40:18Where chemistry is a modern science and alchemy is this sort of shady, somewhat disreputable
40:25practice that you really don't want to be involved with.
40:29For the last 200 years, scientists who have looked back on the period have deemed the
40:34search for the philosopher's stone a fool's quest, and alchemy itself a pseudoscience.
40:41But that assessment is changing.
40:44Many of the techniques of chemistry, even if they were not initiated, invented by the
40:51alchemists, were nevertheless perfected by them, and we're talking about such fundamental
40:56operations as crystallization, distillation, sublimation, fundamental processes in chemistry.
41:05If you went into a chemist's laboratory in the middle of the 20th century, you would
41:10often see the same sorts of glassware and see the chemist doing the same sort of operations
41:15that you would have seen had you walked into an alchemist's lab in the middle of the 17th
41:20century.
41:21Alchemy also had a direct effect on some of the world's greatest scientific minds, like
41:26Sir Isaac Newton.
41:28We have over a million words that Newton copied out from alchemical texts.
41:33So clearly, he was a very close reader of these texts.
41:38We also know that he worked in a laboratory doing alchemical experiments.
41:43One of the matter theories that the alchemist held was that matter was made up of tiny corpuscles
41:47that could combine and had specific properties.
41:50And Newton seems to have borrowed a good deal of this material in his own science.
41:56In both science and fiction, alchemists are making a comeback.
42:01In the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Nicholas Flamel, Dumbledore's unseen
42:06partner, is said to be 666 years old.
42:10But author J.K.
42:11Rowling isn't the first to suggest that Flamel didn't die in the 1400s.
42:18Several centuries later, there are records of him being in India and in Uzbekistan in
42:24Central Asia, and even appearing in the opera in Paris in the 1870s.
42:33Did he acquire the Philosopher's Stone?
42:36Perhaps he's still alive today.
42:40John Dee, whose search for the Philosopher's Stone drove him to despair, is also enjoying
42:45a renaissance.
42:47Dee's works are published and reprinted.
42:50They're very popular among New Age spiritualists.
42:54You can even buy transcripts of his conversations with the angels in case you want to try this
42:59at home.
43:01John Dee would have been extremely gratified to know that the fame and recognition that
43:07eluded him under Elizabeth I has in some respects been given to him in the 20th and 21st centuries.
43:17As for the alchemist's central goal of finding the Philosopher's Stone and transmuting substances
43:22into gold, that objective is now possible.
43:26We can transmute in the sense that nuclear reactions can take the nucleus of other elements
43:34and turn them into the nucleus of gold.
43:38But the cost for that, in terms of building accelerators, operating them, having the crew
43:44and so on, is millions if not thousands of millions of dollars per microgram of gold.
43:52It isn't worth doing.
43:55As for the stone's other attribute, extending human life.
43:59In an age of wonder drugs, health clubs and cryogenics, our life expectancy gets longer
44:05every year.
44:06Though so far the ultimate prize has eluded science, the quest continues.
44:13The dream of immortality is certainly a very old and I think persistent human dream.
44:18So perhaps the dream of the alchemist is not so absurd.