The philosopher's stone is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as lead and mercury into gold or silver; it was also known as "the tincture" and "the powder" as well as "red lion" for gold and "white lion" for silver. Alchemists additionally believed that it could be used to make an elixir of life which made possible rejuvenation and immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosopher's stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, divine illumination, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosopher's stone were known as the Magnum Opus ("Great Work").
Antiquity The earliest known written mention of the philosopher's stone is in the Cheirokmeta by Zosimos of Panopolis (c. 300 AD). Alchemical writers assign a longer history. Elias Ashmole and the anonymous author of Gloria Mundi (1620) claim that its history goes back to Adam, who acquired the knowledge of the stone directly from God. This knowledge was said to have been passed down through biblical patriarchs, giving them their longevity. The theoretical roots outlining the stone's creation can be traced to Greek philosophy. Alchemists later used the classical elements, the concept of anima mundi, and creation stories presented in texts like Plato's Timaeus as analogies for their process. According to Plato, the four elements are derived from a common source or prima materia (first matter), associated with chaos. Prima materia is also the name alchemists assign to the starting ingredient for the creation of the philosopher's stone. The importance of this philosophical first matter persisted throughout the history of alchemy. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Vaughan writes, "the first matter of the stone is the very same with the first matter of all things."
Middle Ages In the Byzantine Empire and the Arab empires, early medieval alchemists built upon the work of Zosimos. Byzantine and Islamic alchemists were fascinated by the concept of metal transmutation and attempted to carry out the process. The eighth-century Muslim alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan—Jabir was often romanised as Geber—analysed each classical element in terms of the four basic qualities. Fire was both hot and dry, earth cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air hot and moist. He theorized that every metal was a combination of these four principles, two of them interior and two exterior. From this premise, it was reasoned that the transmutation of one metal into another could be effected by the rearrangement of its basic qualities. This change would be mediated by a substance, which came to be called xerion in Greek and al-iksir in Arabic (from which the word elixir is derived). It was often considered to exist as a dry red powder—also known as al-kibrit al-ahmar ('red sulfur')—made from a legendary stone: the philosopher's stone. The elixir powder came to be regarded as a crucial component of transmutation by later Arab alchemists. In the 11th century, there was a debate among Islamic chemists on whether the transmutation of substances was possible. A leading opponent was the Persian polymath Avicenna (a.k.a. Ibn Sina), who discredited the theory of the transmutation of substances, stating, "Those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of substances, though they can produce the appearance of such change." According to legend, the 13th-century scientist and philosopher Albertus Magnus is said to have discovered the philosopher's stone. Magnus did not confirm he discovered the stone in his writings, but he did record that he witnessed the creation of gold by "transmutation".
Renaissance to early modern period
The 16th-century Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) believed in the existence of alkahest, which he thought to be an undiscovered element from which all other elements (earth, fire, water, air) were simply derivative forms. Paracelsus believed that this element was, in fact, the philosopher's stone. 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. A mystical text published in the 17th century, the Mutus Liber, appears to be a symbolic instruction manual for concocting a philosopher's stone. Called the "wordless book", it was a collection of 15 illustrations.
In Buddhism and Hinduism
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