Curiosities of Olden Times
falling from heaven like a rain, which are offered to all.
The idea of the marvellous, luminous, enriching, health-giving stone remains, its original significance absolutely lost, and is given a new spell of life, in that it is used as a symbol of the teaching of Buddha.
In Europe, also, the idea of the marvellous stone remains; it is not used allegorically, except in the Grail myth, but it haunts men's minds; they believe in it, they suppose it must be found, and they try to manufacture it out of all kinds of ingredients.[1]
Neither Arab nor European alchemist, nor Buddhist recluse, dreamed that the stone that gave light, that nourished, that rejoiced, that enriched, was the sun shining above their heads. The conception of the sun as a stone was so old, so rolled and rubbed down, that they had no notion whence it came. The idea remained, and influenced their minds strangely; but it never occurred to them to ask whence the idea was derived.
There is something pitiful in looking at the wasted lives of those old seekers, bowed over their crucibles, inhaling noxious vapours, wearing out the
- ↑ I said at the beginning of this article that the alchemists were right in believing the Philosopher's Stone to be complex, made up of many metals. We know now that the germ idea of the stone is the sun, and the spectroscope allows us to analyse the sun's light and discover in the solar atmosphere a multitude of metals and ingredients, in fusion.
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