The Elixir and the Stone
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Author: Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
Title: The Elixir and the Stone
Published by: Penguin Non-fiction
ISBN: 0 14 024793 9
Main Topics: Hermeticism; The Renaissance; Alchemy; Sacred Science; Christianity.
It's not like the other books by them, I have to start by saying that. I feel like there's stuff in this book that they are trying to get off their chests. Part two is concerned with modern day issues, so I've only read that part once, but that's the part that's a touch long winded and hypothetical. In this part, they cover things like advertising and mind manipulation, and the use of music as a means of influencing and controlling the masses.
The first part of the book is concerned with Alchemy and Hermeticism, and in a genre where any works are few and far between, this for me is THE book. Laurence Gardner writes some good stuff on the subject in one of his books, but this is the best material I've found so far. It explained to me the feelings I was having in my own head about religion that I couldn't explain to anyone else, and then gave them a name. On a personal and a scholarly level, I really like this book, if only for the first part - which does constitute the vast majority of the book anyway.
There’s a discussion on the literary Faust figure, and the people throughout history who may have provided inspiration for this character, could be compared to him. I’m referring to figures such as Agrippa, Paraclesus, Flood, Dee, Newton, Simon Magi, Flamel… men who might have been called heretical or maybe magicians in their own time, but who might be referred to as alchemists now. There’s an investigation as to how The Renaissance might have been fuelled by the upsurge in underground hermetic thinking.
The roots of Hermeticism are well explored and explained. There’s a look at the figure of Hermes Trismegistus and a discussion as to whether he was a real historical figure, or a composite of other people, legends and myths. The works attributed to him, the Corpus Hermeticus, are also discussed in depth.
