Information about the philosopher's stone has survived to our time, and many still believe that such a stone really exists. Just in case, we recall that this concept does not mean a crystal and, of course, not a cobblestone, but a certain formula with the help of which medieval alchemists intended (or even knew how) to turn “base” metals into gold.
But here's what's surprising: the secret of the philosopher's stone has been kept under our noses for more than a century. Modern historians are convinced that the undeciphered Dunstan's manuscript, found just over a century ago, contains the main formula that medieval alchemists fought over. Traditionally, it was believed that this manuscript contains a recipe for the elixir of immortality, written by the hand of Saint Dunstan of Canterbury. However, Russian historians are ready to refute this version.
So, Dunstan is an English saint who lived in the 10th century. Accordingly, it could be assumed that his book contains some secrets associated with the soul and body of a person, but certainly not with gold. However, not everything turned out to be so simple …
One of the pages of the enigmatic Dunstan manuscript
In one of the works of the famous Dutch scientist Jean Baptist van Helmont, the Philosopher's Stone is described as "a heavy viscous powder of the color of saffron." It turns out that van Helmont witnessed how the alchemists of King Rudolph II John Dee and his companion Edward Kelly turned lead into gold.
In his memoirs, John Dee's eldest son also writes that he remembers such a process. As a child, he saw how the resulting gold was poured into molds, and then, when the yellow metal cooled down, the boy was allowed to play with it. It is believed that Kelly and Dee, court mediums and alchemists, were the last to be able to read Dunstan's cipher code (no other information has survived). According to legend, they got the Philosopher's Stone by accident.
One rainy autumn day, Edward Kelly came to John Dee's house and said that in an old English monastery he had found a book dated, according to him, to the 12th century. In this book there is a cipher with which you can create a tincture - a brown powder that can turn any metal into gold. Did Dee and Kelly manage to decipher the manuscript and make a tincture? Historical facts confirm this indirectly. Kelly allegedly was mainly engaged in the creation of gold, for which he paid with his head.
Kelly promised Rudolph II gold, and for this the king gave his alchemist two small castles. However, soon for some unknown reason, Kelly was in prison, and three months later John Dee received a letter with the news that his partner was killed in the cell.
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This happened in 1597, and soon after the mysterious death of Edward Kelly, the royal treasury increased by almost nine tons of gold bars. As for the mysterious book, it surfaced only in 1912. in the shop of the London antiquarian Voynich. This is the Dunstan manuscript, which is more commonly referred to as the Voynich manuscript.
Today this artifact is kept at Yale Research University; it is believed to be indecipherable. Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, a kind of Olympiad has been held in the world among those who want to be the first to unravel this text. Both professionals and amateurs take part in it.
Was the book fake?
The victory in the competition of decoders was finally won … by radiocarbon analysis, because after this examination it turned out that the age of the parchment on which the manuscript was made is only five hundred years. Scientists concluded that the alchemist Edward Kelly turned out to be a brilliant mystifier and the manuscript of St. Dunstan is a fake, devoid of meaning.
But if so, then why are Kelly's supposedly invented letters found in ancient manuscripts found in various corners of the earth? Maybe all these mysterious signs are not so senseless?.. At present, scientists continue to decipher the manuscript; there is even an opinion that sixty-four symbols have already been solved. However, the details have not yet been disclosed, it is only known that the deciphered part describes the relationship of a certain red stone with plants and objects.
Also, the fact is not hidden that the decoding of the manuscript was carried out using the "Book of Knowledge", which in the X century AD. wrote the great Persian philosopher, scientist and physician, known to us as Avicenna. There is a hypothesis that the Dunstan manuscript is one of the disappeared works of Avicenna, where he describes his experiments with a certain stone, or a chemical compound, which he calls the Holy Grail.
Many sacred stories describe the Grail not as a cup, but as a stone endowed with supernatural properties: it can heal ailments, make a person immortal, and turn them into noble ordinary metals. It is known that at the end of his life Avicenna - publicly and completely unexpectedly - called alchemy a pseudoscience, and also burned part of his works. Or maybe he was so frightened by the possibilities of the red powder from the coded manuscript of Dunstan, after all, having mastered such a secret will take possession of the whole world ?!
The Dutch philosopher and naturalist Benedict Spinoza also mentioned the Philosopher's Stone in his works on metaphysics. He believed that one should look for a stone in a book written in the language of classified symbols - this is how alchemists hid their knowledge from the uninitiated. It is possible that Spinoza meant by this precisely the Dunstan manuscript.
They say that time puts everything in its place. And even if Dustan's manuscript will not be deciphered in the coming years (decades), and the Philosopher's Stone is found, this means only one thing: modern society is not ready for such a "gift", since it would bring down the entire economic model of mankind and lead to a global catastrophe …