Michael Baigent - The Elixir and the Stone

CONTENTS

ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHORS

The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail

(with Henry Lincoln)

The Messianic Legacy

(with Henry Lincoln)

The Temple and the Lodge

The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

Secret Germany

The Inquisition

BY MICHAEL BAIGENT

Mundane Astrology

(with Nicholas Campion and Charles Harvey)

From the Omens of Babylon

Das Geheimnis der Templer

Ancient Traces

ABOUT THE BOOK

Since the seventeenth century, science has been contending with philosophy, organised religion and the arts for domination over Western civilisation and society. By the middle of the twentieth century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and scepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been the so-called occult revival.

The Elixir and the Stone is a remarkably rich and ambitious book that adds up to little short of an alternative history of the intellectual world. Perhaps for the first time it puts into their true context those shadowy alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people for centuries. Moreover it offers a way of looking at the world that is in one sense alternative but, in another, deeply historical.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Baigent was born in New Zealand in 1948, and obtained a degree in psychology from Canterbury University, Christchurch. Since 1976 he has lived in England.

Richard Leigh studied at Tufts University, Boston, the University of Chicago and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Together they have co-authored a number of books including the international bestsellers The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception and Secret Germany.

Une fort des symboles est la nature

O le meute cherche la mandagore.

Fouilles-toi, et tu percevras

Lalisier, cormier et alchemilla.

Ave, regina elementorum.

Le riche art de la chimie noire

Vient du sortilge du gros bois.

La cithare saumtre lave lhermine

Et la gent lensachant.

Ave, mundi rosa.

Mais sois sans crainte. et tu verras

Le Normand vainc le captien.

JEHAN LASCUIZ

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PICTURE SECTION

Hermes Trismegistus (copyright: Scala, Florence (Cathedral, Siena))

Thoth standing before Ra (copyright: British Museum, London)

Thoth and Anubis in the Halls of Justice (copyright: British Museum, London)

Dr John Dee, the Elizabethan magus, anon., British School, 1594 (copyright: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

A magical seal, designed in wax by Dr John Dee (copyright: British Museum, London)

The Hermetic philosopher (copyright: British Library, London)

The Monochord of Hermetic philosopher Robert Fludd (copyright: British Library, London)

The Hermetic philosopher following the footprints of nature (copyright: British Library, London)

Geometry and divine proportion (copyright: British Library, London)

The College of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood (copyright: British Library, London)

Primavera by Sandro Botticelli (copyright: Scala, Florence (Uffizi, Florence))

Dr Faustus involving the devil (copyright: British Library, London)

La Gloria by Luca Cambiaso (copyright: MAS, Barcelona (El Escorial, near Madrid))

Melancholia by Albrecht Drer (copyright: British Museum, London)

Leonardo da Vinci: scheme of human proportion (copyright: Scala, Florence (Accademia, Venice))

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa: scheme of human proportion (copyright: British Library, London)

Robert Fludd: scheme of human proportion (copyright: British Library, London)

Francesco Giorgi: human proportions in harmonic relationship with a design for a church (copyright: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

The church of S. Maria della Consolazione, Todi, Italy (copyright: Scala, Florence)

Interior view of the cupola of S. Eligio degli Orefici, Rome (copyright: Scala, Florence)

Leonardo da Vinci: church design based on a circular geometry (copyright: Bulloz, Paris (Bibliothque de LInstitut de France, Paris))

Leyton Grange, Essex in 1740 (copyright: British Library, London)

Taming wild nature at Badminton, 1720 (copyright: British Library, London)

Heidelberg Castle and gardens (copyright: British Library, London)

One of the automata designed by Salomon de Caus (copyright: British Library, London)

Door to the amphitheatre of eternal knowledge: a Rosicrucian engraving (copyright: British Library, London)

Fighting between Hells Angels and spectators at Altamont (copyright: Michael Ochs Archives/Redferns, London)

Jimi Hendrix in concert (copyright: Petra Niemeier/Redferns, London)

The Grateful Dead playing at the Great Pyramid, Egypt (copyright: Adrian Boot/London Features International)

The pyramid form of the stage at the first Glastonbury festival (copyright: Mick Huston/Redferns, London)

Mysterious blues guitarist Robert Johnson (copyright: Redferns, London)

Voodoo: ritual dancing in the temple (copyright: Guido Mangold/Camera Press, London)

Voodoo: the drawing of the vever to the god Agw (copyright: Images Colour Library, London)

Voodoo: the beginning of the ritual (copyright: Guido Mangold/Camera Press, London)

MAPS

Ancient Egypt under Greek rule, 33230 BC

The Arab world in the Middle East, eighth century AD

Islamic Spain: the Emirate of Cordoba

Renaissance Italy, late fifteenth century

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Once again, we gratefully acknowledge the pastoral skills of Ann Evans and Jonathan Clowes, who, displaying a Cistercian virtuosity with loaves, if not fishes, have shepherded us and this book through the traditional writers wasteland of illiquidity.

We wish also to thank the staff of Arrow, and especially Robin Waterfield, our editor, for his help and support. And we are grateful as well to Sacha Abercorn, Jane Baigent, Ann Baring, Brie Burkman, Lindsay Clarke, Leonidas Goulandris, Belinda Hunt, Sonia Kanikova, Peter Kingsley, Beverly Kleiman, Francis Kyle, David Milne-Watson, Andrew Newmark, Andrew Nurnberg, Isobel Pilsworth, Peter Phillips, John Saul, Esther Sidwell, Lucas Siorvanes, Yuri Stoyanov, Geoff Vanderplank, Jan de Villeneuve, Tatiana Wolff, as well as the staff of the British Library Reading Room, Bloomsbury, and the Warburg Institute, University of London.

INTRODUCTION

Through whom does our civilization seek to define its identity? The answer would at first appear obvious enough. People still speak of Christian civilization, Christian culture, the Christian world. Although not quite as frequently as in the past, people still speak of Christendom. From such phrases as these, it is clear that Western society flatters itself by regarding Jesus Christ as the defining figure of the reality it has created. In fact, however, the figure who most accurately personifies Western culture is not the lamblike saviour nailed to a cross. On the contrary, it is a very different figure the magus, the magician, the sorcerer who, in Renaissance folklore, signed a pact of blood with the Devil. The defining figure for our civilization is not Christ, but Faust.

Faust, or Faustus, endures today primarily, though not exclusively, through two monumental works of literature Marlowes play and Goethes dramatic poem. Both of these works confront Western civilization with an embodiment of its collective identity. Both revolve around a man who, when one first encounters him, has already mastered all spheres of established knowledge, has traversed the entire spectrum of human experience and wonders compulsively where to venture next wonders what new worlds there are to conquer, what new disciplines there are to investigate, what new domains of knowledge there are to explore. Unlike Jesus Christ , this figure does not seek to lead others to God, nor even to attain his own personal oneness with God. On the contrary, he seeks nothing less than to become God himself. In pursuit of this quest, he employs the technical apparatus of his age to conjure to his bidding the repository of an immense and untapped power a power which, by the standards of traditional Christian morality, is labelled infernal, demonic, diabolic, satanic. With the repository of this power, Faustus makes his pact. He will be granted the resources and capacity to achieve everything he wishes to achieve, to obtain dominion over new realms of knowledge, to scale the heights and plumb the depths of human experience, to probe and chart the hitherto uncharted and unknown. And in exchange, at the termination of his allotted span, he will forfeit his soul.