19. The Stone Of The Philosophers – Elagabalus-b

Such is the meaning of the arcanum of Solomon, represented by the two Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and Boaz. The Sun and Moon of the alchemists correspond to the same symbol and concur in the perfection and stability of the Philosophical Stone. The Sun is the hieroglyphic sign of truth, because it is the visible source of light, and the rough stone is the symbol of stability. This is why the ancient Magi regarded the stone Elagabalus as the actual type of the sun, and for this reason the mediaeval alchemists pointed to the Philosophical Stone as the first means of making philosophical gold, that is to say, of transforming the vital forces represented by the six metals into Sol, otherwise into truth and light, the first and indispensable operation of the Great Work, leading to the secondary adaptations and discovering, by the analogies of Nature, the natural and grosser gold to the possessors of the spiritual and living gold, of the true Salt, the true Mercury and the true Sulphur of the philosophers. To find the Philosophical Stone is then to have discovered the Absolute, as the masters say otherwise. Now, the Absolute is that which admits of no errors; it is the fixation of the volatile,; it is the rule of the imagination; it is the very necessity of being; it is the immutable law of reason and truth. The Absolute is that which is. Now that which is in some sense precedes he who is. God Himself cannot be in the absence of a ground of being and can exist only in virtue of a supreme and inevitable reason. It is this reason which is the Absolute; it is this in which we must believe if we desire a rational and solid foundation for our faith. It may be said in these days that God is merely a hypothesis, but the Absolute Reason is not: it is essential to being. St. Thomas once said: “A thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just.” Had St. Thomas deduced all the consequences of this beautiful thought, he would have found the Philosophical Stone, and besides being the angel of the schools, he would have been their reformer. To believe in the reason of God and in the God of reason is to render atheism impossible. When Voltaire said: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,” he felt rather than understood the reason which is in God. Does God really exist? There is no knowing, but we desire it to be so, and hence we believe it. Faith thus formulated is reasonable faith, for it admits the doubt of science, and, as a fact, we believe only in things which seem to us probable, though we do not know them. To think otherwise is delirium; to speak otherwise is to talk like illuminati or fanatics. Now, it is not to such persons that the Philosophical Stone is promised. The ignoramuses who have turned primitive Christianity from its path by substituting faith for science, dream for experience, the fantastic for the real - inquisitors who, during so many ages, have waged a war of extermination against Magic - have succeeded in enveloping with darkness the ancient discoveries of the human mind, so that we are now groping for a key to the phenomena of Nature. Now, all natural phenomena depend upon a single and immutable law, represented by the Philosophical Stone and especially by its cubic form. This law, expressed by the tetrad in the Kabalah, equipped the Hebrews with all the mysteries of their divine Tetragram. It may be said therefore that the Philosophical Stone is square in every sense, like the heavenly Jerusalem of St.