Manly Hall on the Philosopher's Stone

 
   

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The Philosopher's Stone

As Manly P. Hall writes... “The Philosopher's Stone is an ancient symbol of the perfected and regenerated man whose divine nature shines forth through a chain of purified and unfolded vehicles. As the rough diamond is dull and lifeless when first removed from the black carbon, so the spiritual nature of man in its "fallen" state reveals little, if any, of its inherent luminosity. Just as in the hand of the skillful lapidary the shapeless stone is transformed into a scintillating gem from whose facets pour streams of varicolored fire, so upon the lathe of the Divine Lapidary the soul of man is ground and polished until it reflects the glory of its creator from every atom. The perfecting of the Diamond Soul through philosophical-alchemical art was the concealed object of Hermetic Rosicrucianism. Albert Mackey sees a correspondence between the Philosophers Stone and the Masonic Temple, for both represent the realization and accomplishment of the ideal. In philosophy the Stone of the Wise Man is "supreme and unalterable Reason. To find the Absolute in the Infinite, in the Indefinite, and in the Finite, this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work of the Sages, which Hermes called the Work of the Sun." (See Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Abert Pike, Grand Commander, Thirty-Third Degree, Prepared for The Southern Jurisdiction Of The Untited States, and Published by its Authority, 1871. He who possesses the Philosophers Stone possesses Truth, the greatest of all treasures, and is therefore rich beyond the calculation of man; he is immortal because Reason takes no account of death and he is healed of Ignorance --the most loathsome of all diseases. The Hermetic Stone is Divine Power, which all men seek but which is found only by such as exchange for it that temporal power which must pass away. To the mystic, the Philosophers Stone is perfect love, which transmutes all that is base and 'raises' all that is dead.”     —The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy --Being an Interpretation of the Secret Teachings concealed within the Rituals, Allegories and Mysteries of all Ages; Los Angeles, California, 1928, page facing XCVII. For more information on the works of Manly P. Hall, see The Philosophical Research Society.          See also Parsifal and the Holy Grail on this web site. “The Philosopher's Stone is a term used by Cabalists to denote the Supreme Wisdom, the union of the divine consciousness or omniscient Solar Principle in man with the lower consciousness or personality, which union has been the goal of Initiates of all ages. Exoterically, the Philosopher's Stone is the secret of the transmutation of the baser metals into gold.”     —Comte de Gabalis, by the Abbe N. de Montfaucon de Villars, Paris, 1670; Rendered out of French into English, with a commentary by Lotus Dudley, New York: Macoy Publishing & Masonc Supply Company, 1922, page 8.