The Secret Magic of Alchemy | Ancient Mysteries (S3) | Full Episode | History

in ancient times alchemists toiled in dark  laboratories enduring poverty persecution and   fiery death did they succeed at turning lead into  gold did they discover the secret of eternal life before we unlock the future we  must find the keys to the past   i'm leonard nimoy join me and open the door  to ancient mysteries beginning now here on a e nearly 2 000 years ago a shadowy group  called alchemists embarked on a mysterious   dangerous quest in primitive laboratories they risked  their lives trying to make gold they also searched for divine  wisdom and the secret of immortality the quest of the alchemist  is the quest for perfection mysteries abound in alchemy's dark history   do the great cathedrals of europe  display its mystical symbols did a brilliant renaissance alchemist create the  first life in a test tube was sir isaac newton   one of history's greatest minds driven  mad by his secret obsession with alchemy 20th century science may have proved  the alchemists ancient claims modern   physicists have of course succeeded in transmuting  minute quantities of base metals into gold   did the masters of alchemy possess secret  wisdom what were they really seeking was alchemy a quest for gold or a search for god gold since the dawn of  humanity it has fascinated us many have loved gold for what it can buy   others have worshipped it as a  symbol of what we yearn to be gold is the perfect metal you can take  a gold ring you can leave it in seawater   it will not corrode silver will iron  will even lead will degrade over time the pharaohs of egypt were the first to  mine gold some five thousand years ago perhaps it is not surprising that  in this land of gods and gold   the quest for riches and the search for  divine wisdom were destined to become one in the strange secretive work which  strove to turn lesser metals into gold   and sought to perfect the human  soul the ancient craft of alchemy alchemy was invented in the  first couple of centuries a.d   in alexandria which is in egypt and the egyptians  were known for having very complicated spiritual   and technological practices  right alongside each other alchemy's origins are so mysterious that no  one knows exactly what the word alchemy means some scholars trace it to the egyptian word  chem the rich life-sustaining mud of the nile others believe it derives from the greek  word keema meaning to poor or caste from the beginning alchemists deliberately  hid their secrets from the world   alchemy was not meant for the common person to  grasp it was seen to be only the people who were   favored by god the initiates who knew the language  who could read the symbols who were really pure   people themselves who could reach this wonderful  knowledge the most famous of the egyptian   alchemists was zosimos of panopoulos who lived  in alexandria sometime in the 3rd century a.d he was the first to describe the  elusive all-powerful talisman   any alchemist had to possess in order to succeed  a mineralogical riddle known as the philosopher's stone there is a stone which is not a stone  a precious thing which has not value a thing   of many shapes which has no shape this unknown  thing which is known to all zosimos of panopoulos the philosopher's stone was usually pictured  as a very dense glassy red or yellow   substance and it was thought that  an incredibly minute portion of the   substance could transmute a substantial  quantity of mercury or lead into gold but the philosopher's stone was more than the  key to stupendous wealth the alchemist believed   that he who possessed the stone held in his  hands the god-like power to grant eternal life the philosopher's stone was the touchstone of  perfection anything that touched it would be   transmuted to perfection if you touched a person  with the philosopher's touchstone you would be   transmuting them into the perfect state freedom  from all the ills of age disease every infirmity   and of course death in their dark hot smoky  workshops alchemists labored hard to create the   philosopher's stone by following ancient mystical  formulas mixing melting and dissolving minerals   in a strange process they called  transmutation part metallurgy part mythology transmutation is based on the theory that metals  are made out of sulfur and mercury it was also   thought that the precious metals were primarily  made out of mercury for example gold was believed   to be almost pure mercury with a little bit of  sulfur thrown in to make it yellow so it was only   logical then to try to make the transmutative  agent the philosopher's stone out of mercury but the uninitiated found little  logic in alchemy's bizarre world alchemical books hid the secrets of transmutation   among indecipherable pages of  violent erotic monstrous images even scholars who have made  a career of studying alchemy   are often baffled by its fantastic code of symbols one of the recurrent images that is most  striking in medieval and early modern alchemy is   the image of a man and a woman bonded together a  hermaphrodite i would like to know precisely what   the alchemists had in mind when they used this  bizarre and grotesque image on the one hand it   seems to symbolize the union of the volatile and  the fixed the non-volatile on the other hand the   union of the soul and the body on the other hand  good and evil to have an alchemist and to be able   to press him on the meaning of this hermaphroditic  symbol would indeed be a thing worth doing beneath alchemy's layers of arcane  imagery leia supremely ambitious   goal alchemists aimed at nothing less than  revealing the ultimate mystery of creation alchemy was about a search for the secret  of life people believed that metals plants   animals all grew they all shared the property  of life so that when an alchemist worked in his   laboratory and tried to imitate nature  tried to imitate the growing of gold in   the earth the maturing to gold in the earth he  believed he was looking for the secret of life alchemy secrets survived through centuries of  chaos as rome fell and classical civilization declined muhammad's muslim  armies conquered egypt in 643 a.d while europe languished in its dark ages it was   arab alchemists who nurtured  and refined the ancient craft by the 11th century europe's finest minds were   learning alchemy from their  peers in the islamic world despite opposition from the catholic church in  the middle ages the secret art would flourish the gothic cathedral a prayer in stone built in the 12th and 13th centuries these   soaring graceful churches with a  crowning glory of medieval christendom did their dazzling facades also display ancient   mystical symbols alchemical icons the  vatican had condemned some believe they did notredom cathedral in paris carved beneath his magnificent  sculptures of christ and the saints   are some oddly unchristian figures a woman displays a lizard  seemingly engulfed in flame the soldier battles valiantly  against unseen enemies an unknown figure examines a mysterious flask as christian symbols they're meaningless but they appear frequently in  alchemy well alchemical symbols   were definitely built into notre  dame and into most of the cathedrals   if you look into the niches in notre dame  you will find a woman with a shield and on   that shield is a salamander surrounded by fire  and salamanders being water creatures actually   will secrete a milky liquid which keeps them from  burning for a little bit and there's a chance for   the salamander to survive long enough even if it's  been thrown in a roasting fire so of course this   came the medieval belief that the salamander  was a creature of fire and was immune to it the meaning of notre dame's mysterious  images remains controversial but it is a fact that during the middle  ages alchemists carried on their ancient   secret quest sometimes within the  very bosom of the catholic church an archaeological dig that has been done in  the louvre in the garden of the louvre in paris   actually has found alchemical  apparatus in a latrine   that was found at the site of a former  monastery and chemists found that yes indeed   these were alchemical substances  that these monks were working with one of the medieval world's greatest  alchemists was a 13th century english friar   named roger bacon widely regarded as  the most brilliant scientist of his time despite years of experimenting  bacon never succeeded in making gold   but he did invent something that would  have a profound effect on history gunpowder as bacon's fame spread so did dark rumors  about what went on in his laboratory it was whispered that he could summon the  devil that he had made a talking brass head   and a mirror that could predict the future talk like this was too much for  bacon's ecclesiastical superiors   in 1284 the pope jailed the  brilliant monk on charges of heresy   medieval europe's greatest alchemist  spent the rest of his life in prison others suffered even grimmer faiths people  believed that sulfur was associated with   the devil so if they came into your laboratory  and it was thinking of brimstone which is the   medieval name of for sulfur obviously  you'd just been conjuring the devil   so of course the medieval alchemists  were very often burned as witches in 1317 33 years after roger bacon's arrest   pope john xxii decided that once and  for all alchemists had to be stopped alchemies are here prohibited and those who  practice them are punished they must forfeit to   the public treasury for the benefit of the poor  as much genuine gold as they have manufactured   if they have not sufficient means for this they  shall be considered criminals pope john the 22nd despite the papal ban many alchemists  persevered at grave peril to their lives   both from their human persecutors and the  dangerous substances they handled every day you have to remember that most of the alchemists  were playing around with mercury and with sulfur   the compounds that you can chemically make  from these include mercury fulminate which   is the main chemical ingredient in blasting caps  and all the different compounds of sulfur which   are used for gun powder so if you made mercury  fulminate and dropped at the wrong time you   would blow up your kiln yourself and the entire  laboratory this happened with great frequency   in the middle ages and some people were maimed  and many people were just never seen from again but even as some died in explosions and the church  lowered its iron fist on others one medieval   alchemist may have achieved the centuries-old  dream of his secret craft the philosopher's stone in the middle of the 14th century  nicholas flamel was a humble scrivener   living in paris earning a modest  living copying manuscripts he also spent decades struggling to  fathom the secret symbols of alchemy flamel claimed that on january 17 1382   he succeeded at last in  turning mercury into pure gold although this story seems fantastic the municipal   records of medieval paris  reveal an astonishing fact before they died in the early 15th century nicolas  flamel and his wife endowed 14 hospitals three   chapels and seven churches how could a modest  scrivener afford to give a fortune to charity to this day speculation surrounds this question even flamel's death is wrapped in legend for centuries it was rumored  that the philosopher's stone had   granted him another alchemist dream eternal life he and his wife disappeared and there  were occasionally sightings of them   for years afterwards around france and in  other countries people says oh no i think   i'm certain i saw flamel and his wife and that  they had this strange golden tone to their skin   and they didn't look any older even  though it was 10 or 20 years had passed as late as 1818 some 400 years later a man  claiming to be nicholas flamel appeared in   paris coffee houses offering to reveal  the secrets of the philosopher's stone the legend of nicholas flamel  may be only a wishful fantasy   meant to encourage all those who labored in  vain for the ever-elusive philosopher's stone but as the alchemist secretly toiled risking the  vatican's wrath times were changing in their favor   medieval europe was about to be  transformed by a glorious renaissance   that would celebrate man's  thirst for knowledge and power by the beginning of the 16th century a new  era had swept away the old medieval world after centuries of humbling  themselves before religion   europeans reveled in the  liberation of the renaissance no longer was man confined to playing a role in  god's creation now man stood at the center of   the universe free to use the power of his mind  to explore and conquer nature it was time for   alchemy to emerge from its medieval shadows  into the dazzling sunlight of a bold new age the renaissance was really the golden age of  alchemy because so much alchemy was practiced   at the time princes all over europe were employing  alchemists at their courts courts were very much   invested in spectacle and theater of all kinds  and alchemy was another part of that spectacle if you were a rich noble you needed to have a  court alchemist it's the same thing as having   an astrologer having your giant having your fool  having your dwarf having all of the other things   it had to be done to keep up appearances in the 1580s the holy roman emperor rudolph ii  one of europe's most powerful monarchs had more   than 200 alchemists working for him near his  palace in prague in an alley dubbed golden lane   for alchemists aristocratic patronage  brought an end to financial worries   and the beginning of new anxieties the alchemist was in a really tight spot because  he had to both advertise his abilities but not   give away any secrets he had to prove he  was successful by transmuting silver lead   whatever into gold and sometimes if he didn't  produce quick enough he could be in trouble history tells gruesome tales of greedy princes   brutally torturing alchemists trying to  force them to reveal the secrets of their art more than one alchemist fled for his life when  the gold he promised failed to materialize yet despite its risks the  lure of living on a noble's   expense account made alchemy a  popular renaissance profession and a favorite renaissance fraud if one looks at the legal records it seems that  in most instances alchemists were tortured and   executed because they had been exposed  as charlatans and this is a very common   incident in fact an alchemist is exposed for  producing counterfeit gold in lieu of real gold   the ruler of course takes umbrage and then  the alchemist is executed usually by being   hanged dressed in gold tinsel sometimes from a  golden gallows a fitting symbolic death for an alchemist and yet strange reports exist  of actual transmutations   today we are astonished by these mysterious claims how could 16th century alchemists achieve the  seemingly impossible task of transmutation the   answer may lie in that famous ancient saying all  that glitters is not gold at least not pure gold alchemist said that gold was a heavy yellow  malleable metal it could be beaten out   into very thin sheets it was ductile  that is you could pull wire out of it   and it was very difficult  if even possible to corrode   so that any metal that could be made to satisfy  those conditions would by definition be gold and   it seems that they were able in some cases to  produce alloys that did satisfy those conditions dominating this riotous renaissance world of  greed mysticism and chicanery was the mysterious   figure of one theophrastus bombastis  von honahan better known as paracelsus he was one of history's more difficult men   his middle name bombastis passed into english as  the word bombastic meaning excessively pretentious   but pompous as he was paracelsus  had much to boast about for it was he who gave alchemy  a new and noble purpose while other alchemists of his day  struggled to make gold for princes   paracelsus used the secret  art to heal human suffering paracelsus is one of the more flamboyant  figures in the history of medicine   widely respected and widely hated he was known  for accomplishing cures of various diseases   which had stubbornly been resisted to all kinds  of other traditional treatments a determined foe   of medieval superstition paracelsus proved  that miners died of lung disease because   they had inhaled mineral dust not because their  digging had offended wrathful mountain spirits and when europe was ravaged by a terrible new  disease called syphilis brought home by explorers   of the americas he boldly sought a cure in  one of alchemy's most dangerous substances paracelsus was an advocate of  using mercury to treat syphilis   and although we know that mercury which is raw  is quite toxic to the human body with chemical   treatments it can be made into forms  that are not lethal to the human body doctors used mercury to treat syphilis until  the 20th century paracelsus is remembered   as one of history's greatest physicians an  epitaph he would have happily written himself for it was he who first  boasted of creating human life one of the things he claimed to  be able to do in his laboratory   was to produce artificially in his glass test  tube with the aid of his chemical apparatus a   miniature human being and he  called this the homunculus far from concealing how he had made his  homunculus paracelsus openly published his recipe an airtight container of human sperm buried 40  days in horse manure then magnetized then fed   40 days on human blood the result according to  paracelsus a fully functioning human being it may   be raised and educated like any other child until  it grows older and is able to look after itself paracelsus news of the homunculus stunned europe paracelsus  outraged enemies accused him of playing god his   fellow alchemists rushed to their laboratories  to make their own homunculi many claimed to   have succeeded but strangely no one would  display his homunculus not even paracelsus   in the end even paracelsus gigantic ego  was humbled by his fear of what he had done   he told the world that he had destroyed the  living being he had once boasted of creating he felt it morally objectionable to bring into  being a creature which did not have a soul why   did this creature not have a soul it was only  god who could implant the soul in the individual paracelsus died in 1541. ironically his innovative  brilliance may have sparked alchemy's demise by the next century the ancient  art was being discredited   by a new experimental science  paracelsus had helped inspire yet even as europe entered  the age of enlightenment   alchemy's dark secrets never  lost their seductive lure for every action there is an equal  and opposite reaction isaac newton 1666 sir isaac newton discoverer  of the laws of gravity and motion inventor of calculus and the reflecting telescope perhaps the greatest scientific mind in history  only albert einstein has been judged his equal newton's experiments in physics  made him famous in his lifetime but few knew that isaac newton was  conducting other secret experiments work he obsessively concealed until the day  he died isaac newton was a devoted alchemist in 1936 200 years after newton's  death scholars were astonished to   discover long hidden notes of the great  physicist's alchemical experiments   and over a million words he  had written on the secret art his nephew humphrey newton  witnessed his alchemical experiments especially at the spring and fall he used to  employ about six weeks in his laboratory the   fire scarcely going out either night or day what  his aim might be i was not able to penetrate   but his diligence made me think he  aimed at something beyond the reach   of human art and industry humphrey newton he believed in the mechanical philosophy  that matter is just made up of particles in motion   but it was far too confining for him and what he  was really looking for in his alchemy was those   vital principles in nature that secret of life in  nature in matter it was a religious quest for him some scholars believe that newton's alchemy may   hold the key to one of the most  baffling episodes of his life at the age of 51 newton sent bizarre  letters to his closest friends   full of strange accusations complaining  of incidents that had never taken place   declaring that he would never speak to them again he also complained of sleeplessness and  mysterious ailments generations of scholars   were baffled by this bizarre episode until  newton's obsession with alchemy came to light sleeplessness severe memory  loss and paranoid delusions   are among the textbook  symptoms of mercury poisoning   could alchemy have rendered one of the  world's greatest intellects temporarily insane alchemists worked with mercury mercury was  the central element in alchemical theory   and they were working with  mercury all the time and they   tasted things in order to see whether they were  sour or sweet they smelled things they rubbed   it on their skin so it wouldn't be surprising  at all to me if newton had mercury poisoning there is evidence in the form of strands  of newton's hair that have been analyzed   in recent times where the concentration  of mercury is much higher than normal   so it seems to me entirely plausible  that newton may have suffered from   mental instability at one point in his life  as a result of his alchemical experimentation   isaac newton recovered from his mysterious  breakdown and lived another 34 years dying in 1727 at the age of 85. in his final years he confided to his friends  that he greatly missed his alchemical work   and that if he were younger he might as  he put it give the metals another touch but by the end of the 18th  century respectable scientists   no longer believed that metals lived and grew only a few cranks and con  artists still practiced alchemy after centuries of mesmerizing  europe's greatest minds   alchemy seemed destined for history's scrap  heap a discarded relic of an ignorant past but the ancient mystic art refused to die at the dawn of the 20th century the ancient  art of alchemy seemed destined for oblivion it had long been dismissed as  a mere historical curiosity and then in the 1920s interest  in alchemy suddenly revived   after one of europe's most distinguished  minds made an astonishing claim the swiss psychologist carl gustav jung  was a former disciple of sigmund freud   who had broken away from his teacher to  found his own school of psychotherapy jung reported that his patients saw  mysterious fantastic images in their dreams   images they claimed nothing in  their personal lives could explain for years jung puzzled over these  dream images unable to interpret them until he stumbled upon the long  neglected works of ancient alchemists examining their arcane symbols jung  was stunned to discover that they   were strangely similar to the  images in his patients dreams he became convinced that alchemy's bizarre  images were messages of psychic healing   from the depths of the unconscious appearing  to troubled souls in ancient and modern times the symbolism of alchemy has a great deal  to do with the structure of the unconscious   the dreams of modern men and women often  contain the very images and metaphors we find   in these medieval treatises carl jung carl jung  devoted the rest of his life to developing and   defending his startling new interpretation of  alchemy as a secret school of sacred psychotherapy his disciples still carry on his work the psyche is in darkness and it needs to be  liberated from that darkness just as the gold   is brought out of matter uh in alchemy  so in liberating and bringing to your   conscious mind what is unconscious you're  performing a kind of alchemical process whether you go through the process of  psychoanalysis or whether you are puttering around   in your lab until you achieve the philosopher's  stone it's the same thing once you have achieved   yourself you have become a self-actualized  person you have achieved the philosopher's stone   and metaphorically and psychologically  you have achieved transcendence jung's psychological interpretation  of alchemy remains controversial   but he has not been the only 20th century  thinker to investigate its mysteries at harvard university in 1941   physicists brought the power of the atomic age  to the ancient alchemical work of transmutation using the newly invented particle accelerator  they bombarded 400 grams of mercury   with high velocity neutrons and transformed  the tiny amount of the mercury into gold was this the first successful  transmutation in history   or merely proof that transmutation  had always been possible the ancient and medieval alchemists or even  the early modern alchemists did not have   anything like the energy at their  disposal that one has in a modern   nuclear accelerator or cyclotron and in fact  this does not provide any justification for   thinking that the alchemists really were able  to perform genuine transmutations of metals   just because modern physicists can do it on the  other hand it does offer a sort of a latter-day   justification of their theory their  belief that elements could be transmuted the physicists bombarding mercury with radiation  until they created gold may have actually done   the transmutation the hard way and there may  actually be a simpler method of transmutation   locked within the alchemist manuscripts  and the engravings upon the cathedral   the harvard experiment that demonstrated  a minuscule transmutation of gold   is in my way of thinking not a vindication of  alchemy even though it's an interesting experiment   what's more important to me is to  try to find the underlying energy   that the alchemist understood and worked  with i think it's not so important to   prove that it's possible to make  transmutation to me this is a given even today there are those who  pursue alchemy's ancient quest   gripped by its seemingly timeless allure russell and sue house are contemporary alchemists  for them alchemy is not the pursuit of wealth it   is a search for the deepest spiritual truths as  a modern alchemist in the 20th century i'm not   interested in making gold it's not  because i don't believe it could be done   i think my interest in alchemy began when i was  a child i was very inquisitive i liked nature   but i was also very much involved in my  church and i liked the things i heard there   i thought that if people could see  what i had seen through a microscope   that they would see that there's that it's  evident that there is some kind of god i have found alchemy to be a way to travel within  myself and so it's not just a process for me   of watching an experiment taking place but it's  going within me and finding parts of myself that i   didn't realize were there and being able to mesh  that into my life and use it and grow from it the mystery of alchemy still intrigues us and draws us into its ancient quest  for gold for god and for eternal life a dream as powerful today as  it has been for 2 000 years so so you

Channel: HISTORY

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Id: rcGC3W8Glwg

Length: 46min 1sec (2761 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021