The Suspicious Death of an Immortal Alchemist

this investigation is sponsored by raycon hey fellow Seekers I'm Mr Mythos in the cobbled streets of medieval Paris in the late 14th century there lived a man who was to live forever Nicholas Fel a humble scrier allegedly obtained forbidden knowledge that had been sought after by Kings Scholars and Mystics throughout the ages the secrets of eternal life and unimaginable wealth think of a world where gold can be conjured from lead and life eternal Springs from Arcane knowledge this is the world Fel inhabited or so the stories tell Nicholas flamel's sudden rise from obscurity to wealth has baffled historians for centuries was it mere chance or did the scrier indeed discover the philosopher stone and the elixir of life in an ocean of Truth and lore we'll be fishing up the most fascinating facts fraudulent fallacies and fabulous theories that faded Fel to fame and fandom and you could try saying that after a few elixir of course if you happen to already be one of the lucky few who stumbled across a key to immortality and are looking for a way to fill the endless hours that lie ahead of you be sure to like And subscribe to get your fill of obscure oul content and if you haven't yet managed to distill the elixir of life then all the more reason to subscribe anyway after all life is short for most of us at least but before we dive in let's talk about the perfect pairs in life sun and moon sulfur and Mercury Valentine's Day and today's sponsor raycon one of my favorite combinations is listening to spotify's conspiracy theories podcast with my raycon everyday earbuds when I'm doing my daily house chores and making Mrs Mythos happy it's like a magic mix and it definitely helps me get the place clean in time for Valentine's Day just like the alchemical wedding rayon's earbuds unite quality stereo sound enhancement with passive noise isolation and with an 8 hour playtime and 32-hour battery life there is timeless as a good love story so this Valentine's Day let rayon everyday earbuds transmute your audio experience into gold and if you need evidence look no further than their tens of thousands of five-star reviews click my link in the description box or go to buy ron.com Mythos to get 15% off your raycon purchase plus free shipping thanks again to raycon it's now time to investigate the history mystery and of the alleged Immortal Alchemist Nicholas Fel have you ever dreamt of Wealth Beyond what you could possibly spend fantasized about all the things you could see if you could live indefinitely for some of us the dream takes on a life of its own and for some it becomes an obsession that leads to exactly the Breakthrough they're looking for it came to be believed that an alchemist named Nicholas Fel had learned the secret to Gold transmutation and immortality the life of Nicholas Fel has been described as one of the best documented in the history of medieval Alchemy and for good reason far from being a figure who emerges from the fog of History shrouded in Whispers and hearsay as many other mysterious Alchemists are the historical figure of Fel is actually an easy one to track down and verify we know for example that he was born around 1330 in pontoise France a town north of Paris that his family was poor but provided him with an adequate education though with less Latin than he would end up needing we know that while still only a youngster Nichols Fel moved to Paris and took up work as a scrier this was a job that involved hand copying manuscripts and other important documents a fairly common trade in the days before the Advent of the printing press with careful hand copying being the only method of reproducing a text f was also recorded as having been a manuscript seller he initially worked at the cemetery of Holy Innocence as this was where members of his Guild were situated later he moved with the rest of the scribes and scriveners to an area by an early medieval Chapel that would later become the sjac labush according to Legend This Chapel was thought to have been built by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlamagne to house a sacred Relic after receiving an ethereal visitation from the Spirit of St James Charlamagne was commanded to liberate the Saints tomb in Spain and retrieved an artifact from it that he later housed at this Chapel interestingly Fel would later have a similar visitation experience that would lead him on a holy journey to Spain as well it's been noted that the workshop Fel occupied would have been little more than a small wooden construction of about 1 and A2 square m that is just enough to accommodate a tiny table and chair which sounds susp suspiciously like my first apartment this confirms how at this point scrivening and selling manuscripts was not exactly making Fel the sort of coin that would allow him to be as immensely generous as he was later in life in 1368 Fel married an already twice widowed Woman by the name of Madame perinel Lita who was a few years older than him a document still exists that shows that a few years after their marriage perinel and Nicholas agreed that all their properties would be in joint ownership at some point during their marriage which is not clear the couple appear to have come into immense wealth they never had any children however the childless pair gained a serious reputation later in life for their philanthropy as devout Catholics they made numerous large donations to churches notably paying for statues and commissioning carvings records also show that the two acquired a number of properties in Paris on September 11th 1397 Madame perinel abruptly broke her habit of outliving her husbands by well dying she is alleged to have been buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocence opposite to where Fel used to work and chose to leave her wealth to her husband however documents from this time show that this wealth was quickly taken from him parel's sister and brother-in-law brought Fel to court over the entire sum 5,300 l tour NOA or around 300,000 modern us and they won the entire sum leaving Fel with none of panel's Fortune preparing for his own death which would come decades later Fel designed his own Tombstone which is still on display in the Muse de clun though it recently took a trip to England in order to be included in of all things a Harry Potter exhibition having made the odd decision not to be buried in the same places as wife Nicholas Fel died in 1418 at the age of 88 or so they say the less Orthodox version of Nicholas F's biography has its roots in a 1612 alchemical text the book of hieroglyphical figures it not only claimed to have been written by Fel and to contain the secrets of the philosopher stone but also to explain how the French scer came into possession of this knowledge by including a short autobiography and Memoir of the start some would point out that this is a kind of pseudepigrapha which is the attributing of a text to another more prestigious and well-known author to increase his reputation so the idea that someone would choose to attribute a text to Fel suggests that he must have already had a firm alchemical reputation before the text itself emerged and of course there is the alternative explanation as it wouldn't be difficult for a man to author a book centuries after his death waiting for the invention of the printing press to Aiden its distribution if that man happened to never have died in the first place the story this volume presents diverges from the mainstream account at the point in which Fel had a powerful dream in which he was visited by an Angel this Angel delivered a revelation to him concerning a very particular alchemical volume Bound in brass with Pages made of bark showing it to the scrier the angel then addressed him by name and instructed him quote Fel take careful note of this book you will not understand any of it at present nor will many another but one day you will discover from it what no one else will be able to do end quote that's quite the book review it's worth noting that while some might immediately dismiss stories of angelic Revelation as nonsense there is a long and documented history of this kind of angelic dream being a source of inspiration for a whole raft of important figures like that of Charlamagne and even outside of a purely religious context we must not forget that such supposedly serious-minded luminaries of Western thought such as Renee Dart and Carl Young have attributed their later successes to visions of angels and in the case of Carl Young with details strikingly similar to F's account inspired by the vision Fel began careful study in the field of alchemy but was understandably little disheartened when no such book came his way that was until one fateful day in 1357 when Fel came into possession of a large and ancient illuminated TB for the bargain price of two Florin a book which almost exactly matched the one shown to him by the angel in the book of hieroglyphic figures Fel describes the tome in his own words cool there fell by chance into my hands a gilded book very old and large which cost me only two Florin it was not made of paper or parchment as other books are but of admirable rinds as it seemed to me of young trees the cover of it was brass it was well bound and Graven all over with a kind of strange letters this I know that I could not read them nor were they either Latin or french letters of which I understand something as to the matter that was written within it was engraven as I suppose with an iron pencil or Graver upon said bark leaves done admirably well and curiously colored and quot in addition to its striking appearance the text also contained after the dedication a collection of quote fearful denunciations and curses directed at anyone who should dare to look upon this unless he were a priest or a scribe end quote luckily of course being a scrier Fel presumably avoided these curs curses but unluckily it turned out that the angel wasn't joking when he told Fel of his inability to comprehend the text within the volume in terms of specifics the book itself was said to have 21 leaves the early pages of which were fairly clear explaining that the book contained a formula for transmuting base medals into gold and that this process was revealed within in order to allow Jews living under Roman occupation to pay their taxes more easily why worry about the tax man when you can create as much gold as you like well unfortunately in a manner typical of alchemical texts the book soon after descended into DEC nomin that is the coded words in symbolic often allegorical illustrations intended to protect the secret Arts from use by the Unworthy basically concealing the message of the text in a stylized language and elaborate illustration in order to make it utterly incomprehensible to anyone but the learned and initiated it's no accident that the term gibberish meaning incoherent nonsense is derived from the name jabir Inn hyan a noted Muslim Alchemist whose texts were written in just such a complex and codified Manner and were often considered to be completely unintelligible and while we're on the subject of jabir I hyan well he didn't achieve the elixir of life since the Quran teaches that every man must die meaning the entire concept of achieving immortality was undermined from the start jabir did apparently succeed in creating life rustling up synthetic scorpions snakes and other homunculi and bringing them to life through chemical reactions in his laboratory but that's perhaps a topic for another time impact of Fel and his sadly unreadable alchemical manuscript much of the mystery of the book's contents lay in the fact that every fourth fifth and seventh leaf included no text at all but only illustrations meant to explain through the use of symbols and images the process of creating the elixir of life when it comes to something as dense and oul as Alchemy pictures alone are often not that helpful in extracting information especially when those illustrations are intentionally complex every seventh Leaf was described by Fel as being an illustration involving serpents the first of them was a serpent swallowing a rod the second was a crucified serpent a symbol now known as F's cross and the third was a desert with many fountains through which these serpents run if you fancy your own attempt at decoding the images in the book then you should know that the copies included in later editions of flamel's own book were not published with the original volume and are likely later editions produced to match the descriptions given by him in the text though he was obviously somewhat frustrated by having acquired this promised volume only to be confounded by it Fel refused to give up and instead spent 21 years trying to decipher it that's one year for every leaf of the book which you have to admit is some pretty intensive research during this period of study Fel continued his work as a scer and book seller but consulted with many scholars in an attempt to decipher the meaning to no avail as Fel writes in his Book quote I copied as much to the life or original as I could all the images and figures of the said fourth and fifth leaves these I showed to the greatest Scholars and most learned men in Paris who understood thereof no more than myself I told them that they were found in a book which taught the philosopher stone but the great part of them made a mock both of me and that most excellent secret except one whose name was anel a practicer of psychic and a deep student in this art he much desired to see my book which he valued more than anything else in the world but I always refused him only making him a large demonstration of the method and quote EA waight in his book lives of alchemistic philosophers describes how Fel painted faithful reproductions of the illustrations onto the walls of his home for a True Believer an amateur Alchemist by the name of Master Ansel who apparently aided Fel for many years Master anel proved somewhat Unworthy of the title of Master though by providing little in the way of useful information besides insisting that the missing ingredient in fal's experiments to find the stone was the pure blood of children while this is not actually an uncommon alchemical assertion with a number of Alchemists throughout the centuries having demonstrated an obsession with blood blood amongst other bodily fluids it is thankfully one that Fel chose to reject having decided that extracting blood from children would be both a sin and misguided Nicholas Fel would end up spending decades struggling to decipher the book eventually the scer realized that he would again have to seek out help from learned individuals with many in Paris ridiculing his research he figured that the best people to seek knowledge from in trying to understand the manuscript would beat Calis sages who were experts in translating ancient and oul languages cabala is a Jewish oul practice and during fal's time most Jews residing in France fled due to persecutions to places like Spain which was still under occupation by the Moors who were more tolerant of Jews than Christians were in search of answers and with the consent of his wife panel he set out on a journey to Santiago de compostella in Spain to demand an interpretation from the cabalists the site as Jacques sodel points out in his book Alchemist and gold had already been visited exactly 100 years earlier by the famed Alchemist Raymond LOL and later visited by yet another named basil Valentine Fel referred to this as a pilgrimage and made a vow to both God and St James to complete it however it's quite clear that the purpose of the journey was not that of traditional religious growth as a pilgrimage usually is some speculate that Fel did this to avoid suspicion from his neighbors While others consider it to have been a genuine pilgrimage however as we'll see later on Fel was often one to use religious allegories to describe alchemical Concepts without a strong armed escort at his side this would be a very dangerous journey to undertake therefore Fel made a copy of several of the book's pages and illustrations to keep the original safe at home he put on a hat adorned with shells wrapped himself in Pilgrim's robes and armed only with a large staff the scrier took off to foreign lands there is no existing account as to what events occurred during flamel's Journey the only details stated are that the pilgrimage took him to mjoy then to Santiago de compostella with unfortunately no results disappointed that he had wasted so much time memories flashed of perinel and his servants waiting for him at a shop evenings of loneliness and homesickness overcame him and eventually Nicholas Fel made the tough decision to return to France and he began his journey back upon his arrival in the Spanish city of leyon however fate intervened Fel happened to have a meal at an inn with a merchant from bolognia who was traveling for business this Merchant must have made a very good impression on Fel as the scrier decided to divulge to the merchant the scope of his journey and his need for the assistance of a learned Jew luckily the merchant knew just the right person after dinner he introduced Fel to a local physician A Very Old Man by the name of Master canz canz was a converso a Jewish convert to Catholicism which gave Fel hope that this man might Aid him when no other Jewish Scholars on his pilgrimage did as Christians across Europe were persecuting Jews they had reason to be cautious when a Catholic such as Fel tried to learn their secret teachings unfortunately master canz was similarly reluctant as Knight fell and the city Gates closed Fel approached the elderly master and expressed how much he admired the knowledge of the Jews Master canz looked upon him and could tell that Fel was French and that the Pilgrim's robes he wore were a disguise to appear mediocre and go unnoticed fearing trouble canz responded to Fel politely and brief briefly hoping to sh away this Frenchman from a shop but Fel would not let go of this opportunity so easily he pulled out copies of the book's pages and handed them to master canes who looked at them casually at first but quickly his eyes widened as Fel recounted quote as soon as I had shown him the figures of my extract he being ravished with great astonishment and joy demanded of me incontinent if I could tell him any news of the book from whence they were drawn I answered him if anybody could decipher unto me the enigmas all at that instant transported with great ardor and joy he began to decipher unto me the beginning but to be short he well content to learn news where this book should be and I to hear him speak and certainly he had heard much discourse of the book but as he said as of a thing which was believed to be utterly lost end quote the master who had been translating Hebrew texts dating all the way back to the time of Moses immediately recognized the source of this text and its illustrations a legendary cabalist manuscript called the Esh metov or purifying fire a book which had vanished centuries ago thought by most to have been destroyed but according to tradition the book was said to still exist to only appear to men whose Destiny it was to receive it Master canz told Fel that he had dreamed for all of his life of finding it canz identified the author of the book as Abraham the Jew priest half Prince levite astrologer and philosopher while nothing is known for certain about this Abraham the Jew the same man is also identified with eleazer Abraham author of another text the age-old chemical work which was published in the 17th century long after a certain Mr Fel supposed demise however many sources suggest that the original text dates back hundreds of years earlier than this it's difficult to establish whether the age-old chemical work perhaps proceeded or was contemporary to Fel or was inspired by his story and emerged later as this was a profound moment for master canz then a very elderly man close to death he wasted no time in helping fale translate the text scattered across the copies of the pages by the light of many candles KZ hunched over a table explaining to Fel symbols that were known to the ancient calans and translating what appeared to be ancient Hebrew script by the dawn of morning the master had successfully translated the pages Fel had brought but this was only a portion of the full book and not enough to reveal the entirety of its Secrets it was clear that Master canz would need to travel back with Fel to Paris to complete the work KES who had long been searching for the Lost text easily made up his mind to do so the journey was long and uous and along the way canz helped Fel decipher many of the greater Mysteries of the manuscript they traveled from leyon to OBO and from OBO by sea to France unfortunately the closer Master canes came to realizing his dream of reading the full book his age and weakness became more and more evident he prayed every day and night for God to Grant him more days so that he would die only once knowing the secrets of the great work but God was not so kind as tragedy struck when the two men finally reached the shores of Orly on France according to fal's writings quote when arriving at oron this learned man Master canes fell extremely sick being Afflicted with excessive vomitings which remained still with him of those he had suffered at Sea and he was in such a continual fear of my forsaking him that he could not imagine nothing like unto it and although I was always by his side yet would he incessantly call for me but in some he died at the end of the seventh day of his sickness by reason whereof I was much grieved God have his soul for he died a good Christian and quot Fel gave canes a proper Christian Burial at the Church of s qua in oron and made masses for him mourning his Fallen master and armed with an understanding of his sacred texts Fel returned to his shop and his wife panel in Paris laid down his robes and staff and began the great work for the next 3 years he would use what he learned from Master canes to translate the remaining pages and then labor tirelessly to create the Philosopher's Stone while mainstream rationalists might argue that the search for mystical treasure able to improve The Human Condition such as the philosopher stone is simply a symbol for the struggle for scientific advancement it's clear that not everyone agrees as we'll see right up until the last century there were learned men and women who fully accepted Alchemy not as allegory but as a real and tangible discipline and a Force for good in the world people were willing to accept not only the transmutation of metals but the existence of genuine Immortals the primary goal of the Alchemist is the completion of the magnumopus a Latin term which means great work the magnumopus begins with the Prima Materia or first matter and through a number of steps The Alchemist brings the substance through four phases of transformation until the final form is reached and the great work is completed this completed and purified material known as the philosopher stone has the power to transmute other substances and bestow prolonged life another key principle in the magnumopus is that of the rbus like most things in alchemy the rubus can be taken in relation to the physical work of the transmutation of Base Metals into gold or conversely it can be taken in reference to the inner work of the Alchemy of the self the word Rebus comes from the Latin term resina which means dual or double matter the rbus holds within itself a perfect balance of opposing qualities feminine and masculine spiritual and physical achieving this is done by first purifying the individual aspects of the matter and then recombining them into a substance of Perfect Harmony the RB's dual nature is Illustrated in two phrases known by all Alchemists those being as above so below and solve at coagula the first phrase As Above So Below describes the Dual nature of our reality and the balance of the material and the spiritual and the second phrase sve at coagula is the practice of breaking down materials into their base forms to purify them for reintegration into a more stable form these ideas aren't restricted to the physical workings in a laboratory we aren't all trying to produce gold from lead of course however a lot of us have practiced these things in our personal lives for example the psychoanalyst Carl Young developed the practice of Shadow work where the individual break breaks down their undesired qualities then learns to acknowledge them and accept them this is known as integrating the shadow in this case we put ourselves in a position to break down and purify the imbalances in our own lives and that's certainly a form of alchemy that said flamel's achievements in his laboratory were said to have been absolutely tangible as Nicholas Fel wrote in his book quote I now had the primma Materia the first principles but not their first first preparation which is the most difficult thing in the world at last I found what I desired what I also knew through the strong scent and smell of it with this I easily attained Mastery the first time I made a transmutation was on Mercury of which I turned about half a pound into pure silver better than that of the mine as I did examine himself and had others examined many times this was at about noon on a Monday January 17th at my house in the year of restoring the mankind 1382 only parel present end quote then 3 months later a tremendous breakthrough occurred at 5:00 in the afternoon on the 25th of April 1382 perinel watched as her husband made a projection of the red stone onto a small quantity of mercury quote I truly transmuted into almost as much gold much much better indeed than common gold more soft also and more pliable I had indeed enough when I had once done it end quote interestingly according to KR Johnson author of The fulcanelli phenomenon this alleged incident corresponds to the time in which the common scrier suddenly became a full-scale property developer charity benefactor and owner and designer of many impressive buildings in Paris W F's transmutation can't be verified his philanthropy certainly is according to Laura Night jic author of The Secret history of the world and how to get out alive this is proven in documents that still exist in the public record today quote what is true and can be verified is that Nicholas and perinel Fel endowed 14 hospitals three chapels and seven churches in the city of Paris all which we had new built from the ground ground and enriched with great gifts and revenues with many reparations in their churchyards we also have done at balone about as much as we have done at Paris not to speak of the charitable acts which we both did to particularly poor people principally widows and orphans end quote among the various Works carried out by Fel was the construction of an archway at the cemetery of the Holy Innocence where his wife perinel was supposedly buried after her death death this archo has unfortunately been destroyed since but the original was said to have been decorated with boss relief portraits of Nicholas and parano reproductions of images from the famed book and a color-coded sequence detailing the process for the production of the philosopher stone of course the couple's Newfound wealth would not go unnoticed and soon it came to the attention of King Charles IV deciding that a portion of fal's wealth should find its way into his Pockets the king sent a tax inspector by the name of M cromo to investigate according to treasury of Golic in French discoveries and Antiquities which is a 1655 account by Pierre borell the counselor and physician in ordinary to the king this m cmoi did indeed visit Fel on the king's orders however cmoi was convinced or rather bribed to overlook fil's activities with an offer not of gold but of a vial of flamel's powder of projection the elixir of Life little is known of what Mr Cy did with his portion of the powder though Pierre borell wrote that quote the powder is said to have been preserved in that family for many years end quote what's clear is that cmoi was definitely persuaded as The scrier Alchemist was then left to continue his studies and charitable donations undisturbed for the rest of his days or at least until his his supposed death what's particularly interesting about F's wealth though is his apparent disinterest in holding on to it by happily donating the vast majority of his riches to church and charity Fel fits perfectly into the stereotypical image of a true Alchemist For Whom the transmutation of metals is not the ultimate goal but merely the means to an end or in their case to not end at all [Music] it's often said that where history ends Legend begins however in the case of Fel the two are inescapably intertwined the details of F's historical existence are so well accounted for that you can literally Reach Out And Touch them for example you could find yourself in Paris strolling down the Rue Nicholas Fel or the intersecting rup Perino streets named after the scrier and his wife you could visit the old Stone building in Paris at 51 R Mont SE where you'll find a building Fel himself had erected to accommodate the homeless of the city an act of philanthropy the likes of which he was very well known for head to the Muse de clun and you can view F's strikingly embellished gravestone that he personally designed and commissioned it went missing from his burial place when it was demolished in 1717 only to be rediscovered in the middle of the 19th century in a gross shop in the rude areas where he was stored face down with its backside used as a chopping board seriously what's striking about these tangible proofs of F's existence however is that while they do prove that he definitely existed they do very little to disprove the many rumors surrounding his alchemical Endeavors in fact they often create more questions than they answer Nichols fal's refuge for the homeless might still stand as a test to his presence but it also poses the question of how a common scrier even after his marriage to a multiple time Widow was able to afford such an expensive Act of philanthropy and why in the Years following his death his properties were ransacked looted and searched to their very foundations by opportunists Looking for Gold and other valuable Secrets the survival of his Tombstone and the fact that he had one in the first place would seem to indicate that he passed away like any other mere mortal it also begs another question though why would a common scrier choose to not only spend time morbidly designing his own headstone but also fill that design with icons linked to alchemical symbolism as Kathleen Cohen notes in her book metamorphosis of a death symbol quote certain iconographic peculiarities of this Tombstone can only be explained in light of alchemical illustrations the double meaning both religious and alchemical of the symbols on the tombstone can clearly be seen from F's own writing end quote these include these celestial bodies with the sun representing gold and sulfur and the moon embodying silver and Mercury which are unusually included alongside Jesus Christ holding a globe next there is the symbol of St Peter with keys representing the ability to open and close bind and shut and St Paul would the sword representing a process of purification the resurrected Christ represents the finished work the lus and finally the naked corpse of Fel himself represents the decomposition before renewal associated with achievement of the stone as Kathleen Cohen observes quote with F's Tombstone the symbolism of the troni image went beyond a mere humbling of the self and became a necessary step in the process of Resurrection the body must Decay before it can become immortal and Incorruptible end quote this process appears to be quite gruesome with multiple accounts stating that those achieving the elixir of life will first go through a degenerative process losing all of their hair teeth and fingernails before they are rejuvenated however others might say that the distillation as it's referred to by Alchemists is a more spiritual process where the purities of the practitioner are removed and their so reduced to its pure Essence after this the coagulation solidifies the essence of the self into a whole it's worth noting that the Sun and Moon represent the male and female and the inclusion of both could suggest the unification of contrasting elements that comes with the achievement of the great work to form the rbus and keep in mind that the rbus means dual or double matter a perfect balance of opposing qualities each of these celestial bodies is positioned on the tablet above either Paul or Peter Nicholas Fel who was a devout Catholic would have recognized them as the founders of the church and he also would have known that they were noted for their distinctly opposing personalities St Paul and St Peter held very different roles in the early history of Christianity and their Union ultimately led to what Fel would have seen as a grand whole in the form of the in institution of the church this ultimate Union is likely represented by Jesus Christ in the center who holds a globe with his other hand in the sign of benediction while the historical presentation of Nicholas Fel is of a generous but unremarkable medieval Tradesman who came into a bit of money it's long been a belief that Fel was far more than simply a common scer within just a few years of his death stories began to circulate of his association with Alchemy and his discovery of the philosopher stone and supposed immortality as a result of having consumed the elixir of Life some have suggested that F's reputation as an alchemist may have risen from his selling and copying of manuscripts perhaps the fact that he was so often seen pouring over these strange volumes was enough for people to think that he was studying them and trying out the experiments they detailed others speculate that the myths of his immortality might stem from his incredible and verifiable longevity by the standards of the age having lived into his late 80s and at least one account stating to the age of 116 Fel would have appeared comparably Immortal at a time when the average life expectancy was a mere 35 years uncommon longevity in a time of low life expectancy happens to be a common feature amongst Alchemist as Shawn Martin points out in his book Alchemy and Alchemist quote jabir lived to around his mid 90s albertus Magnus to 87 Roger Bacon to around 80 L to 81 Fel himself to at the very least 87 and later Isaac Newton to 84 and fulcanelli to well over 100 According to some accounts it was also a common Trend in the 15th century for the fortunes of wealthy citizens to be attributed to their work in alchemy with other notable examples being Jac k and Nicholas Vala but we'll talk more about the money later for Fel the elixir of life was not a liquid but a solid that he referred to as his powder of projection according to a number of sources this substance seems to have been pretty Dorn effective in keeping the Alchemist alive for hundreds of years after his supposed death in May of 1818 a couple rumored to be Nicholas and perinel Fel rented an apartment at 22 Ru Clary in Paris and began offering to amateur well-off Alchemist a course in the Hermetic Sciences this course for which participants paid 300,000 Franks promised to give these secrets to producing the elixir of Life further back though in the text journey through Asia Minor published in 1714 almost 300 years after fal's alleged demise The Traveler and archaeologist Paul lcas recounted an absolute seriousness an extraordinary story Lucas had been sent to the east by King Louis the 14th to retrieve Antiquities and there he recalled how he met with a dervish a Sufi Muslim athetic Lucas consistently referred to the dervish as being USC outside the mosque in what is now the city of Bersa in modern day Turkey the dervish told Lucas that he was in the area to attend a meeting of seven alchemical adepts who would meet in a designated place every 21 years he then spoke about the elixir of Life explaining that quote hereditary disease and weakness reduce the life of man but the sage by the use of the true medicine can ward off whatever May hinder or impair the animal functions for a thousand years end quote when Lucas mentioned how unfortunate it was that Fel a supposed discover of The Elixir was long dead the dervish protested quote no no no my friend Fel is still living neither he nor his wife are dead three years since I left both the one and the other in the Indies he is one of my best friends end quote according to the dervish Nicholas Fel realized after the king's investigation into his finances that soon enough his Secrets would be discovered and he decided to leave Paris his first step in this undertaking was to fake panel's death and send her off to live in Switzerland and bury in place of her body a large log dressed in her clothes Fel then faked his own death and following suit he also had a log placed in a coffin to simulate the presence and weight of a body after this he reunited with his wife and spent the years continuing his studies and traveling the world this would of course fit with the various accounts stating that when flamel's coffin was opened there was no body to be found decades after the publication of Journey Through Asia Minor Fel was rumored to have met with France's ambassador to Turkey count desier who was Ambassador between 1747 and his death in 1754 years later in 1761 there were reports that both Nicholas and perinel were seen at the Paris Opera along with the sun despite the pair of remaining childless and historical accounts of their lives but it gets much stranger though in the 18th century a clergyman by the name of Sir morsel claimed to have met Fel in an underground la laboratory in Paris where he continued his research in secret this location was apparently separated from the outside world by seven doors oddly enough this idea of Fel persisting within some kind of underground laboratory possibly as part of a wider community of Alchemists is a consistent theme in reports of him still being alive for example Alexis Monte in his 1848 text Hisar de France D divers claimed that he met with a French intellectual who not only insisted that Fel was still alive and well but that he was working in an underground laboratory at the end of the 20th century the same idea came up again in alvaro's sukunda book Terra Incognito perpetua in which he claimed to have met with Fel himself at an underground facility in Spain below the Sierra Morena Plateau he described this immense mazike facility as extending over several hundred kilom with with various entrances through abandoned houses caves and catacombs the facility was run by a community of initiates and would only admit one person at a time through concealed doors and even then only through a series of signals and procedures finally in 2010 the Russian artist Dimitri shagen claimed to be working on a series of portraits of Fel in which the famed Alchemist who apparently lived in Russia at the time was actually posing of course not everyone is convinced by the stories of The Immortal Alchemist Nicholas Fel over the years a number of hostile critics have attempted to debunk the idea but unfortunately their counterarguments tend to have more holes than F's Legend itself for example in 1761 etan VII put forward the idea that Fel had no connection to Alchemy and that his Legend was actually the invention of P Arnold de chovi according to AE weit however this argument is undermined by documented evidence located in the biblioteca du also known as a king's Library there one can find a handwritten manuscript dated to the end of the 14th century which deals with alchemical operations and the achievement of the magnumopus according to waight quote on the last Leaf of the manuscript is the following inscription written by the same hand as the rest of the text of and belonging to Nicholas Fel of the parish sanjac labri who has written and illuminated it with his own hand end quote Gabriel n who according to the lives of alchemistic philosophers detested magic and despised Alchemy vilifying the possessors of both of these Sciences alike he took a very different approach while he acknowledged the reality of F's sudden Financial upswing he suggested that this newfound wealth came not from the art of chrysopa or the artificial production of gold but through the extortion of Jews and claiming their assets after their banishment from France n essentially argued that F's familiarity with Jewish business Affairs allowed him to receive bribes in exchange for not exposing them this argument has been challenged on a number of grounds first off Fel couldn't have benefited from two of the three expulsions which occurred in 1308 and 1320 respectively largely on account of him having not yet been born meanwhile the third expulsion didn't involve the claiming of property and assets but rather a choice to convert or leave it's also worth mentioning that F's sudden wealth seemed to come in 1382 a decade before the third expulsion took place moreover as the author of The fulcanelli phenomenon KR Johnson points out for Fel to have amassed the wealth that he did the scrier would have needed to quote control the wealth of the entire Jewish population of Paris end quot all of this shows that gel not is Theory Withers when exposed to the light of historical fact blurring the line between Orthodox history myth and conjecture Fel rests very happily on the borders of plausible exemplifying the humility required of a true adapt he shunn the Limelight yet somehow managed to maintain both an elusive sense of mystery and a reput ation is solid and longlasting as the many Stone artifacts that may or may not have outlasted him on the other hand it might be the case that flamel's wealth had a much less ult reason behind it than Legend would suggest we're going to get a bit technical here but stick around as we might actually be able to solve this age-old gilded mystery consider the economic landscape of the time as the period in question was one of the more dramatic changes in the economy of Western Europe early in the 14th century and shortly before the birth of Nicholas Fel the king of France Philip IV also known as Philip the fair began to enact a series of levies and taxes on the French in order to fund his War efforts eventually Philip IV created a system of Perpetual taxation very similar to what we have today prior to this taxes were only collected during times of heavy State burden or extended wartime this Perpetual taxation is important because it led to the possibility of what would take place next 23 years after the death of King Philip IV his system of Perpetual taxation would give rise to the possibility to wage war on a long-term basis and thus started the Hundred Years War in terms of physical Devastation the Hundred Years War was not one of mass casualties and destroyed cityscapes unlike what we're used to seeing in modern times in contrary their armies were considerably smaller and the technology was rudimentary so the real cost of the Hundred Years War was an economic one waging prolonged war is extremely expensive and even with King Philip's Perpetual taxation in place inflation was bound to set in as supplying armies requires resources and as local resources dwindled prices went up this left many people in a state of dire poverty foreclosure and seizures of assets occurred when families and businesses failed to pay taxes this was truly a difficult time for the people of Western Europe and especially the people of France but what does all this have to do with Nicholas Fel well Fel wasn't bankrupted like others at the time and this was due to his tax status this goes back to when Fel moved to Paris to take up shop and became registered as a book seller juror a book seller juror had to take a clerical oath to operate and therefore he became a member of the clerical or Priestly class which had no obligation to pay any taxes with all this in consideration it becomes more clear as to how Nicholas and perinel Fel amassed so much with the Estates of her past husbands perinel would have come into the marriage with a modest if not sizable sum which in the economic landscape could have been used to purchase properties all around Paris for very affordable rates exempt of Taxation so it would now seem that the wealth of Nicholas Fel may be much more mundane than the Legends purport you might be a bit bummed out with the revelation of the riches of Fel but if you're like me it's fascinating nonetheless but wait there's more so whatever happened to the book of Abraham the Jew well the truth is nobody really knows however there is one story that may be worth noting according to the account M's possessions including the secret to the powder of projection were passed to a nephew of perano by the name of perier next to nothing is known about perier but it is said that the knowledge and writings of Fel were passed from him to his grandson a man by the name of Dubois dubo must have had access to some amount of leftover projection powder and managed to gain an audience with the King to whom he showed the properties of the powder changing lead balls into gold after after this feat he was questioned extensively by Cardinal risho about the secret process of producing the powder though duah possessed the book of Abraham the Jew as well as Nichols F's other writings he was completely ignorant to the working of the magnumopus or even how to decipher the text themselves however risho dug up dirt and found prior criminal offenses with which to charge du and du was arrested and imprisoned and the remainder of what was left of the the estate of Nicholas Fel was passed into the hands of cardinal risho from there on it remained with risho until it seemed to vanish from history after his death the book was at some point copied yet no copies have been found in modern day that said there's a 17th century reference to a copy being in the possession of the sener of carrieras of Milan which was viewed by Pierre Bell who was a French Savant and an alleged Alchemist himself perhaps someday one of us might be in a Dusty old Bookshop somewhere and stumble upon a strange looking book with 21 leaves that we can't read but looks like it would make for a great conversation piece or perhaps it's sitting on somebody's coffee table right now let me know your speculations in the comments below thank you for watching if you enjoyed this investigation into Nicholas Fel you're going to love my deep dive into the alleged last Immortal Alchemist fanelli or if you're looking for a concoction of alchemy demonology and magical treasure hunting definitely check out my video treasure hunting with demons shout out to my patrons thank you so much for supporting what I do and if you'd like to join in I've got links in the description where you could pledge monthly or make a one-time donation and 100% goes back into these videos I'm Mr Mythos never stop seeking I'll see you in the next one peace [Music]

Channel: Mr. Mythos

Views: 215,436

Keywords: Nicolas Flamel, Nicholas Flamel, alchemy documentary, alchemist documentary, Nicolas Flamel documentary, Nicolas Flamel alchemist, Western alchemy, philosopher's stone documentary, elixir of life documentary, Mr. Mythos alchemy, Mr. Mythos immortal alchemist, Mr. Mythos, mr mythos, mrmythos, mystermythos

Id: MYsU9xAPvus

Length: 53min 44sec (3224 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2024