Man has been an alchemist from the time when he first raised himself, and with the powers long latent pronounced himself as human. Experiences are the chemicals of life which the philosopher is experimenting with. Nature is the great book whose secrets he seeks to understand through her own wondrous symbolism. His own Spiritual Flame is the lamp by which he reads, and without this the printed pages mean nothing to him. His own body is the furnace in which he prepares the Philosopher’s Stone; his senses and organs are the test tubes, and incentive is the flame from the burner. Salt, sulphur, and mercury are the chemicals of his craft. According to the ancient philosophers, salt was of the earth earthy, sulphur was a fire which was spirit, while mercury was nothing, only a messenger like the winged Hermes of the Greeks. His color is purple, which is the blending of the red and the blue--the blue of the spirit and the red of the body. The alchemist realizes that he himself is the Philosopher’s Stone, and that this stone is made diamond-like when the salt and the sulphur, or the spirit and the body, are united through mercury, the link of mind. Man is the incarnated principle of mind as the animal is of emotion. He stands with one foot on the heavens and the other on the earth. His higher being is lifted to the celestial spheres, but the lower man ties him to matter. Now the philosopher, building his sacred stone, is doing so by harmonizing his spirit and his body. The result is the Philosopher’s Stone. The hard knocks of life chip it away and facet it until it reflects lights from a million different angles. [Illustration: The Five Pointed Star: This picture, known to all Masons, is that of the Soul. It is the Star of Bethlehem, which heralds the coming of the Christ within. The two clasped hands are the spirit and body united in the marriage of the Lamb. It is from the union of the higher with the lower that the Christ is born.] The Elixir of Life is once again the Spirit Fire, or rather the fuel which nourishes that fire, and the turning of the base metal into gold is accomplished when he transmutes the lower man into spiritual gold. This he does by study and love. Thus he is building within himself the lost panacea for the world’s woe. The turning of the base metal into gold can be called a literal fact, as the same chemical combination which spiritually produces gold, will also do this physically. It is a known fact that many of the ancient alchemists really did create the precious metal out of lead, alloy, etc. But it was upon the principle that all things contain some part of everything else; in other words, every grain of sand or drop of water has in some proportion every element of the universe therein. Therefore the alchemist did not try to make something from nothing, but rather to extract and build that which already was, and this the student knows is the only possible course of procedure.