The Philosopher's Stone &
The Elixir of Life
The name given in Alchemy to a stone, powder or substance which will transmute base metals into gold (or so dictionaries say... if you want to know the deeper truth, wait a bit I'm up to my neck lately).
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 Philosopher's 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."
He who possesses the Philosopher's 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 Philosopher's Stone is perfect love, which transmutes all that is base and "raises" all that is dead (from 'The Secret Teachings of All Ages').
The Elixir of Life
A term derived from Alchemy and used to denote the supposed liquid, a draught of which would give eternal life or some similar required extension or intensification of being.
While in popular imagination the Elixir is regarded as being a liquid, the early alchemical manuscripts also often describe it as a powder. The origin of the term is probably Arabic. for a word of similar sound denotes a powder used for healing wounds.
Sometimes it was believed that the Elixir was the so-called Philosopher's Stone, which could be used to turn base metals into gold or silver.