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. Nicolas Flamel, a humble scrivener, 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 Flamel inhabited, or so the stories tell. Nicolas Flamel's sudden rise from obscurity to wealth has baffled historians for centuries. Was it mere chance, or did the scrivener indeed discover the philosopher's 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 Flamel to fame and fandom. And you could try saying that after a few elixirs. Of course, if you happen to already be one of the lucky few who've stumbled across the 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 occult 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, Raycon's earbuds unite quality stereo sound enhancement with passive noise isolation. And with an 8-hour playtime and 32-hour battery life, they're as timeless as a good love story. So this Valentine's Day, let Raycon everyday earbuds transmute your audio experience into gold. And if you need evidence, look no further than their tens of thousands of 5-star reviews. Click my link in the description box or go to buyraycon.com slash 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 lore of the alleged immortal alchemist, Nicholas Flamel. 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 Flamel had learned the secret to gold transmutation and immortality. The life of Nicholas Flamel 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 Flamel 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, Nicholas Flamel moved to Paris and took up work as a scrivener. 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. Flamel is 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 early medieval chapel that would later become the Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. According to legend, this chapel was thought to have been built by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne to house a sacred relic. After receiving an ethereal visitation from the spirit of Saint James, Charlemagne was commanded to liberate the saint's tomb in Spain and retrieved an artifact from it that he later housed at this chapel. Interestingly, Flamel 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 Flamel occupied would have been little more than a small wooden construction of about one and a half square meters, that is, just enough to accommodate a tiny table and chair, which sounds suspiciously like my first apartment. This confirms how, at this point, scrivening and selling manuscripts was not exactly making Flamel the sort of coin that would allow him to be as immensely generous as he was later in life. In 1368, Flamel married an already twice-widowed woman by the name of Madame Perenelle Lita, who was a few years older than him. A document still exists that shows that, a few years after their marriage, Perenelle and Nicholas agreed that all their properties would be in joint ownership. At some point during their marriage, which is not clear, the couple appeared 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 Perenelle abruptly broke her habit of outliving her husbands by, well, dying. She is alleged to have been buried in the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, opposite to where Flamel 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. Perenelle's sister and brother-in-law brought Flamel to court over the entire sum, 5,300 livres tournois, or around 300,000 modern US dollars, and they won the entire sum, leaving Flamel with none of Perenelle's fortune. Preparing for his own death, which would come decades later, Flamel designed his own tombstone, which is still on display in the Musée de Cluny, 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 place as his wife, Nicolas Flamel died in 1418, at the age of 88, or so they say. The less orthodox version of Nicolas Flamel's biography has its roots in a 1612 alchemical text, the Book of Hieroglyphical Figures. It not only claimed to have been written by Flamel and to contain the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone, but also to explain how the French Scrivener came into possession of this knowledge, by including a short autobiography and memoir at 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 Flamel 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 aid in 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 Flamel 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 scrivener, the angel then addressed him by name and instructed him, Flamel, 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. 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 Charlemagne, and even outside of a purely religious context. We must not forget that such supposedly serious-minded luminaries of Western thought, such as Rene Descartes and Carl Jung, have attributed their later successes to visions of angels, and in the case of Carl Jung, with details strikingly similar to Flamel's account. Inspired by the vision, Flamel began careful study in the field of alchemy, but was understandably a little disheartened when no such book came his way. That was until one fateful day in 1357, when Flamel came into possession of a large and ancient illuminated tome for the bargain price of two florins, a book which almost exactly matched the one shown to him by the angel. In The Book of Hieroglyphic Figures, Flamel describes the tome in his own words, There fell by chance into my hands a gilded book, very old and large, which cost me only two florins. 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." In addition to its striking appearance, the text also contained, after the dedication, a collection of fearful denunciations and curses, directed at anyone who should dare to look upon this unless he were a priest or a scribe. Luckily, of course, being a scrivener, Flamel presumably avoided these curses. But unluckily, it turned out that the angel wasn't joking when he told Flamel 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 metals 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 taxman 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 Dechnomen, 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 ibn Hayyan, 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 ibn Hayyan, while 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 Flamel on 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 occult 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 Flamel 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 Flamel's cross. And the third was a desert with many fountains through which the 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, Flamel 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, Flamel continued his work as a scrivener and bookseller, but consulted with many scholars in an attempt to decipher the meaning, to no avail. As Flamel writes in his book, 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's stone, but the great part of them made a mock both of me and that most excellent secret, except one whose name was Anselm, 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." E. A. Waite in his book, Lives of Alchemistical Philosophers, describes how Flamel painted faithful reproductions of the illustrations onto the walls of his home for a true believer and amateur alchemist by the name of Master Anselm, who apparently aided Flamel for many years. Master Anselm 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 Flamel'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 amongst other bodily fluids, it is thankfully one that Flamel chose to reject, having decided that extracting blood from children would be both a sin and misguided. Nicholas Flamel would end up spending decades struggling to decipher the book. Eventually, the scrivener 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 be Kabbalist sages, who were experts in translating ancient and occult languages. Kabbalah is a Jewish occult practice, and during Flamel'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, Paranel, he set out on a journey to Santiago de Compostela in Spain to demand an interpretation from the Kabbalists. This site, as Jacques Sorel points out in his book Alchemists in Gold, had already been visited exactly 100 years earlier by the famed alchemist Raymond Lowell, and later visited by yet another named Basel Valentin. Flamel referred to this as a pilgrimage, and made a vow to both God and Saint 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 Flamel 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, Flamel 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, Flamel 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 the Lord's staff, the Scrivener 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 Monjoy, then to Santiago de Compostela, with unfortunately no results. Disappointed that he had wasted so much time, memories flashed of Paranel and his servants waiting for him at his shop. Evenings of loneliness and homesickness overcame him, and eventually Nicolas Flamel made the tough decision to return to France. And he began his journey back. Upon his arrival in the Spanish city of Lyon, however, fate intervened. Flamel happened to have a meal at an inn with a merchant from Bologna, who was traveling for business. This merchant must have made a very good impression on Flamel, as the Scrivener 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 Flamel to a local physician, a very old man by the name of Master Kanchez. Kanchez was a converso, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, which gave Flamel 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 Flamel tried to learn their secret teachings. Unfortunately, Master Kanchez was similarly reluctant. As night fell and the city gates closed, Flamel approached the elderly master and expressed how much he admired the knowledge of the Jews. Master Kanchez looked upon him and could tell that Flamel was French, and that the pilgrim's robes he wore were a disguise to appear mediocre and go unnoticed. Fearing trouble, Kanchez responded to Flamel politely and briefly, hoping to shoo away this Frenchman from his shop. But Flamel would not let go of this opportunity so easily. He pulled out copies of the book's pages and handed them to Master Kanchez, who looked at them casually at first, but quickly his eyes widened. As Flamel recounted, As soon as I had shown him the figures of my extract, he, being ravished with great astonishment and joy, demanded of me incontinently 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. 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 Kabbalist manuscript called the Esh-Metzaraf, 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 Kanchez told Fomel that he had dreamed for all of his life of finding it. Kanchez 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 Eliezer Abraham, author of another text, the Age-Old Chemical Work, which was published in the 17th century, long after a certain Mr. Fomel's 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 preceded or was contemporary to Fomel, or was inspired by his story and emerged later. As this was a profound moment for Master Kanchez, then a very elderly man, close to death, he wasted no time in helping Fomel translate the text scattered across the copies of the pages. By the light of many candles, Kanchez hunched over a table, explaining to Fomel symbols that were known to the ancient Chaldeans, and translating what appeared to be ancient Hebrew script. By the dawn of morning, the Master had successfully translated the pages Fomel 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 Kanchez would need to travel back with Fomel to Paris to complete the work. Kanchez, who had long been searching for the lost text, easily made up his mind to do so. The journey was long and arduous, and along the way Kanchez helped Fomel decipher many of the greater mysteries of the manuscript. They traveled from Lyon to Obieto, and from Obieto by sea to France. Unfortunately, the closer Master Kanchez 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 Orléans, France. According to Fomel's writings, quote, when arriving at Orléans, this learned man, Master Kanchez, 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 sum, 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, end quote. Fomel gave Kanchez a proper Christian burial at the Church of Saint Croix in Orléans, and made masses for him. Mourning his fallen master and armed with an understanding of his sacred texts, Fomel returned to his shop and his wife Perenelle in Paris, laid down his robes and staff and began the great work. For the next three years, he would use what he learned from Master Kanchez to translate the remaining pages, and then labor tirelessly to create the Philosopher's Stone. While mainstream rationalists might argue that the search for a mystical treasure able to improve the human condition, such as the Philosopher's 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 magnum opus, a Latin term which means great work. The magnum opus 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's Stone, has the power to transmute other substances and bestow prolonged life. Another key principle in the magnum opus is that of the rebus. Like most things in alchemy, rebus 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 res vina, which means dual or double matter. The rebus 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 matter and then recombining them into a substance of perfect harmony. The rebus's dual nature is illustrated in two phrases known by all alchemists, those being as above so below and salve et coagula. The first phrase as above so below describes the dual nature of all reality and the balance of the material and the spiritual, and the second phrase salve et 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 Jung developed the practice of shadow work, where the individual breaks down their undesired qualities, then learns to acknowledge them and accept them. This is 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 Nicolas Flamel wrote in his book, Cool, I now had the prima materia, the first principles, but not their first preparation, which is the most difficult thing in the world. Alas, 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 Paranel present. Then, three months later, a tremendous breakthrough occurred. At five o'clock in the afternoon, on the 25th of April, 1382, Paranel watched as her husband made a projection of the red stone onto a small quantity of mercury. I truly transmuted into almost as much gold, much better indeed than common gold, more soft also, and more pliable. I had indeed enough when I had once done it." Interestingly, according to K.R. Johnson, author of The Fulcinelli Phenomenon, this alleged incident corresponds to the time in which the common scrivener suddenly became a full-scale property developer, charity benefactor, and owner and designer of many impressive buildings in Paris. While Flamel's transmutation can't be verified, his philanthropy certainly is. According to Lauryn Knight-Jagic, 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 Paranel Flamel endowed fourteen hospitals, three chapels, and seven churches in the city of Paris, all which we had new-built from the ground, and enriched with great gifts and revenues, with many reparations in their churchyards. We also have done at Boulogne about as much as we have done at Paris, not to 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 Flamel was the construction of an archway at the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, where his wife Paranel was supposedly buried after her death. This archway has unfortunately been destroyed since, but the original was said to have been decorated with bas-relief portraits of Nicholas and Paranel, reproductions of images from the famed book, and a color-coded sequence detailing the process for the production of the Philosopher's 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 Flamel's wealth should find its way into his pockets, the king sent a tax inspector by the name of M. Cromoisy to investigate. According to Treasury of Gallic and French Discoveries and Antiquities, which is a 1655 account by Pierre Borel, the counselor and physician in Ordinary to the King, this M. Cromoisy did indeed visit Flamel on the king's orders. However, Cromoisy was convinced, or rather, bribed, to overlook Flamel'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. Cromoisy did with his portion of the powder, though Pierre Borel wrote that, quote, the powder is said to have been preserved in that family for many years, end quote. What's clear is that Cromoisy was deftly persuaded, as the Scrivener Alchemist was then left to continue his studies and charitable donations undisturbed for the rest of his days, or at least until his supposed death. What's particularly interesting about Flamel's wealth, though, is his apparent disinterest in holding onto it. By happily donating the vast majority of his riches to church and charity, Flamel 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. It's often said that where history ends, legend begins. However, in the case of Flamel, the two are inescapably intertwined. The details of Flamel'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 Nicolas Flamel, or the intersecting Rue Perrineau, streets named after the Scrivener and his wife. You could visit the oldest stone building in Paris, at 51 Rue Montmorency, where you'll find a building Flamel 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 Musée de Cluny, and you can view Flamel'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 grocer shop in the Rue d'Arius, where it was stored face down with its backside used as a chopping board. Seriously. What's striking about these tangible proofs of Flamel'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. Nicolas Flamel's refuge for the homeless might still stand as a testament to his presence, but it also poses the question of how a common scrivener, 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 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 scrivener 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, 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 Flamel's own writing. These include the 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 Saint Peter with keys, representing the ability to open and close, bind and shut, and Saint Paul with a sword, representing a process of purification. The resurrected Christ represents the finished work, the lapis. And finally, the naked corpse of Flamel himself represents the decomposition before renewal associated with achievement of the stone. As Kathleen Cohen observes, quote, With Flamel's tombstone, the symbolism of the transe 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 impurities of the practitioner are removed and their soul 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 a unification of contrasting elements that comes with the achievement of the great work to form the rebus. And keep in mind that the rebus 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 Flamel, 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. Saint Paul and Saint Peter held very different roles in the early history of Christianity, and their union ultimately led to what Flamel would have seen as a grand whole in the form of the 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 Flamel is of a generous but unremarkable medieval tradesman who came into a bit of money, it's long been a belief that Flamel was far more than simply a common scrivener. Within just a few years of his death, stories began to circulate of his association with alchemy and his discovery of the philosopher's stone and supposed immortality as a result of having consumed the elixir of life. Some have suggested that Flamel's reputation as an alchemist may have risen from his selling and copying of manuscripts. Perhaps the fact that he was so often seen poring 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, Flamel 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 alchemists. As Sean Martin points out in his book, Alchemy and Alchemists, Jabir lived to around his mid-90s, Albertus Magnus to 87, Roger Bacon to around 80, Lali to 81, Flamel himself to at the very least 87, and later Isaac Newton to 84, and Fulcinelli 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 Jacques Couert and Nicolas Valois, but we'll talk more about the money later. For Flamel, 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 darn effective in keeping the alchemist alive for hundreds of years after his supposed death. In May of 1818, a couple rumored to be Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel rented an apartment at 22 Rue Clery in Paris and began offering to amateur well-off alchemists a course in the hermetic sciences. This course, for which participants paid 300,000 francs, 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 Flamel's alleged demise, the traveler and archaeologist Paul Lucas recounted in absolute seriousness an extraordinary story. Lucas had been sent to the east by King Louis XIV to retrieve antiquities, and there he recalled how he met with a dervish, a Sufi Muslim ascetic. Lucas consistently referred to the dervish as being Uzbek, outside the mosque in what is now the city of Bursa 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 Flamel, a supposed discoverer of the elixir, was long dead, the dervish protested, quote, no, no, no, my friend, Flamel 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 Flamel 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 Perenelle's death and send her off to live in Switzerland and bury in place of her body a large log dressed in clothes. Flamel 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, Flamel was rumored to have met with France's ambassador to Turkey, Count de Salier, who was ambassador between 1747 and his death in 1754. Years later, in 1761, there were reports that both Nicholas and Perenelle were seen at the Paris Opera along with a son, despite the pair remaining childless in 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 Flamel in an underground 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 Flamel 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 Montey, in his 1848 text Histoire des Français des Diversitats, claimed that he'd met with a French intellectual who not only insisted that Flamel 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 Alvaroes Secundus' book Terra Incognita Perpetua, in which he claimed to have met with Flamel himself at an underground facility in Spain below the Sierra Morena plateau. He described this immense maze-like facility as extending over several hundred kilometers 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 Dmitry Shagin claimed to be working on a series of portraits of Flamel, 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, Nicolas Flamel. Over the years, a number of hostile critics have attempted to debunk the idea, but unfortunately, their counter-arguments tend to have more holes than Flamel's legend itself. For example, in 1761, Étienne Villay put forward the idea that Flamel had no connection to alchemy, and that his legend was actually the invention of P. Arnold de la Chevalerie. According to A.E. Waite, however, this argument is undermined by documented evidence located in the Bibliotheca du Roi, also known as the 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 magnum opus. According to Waite, 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 Nicolas Flamel, of the parish Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, who has written and illuminated it with his own hand, end quote. Gabriel Nade, who, according to the lives of alchemistical 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 Flamel's sudden financial upswing, he suggested that this newfound wealth came not from the art of chrysopoeia, or the artificial production of gold, but through the extortion of Jews and claiming their assets after their banishment from France. Nade essentially argued that Flamel'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, Flamel 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 Flamel's sudden wealth seemed to come in 1382, a decade before the third expulsion took place. Moreover, as the author of The Fulcinelli Phenomenon, K. R. Johnson, points out, for Flamel to have amassed the wealth that he did, the Scrivener would have needed to control the wealth of the entire Jewish population of Paris. All of this shows that Gabriel Nade's theory withers when exposed to the light of historical fact. Blurring the line between orthodox history, myth, and conjecture, Flamel rests very happily on the borders of plausible. Exemplifying the humility required of a true adept, he shunned the limelight, yet somehow managed to maintain both an elusive sense of mystery and a reputation as solid and long-lasting 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 occult 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 Nicolas Flamel, 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 Twenty-three 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 in 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. Foreclosures 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 Nicolas Flamel? Well, Flamel wasn't bankrupted like others at the time, and this was due to his tax status. This goes back to when Flamel moved to Paris to take up shop and became registered as a bookseller-juror. A bookseller-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 Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel amassed so much. With the estates of her past husbands, Perenelle would have come into the marriage with a modest, if not sizeable 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 Nicolas Flamel may be much more mundane than the legends purport. You might be a bit bummed out with the revelation of the riches of Flamel, 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, Flamel's possessions, including the secret to the Powder of Projection, were passed to a nephew of Perenelle by the name of Perrier. Next to nothing is known about Perrier, but it is said that the knowledge and writings of Flamel were passed from him to his grandson, a man by the name of Dubois. Dubois 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 this feat, he was questioned extensively by Cardinal Richelieu about the secret process of producing the powder. Though Dubois possessed the book of Abraham the Jew, as well as Nicolas Flamel's other writings, he was completely ignorant to the working of the magnum opus, or even how to decipher the texts themselves. However, Richelieu dug up dirt, and found prior criminal offenses with which to charge Dubois. Dubois was arrested and imprisoned, and the remainder of what was left of the estate of Nicolas Flamel was passed into the hands of Cardinal Richelieu. From there on, it remained with Richelieu 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 seigneur of caballeras of Milan, which was viewed by Pierre Borel, who was a French savant, and an alleged alchemist himself. Perhaps someday one of us might be in a dusty old bookshop 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 Nicolas Flamel, you're going to love my deep dive into the alleged last immortal alchemist, Fulcinelli. 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 can 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.