The Magnum Opus of Great Work of the aclchemist was to find or make the Philosphers Stone, and then to use it as a transmuting agent. Alchemical liteature through the ages is littered with allegoris of seekers of the Stone, and endless laboratory accounts of operations.
There is was not such thing as a control expriment. No account is consistent with any other, either in method or end product. The Stone cane appear in a myriad gusies: as a poweder, or Tincture, as cube, as a flying boulder, as coral.
Making the Stone
The basic idea is to extract impurities from ordinary matter and reconsitute it in its perfect state. To complicate the issue, every thing has its own Stone, which is the peak or purified form of itself, but the Stone for making gold is the ultimate aim, and this is where writings become wooly, for few have achieved it, and adepts lips are sealed.
Using the Stone
The Stone was used as a transmusting agent, whereby the potency of the Stone could be multiplied up to thousands of times in impure substances as for instance, potentizing in homeopathy. For Paracelsus this had enormous possiblitiles in medicine. Sick people could be tranformed by Tinctures and powders from the Stone that had been alhcemically porduced.
Dictionary of Alchemy
Diana Fernando