The alchemical Stone, I suggest, is the raw material for a creativity rooted in the spirit, which we discover in the unconscious. In our everyday lives we are very much occupied with the mundane. What we choose to occupy ourselves with is rooted in the mundane, whether its pleasure, search for wealth, power, etc. So that's why the unconscious produces the fantasy of the spiritual Stone, like in my own dream from decades ago when I dreamed about finding the Uranium stone in the Holy land. In the dream I immediately started to work diligently, to refine its properties, together with my companions.
The Stone generates a spiritual form of creativity, because it contains another kind of energy than the mundane energy. However, being creative often means to occupy oneself with matter, as in the work of the artist. Actually, artists have always worked with led which they have turned into "gold", in a sense. 'Led white' has superior qualities, but today's artists seldom use it while it is poisonous. 'Naples yellow' is also made of led, but seldom used today.
The spirituality of the Stone (the spirit Mercurius) emerged in the medieval era. The earlier antique form of spirituality was of another kind. It died out in late antiquity. Plutarch (d. AD 120) relates (in Cessation of the Oracles) that the passengers of a ship, while passing by a group of islands on the coast of Greece, heard a mysterious voice proclaiming that "The great god Pan is dead". At this there came the sound of a mighty groaning and lamentation from countless throats. Emperor Tiberius set up a commission to investigate the matter. They managed to find witnesses who corroborated the story (cf. Walker, Gnosticism, pp.72-73). A god can never really die, of course, but the epoch of Pan was over.
I myself have dwelled with this spirit in my life. In one dream a voice told me: "You ought to be like Pan for a time." It means to immerse myself in the waters of antique spirituality. But I cannot stay there because it leads nowhere, although it is good for healing purposes. Finding the Stone, which contains the spirit Mercurius, is a more advanced form of spirituality. It signifies, I think, a creativity rooted in the spirit, which derives from an unconscious realm. When this source has been found, then one can be creative and continue to "search". Life becomes rooted in the spirit, and the personality is no longer psychologically dependent on the worldly energies.
As to the phenomenon of "alchemical humbug", e.g. people who claim to have possession of the stone in its material guise. I think this belongs to the category of ritualization, i.e. the way in which people tend to create a new religion out of an impressive phenomenon. Today's consumerism implies that people go on pilgrimage to shopping centres and purchase fetish objects. This richness in furnishings gave rise to the "cargo cults" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult ) among primitives who adopted white man's cult. So the primitives "imitated" white man's lifestyle and made a ritual out of it. This ritualizing factor is born out of man's religious temperament.
Likewise, there is a tendency, on lines of New Age, to make a religion out of alchemy. Personally, I tend to be favourably disposed toward religion, in a general sense, because it belongs in human nature. However, an alchemical religious attitude can cause irritation as it contravenes the very spirit of alchemy, namely as an alternative path to religion. If people start worshipping the Stone as a material object created in the laboratory, then it can put the lid on the said spiritual creativity. Alchemy, I think, is meant to go beyond religion, i.e., not imitating through ritual, but experiencing it yourself.
I have called this phenomenon "romantization", the tendency to romanticize the spiritual path. After the Middle Ages, alchemy became more and more romantic, high-flown, occupying itself with beautiful imagery, etc. But the Stone is hidden in the mud. As it appears crude and simple it is something that tends to be neglected, but it can be refined immensely.
Mats
