Could the alchemists make gold, and what was the Philosopher's Stone?
Gold stands for royalty, and gold is called the king of metals, because gold is precious and rare, and it always shines without rusting or tarnishing – gold lasts forever.
Metals such as iron, copper, silver and gold are dug up from mines in the earth. In the ancient and medieval mystical understanding of the world, the notion was that metals slowly grew and matured in the earth.[1] The similarity to the crop in the field, growing and ripening in the soil, has been obvious.
Once the ore was dug up, the metal was extracted from the stone. The stone from which it was "grown" determined how noble the metal was.
Everything had a destiny. Not only people, but also dead things, even the world itself had a destiny. Alchemists were "destiny makers", they could change the destiny of metals, create precious out of base, gold out of non-precious metal. Or – at least that was the intention. They did this, among other things, using 'the Philosopher's Stone'. It was probably originally an attempt to magically imitate the stone from which the gold in the earth was "created" and "matured".
Just as metals had different values, so did people have different statuses. Equality creates identity.[2] So, mysteriously, "that which looks like" did also have a similar destiny. Those who could magically change the destiny of metals must therefore also be able to change the destiny of people. And if they could create gold, they could also create kings. The stone which had created and matured the gold, the king of metals, must also be able to create and maintain royal power and the royal family.