Product Description

In this study Baigent and Leigh construct an alternative history of religion and thought which begins with the Hermeticism of 1st century Alexandria and describes its pathways through Europe over the ensuing centuries. Along the way there are tales of individuals, including the Elizabethan magician John Dee and the Franciscan friar and alchemist Roger Bacon.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1186101 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From the Publisher
An alternative history of the intellectual world

About the Author
Michael Baigent was born in New Zealand in 1948, and obtained a degree in psychology from Canterbury University, Christchurch. Since 1976 he has lived in England. Richard Leigh studied at Tufts University, Boston, the University of Chicago and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Together they have co-authored a number of books including the international bestsellers The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception and Secret Germany.

Customer Reviews

Quite interesting but painful to read.
Some of the history of Hermetism in the first book is interesting but too condensed, names are thrown at you with no explanation of what they did or who they were. The biggest complaint though is the dreadful prose style, never use a short word where a longer one (often used incorrectly) will do, seem to be the authors' maxim, thus people never travel they always peregrinate, the future is never bright always roseate(!) etc. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't done for purely portentous reasons.
The second part dealing with the integration of hermetic ideas into modern life is simply a disconnected mess. Not recommended

Poorly researched
I could not bring myself to finish this book. Writing about this subject matter requires a great deal of effort in research. All manner of sources would have to be investigated and interpreted. Yet at the begining of the book, there are some major errors when it talks about Islam. It says that Islam may be based on christian origins, whilst there is no evidence , nore do they provide any to support this. Fine, I can live with that, they just chose a story that fits their line of thinking. Unfortunaly, it then goes on to attribute certain beiliefs to Islam which simply arent true. Whilst this may not be a big a deal in the context of the book, I was still very disapointed, how can I trust the authors to have performed thorough research on a subject such as hermiticism where sources are few and far between when they neglected to research islamic beliefs properly, a subject on which there is no shortage material. It just tells me that attention to detail isnt important to the authors....or only important when it fits their hypothesis.

A review of the "Elixir" by someone who is NOT stoned.
You can ignore entirely the person who wrote the review claing that this book is (1) badly written ("painful to read") and (2) does not show any proper sequence of events. Both criticisms are not only nonsense but are worse - they are the exact OPPOSITE of the truth. As a matter of fact the thing most striking thing about this work is its fluent beauty of its "poetic prose" style. It is such a pleasure to read, the words rolling off the tongue like honey. The particular criticism of the word "roseate" in place of "bright" is typically ludicrous - the use of more colourful terms (such as "roseate" in place of the more mundane is called poetry, my friends - it makes reading not more "painful" but infinitely more pleasant. As reagrds criticism two, it is so obviously off-the-mark as to not even require comment or counter-criticism. Read the book and you will see just what I mean.

The Elixir and the Stone is a great book and scholarly work - highly recommended for all students of the Hermetic Tradition.