Original papers of Isaac Newton on his studies in alchemy have recently been rediscovered in the archives of the Royal Society in the process of recataloguing the collection. The papers had been lost since 1936, when they were sold at auction, and apparently not properly documented until now.
An example of his writing on the subject:
“It is therefore no wonder that – in their advice lay before us the rule of nature in obtaining the great secret both for medicine & transmutation. And if I may have the liberty of expression give me leave to assert as my opinion that it is effectual in all the three kingdoms & from every species may be produced when the modus is rightly understood: only mineralls produce minerals & sic de calmis. But the hidden secret modus is Clissus Paracelsi wch is nothing else but the separation of the principles thris purification & reunion in a fusible & penetrating fixity.”
Clear as mud!
The Da Vinci Code should be filed under nonfiction.
Alchemists were as much in search of a universal medicine (the panacea) as they were of the secret of the transmutation of metals: and believed that the Philiosophers’ Stone could somehow achieve both, hence Newton’s mention of ‘medicine & transformation.’
I’d guess that the ‘three kingdoms’ here are the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.
I’d not heard of the word clissus before: but it looks like clyssus is a commoner variant. It seems a clyssus was an extract or essence produced from one single type of mineral or plant (as opposed to an elixir, which was produced from multiple ingredients.
But I still don’t really know what he’s going on about…