BP Editors
The Ripley Scroll is actually a series of scrolls, so named for George Ripley, a 15th century Augustinian monk from Yorkshire who moonlighted as an alchemist. He spent nearly twenty years traveling through Europe, searching for the secrets of transmutation and immortality, and by the time he returned to England in 1477, some believed that he had found it. It was alleged that much of the money that he gave to the Knights of Malta and Rhodes, to fund their war against the Turks, came from gold he had transmuted from base metals.
The Ripley Scrolls show, in a cryptic series of pictures, how to create the fabled philosopher’s stone. For those not already learned in alchemy (or who haven’t read the Harry Potter books) this stone is the key ingredient in creating the elixir of life, and for making gold out lead. The pictures are accompanied by enigmatic texts, saying such things as “You must make Water of the Earth, and Earth of the Air, and Air of the Fire, and Fire of the Earth.”
