Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote in his book a recipe that is supposed to turn metal into gold • 400 years after his death he seems to have succeeded in the task in a crooked way

• Gold bars // Photo: Reuters

Anyone who has read Harry Potter knows that alchemists sought to do the impossible: turn simple metals into gold - the most precious metal of all. Well, this is not just a scene from an imaginary book, and there were some who really tried to do the impossible. One of those alchemists was the Kabbalist Rabbi Chaim Vital, a disciple of the late Aryan Kabbalist, who devoted many years to searching for the winning recipe. This year we mark 400 years since his death.

Rabbi Chaim Vital dealt with alchemy as well as goldsmithing and wrote about it at length in his book "The Book of Acts", an essay that is "one of the richest and most fascinating books in Jewish prescription literature", as claimed by Dr. Uri Safrai, who even called Rabbi Chaim Vital the Kabbalist. And the morality of his teachings, called "the goldsmith of the deity" - due to the connection between goldsmithing and alchemy and the correction of the Kabbalistic souls. In a book written and illustrated by the Safed Kabbalist, traditions, medical prescriptions, virtues, amulets, formulas and various and varied calculations were preserved, some of which Rabbi Chaim Vital personally experienced and some of which he received from others. Much of his book is devoted to alchemy and goldsmithing, from the preparation of the crucible to the forging of coins and the coloring of copper so that it would look like gold, under the heading "The actions of the chemist in the matter of the 7 metals."

"The rise of the wisdom of alchemy probably took place in the first century AD in Alexandria," explains Dr. Yael Buchman, who researched the writings of the Kabbalist in her book "Practical Medicine for Rabbi Chaim Vital", "Alchemists accepted the teachings of Aristotle, "And they concluded that less metal strives to reach the degree of gold integrity - but while in nature the process of refinement takes place in the depths of the earth and takes a long time, the artist in the workshop or the scientist in the research laboratory can speed up the process." Syria and Persia, while new ideas came from China and alchemy spread to the West.

During its spread in the world, alchemy also reached the Jews who lived in those countries, including Rabbi Chaim Vital, and alchemy became his secret passion. In Rabbi Chaim Vital's personal diary, "The Book of Visions," he tells how when he was twenty-four he completely immersed himself in the study of the fields of goldsmithing and alchemy and devoted two and a half years to them. This occupation drew sharp criticism from those around him and especially the Aryans, who saw engaging in these crafts as a waste of valuable time studying Torah, and according to his testimony the Aryans told him "who saw written on the foreheads a verse 'to think thoughts to do with gold and silver'", a verse mentioned in the Book of Exodus, This is a "hint at the sin of canceling time that I canceled in the wisdom of al-Kimi'a." , It seems that after the Ari died, Rabbi Chaim Vital returned to engage in alchemy.

Rabbi Chaim Vital was not interested in the philosophical teachings of alchemy, but accepted the underlying theory: simple metals such as tin and lead can be turned into gold in the laboratory. Indeed, in eleven pages of the Book of Acts, Rabbi Chaim Vital brings close to a hundred prescriptions dealing with various aspects of alchemy, including: metal therapy, alchemist's tools, ways to distinguish similar metals, ways to identify impure metals and gold and silver qualities. Methods for cleaning and purifying metals - and the highlight: prescriptions for changing types of metals, one of which he even attributes to Maimonides, no less: "to make from the tin gold, for the late Maimonides to his disciples."

So did Rabbi Chaim Vital, a student of the Ari, finally turn lead into gold? No, at least not in the physical sense, but recently a simple sheet of paper was offered for sale on which Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote in his handwriting purple and practical Kabbalah and alchemy notes, including the secret way of refining Metals and turning them into gold; the thin sheet was sold to an anonymous buyer for $ 30,000, so it seems that in the end Rabbi Chaim Vital may still have found the way to turn simple materials into gold.