The Flamel story (was:The Philospher's Stone (was: Harry's Protection ))

[eloise_herisson]

No: HPFGUIDX 119562


Jen: 
> Yes, I was re-thinking this one myself. Except if Flamel was a 
> real person, someone or some book would have a picture of him and 
> put two-and-two together. (Or not, if it servs JKR's purposes, I 
> guess.)

Eloise:
Like this one? 
http://www.crystalinks.com/flamel.gif
(It's also in the Lexicon)

Possibly a passing resemblence.

This is part of what the site containing that image (and Flamel's 
biography) says,

"There is nothing legendary about the life of Nicolas Flamel. The 
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris contains works copied in his own hand 
and original works written by him. All the official documents 
relating to his life have been found: his marriage contract, his 
deeds of gift, his will."

www.crystalinks.com/ flamel.html
(Long biography, well worth reading.)

Perhaps this is the problem. Perhaps he's regarded as too much part 
of the Muggle world, a Muggle alchemist, rather than a true wizard. 
That could be why he doesn't appear to have a famous wizard card of 
his own. Perhaps the whole Philosopher's Stone thing is regarded as a 
Muggle myth. If no-one in the WW until Voldemort actually believed in 
the thing, it would explain a lot. In fact, after Flamel's death his 
house was the focus of great attention as there was a rumour that he 
had left great stores of gold there.

I have to say that I think the "nothing legendary" bit is an 
exaggeration; he is clearly a well-documented, historical person, but 
there is a lot of interpretation in the biography.

Interestingly, it appears that Flamel, just as Jen intimated, had no 
regard for the material benefits bestowed by the Philosopher's Stone

"At the same time that he was learning how to make gold out of any 
material, he acquired the wisdom of despising it in his heart...He 
knew that man attains immortality only through the victory of spirit 
over matter, by essential purification, by the transmutation of the 
human into the divine."

The biography actually states that he kept the secret to himself as,

"he knew that the revelation of the secret to an undeveloped soul 
only increased the imperfection of that soul." 

Nor did he exploit the money making opportunities of the Stone:

"Though he knew how to make gold, Nicolas Flamel made it only three 
times in the whole of his life and then, not for himself, for he 
never changed his way of life; he did it only to mitigate the evils 
that he saw around him."

I am now struck by how all this meshes in with what we've been 
discussing. 

Flamel apparently embraced the idea of death and had his tombstone 
made in advance. However in the 17th century, a French savant sent by 
Louis XIV to study antiquities in the East reported meeting one of a 
group of seven philosophers who travelled the world, meeting just 
once every twenty years. This philosopher claimed that the average 
human life should be 1000 years, but that the sages kept the 
knowledge to themselves. He claimed in addition that Flamel and his 
wife were still alive and living in India; their funerals had been 
shams.

So again we have this contrast between the apparent acceptance of 
death and the actual prolongation of it via the Elixir of Life.

It seems these contradictory themes which we've been discussing 
aren't quite so odd after all, or at least are firmly embedded in the 
story of Nicolas Flamel.

~Eloise