the stone to France, where he died a suicide. The Regent changed hands from one French aristocrat to the next, bringing misfortune to all of them. Napoleon Bonaparte had the Regent embedded in the pommel of his sword, which he later surrendered upon being exiled to Elba in 1814.

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Thrice Great

God or human wizard? All books of esoteric lore speak reverently of Hermes Trismegistus or Hermes Thrice Great and his coveted "Emerald Tablet". Worshipped by the Greek residents of the Egyptian city of Alexandria, and identified with the ancient deity Thoth, the scribe of the underworld, Hermes Trismegistus was believed to have been a human monarch who ruled for three thousand years and wrote an amazing thirty-five thousand books -- a useful way ofin 1998 does offer fascinating possibilities), part of the Emerald Tablet's metallurgical secrets can be found in the Leyden Papyrus--brought back to Europe in the 1820's by Johann d'Anastasi--which escaped the destruction of alchemical texts mandated by the Emperor Diocletian in 298 A.D..Based on this historical assessment, one could hardly consider the Emerald Table a holy relic...unless the theories of Argentinean author Fabio Zerpa are taken into consideration.

Zerpa, better known for his work in ufology, cites the Count de Gebélin's belief that the Emerald Tablet is merely another name for the legendary Book of Thoth -- a forbidden book some ten thousand years old which would have been the basis of Egyptian civilization and occultism, as well as the key to "mastering the secrets of the air, the