Common in older folklore, the Elixir of Life is a stock element of magic which grants renewed life to whoever drinks it. This may range from Panacea to a true Immortality Inducer that doubles as a Fountain of Youth. Indeed, in cases where an example of said Fountain is not inherently magical, its properties come from the fact that it is Elixir of Life springing from it as opposed to water.
Unlike the Fountain of Youth's waters (except for overlaps between the two tropes), the Elixir of Life must usually be drunk to take effect, rather than bathed in.
Said to be related to the Philosopher's Stone in alchemical lore, though this was not always its origins in myths and legends. No Immortal Inertia and/or Rapid Aging are likely to occur if a repeated user stops taking elixir. Subtrope of Magic Potion. Compare Healing Potion (which sometimes overlap). For a science-based version, see Longevity Treatment.
Examples:
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Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering: Elixir of Immortality
, described in its flavor text as "bottled life", restores some of your life when used and shuffles your discarded cards (representing your spent magic) back into your deck.
Comic Books
- The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In Issue #3, Indy meets an alchemist by the name of Prospero and his grandson. Prospero claims to have brewed an elixir of immortality, and to be 400 years old while his grandson is 200. By the end of the story, Indy is convinced.
- Spirou & Fantasio: The "spilling from the Fountain of Youth" variety is the macguffin in The Man Who Did Not Want to Die. The titular Man is an old adventurer called Tanzafio who found the Fountain of Youth and brought back copious amounts of its waters (the Elixir) in large bottles. Decades later what remained of his supplies is actually lost and he has to return to the Fountain in time before ever-fastening Rapid Aging gets him...
Fan Works
- Legacy (Sekiro/Kimetsu no Yaiba): Tamayo gives Wolf regular doses of a medicine developed by her grandfather Dogen to keep Wolf alive in his vigil over the Mortal Blade. As a result, Wolf no longer needs to eat, drink, or sleep to survive, nor will he age or sicken so long as he continues taking the drug. However, he falls short of Complete Immortality in that he can still be slain, which is a comfort to him, as he shudders to think about the possibility of an unkillable Shura should he ever give into his innate urges.
- Star Wars: Galactic Folklore and Mythology: A great alchemist named Mixan is said to have created a potion that restored his youth and made him immune to sickness. However, it also restored his youthful arrogance, and didn't prevent him from suffering injury — a combination that shortly afterwards led him to dying in a fight with a stronger foe.
Fairy Tales
- The Brothers Grimm: "The Elixir of Life" shows the titular substance as the only cure for a dying king, said in legend to flow from a magical fountain in a far-away palace. The king sends his three sons to get elixir for him.
Film — Live Action
- In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Georges Bonnet is maintaining his eternal youth by having his parathyroid glands replaced every ten years. If the transplant is delayed for some reason, he can keep his youth by drinking an elixir made from the gland; usually harvested from unwilling victims.
- In The Thirsty Dead, the cult uses the blood of nubile young combined with a leaf that has healing properties to create an elixir that grants eternal youth and life to those who imbibe it so long as they remain inside the 'Circle of Age'.
- Twice-Told Tales: In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", Heidegger believes that the water dripping into Sylvia's coffin has the power to preserve. He tries it on a withered rose and it comes back into full bloom. Carl and Alex drink it and become young again. Carl injects the liquid into Sylvia and she comes back to life.
Literature
- The Birthmark: Aylmer admits that such a potion would be possible, although he believes that it would be an imbalance in nature for it to be used.
- L Elixir De Longue Vie tells the story of how the father of Don Juan note obtained a phial of Elixir of Long Life that, if rubbed over his freshly-dead body, could restore him to life. The dying man tells Don Juan to use it on him without specifying how. Juan starts to fulfill his dead father's last request but never for a moment believes it will work. When Juan Senior's head starts to twitch, Don Juan is so terrified that he drops the phial, leaving half of his father's body a corpse. Weirdness ensues.
- L Elixir De Vie, a 1890 French fantasy novel, invokes the trope as a Red Herring. It is thought to be the mysterious Mr Vincent's source of immortality before the twist that he is actually a Life Drinker who sucks out children's life force.
- Harry Potter:
- The Elixir of Life is mentioned in the series, where it is created (by methods unknown) from a Philosopher's Stone. This version of the Elixir gives health and youth to whoever drinks it, but has to be drunk regularly, as the body will start aging again after each rejuvenation. In the first book, Lord Voldemort mostly seeks the Philosopher's Stone because he wants to use the Elixir to remake a body for himself, hinting there may still be more the Elixir can do.
- Unicorn's blood also functions as a dark counterpart to the Elixir of Life: drinking it can somehow stave off imminent death by malady, but it carries a curse that will make the body even weaker in the long run. Elixir of Life is said to counteract this curse, though this may just have been a lie Voldemort told Quirrel to get him to go along with drinking Unicorn's Blood.
- The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel: The Elixir is the source of the titular Flamel's immortality. In this version, it is a mystical drink whose recipe is different each month, with the new formulas being found in the self-updating Codex of Abraham the Mage, a mystical tome in Flamel's possession.
- Starless: The rhamanthus seeds, when empowered by Anamuht, grant a year of youth and vitality. The House of the Ageless keeps the harvest; King Azarkal has ruled for 300 years. One cannot live forever, however, and in Khai's time, Azarkal's family has grown large, Anamuht's blessings are rarer, and the seeds are running out.
- In The Well at the World's End, anyone who drinks from the titular Well becomes a strong, healthy youth, no matter how old they were before. The effects last for many decades, although they do seem to wear off eventually.
Live-Action TV
- In Doctor Who, the Sisterhood of Karn are guardians of the Elixir of Eternal Life, as seen in "The Brain of Morbius" and "The Night of the Doctor".
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Last Defender of Camelot", Merlin has Lancelot give him an elixir of life after he awakens from his 1,000 years of sleep so that he can regain his strength. After Merlin removes the enchantment granting Lancelot immortality, Lancelot drinks the rest of the elixir as he has learned caution in his extremely long life and suspected that Merlin might betray him.
Myths and Legends
- Chinese Mythology:
- In traditional Chinese myth, a white rabbit that lives on the Moon knows the secret to creating an elixir that grants eternal life, which it produces by grinding various ingredients together with a mortar and pestle.
- The archer Houyi once shot down the nine suns that were overheating the earth, and was given the elixir of immortality as a reward. However, he wanted to share it with his wife Chang'e, but (depending on the version) she drank it herself/was forced to drink it, and fled to the moon to escape her husband.
- Historically, a common pursuit of Chinese alchemists during the imperial period was the attempted creation of an elixir which would grant eternal life if drunk. This research instead led to a lot of people dying:
- The most common avenue of "research" for ancient Chinese alchemists involved mercury and its ore, cinnabar. For reasons partly mystical and partly unknown, they believed that mercury was their best shot at immortality, and got many powerful people—including several emperors—to believe them. For nearly 2,000 years—from the first emperor of a united China, Qin Shi Huangdi, in the third century BCE,note to the Yongzheng Emperor of Qing (the very last Chinese imperial dynasty) in the 18th century CEnote —the alchemists somehow managed to kill at least a dozen emperors and many others besides with the same mercury-based elixirs (and driving them all mad as hatters in the process).
- Another group of alchemists ditched the cinnabar for a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter with the hope that it would either grant extended life or transmute materials. Instead, it made a big boom—it was the first gunpowder.
- Hindu Mythology: According to Hindu myth, Amrita — the nectar of life that grants immortality to those who drink it — was created when the gods and demons churned the ocean with a mountain, using the king of the nagas as a rope to move the peak. Amrita was brought to the surface by the churning, and the gods drunk it and obtained eternal life. The demons would have drunk it as well, but the gods managed to trick them and deny them the elixir of immortality.
- Mande Mythology: Wild ngoyo tomatoes rejuvenate those who eat them.
- Much like their Chinese counterparts, many European alchemists in the Middle Ages sought to create the elixir of life. Often, this was done in parallel with attempting to create the Philosopher's Stone, as the ability to create the elixir of life was one of the many powers given to the mythical stone. A number of historical and pseudo-historical figures, such as Nicolas Flamel and St. Germain, were said to have created the Stone and the associated Elixir, and to have lived for centuries as a result.
- It's a tongue-in-cheek understanding, among fans of Groundhog Day mascot Punxsutawny Phil, that Phil is more than 130 years old, having vastly exceeded the normal six-year groundhog lifespan thanks to periodic sips of this trope.
Tabletop Games
- Arduin: Every midnight, the Silver Chalice of Life fills with a mead that adds one day to the drinker's life. Consequently, its owner will have unending life as long as they possess the Chalice and drink from it daily.
- Ars Magica: Whereas any magus can brew a Longevity Treatment, the true Elixir of Life is a hypothetical breakthrough fusion of Alchemy and Wrong Context Magic. It permanently transforms the creator (and only them) into a being of magic, complete with agelessness and other perks, albeit at the cost of Creative Sterility.
- Dungeons & Dragons: AD&D 1st/2nd Edition had two versions of this.
- Drinking a Potion of Longevity reduces the drinker's age by one to twelve years. However, each time one is drunk there's a 1% cumulative chance that the effect will be reversed, causing the drinker to become their true age. If this happens to someone who's extremely old, they can die of Rapid Aging on the spot. 5E has largely the same version, but with a few tweaks — the minimum age reduction is seven years instead of one, but the chance of aging up is bumped up to 10%.
- Drinking an Elixir of Youth causes the drinker to become two to five years younger, with no chance of side effects.
- GURPS Warehouse 23:
- The life-sustaining properties of manna are such that someone whose diet consists of 80% or more of the stuff for a year or more will age at half the normal rate.
- The secretions of the immortality fish, when refined and injected over a week, halt and even slightly reverse the aging process for a period of ten years. If used once a decade or so, this renders people effectively immortal.
- Pathfinder:
- The sun orchid elixir will restore its drinker's physical age to that of its species' young adults, allowing potentially unending life if drunk once every few decades. Because of this, and because the secret of its making is a closely kept secret and sun orchids are vanishingly rare, it's far and away the most expensive and desired product in Golarion.
- In 2e Alchemists can make a variety of elixirs, including a variety of "Elixirs of Life" that generally act as weaker Healing Potions but also grant a temporary bonus to saves against disease and poison. The most powerful of which can be combined with a Philosopher's Stone to create an elixir that can raise the dead.
- Res Arcana: The Chalice of Life is implied to turn water into an elixir of life — if you dump the water-like Calm essence into it, it'll give it back alongside Life essence. It also passively generates Life and Calm.
Video Games
- Książę i Tchórz: Galador finds a flask of this stuff.. in Arivald's grave.
- In Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Rayman meets a sick-looking Clark at the Menhir Hills. Clark explains to Rayman that he must have swallowed something bad for him, and he needs a life potion, hidden near the entrance of the Marshes of Awakening, in a place called The Cave of Bad Dreams. Jano, the guardian of the Cave of Bad Dreams, won't let you in if you don't know its name. After defeating Jano, Rayman returns to the Menhir Hills with the elixir, and Clark is back to his normal self.
- The Sims 2 has an Aspiration Reward that name drops this trope. When a Sim consumes it, they gain 3 days to their lifespan. However, if the Sim is in a bad mood, it will subtract days from their lifespan or even send them to the next Life stage if they are close enough, including death by old age.
- Stellaris: An event chain allows the discovery of an elixir of life. Production capacity is not enough to significantly raise the lifespan of the entire population, so you have to choose between distributing it anyway (which raises population happiness) or restricting it to your leaders (which increases your empire's "leader lifespan" properly, so you can keep experienced leaders longer).
- Touhou Project: This shows up twice:
- Eirin Yagokoro came up with the Hourai elixir, which induces complete Resurrective Immortality in the drinker after three sips (the first prevents aging, the second prevents disease), and was banished to Earth from the Moon along with Kaguya. When Kaguya left the Earth, she left the elixir behind and he Emperor ordered it destroyed, but Mokou (whose father had been humiliated by Kaguya's Impossible Task) stole it and drank it herself.
- Junko launched an invasion of the moon to get revenge on Chang'e (her son was killed by one of the suns shot down by her husband Houyi), unaware that the Lunarians had imprisoned her for drinking the Hourai elixir as well.
Webcomics
- In The Dragon Doctors the Fountain of Youth was reverse-engineered to mass-produce rejuvenation potions, with a safety installed so that the furthest back one can be de-aged is to babyhood (the original fountain is in the middle of a dead wasteland due to lacking that safeguard). The potion, detached from the Fountain, is not referred to as Elixir of Life but otherwise fits this trope to a T.
Western Animation
- Disenchantment: The Elixir of Life is used as an important MacGuffin in the 1st season. Princess Bean's father, King Zog, is one of several humans who wants to obtain the Elixir, which is said to be derived from the blood of an elf; he allows Bean's friend Elfo to live in the castle, in exchange for him being used as a guinea pig for magical experiments. Zog's plan is to use the Elixir to resurrect his petrified first wife Dagmar, which eventually succeeds. The Elixir is also deceptively named, as it turns out to be a hollow crystal pendant into which elf blood is dripped.