ALCHEMY - TWELVE KEYS - CROSS - CIRCLE - PRIMA MATERIA The Ninth Key of Basil Valentine, from Practica cum Duodecim Clavibus in the Tripus Aureus of Michael Maier, 1618. The acrobatic couple are the top are designed to form a cross. This cross rests on a circle, and together the cross and circle form the sigil for Earth, a reversal of the familiar Venus symbol [?] which in Alchemy symbolizes the Prima Materia, or First Matter. Within the circle rotate the goose-headed heart-forms - symbol of the darker urges, or of the dark fires of Sulphur, from whence the sexual desires arise. The four
ALCHEMY - TWELVE KEYS - CROSS - CIRCLE - PRIMA MATERIA The Ninth Key of Basil Valentine, from Practica cum Duodecim Clavibus in the Tripus Aureus of Michael Maier, 1618. The acrobatic couple are the top are designed to form a cross. This cross rests on a circle, and together the cross and circle form the sigil for Earth, a reversal of the familiar Venus symbol [?] which in Alchemy symbolizes the Prima Materia, or First Matter. Within the circle rotate the goose-headed heart-forms - symbol of the darker urges, or of the dark fires of Sulphur, from whence the sexual desires arise. The four birds which participate in the acrobatics represent colours, which are of symbolic importance in the development of the Stone or Lapis, from the Prima Materia. The raven (top) represents the stage of Black (a stage which is said to be blacker than black). The peacock represents the variegated colours that follow on the dispersal of this blackness -a stage which is sometimes referred to by alchemists as The Peacock's Tail. On the woman's head is the white swan, which marks the third stage of perfect Whiteness. The fourth and final stage is that of the Red, symbolized here (as in many alchemical diagrams) by the Eagle. The identity of Basil Valentine is not known, though he tells us in one of his works that he comes from the Rhineland, and spent some of his youth in England and Belgium. He was a Benedictine monk in the monastery of St. Peter at Erfurt - some records refer to him being in that monastery in 1413. His name is said to be a play on the Greek Basileus (King) and the Latin Valens (Powerful), which is in turn a play on one of the alchemical names for the Lapis, or Stone of the Philosophers, which is the powerful stone of kings.
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