ALCHEMY - TWELVE KEYS - LION - ROSE - MERCURY The Eleventh Key of Basil Valentine, from Practica cum Duodecim Clavibus in the Tripus Aureus of Michael Maier, 1618. The lion is symbol of Fixed Sulphur (that is, Sulphur tempered by the Mercury, here represented as a single snake, from the caduceus of the god). The flaming keg is a well-established alchemical symbol of the Secret Fire, which is no longer a secret to the practitioner in the picture. The two flowers (they are roses) recall the three flowers of the First Key, and are now linked with the celestial anima and animus, the Moon and the Sun, seen through the window, above them. Now there are only two flowers because the third has been transformed, or transmuted: the third flower has become the sigil for Mercury, which hovers over the pot, between the Sun and Moon. With a gesture of his hand, the alchemist reveals the importance of this flower-pot: the sigillized third flower forms a connexion between the last and the first engravings - in my end is my beginning. 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, or Kingstone.