Twelve Keys

Description

Twelve Keys by Basil Valentine is a sequence of alchemical operations encoded allegorically, in words to which images have been added. The first part of the book is a discussion of general alchemical principles and advice about the philosopher's stone. The second half contains twelve short chapters. Each chapter, or key, is an allegorical description of one step in the process by which the philosopher's stone may be created. With each step, the symbolic names used to indicate the ingredients are changed, just as the ingredients themselves are transformed. The keys are written in such a fashion as to conceal as well as to illuminate: only a knowledgeable reader or alchemical adept was expected to correctly interpret the veiled language of the allegorical text and its related images.

This book has 52 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1599.

Production notes: This ebook of Twelve Keys was published by Global Grey in 2018.