ALCHEMY - TWELVE KEYS - KING - QUEEN - WOLF The First Key of Basil Valentine, from Practica cum Duodecim Clavibus in the Tripus Aureus of Michael Maier, 1618. The King and Queen are the staple symbols of the animus and anima within man (the true object of the alchemical search), or the Gold and Silver of the spagyric art. The three flowers held by the Queen indicate that the process of purification must be carried out three times. The wolf is said to represent both Mars and Antimony: it is leaping over one of the more mysterious of the alchemical symbols - the thee-sided container. This is probably yet another symbol of Man, for all humans are (in the alchemical vision) three-sided, or three-brained, with Salt the substance of the Mind, Sulphur the substance of the sexual energies, and Mercury the emotions that reconcile the two. Old Man Saturn is working the fire, between his legs - fire being one of the symbols of Sulphur. 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.