ALCHEMY - TWELVE KEYS - DRAGON - SOLVE ET COAGULA The Third Key of Basil Valentine, from Practica cum Duodecim Clavibus in the Tripus Aureus of Michael Maier, 1618. This engraving illustrates the combat of the two natures of the First Matter, and of the sexual nature of humanity. According to some alchemists, the cock attacking the fox, which is running off with its mate, represents the circular process of the Fixation of the Volatile, and Volatilization of the Fixed - a cycle essential to the alchemical process, and not unconnected with the sexual process. This process is set out in the commonplace alchemical adagae, Solve et Coagula (roughly translatable as 'Dissolve and Coagulate'. The dragon itself is symbolic of the lower forces of Will, called in alchemy Sulphur, and the entire plate has sexual undertones which are not evident to someone unfamiliar with alchemical symbolism. 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.