6. Basil Valentine

The problem with monarchy is rarely the monarch himself. Rather, the problem is his successor. Succession appears to be not much more than a craps shoot. The greatest of Roman emperors, Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Valentinian, Constantine -- are their legacies not besmirched by their sons and successors? What good is a great King if his son is a monster?

We shall count the fruit, in this regard, of Basil Valentine as doubled, for the muchness of his successor surpasses his own muchity.

Mr. Valentine, whoever he was, was born in interesting days… and he nursed his era for every bit of weirdness it held.

During the final year of the 16th century, a short little book started to populate itself amongst a sea of European men of intrigue.


Not much later, in 1602, the book became accompanied by 12 woodcuts. The book, entitled, "Of the Great Stone of the Ancients" was broken into two halves. The first dealt with the mystical Philosopher's Stone…



A moment's pause to familiarize with the Philosopher's Stone:

• It's pretty much the Alchemist's El Dorado
• Generally, the Stone is the miracle substance that can be used to turn stuff into gold
• The Stone is often also supposed to have mystic powers, most commonly that of giving inordinately long life to those who consume bits of it.
• During the High Church era of Europe, the Stone also took on religious significance, with some speculation coming down that it was a secret that God gave to Adam, which he shared with many-a patriarch. This would explain the long lives mentioned in Genesis.

The 2nd half of Basil Valentine's book delves into his obtuse "12 Steps". The steps, as included in the wood reliefs, appear as though they must have some sort of deep allegorical significance. One can presuppose that the visuals in each step represent some chemical or physiochemical process. For example, a crowned king is thought to represent gold. 

But it's the sheer impenetrableness of the keys that makes them so alluring. No one knows for sure what they really represent. Are the keys a process to refine the Philosopher's Stone out of basic elements? Because of their weirdness (and inclusion of many languages, including German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew), it remains a question whether or not the keys are more akin to witchcraft than chemistry. 

As for Basil Valentine himself, we know almost nothing of the historical man. Some suggest that his publisher, a man named Tholde, was actually Basil, writing under a pseudonym. Whether or not that's true doesn't really change anything. 

The lingering question of Basil Valentine remains: 

Did he find what he was looking for?

Alchemy's heyday had long past into darkness when Basil Valentine's successor entered into the light of history. He is known to us simply as Fulcanelli. 

Fulcanelli lived in the 20th century, and had an artful power over the biological world whose grasp was so great that the Nazis scavenged the world in search of him and his secrets. We know with relative certainty is that Fulcanelli was a writer of esoteric books, emphasizing the reality of the strange in his writings. The connection with Basil Valentine, likewise, is bizarre. Supposedly, Mr. Valentine came to Fulcanelli's wife in a dream, and henceforth (somehow) declared that he, Basil Valentine, as a dream, was to undertake Fulcanelli as his very own apprentice. 

The result of all this, supposedly in 1920, was the successful transmuting of lead into gold. This was seen and partially performed by Fulcanelli's own apprentice, a one Mister Eugene Canseliet. Note: many suppose that Fulcanelli and Canseliet are indeed the same person, in which case, the successor emperor to Fulcanelli then has yet to disturb the course of history.

Sometime during the 1930s, Fulcanelli communicated with French atomist Professor Helbronner that unleashing nuclear power was not so tricky, and that in fact it had been used by and against humanity before… knowing the bomb's horror, Fulcanelli warned against its usage. Before Helbronner could decipher the truth behind Fulcanelli's sentiment, Helbronner was assassinated by the Gestapo. With the advent of this murder and many like it, Fulcanelli went underground.

By many, Fulcanelli was presumed dead after years of hearing nothing from the eccentric alchemist. If he were alive, there seemed no reason for him to remain in hiding after the Nazi monster was subdued. Finally, in 1954, Canseliet supposedly met up with the not-so-old man in Spain. According to Canseliet, Fulcanelli was pulling a Benjamin Button, becoming younger and younger with every passing year.  

And that was the last the world was to know of Fulcanelli. 

Perhaps now, 

his stomach full of 

Philosopher Stone, 

the young man 

wanders about the Earth, 

spewing 

indecipherable 

allegory 

from his lips,

spending his leisure time 

in dreams 

with the

ghost of his master.