Alchemy: The Twelve Keys

Alchemy reads the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, one of the best-known books of the alchemical tradition, as a path of eighty-four days: twelve Keys, seven days each, one passage a day. Beside it stands the Emerald Tablet, line by line, in Isaac Newton's own English translation and the medieval Latin.

The text is A. E. Waite's English translation of 1893, kept word for word. Every sentence in the app says whose it is: TEXT for the old book, GLOSS for a usual reading of a symbol, MODERN for what is ours. Nothing is mixed up with anything else.

THE WORK
• Twelve Keys, seven days each: the passage, what its symbol is usually taken to mean, and one question about your own day
• The four colours of the Work as a map: nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo. The colour of your stage colours the app
• Mark a day done; the Work keeps your place and moves on the next day. A missed day skips nothing
• Read any Key whole, with its pages and its seven days marked

THE EMERALD TABLET
• Fifteen lines in Newton's translation of about 1680, with his own spelling
• The medieval Latin beside each line
• Each line also in modern spelling, with a note and the variant readings

LORE
• Articles: the four colours, who Basil Valentine was, Newton the alchemist, seven metals and seven planets, the Grail stone, real furnaces, reading alchemy inwardly
• Twenty-three symbols with where they stand in the text: sulphur, mercury and salt, the grey wolf, the pelican, the swan, the Peacock's Tail, the Rebis

THE LABORATORY BOOK
• A private journal for thoughts, never experiments. Notes stay on this device: never shared, never backed up, never counted

Also: a home-screen widget with the day's passage, an optional daily reminder, and the day's passage as an image to share.

The book describes real substances. This app gives no procedure, no amount and no temperature: the few paragraphs of laboratory directions are left out and marked where they stood. Where the old text promises health, it is shown as the text's own claim.

No account and no sign-in. Your progress and your notes stay on your phone.

Free to install, with ads. A single one-time purchase removes them; everything else is free.