The Six Keys: Why Alchemy Was Designed to Mislead You
A 17th-century text encodes a specific process in deliberately confusing language. Once the misdirection is recognized, the work comes into view: the opening of a stone to release its mineral essence
We now arrive at the third and final alchemical text in this series of posts.
If The Emerald Tablet gave the symbolic picture of the cycle on Earth, and the Letter from Sternbuchta gave the portrait of the essence brought forth within it, The Six Keys turns to the work itself: the sequence of openings, dissolutions, and separations through which that essence is brought forth from stone.
These posts have been trying to bring a coherent structure into view. Each text describes the same process from a different angle. In this post, we have to enter the labyrinth as deeply as we can, because The Six Keys is where the sequence itself is hidden: not the cycle in Nature, but the Work in Art.
The First Key: The Trap of Literal Reading
Although presented last in this series, The Six Keys of Eudoxus proved to be exactly what its title suggests: not just a key, but the key through which the rest of the Hermetic canon began to resolve for us.
A brief note on the history of The Six Keys of Eudoxus. The text appears to date to the late seventeenth century, and scholars have long noted its resemblance to writings attributed to Eirenaeus Philalethes, the alchemical pseudonym widely associated with George Starkey. Starkey was an American born in Bermuda, educated at Harvard, and later active in London in the 1650s. Notably, he was there during the same period as Robert Boyle, of Boyle’s law, one of the founders of modern chemistry, and a central figure in arguing that scientific inquiry and theology were not in conflict but deeply aligned. I bolded that point, given some of the concerns readers have raised about my exploration of alchemical texts.
While no definitive attribution can be made, the text most likely emerged from the same Western European alchemical world, carrying the same preoccupation with guarding the method using symbolic compression and deliberate misdirection that defines that period of the Hermetic tradition.
What cost me a long time to figure out was that, despite its title, The Six Keys are not six steps in a procedure. They are instead six symbolic vantage points onto one underlying process, repeating it in shifting language so the reader cannot lock onto it too cleanly.
For that reason, I will not walk through all six Keys in equal detail. I will begin by moving slowly through the First Key, with our role-grammar already in place and with a quick review of Shimanishi’s method.
Shimanishi’s process began with vermiculite, a weathered form of biotite, or “black mica” — an iron-rich mineral known to contain an unusually broad range of elements. In Nature, sulfate-bearing rainwater slowly transforms biotite into vermiculite, making it more porous, hydrated, and reactive than its parent stone, whose minerals remain tightly bound within stacked aluminosilicate sheets. Shimanishi then dried the vermiculite to remove residual moisture before exposing it to sulfuric acid under carefully controlled conditions, a method that took him nearly fifteen years to perfect. The result was a golden-colored, mineral-dense aqueous solution he called Themarox or “Rock Extract.”
For brevity, I include only the First Key below; for the complete document, readers can consult the text here.
THE FIRST KEY
The First Key is that which opens the dark prisons in which the Sulphur is shut up: this is it which knows how to extract the seed out of the body, and which forms the Stone of the philosophers by the conjunction of the spirit with the body—of sulphur with mercury.
Hermes has manifestly demonstrated the operation of this First Key by these words: In the caverns of the metals there is hidden the Stone, which is venerable, bright in colour, a mind sublime, and an open sea.
This Stone has a bright glittering: it contains a Spirit of a sublime original; it is the Sea of the Wise, in which they angle for their mysterious Fish.
But the operations of the three works have a great deal of analogy one to another, and the philosophers do designedly speak in equivocal terms, to the end that those who have not the Lynx’s eyes may pursue wrong, and be lost in this labyrinth, from whence it is very hard to get out. In effect, when one imagines that they speak of one work, they often treat of another.
Take heed, therefore, not to be deceived here; for it is a truth that in each work the Wise Artist ought to dissolve the body with the spirit; he must cut off the Raven’s head, whiten the Black, and vivify the White; yet it is properly in the First operation that the Wise Artist cuts off the head of the Black Dragon and of the Raven.
Hence, Hermes says, What is born of the Crow is the beginning of this Art. Consider that it is by separation of the black, foul, and stinking fume of the Blackest Black that our astral, white, and resplendent Stone is formed, which contains in its veins the blood of the Pelican. It is at this First Purification of the Stone, and at this shining whiteness, that the work of the First Key is ended.
The Key to The Six Keys
Recall that in Chapters III and IV, I presented the core scientific insights into iron-sulfur-aluminum-water (ISAW) chemistry, the chemistry that powers the Rock–Water Circuit, a scientific framework that allowed us to construct an interpretive key for decoding these texts.
For interpreting The Six Keys, a crucial aspect of the relationship between the two mineral forms central to the Rock–Water Circuit Theory must be noted: only Nature can transform biotite into vermiculite over geologic time; no human can. It is only once it has been weathered into vermiculite that black mica can release the broad range of minerals it contains. If an alchemist—referred to in the text below as a philosopher—began the Work with black mica itself, he would never succeed.
That point matters because, across centuries of Hermetic alchemy, no universally recognized instance of the substance described in The Six Keys or Letter from Sternbuchta has ever been established. It is my belief that this failure was not accidental, but the result of deliberate misdirection in The Six Keys.
This text cost me months because it appears simple, but it defeats anyone who reads it as such. To wit, the First Key begins with a brazen deception in the first line:
“The First Key is that which opens the dark prisons in which the Sulphur is shut up.”
Here, the text suggests that the alchemist should aim to open black mica, “the dark prisons,” in order to access the reactive, redox-capable mineral chemistry locked inside, “the Sulphur.” But that first opening is humanly impossible. It belongs to Nature alone.
“This Stone has a bright glittering.”
Again, the text points the reader toward black mica, a stone known for its lustrous shimmer. Then, almost immediately, the author warns the reader of the language he will be encountering:
“But the operations of the three works have a great deal of analogy one to another, and the philosophers do designedly speak in equivocal terms.”
Although this line announces that there are three steps in the process, “the operations of the three works,” the steps will be difficult to interpret because the descriptions overlap. In my reading, this is an explicit admission that the same process will be described in shifting language, and that the ambiguity is intentional.
The warning then sharpens:
“To the end that those who have not the Lynx’s eyes may pursue wrong, and be lost in this labyrinth, from whence it is very hard to get out. In effect, when one imagines that they speak of one work, they often treat of another.”
“Lynx’s eyes” in alchemy refers to those with the ability to discern what is true from what is false. Without that capacity, the reader cannot tell which step is being described, what material is being acted upon, or when the text has shifted from one operation to another. That is how an alchemist reader can quickly become “lost in this labyrinth.”
The text again returns to deceptively suggesting the alchemist begin his work with black mica, all the while warning him not to be deceived, while stating it is a truth:
“Take heed, therefore, not to be deceived here; for it is a truth that in each work the Wise Artist ought to dissolve the body with the spirit; he must cut off the Raven’s head, whiten the Black, and vivify the White; yet it is properly in the First operation that the Wise Artist cuts off the head of the Black Dragon and of the Raven.”
Read this way, the passage appears, for the first time, to encode—however cryptically—the three distinct and sequential steps in the process:
(1) The weathering of biotite (black mica) into vermiculite—“cut off the head of the Black Dragon.”
(2) The separation of the stone from its mineral essence using sulfuric acid—“whiten the black.”
(3) The emergence of that essence in active aqueous form—“vivify the white.”
Just as it warned it would, the text repeats the false instruction that the artist himself must begin by opening biotite (while confusingly naming it twice, almost suggesting that there are two different materials required to start with):
“It is properly in the First operation that the Wise Artist cuts off the head of the Black Dragon and of the Raven.”
Again, any alchemist who began the work with black mica, trying by Art to perform what only Nature can do, would fail every time. Shimanishi did not. He began with vermiculite, starting only after Nature had completed the first step in the process.
Although the First Key contains a good deal of deliberate misdirection, the later Keys start to offer clearer and more faithful guidance. From the Third Key:
“Hence, Hermes says, What is born of the Crow is the beginning of this Art.”
This is a clear instruction that the Artist must begin not with black mica itself, but with what is “born of the Crow”: vermiculite weathered from black mica.
In one instance, the connection to Shimanishi’s method is unusually precise. When the text speaks of a “Secret Fire” that dissolves the Stone “without violence,” it mirrors his discovery that vermiculite must first be air-dried; if sulfuric acid is applied while moisture remains, the material shatters violently.
Later in the Third Key, the clearest illustration of the first step appears:
“But, further, that you may not be deceived with the terms of the Compound, I will tell you that the philosophers have two sorts of compounds. The first is the compound of Nature, whereof I have spoken in the First Key; for it is Nature which makes it in a manner, incomprehensible to the Artist, who does nothing but lend a hand to Nature by the adhibition of external things, by the means of which she brings forth and produces this admirable compound. The second is the compound of Art; it is the Wise man who makes it by the secret union of the fixed with the volatile, perfectly conjoined with all prudence, which cannot be acquired but by the lights of a profound philosophy.”
Here, the text more clearly points to the rock the Artist must start with. “The first is the compound of Nature,” suggesting that the Artist leave that to Nature, and instead start with vermiculite, the rock weathered from black mica, “in a manner incomprehensible to the Artist.” “The second is the compound of Art,” describing the mineral essence produced when the alchemist takes the vermiculite and then applies “the volatile,” i.e., sulfuric acid.
Each time I return to the final line of that passage, it resonates more deeply. I cannot help but see in it a description of Shimanishi—the “Wise Artist”—whose determination and persistence kept him working alone for fifteen years until he could “perfectly conjoin” sulfuric acid with vermiculite, arriving at a method that, in the text’s words, “cannot be acquired but by the lights of a profound philosophy.” We will return to what is meant by those “lights” in the next post.
Now to the First Key, to one of its most beautifully symbolic passages:
“Consider that it is by separation of the black, foul, and stinking fume of the Blackest Black that our astral, white, and resplendent Stone is formed, which contains in its veins the blood of the Pelican. It is at this First Purification of the Stone, and at this shining whiteness, that the work of the First Key is ended.”
The “blackest black” corresponds to what is driven off or separated during the process, while the “white and resplendent Stone” is the extracted essence itself—clarified, active, and no longer confined within the mineral lattice. For the first time, a hint of the mineral composition it will contain appears: “It contains in its veins the blood of the Pelican.”
In ordinary life, blood is inseparable from iron, which gives it its redness and underlies its power to carry oxygen. In alchemical imagery, the pelican is a figure of nourishment through blood. Thus, the phrase naturally points to an iron-rich, life-bearing essence: a mineral extract whose redox-active core helps explain why the alchemists spoke of it in terms of blood, nourishment, and vitality.
That suggestion becomes even more striking when set beside Shimanishi’s extract. After sulfur, iron is the second-highest concentrated active mineral in Themarox. Shimanishi appears to have understood that iron was central to many of the properties the extract displayed, as he reportedly spent twenty years searching across multiple continents for the most iron-rich mica he could find. In the end, the richest source he identified lay not halfway across the world, but in Japan, within two hours of his home, in Fukushima Prefecture.
A Second Reading
As in the last chapter, I will leave the reader with a cluster of repetitive descriptions appearing throughout The Six Keys, all circling one of the “three works” or steps. By this point, they should begin to sound less like separate instructions than like recurring views of the same operation.
For instance, there are numerous descriptions of a liquid solution of dissolved minerals being extracted from vermiculite via the actions of sulfuric acid; here, I include only three of the many I found:
• “Extract the seed from the body”
• “Ought the Wise Artist dissolve the Body with the Spirit”
• “Dissolution of the Body into its water”
Then:
“This is the Secret Fire which forms the Stone of the Philosophers by the conjunction of the Spirit with the Body, of Sulfur with Mercury.”
For MB and me, the phrase “of Sulfur with Mercury” was the most difficult line we encountered in alchemy. We initially read “Sulfur” and “Mercury” as materials: first as sulfated rainwater acting on black mica, then as sulfuric acid acting on vermiculite. Both readings worked locally but failed as we carried them forward.
The difficulty resolved only when we stopped treating these terms as substances and began reading them as functions.
In that framework, “Sulfur” does not name sulfuric acid itself, but its activating function—its capacity to penetrate, react, and transform. “Mercury” does not name a separate material, but its mediating function—its capacity to dissolve, mobilize, and carry.
Read this way, the phrase no longer describes two substances joined together, but two roles performed by the same agent. It is sulfuric acid acting simultaneously as activator and mediator, “the Spirit” working upon the “Body” to release the mineral essence.
Our understanding of that line is what finally led us out of the labyrinth.
When the Three Came Into Focus
At the outset of this sequence of chapters, I proposed that these three texts were not saying the same thing in the same way, but rather describing the same underlying chemistry and process from different angles. Having now walked through them one by one, that conclusion can be stated more plainly.
The Emerald Tablet gives the larger natural order: the recurring cycle by which mineral chemistry, water, energy, and life remain linked across ascent, descent, nourishment, and return. Letter from Sternbuchta gives the portrait of the essence once brought forth: its value, its multiplication, its restorative power, and the kind of language required to describe it without exposing it too openly. The Six Keys of Eudoxus gives the guarded work itself: the sequence, misdirections, and operations by which that essence is brought forth from stone.
Taken together, the three texts do not merely echo one another. They form a coherent structure. The Tablet gives the cycle in Nature. Sternbuchta gives the essence in view. Eudoxus gives the steps in Art. That was the interpretive framework I proposed at the outset. What these chapters have attempted to show is how and why that reading holds.
But now that the chemistry in these texts has been decoded, it is time to turn to another kind of knowledge they preserve: not about minerals, water, and extraction, but about the human beings drawn into such work, shaped by it, and, in rare cases, those who brought it to its end. Seeing that side of the texts hit me harder than I was prepared for, just as their insights into chemistry had. It mapped first onto Shimanishi, the modern figure I had already come to regard as a man of historic importance whose achievement history had largely missed.
And then, more disturbingly, it began to map onto MB and, however reluctantly I say it, onto me as well.
*If you value the late nights and deep dives into all the “rabbit holes” I write about, your support is greatly appreciated.
A NOTE FOR READERS: In the next post, we will turn to a 17th-century text that describes the procedure by which the mineral solution was said to be prepared.
For those interested in how that knowledge has re-entered the world in material form, I invite you to explore Aurmina (“golden mineral essence”) — a name we chose before we fully understood what it pointed to, and one that will become clearer as this series unfolds.
Yes, this is a product, and part of a company I am building around this work, because at some point the work had to leave the page and enter the world.
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