Clavis Artis

Attributed to Zoroaster

Clavis Artis is the title of an alchemical manuscript published in Germany in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, pseudoepigraphically attributed to the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra). The work is presented as a three-volume manuscript written in German Gothic script cursive, accompanied by numerous watercolor illustrations depicting alchemical imagery and pen drawings of laboratory instruments. The title page claims the original was written by Zoroaster "over a skin of dragon" in the "Year of the World" 1996, and that the text was later translated from Arabic into German in the Year of Christ 1236.

The manuscript's true authorship and origins remain unknown, though scholars have speculated about its connections to the Rosicrucian movement, particularly the Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreutzer. Some theories suggest it may be a translation or adaptation of an older Arabic alchemical text by a Rosicrucian alchemist.  Another hypothesis links it to Abraham Eleazar, author of the Uraltes Chymisches Werk, due to shared symbolic imagery such as the woman-serpent and the serpent on a cross, which also appear in Nicolas Flamel’s Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques. 

The Clavis Artis is notoriously inconsistent across manuscripts. Some versions contain additional images of grotesque demons, surgical operations, or apocalyptic scenes. The symbolism is deliberately obscure, nightmarish, and resistant to linear interpretation—scholars debate whether it represents a genuine operative tradition or a deliberately encoded riddle meant to test comprehension.

1. The Three-Headed Serpent Devouring Its Tail A triple-headed ouroboros encircling alchemical vessels and celestial symbols; represents the threefold prima materia and the recursive nature of the Work beginning and ending in unity.
2. The Roasting of the King A crowned king is roasted alive on a spit over flames, tended by figures with bellows; depicts the calcination and torment of the solar principle, the destruction of the crude metallic body.
3. The Green Lion Devouring the Sun A green lion consumes a solar disk or bleeding sun; represents vitriol (the green lion) dissolving gold, the beginning of putrefaction and the freeing of the solar seed.
4. The Bath of Rebirth with Multiple Figures Several figures (often including kings, corpses, or hybrid beings) immersed in a vessel or fountain; the collective bath signifies dissolution and the return of many to the prima materia.
5. The Dismemberment or Butchering A human or royal figure is cut apart, sometimes by grotesque attendants or demons; represents the violent separation (separatio) required to break down the components before purification.
6. The Sublimation Tower or Furnace Scene A complex apparatus with ascending vapors, multiple vessels, and often a tower-like structure; depicts sublimation, distillation, and the rising of volatile spirits through repeated purification.
7. The Crowned Hermaphrodite Emerging A double-sexed figure, crowned and holding solar and lunar symbols, rises from a vessel or tomb; the rebis appears as the unified consciousness after conjunction and purification.
8. The Feeding of the Dragon or Serpent A serpent or dragon is fed by figures, sometimes with blood or milk; represents the nourishing of mercurial spirit with fixed matter, the feeding of the volatile with the permanent.
9. The Copulation of Animals or Hybrids Bestial or chimerical creatures (lions, dogs, wolves, birds) couple within vessels or landscapes; symbolic sexual union of opposing principles at the animal or instinctual level of matter.
10. The Black Sun or Eclipse A darkened sun or eclipse scene with mourning figures or skeletal forms; the nigredo at its deepest point, the death of the light before resurrection.
11. The Resurrection from the Tomb A figure (often Christ-like or kingly) rises from a stone sarcophagus, sometimes with angels or celestial beings attending; the stone awakens, spirit returns to body, albedo achieved.
12. The Red King Enthroned A crowned red king seated on a throne, holding scepter and orb, often with the sun blazing behind; the perfected sulphur, solar consciousness enthroned, rubedo completed.
13. The Philosopher's Egg or Vessel of Completion An ovoid vessel containing the perfected stone, often with symbols of all four elements, planets, and metals surrounding it; the sealed microcosm containing the quinta essentia.
14. The Projection or Transmutation Scene The philosopher casts powder onto molten metal or into a crucible, producing gold; the operative stone in action, the final proof of the Work's completion.
15. The Garden of the Philosophers A paradisiacal garden with the tree of life, fountain, sun and moon, or crowned adepts harvesting fruit; the achieved state of wisdom, the return to Eden through the completed opus.