Two Dialogues on Alchemy

...mixed with water, cooked and transformed by mineral and celestial heat, as we have shown clearly enough.

DEMO. Now, if you please, say a few things about the mineral intermediates and the remote principles.

5. GEBER. The mineral intermediate, from which all metals, quicksilver original: "argentum uiuum," or living silver., marcasite, and antimony are generated, is that very vitriol which we said was hidden in the earth, mixed with water, or cooked and burnt out. Marcasite and antimony were often grouped with metals but considered "incomplete" because they were brittle and could not be hammered out. And since metals must be reduced into their first matter—that is, as close as they can come to the metallic nature—they must be reduced to the nature of vitriol and sulfur.

10. DEMO. Why are metals generated more from this vitriol than from other sulfur or alum?

GEBER. Because it is more sulfurous and approaches the nature of metal more closely. Through celestial influence, its power is also more capable and ready to be converted into metal, provided the mineral site agrees and promotes the process through sufficient sulfur and heat.

DEMO. What mineral site are you telling me about?

GEBER. The stone, in which the mineral power of hardening and fixing is contained. Fixing: The alchemical process of making a volatile substance stable under heat so that it does not evaporate.

20. DEMO. What is this mineral power?

GEBER. This power is celestial. It has the ability to procreate metals and is hidden in a certain washed sulfur that is as bright as silver.

DEMO. I know of no sulfur that is washed and bright.

GEBER. Have you never noticed that in the sand and stones dug from the earth, there are certain shining scales mixed in, similar to silver?

perhaps it is the whitest mica, gleaming and assisting the strengths.

DEMO. I have noticed it often, but I believed it was the substance of silver itself.

GEBER. You are mistaken. It is sulfur, washed by nature, cooked, and partially fixed. It possesses the nature, splendor, and metallic fusion within itself. Without this, metals can in no way be generated. Whe-