Two Dialogues on Alchemy

...it will in no way be able to make them fixed, so that they might be united into one substance of gold or silver. This is because for this there is required, above all, a certain and infallible measure. One must have the correct proportion of the thickening substance and an exquisite balancing of heat. All these things are unknown to us, as we clearly showed in the first book, chapter 8.

DEMO: I shall therefore take sulfur Sulfur: in alchemy, the active, combustible, and masculine principle associated with fire and the soul alone. In book 1, chapter 13, you openly say that he who knows how to mix and befriend this with bodies original: "corporibus"; here referring to the physical forms of metals during preparation holds the greatest secret of nature. You say he has already entered a path of perfection. There are many paths, but they all lead to the same goal. In the same place you bear witness to God that everything is illuminated by this. It is body, and light, and tincture Tincture: a substance capable of imbuing other materials with its color or properties. Furthermore, in the same book concerning roots, you speak of that red water original: "aqua rubea"; often refers to the final stage of the Elixir or a highly refined solvent. You exclaim that this lights the lamps and illuminates the houses (that is, metallic bodies) and gives the greatest riches.

GEBER. Although our sulfur is the principal seed and the beginning of metals and the Elixir Elixir: the agent of transmutation and perfection, it has limits. Just as a father, by means of his seed, does not generate children in himself but in another, namely in menstrual blood Alchemy often used biological analogies. Menstrual blood was seen as the material substrate that received the masculine seed., so also our sulfur generates neither metal nor Elixir in itself. It does so in its quicksilver Quicksilver: mercury, the passive, feminine, and fluid principle of metals, or in another metal. You will note, therefore, that the Elixir can be made in two ways. One is by distillation, solution, and coagulation Coagulation: the process of turning a liquid into a solid or semi-solid state of the matter. The other is without distillation, solution, and coagulation. Saint Thomas referring to Saint Thomas Aquinas, to whom many alchemical treatises were falsely attributed in the Middle Ages. affirms this at the end of the third book of the Meteorologica. Regarding the second method, I say that the craftsman who knows how to prepare sulfur so that it can penetrate bodies and be joined to them already holds the greatest secret of nature. He has entered the path of perfection. Furthermore, in a certain chapter on accuracy, I said that this shortened work is completed in twenty days. In this work, two stones will be necessary. These are two metals. One is the source from which the sulfur is extracted as something fixed and altered. To this, the prepared sulfur is mixed by melting. When I say this work is completed in twenty days, it must be understood to mean the time after the preparation of the sulfur. That preparation lasts for three months.