ON THE PERFECTION OF GEBER.

...long and tempered decoction original: "decoctio"; the natural "cooking" process of minerals within the earth, thickened and fixed in the interior of the clean earth. This process occurs with the preservation of its radical moisture radical moisture: the essential, fundamental humidity that gives a substance its integrity. This moisture is not corrupting. It is instead brought to a solid substance that melts with proper heating and extends under the hammer. By defining this perfecting nature, we can more easily understand the thing that corrupts. This must be understood by the opposite sense. It is an impure substance of quicksilver quicksilver: also known as mercury and sulfur, mixed without proper proportion. It may be insufficiently decocted in the interior of unclean earth. It is not correctly thickened or fixed. It has a combustible and corrupting moisture. It is of a thin and porous substance. It may melt without proper heating, or not at all, and it does not withstand the hammer sufficiently.

I have found the first definition embedded in these two bodies: the Sun Sun: the alchemical name for gold and the Moon Moon: the alchemical name for silver, according to the perfection of each. I have found the second definition in these four: tin, lead, copper, and iron, according to the imperfection of each. These imperfect bodies cannot be returned to health and perfection unless the opposite is worked within them. This means that what is manifest is hidden, and what is hidden is made manifest. This operation or opposition occurs through preparation. Therefore, preparation must be applied to them. To prepare is to remove the superfluous, to supply what is absent, and thus to impart the known perfection to them. Perfect bodies do not need this preparation. However, they do need a preparation such that their...