03-31-2023, 10:19 AM
Here is a quick and dirty translation of a piece of the text, between folios 42 and 46 of the 1551 edition, which explores these classical allegories.
Geber: ...By the stones cast by Deucalion, which were transformed into men, he meant the large stone known as Mars. Albertus also says in the first chapter of the second treatise on minerals that the fable of the Gorgon says that all those who look at it have been transformed into stones; the virtues of minerals have been named Gorgon, and they say that the stone-making virtue is the disposition of the humours of bodies. This gloss is more obscure than the text.
Demogorgon: The minerals are sulphurs, the strong virtue of them, the metallic, hardening and fixative virtue.
Geber: The return of the vapours of metallic bodies, to that mineral virtue, is when the fumes have risen above the long neck of the vessel, which are fixed and return back to that mineral virtue, which hardens and converts those vapours into the noble stone of the philosophers.
Geber: ...By the stones cast by Deucalion, which were transformed into men, he meant the large stone known as Mars. Albertus also says in the first chapter of the second treatise on minerals that the fable of the Gorgon says that all those who look at it have been transformed into stones; the virtues of minerals have been named Gorgon, and they say that the stone-making virtue is the disposition of the humours of bodies. This gloss is more obscure than the text.
Demogorgon: The minerals are sulphurs, the strong virtue of them, the metallic, hardening and fixative virtue.
Geber: The return of the vapours of metallic bodies, to that mineral virtue, is when the fumes have risen above the long neck of the vessel, which are fixed and return back to that mineral virtue, which hardens and converts those vapours into the noble stone of the philosophers.
Adam McLean