Sublimated mercury, the Dragon devouring all things,
converting its own nature, Alkali salt extracted from its own earth,
Salt of metals, salt ammoniac, the salt of the urine
of metals, Sulfur, white foliated earth, cleansed
earth, a transforming and deadly poison. These
names, when kept in their order and proportion, also
apply to the vegetable and animal Sulfurs themselves. While
gold itself is reduced into its first matter, and into
a mercurial nature, then it is called the Argentum vivum Philosophorum Living Silver of the Philosophers.

12 Sometimes Raymond Lull would begin his work
with a certain foliated earth which he made in this way. He took
six parts of highly purified mercury, and two parts of gold
calcined or made into leaf in the common way: he mixed them together, and
ground them for as long as it took for them to pass together through leather, then
he sublimated them all together just as many times, putting back the sublimated part with the
non-sublimated part so that they might all sublimate together. He called the sublimated
part "foliated earth," which he afterward dissolved with some menstruo solvent
and distilled the solvent three times through a low retort: or before he dissolved it with the solvent, he calcined it with a gentle
fire; afterward he dissolved and distilled it. From here, he drew the matter from the whole solvent by light distillation and
dried it, and afterward he anointed it with the oil of the sun and with this medicine he makes
a projection the act of transforming base metal into gold, or he multiplied it beforehand, as will be clear from what is to be said.

Those things which pertain to this art are defined.

Chapter IV.

What the transmutatory art is

On account of various and continuous frauds, by which
not infrequently certain bewitched people, smoke-sellers charlatans, and vagabonds
deceive many, mock others in different ways, and lead everyone into desperate
poverty, it has happened that by the name of Alchemy one now
understands some impure and deceptive mixture of metals,
which serves neither the health of men nor the true
transmutation of metals; but only feeds the eyes or deceives the unwary, while they show off gold with sophisticated tinctures and crude
amalgams, which is not gold, nor will it ever
be a perfect metal. The matter is not so;
that should not be called Alchemy, but the shadow, picture, and ape of Alchemy:
for true and perfect alchemy is
that renowned and most worthy transmutatory art of the ancient Wise Ones,
which teaches and explains the mode and means
by which medicines are made, or can be made, both for protecting
and causing the health of men, and for perfecting
imperfect metals, and reducing them through mercury into perfect
gold, or the best Silver.

What the Stone of the Philosophers is

The perfect Stone of the Philosophers, speaking figuratively, is
the metallic sulfur itself, sublimated or multiplied.