Throughout this course, we have seen various figures throughout the early modern period build credibility through multiple strategies. This is the first time I have seen this strategy of creating credibility; that is, proving one is truthful through the impossibility of lying. We've seen people talk about first hand experience, assert they are well read, and demonstrate the empirical quality of their knowledge. However, implying that this book is true because it cannot "be faked by human knowledge" seems like a new strategy to me. This strategy, perhaps coincidentally, is one I encounter in the present, as "How would I even lie about that?" and similar assertions are ones I hear from friends after they have said something truly preposterous.

Based on the description of this omen and the previous one, it seems to me that an important part of omens in this culture is the consolation that comes after hearing/witnessing a negative one and, conversely, the celebration that comes after hearing/witnessing a positive one. In this example, it is the role of the leader to console people after having heard the omen, whereas in the previous omen the soothsayer takes on this role. Therefore, I feel like community-building and reinforcement of communal roles are just as important to the culture of omens as the prediction of the future itself.

Reading this section, it's clear that the text went through many iterations and translations and this fact affects how one reads the text as a historian. This reminds me of Professor Nummedal's point from Monday's lecture about how the Florentine Codex must be used carefully to access Indigenous voices and perspectives, and how it was a complicated text made with many agendas. Lines like these clearly show how we must think critically about what is lost in translation (such as the hummingbird stone) and also lost in each new iteration/adjustment.

According to a Google search of the word "Mountebanks," a mountebank is "a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan." However, Google also provides a "historical" definition, which reads: "a person who sold patent medicines in public places." In this sentence, Michael Maier appears to be calling on the knowledge of jugglers and mountebanks in order to argue that just as one can expel worms out of children by using other worms, one can kill a dragon through the power of its brother and sister. However, I wonder why Maier would call on a source that is connoted as inherently being "a charlatan." Or was that reputation to arise during a later period, and at this point they were not considered charlatans and were simply vendors of patent medicines? I'm also curious about who these jugglers were. Did early modern Europe have a juggler profession? How were they funded, if so? Or is the meaning less literal?

I looked up this word because I did not know it and found that it is defined as "the ‘sperm’ (sometimes ‘menstruum’) of the world, and ‘our Mercury’ (philosophical mercury as opposed to common mercury)." (Here is the link to the source where I found that definition.) This definition reminded me of how "The generation of the philosophers’ stone might be framed in terms of human or animal reproduction" (source). I wonder what might be the reasoning behind calling to mind human reproduction when discussing alchemy. One guess I have is that human reproduction is a natural process, so if making the philosopher's stone is a process similar to that, it can't be diabolical because it is as natural as giving birth. However, that is just a guess of mine.

In our discussion section, we have been talking a lot about how knowledge production during the early modern period was, at times, a means toward gatekeeping and, in doing so, maintained hierarchies of class and gender, for example. Similarly, in Magus, the credibility of a magus often depended on their ability to neatly frame themselves as one of those magi who skillfully drew upon elements that already existed in nature rather than a magus who conspired with the devil to produce effects. I feel that Michael Maier is doing something similar here, as he establishes his credibility by setting himself apart from those "strangers to all good learning and intention."