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."