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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Reading language

The Wilderness Rivers and Fixation

Explanation of the figure depicting a deserted wilderness ravaged by serpents and watered on every side by four rivers. — Fixation.

In this emblem deserted and solitary places are depicted with great art, such as places abounding in minerals, ravaged by many serpents. For the pestilential and burning vapors of the sulfur filling them dry up the plants and trees, so that everything becomes dry and barren, because the sap or moisture is consumed by the metals

because of the quantity of that same niter, which coagulates and petrifies everything. For sulfur and the minerals filled with it are said to be nourished and increased by the vapors of niter rising from the sea’s water. These places are covered with sand, talc, alum, stone, and stones, and filled with high mountains, cracked on every side, that emit smoke because they enclose chasms full of pestilential sulfur. Through the stench and heat of the earth—which is brackish and reddish, calcined and [wasted?]—they produce great quantities of firestones, salts, and marcasites, but very few herbs, trees, or shrubs; and even these are thorny or bereft of flowers and fruit. They are further ravaged by innumerable serpents issuing from the four rivers. These almost always make their home there because of the place’s heat and the character of the earth, swollen with radical or metallic moisture. Since these animals are born in the deepest recesses of caves and rivers, they are filled with a very cold venom; this is why they delight in

hot places scorched by heat. The fable speaks here of neither Erymanthus, a mountain of Arcadia, nor the island of Crete as laid waste by serpents, but by a boar and a raging bull. Just as the place depicted in this emblem is exceedingly barren and unfruitful, so too are that mountain of Arcadia and the island of Crete, because the animals named above ruin and ravage them, rendering them infertile and dry. Let us proceed to explain what lies hidden beneath these fables and the figures of Erymanthus and Crete: what the serpents, boars, bull, and finally these four rivers issuing from four springs signify. Great secrets of chemistry lie concealed beneath fable’s mysterious covering, whose bosom reveals the truth of the whole study of nature. What do these serpents, this boar, and these bulls signify, if not our mercurial water? Maddened with rage, they overturn and sack everything: that is, nothing can resist our water’s dissolving power. This may be understood through the word Erymanthus, derived from Erycine, her surname, and the Greek word anthos, meaning the flower of Venus. Thus the boar

of Erymanthus is called mercury from the name of Venus’s flower; it is ready to devour Venus’s Adonis, that is, the earth or sulfur of the Sun, as we have often said. We must think the same of the bull. For, like the bull, it makes the earth infertile: the earth is separated from its own moisture and mercurial sap, calcined and ravaged, and this water corrodes, destroys, and ruins it, as may be seen through the serpents of this emblem. Yet the aim is one day to make it useful and fruitful in its season, when these monsters, conquered and overthrown, will win a glorious victory. It is neither a mere idea nor a dream, although many imagine it so, that Python fell upon the island of Chryse while the Sun lay with Venus, or when Pallas issued from Jupiter’s brain. Chryse has been the name given to the island of Rhodes because of the many roses it produces; or Ophioglossa, because of the multitude of serpents infesting it; or Colossicola, in reference to the colossus of the Sun formerly constructed there. To discover what is represented in this emblem, tell me, what is meant

by Pallas, who carries off Mars’s ornaments and arms—his spear and sword—and Venus’s beauty, or her sex, if not our sulfur or earth, conceived from Jupiter’s brain: that is, within mercury’s belly or vapor? For it is formed in Mercury’s belly and at the head of the alembic. Its origin lies only in the embraces of the Sun and Venus: that is, the union of solar and vitriolic sulfur through the agency of mercury, messenger of the gods. It is from him that this goddess may be said to have been begotten or born, because he falls in a rain of gold, because he contains all the world’s riches and honors, and especially health. Is it therefore surprising that this precious sulfur of nature is represented as a mountainous desert ravaged by serpents, since it can be obtained only after long calcination and the total destruction of the volatile sulfurous nature expressed by serpents, the dragon, boar, and bull? Chemists have compared their sulfur or earth not only with deserted and uninhabited places, dreadful mountains, and high and precipitous rocks, but also with the lions and wolves that

make their home there and exercise their rage and fury, as also with the dragons dwelling in cold and damp caves. The reason is evident: the wolf is the most voracious of animals, and some maintain that for a time it lives only upon earth and wind. Thus this exceedingly dry animal, or this sulfur, consumed by raging and insatiable hunger, devours everything set before it: that is, through its breath and stench it congeals and fixes as much quicksilver or volatile sulfur as it is given. These are the smoke, wind, and earth upon which it feeds and is nourished. At this stage it is so hostile to itself and its own kind, and so venomous, that the ulcers and wounds it inflicts upon itself become poisoned as soon as its tongue touches them. Likewise, our sulfur tinctures whatever it touches and also fixes the outward body of metals through its venom. It is therefore exceedingly cruel, sparing not even its own kind but devouring them.

We must think of the lion in the same manner. These animals are the hottest and driest of all; hence it is said that, always aflame with fury and rage, they are tormented by a continual fever

anger makes sparks of fire issue from their eyes. Their young are dead when they give birth, and they impart life to them only by roaring. All this corresponds to our sulfur, which, like the salamander, lives upon fire and within fire, being a true fire. It darts sparks not only from its eyes but from every part of its body, and brings forth its lion cubs only through lamentations and roars. When they must be captured while still young, as we related of the two serpents sent against Hercules by Juno, they are found only upon mountain summits. For this unhappy and unfruitful earth produces nothing but these monstrous and terrible animals, either because the Sun’s heat burns them or because they are congealed by water and overwhelmed by the snow of the middle and cold region of the air, which is frozen. From these fabulous inventions we may infer—and all philosophers agree—that this sulfur is born in fire and burns with its own flames like another Etna; that it feeds upon air, smoke, and wind raised to the top and head of the alembic; and that it is a vapor coagulated upon the waters at the bottom of valleys

which grows into the form of water and returns to the bottom of the alembic. Likewise, in dissolution it is a water; in the corruption of its fetus, a dung-heap, a poison deadlier than sulfur and arsenic. Finally, in its sublimation, whitening, and reddening, it is an air, a fire that cleanses everything, purifies, tinctures, and perfects, and so forth. It has also been compared with the mountains Etna, Athos, and Vesuvius, which vomit whirlwinds of sulfurous and mercurial flames. It is made to arise in smoke, flames, waters, and earth, and is given different names. It has further been compared with the four rivers issuing from Pluto’s royal throne, or watering the paradise of Delight, according to the four springs devised by Vulcan. This is with good reason, since they correspond in every respect to the forms of our stone described above. What is meant by Phlegethon, which casts out flames, or by the little spring that corrupts through the abundance of its sulfur, if not our sulfur or fire? What is meant by the river Lethe, or the little fountain from which much white milk flows, if not the bath, the double spirit, and the white smoke of our sulfur? What is meant

143.The original adjectives saumâtre and rougeâtre describe the earth as brackish and reddish. The following bound-edge word begins amaigr… and may signify wasted or emaciated; its final letters remain uncertain and the tentative English meaning is marked. The repeated ‘stone and stones’ is present in the manuscript.

144.The manuscript distinguishes the serpents shown in its emblem from the boar and bull of the fables, then assigns all these destructive animals to the dissolving power of mercurial water.

145.The author offers an allegorical derivation of Erymanthus from Erycine and anthos. The Greek term is transcribed without supplied accents as in the manuscript; the translation preserves the author’s complete claimed meaning rather than endorsing the derivation as historical etymology.

146.The text explicitly makes present destruction serve future fertility. Its paradoxical victory of defeated monsters is retained within that account of the work’s stages.

147.Chryse, Rhode, Ophioglossa, and Colossicola are the manuscript’s names and explanations; the latter three are underlined. The translation records its mythographic and geographical claims without substituting names from another source.

148.The manuscript explains Pallas’s birth through the union of solar and vitriolic sulfur mediated by mercury. Its promise of riches, honors, and health belongs to that alchemical interpretation.

149.Sulfuréité names the sulfurous character or nature of the matter. The text specifies that its volatile form must be destroyed before the precious sulfur can be obtained.

150.The wolf’s hunger is interpreted as the sulfur’s ability to congeal and fix quicksilver or volatile sulfur. The assertions about wolves’ diet and wounds remain part of the historical natural lore used in that interpretation.

151.The story of lions giving life to their offspring by roaring is presented as fabulous natural lore. The author immediately makes it an analogy for sulfur’s generation; it is not a statement of modern zoology.

152.Manuscript footnote (1), after mortel: ‘un cadavre horrible, une fumée plus mortelle’—‘a horrible corpse, a more deadly smoke’. The French main text has the compressed comparison ‘un poison mortel … que le soufre et l’arsenic’; the English expresses its comparative sense.

153.Dealbation and rubification are rendered ‘whitening’ and ‘reddening’. The source’s doubled un in ‘un air un un feu’ is read once in English. The middle mountain-name reads Athos, as confirmed in an enlarged image.