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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Reading language

The Guarded Art

Our venerable Jewish priest gives no warnings or commands more forceful or more frequent than those enjoining us to keep the most deeply hidden secrets of the cabalistic art in the depths of the heart. He pours out a thousand curses against those who, through sacrilegious ignorance and brazen rashness, disclose them to unworthy people to be profaned. Against those who explain them with less decorum and respect than is fitting, he thunders anathemas so dreadful to hear that even the keenest mind can scarcely understand them. Maranatha (which in Greek and Arabic means): ✝ a curse in the city and in the countryside; ✝ Maranatha; ✝ a curse upon the children, upon the cattle, upon the flocks; Maranatha; ✝ a curse upon the barns and the houses, unless these secrets are treated with all the reverence and piety required. Maranatha, unless the silence of Pythagoras and Hippocrates is observed concerning them. To all this he adds plague, fever, heat, cold, and seasons infected by a malignant air,

and, finally, everything that can ravage and desolate the world—and this without limit—against those who mock these secrets, regard them as old women's tales, or even make light of them. He does not stop there, but goes further.

May the heavens become bronze for him, and the earth on which he walks iron, as is written in Deuteronomy. May the Lord send him dust instead of rain if he approaches these mysteries without a spirit as great as that of Moses. May he be struck with all the plagues of Egypt, and may his corpse become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, if he has the wickedness and indiscretion to disclose and make known to foreign dogs, to pagans, and to their children and successors what God, in his sovereign and boundless mercy, has granted only to sages and priests. May these foolish meddlers be afflicted with such madness, such blindness, and such frenzy that they grope at midday as a blind man is accustomed to

do. May no one guide his steps or show him the way if he dares to touch this sacred book without divine inspiration. May he taste neither the heifer slaughtered before his eyes nor the tacamaque he has planted himself. May he not rest upon his wife's breast, but another in his place. May his children and his flocks be delivered to his enemies, and may another people eat the fruits and labors of his hands. If he passes along the street or into someone's hands, may he be given insulting names and made the subject of a thousand tales. In a word, may he be rejected and driven from every place he goes.

May the Lord increase all these plagues and curses still further, so that not a single man remains of the Jewish people, though they are as countless as the stars of heaven. May your name be erased from the earth; may he scatter you to your ruin, so that you serve foreign gods, walk without ceasing and without being able to rest, and have in your heart

any consolation. On the contrary, may your heart always be gripped by fear, your soul overwhelmed with sorrow, and your eyes dying. May he seize you day and night with fear and languor if, in treating these mysteries, you do not submit yourselves to meditation, wisdom, reverence and fear, and if you do not withdraw from the sight and company of all people. Finally, may he place our head beneath an iron yoke until it is crushed. You will become the slave of an enemy whom you will serve in thirst, hunger, nakedness and the want of everything. He will bring a people from the ends of the earth like an eagle in flight, who will spare neither grain nor horses, leave him neither grain nor wine nor oil, and remain near his towns, his walls and his besieged gates until everything has been pillaged and laid waste. May no one receive him out of pity or call for him as a slave, if they do not listen to the voice of the one who is to be sent, if they do not keep the commandments and fulfill the

ceremonies most reverently, and unless they keep, under secrecy and an inviolable oath, the mystery of the furnace science which God has been pleased to entrust to them. Such are the curses with which our Jew threatened those of his nation as punishment for the crime it had committed in crucifying its Redeemer, and with which all Christian chemists can readily see that it is afflicted.

His blessings and consolations now follow. With these he sought to hearten those among the nation whose minds had been troubled by the curses. He warned them to avoid every kind of vice, especially idolatry, and to pay their tribute faithfully to the Roman emperors. They would surpass all other nations in power if they awaited Christ with supreme patience and a hope admitting no doubt, and if they believed steadfastly in the prophecies, words and commandments. He also sought to make them bear patiently the reversals, hardships, languor, persecutions, and afflictions of poverty and dishonor.

He taught them the transmutation of metals in the language of the country, yet in a veiled manner. He depicted the vessels for them, indicated the different degrees of heat, and finally instructed them in the colors that succeeded one another during the cooking. He showered blessings upon them after taking their oath—especially if they were priests or scribes—to maintain a profound silence.

Whoever you are, priest or sage, into whose hands this secret may fall, may God bless you with the blessing given to Noah and his children, so that you may increase above all nations, multiply and fill the whole earth, above all the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, and so that all animals may serve you as food, like green vegetables. May he bless you with the blessing bestowed upon Judah, with that blessed blessing of Abraham, so that your descendants may multiply beyond the stars of heaven, and so that the Holy Land, filled with honey and milk and flowing with them, promised to his descendants as an inviolable pledge of the covenant, may be granted to you. May God shower upon you the same blessing that Isaac gave his son Jacob: ‘The fragrance that

comes from my son is like a field full of flowers, blessed by God.’ May God grant you the dew of heaven, the richness of the earth, and abundance of grain and wine. May peoples be subject to you and tribes bow before you. Be the god of your brothers, and may your mother's children bow down before you. May whoever curses you be cursed, and whoever blesses you be blessed!

May God bless you with the prophetic blessing with which he blessed the children of Jacob and made the future known to them in advance, the blessing with which Judah was blessed: your brothers will praise you; your hand will bring your enemies beneath the yoke; your father's sons will bow before you. Judah is a young lion. You have risen, my son, to seize the prey, and in resting have lain down beside it like a lion and a lioness. Who will dare wake you? The scepter will not be taken from Judah, nor the lawgiver removed from his posterity, until the one who is to be sent has come, and he will be the expectation of you and of the nations. He will tie his young donkey to the vine and his she-ass, O my son, to the vine stock. He will wash his robe in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape;

his eyes are more beautiful than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk. May he bless you with the blessing with which the son who grew in Israel was blessed. The growing son is beautiful to behold; the daughters ran to and fro upon the walls, provoked him, and made a noise; his bow rested upon the most mighty, and so forth. The God of your father will be your help, and the Almighty will bless you with the blessings of heaven above and of the abyss below, with the blessings of the breasts and the fruit of their wombs. Your father's blessings have increased upon you, awaiting the fulfillment of the desire of the everlasting hills.

May these blessings come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the head of him who is like a Nazirite among his brothers.

3.The manuscript treats Maranatha as a curse and calls it Greek and Arabic. The expression in 1 Corinthians 16:22 is Aramaic, conventionally understood as an invocation of the Lord; the translation preserves the manuscript's interpretation rather than silently correcting it. See the textual note to 1 Corinthians 16:22.

4.The catalogue of curses adapts Deuteronomy 28, especially verses 16–22. Its reuse here binds secrecy about the art to the biblical language of covenant obedience.

5.The bronze heaven, iron earth, dust, unburied corpse and madness correspond to Deuteronomy 28:23–28. The phrases about foreign dogs, pagans and initiatory access belong to the manuscript's adaptation.

6.This passage continues to reshape Deuteronomy 28, especially verses 30–33 and 62–65. Tacamaque is retained as the manuscript's botanical term; it is not replaced with the vineyard of Deuteronomy 28:30.

7.The iron yoke, invading people like an eagle, siege and lack of a purchaser for slaves recall Deuteronomy 28:48–52 and 68. The changes among singular, plural, first and second person are in the manuscript and are retained.

8.The passage's claim that Jewish suffering punishes the crucifixion is the manuscript's Christian anti-Jewish polemic. It should not be treated as historical explanation. The contrast between the nominally Jewish speaker and 'Christian chemists' also makes the work's Christian interpretive setting explicit.

9.Vaisseaux means the vessels used in the operation; cuisson is the continued heating or cooking of the material. The passage links its veiled language to practical observations of heat and changing color.

10.The blessings combine Genesis 9:1–3 (Noah and food) and 22:17 (Abraham's descendants and the stars), before turning to 27:27–29 (Isaac's blessing of Jacob). The manuscript's enlarged comparisons are retained.

11.Genesis 27:27–29 supplies the underlying blessing. The manuscript reads 'Dieu' (god) where the biblical blessing speaks of lordship over brothers; the translation preserves that striking wording.

12.The blessing of Judah follows Genesis 49:8–11. The phrase about the one 'to be sent' reflects the Vulgate wording at 49:10; the manuscript makes it part of its expectation of Christ.

13.The first sentence concludes Genesis 49:12; the remainder adapts Joseph's blessing at 49:22–26. In particular, the daughters and walls follow the Latin Vulgate tradition. The manuscript abbreviates the biblical wording with 'etc.'; this abbreviation has not been expanded.

14.Nazaréen here renders the Latin nazaraeus of Genesis 49:26: the one distinguished or set apart among his brothers. It is retained as 'Nazirite' rather than read as a geographical reference to Nazareth.