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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

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The Two Natures of Natural Spirits

and unknown to the keenest minds among philosophers.

What, I ask, is more unheard-of than to learn that opacity and passibility are received in bodies composed only of the purest and most luminous qualities of the elements? This makes lucidity, purity, incorruptibility, and subtlety an abyss of prodigies from which one cannot disentangle oneself.

Considering whether dark bodies can by any natural means penetrate or be penetrated, since luminous spirits end at darkness and are stopped by opacity. In the end this amounts to nothing unless we show by natural reasoning how incorruptible bodies can endure every kind of disease and torment at the same time, throughout themselves or within their smallest parts. Although these things are not uncontested and one may speak against them, there are nevertheless no sophisms, and they have no need of true and certain demonstrations: as the subject of all contrariety and all diaphthora, or corruption, and the abyss of darkness opposed to the

vital principle of light, is an inexhaustible gulf of every evil, and the deepest abyss of torments all gathered into one. For no punishment in nature is greater than deprivation of the light in which the life of things is contained. Just as impassibility joined to incorruptibility, being a continual absence of evils, produces a perfect abundance of eternal goods and pleasures that will never end, so passibility joined to incorruptibility, being a successive and continual death, will form a gulf always full of every torment and punishment, and a labyrinth from which unhappy souls will never escape. These torments will be greater and more overwhelming for the suffering subject in proportion to its greater capacity to receive these qualities, because of its density. For the more quality and capacity there is, and the more powers gathered into one, the more powerful and strong the impression of the elements or agents will remain, through its subtlety and penetrability, which will form a unity with passibility. In a single moment they will suffer every

kind of punishment in every part, even the smallest parts of their bodies. Thus they will suffer as many pains, penalties, and diseases as there are kinds of agents and individuals that alter things. In the same span of time they can be frozen with cold, burned, cast into watery abysses, afflicted by every disease of body and spirit, plunged into the deep gulf of every punishment, and overwhelmed by it, without being able to die, discharge the penalties due for their crimes—which will endure throughout eternity—or satisfy the wrathful God. They will experience his hostility and vengeance through an eternity of ages, from a source that will never run dry, without being able to move him by any prayer, touch him, or appease him through the abundance of their tears.

If you now ask how material fire acts upon immaterial souls, or whether one admits a pure and immaterial fire such as that kindled by God’s hand to punish Demons, and how it acts upon bodies, we must have recourse to

quicksilver, which is the figure of Jesus Christ and of the Demon, as also of the spirit of our quintessence. If, after knowing it, the true brilliance of alētheia, or truth, does not leap before your eyes, you understand nothing of chemistry; you go astray at the very threshold and will never find an entrance to discover these hidden secrets. For in quicksilver, as in a transparent crystal, everything that can be objected on this subject is revealed. It is certainly astonishing beyond words. O infinite abyss of wisdom! O immense and boundless goodness of God, who has set before our eyes a true and sensible proof of the things we must believe and hope, upon which he has established faith as on a firm, unshakable support that will never fall! It is so beyond any doubt; but who has ever given it credence?

Now all followers of Hermes testify that quicksilver is the heaviest of all bodies except gold, and that gold alone sinks within it.

These are the philosophers’ own words, because gold is without exception the heaviest of all metals.

But, O prodigy in nature! This same quicksilver surpasses the lightest bodies in spirituality and volatility, so that it sublimes at the slightest warmth of the sun and proliferates like a plant proliferating among stones. I say more: it is borne on the wings of the winds more swiftly than air itself; ‘the wind carries it in its belly.’ Now, lest the mind take fright, one must know that the chemical philosophers have placed it among bodies because its body is earthy, and ranked it among spirits because it is wholly spirit. Thus, owing to its perfect corporeity, it suffers as bodies do; and as spirit, it possesses every mode of essences in the manner of spirits, whether through the aid and assistance of the power from above, which elevates the activity of agents beyond nature. For it penetrates all the most solid glasses of metals, precious stones, and crystals, and even opaque bodies—a power denied to the

shining heavenly bodies of the stars. It is subtler and more penetrating than all other things and, because of the delicacy of its essence, is altered by the slightest occasion. There is no heavenly body from which it does not receive power; the elements pour and cast all their qualities upon it, and it receives the impressions and light of everything acting in nature. Although it changes into countless forms, is altered in a thousand ways, and like another Proteus assumes every figure in the world as the artist pleases, it does not thereby become corrupted or lose its first form. This is the judgment of the true sages, confirmed by experience and truth itself: since it is composed of homogeneous parts, it either remains wholly in the fire or leaves the fire wholly. For it is the most condensed and darkest body of all. It is called the receptacle of the impurity of corruptible bodies, of alteration, corruption, suffering, and death itself; for just as light is the image and

representation of purity, incorruptibility, and blessed life, so darkness is the figure of all confusion, war, torments, and unhappy life.

Should we then be astonished that quicksilver, containing such great secrets, being nature’s play and marvelous work, the image of the Demon, the ape of Jesus Christ, the whole study of humankind, the book of our fathers and the first hieroglyphic figures of the ancients, having given rise to every kind of emblem, figure, character, artifice, and enigma, should contain the separation and purification of things before they become blessed, and before one penetrates the great marvels of chemistry for which nature shows the way?

Chemistry, guided by nature and confirmed by experience, teaches that all things, whether bodies or spirits, composed of the four elements, are not exempt from their filth and impurities, whatever they may be, which are outside the first formation of some of them, and which are

accidental to matter; that things are most often not stripped and purified of them by art and according to nature’s laws, or of their own accord after long spans of time, as happens in the purification of precious stones, crystal, gold, or silver. The ancients call this separation of the pure from the impure, as we perform it by means of fire, chemistry; and they named that which is practiced to make silver by means of art ‘Hermetic science’ [partly legible Greek], that is, from the name of Hermes, its inventor, which signifies Mercury. In the same way, the pure influences of the heavenly bodies, cast upon the bodies of the elements, are clothed in envelopes of impure and corruptible matter, so that they may fulfill all the laws of alteration, corruption, and generation, or until, after finishing their work, which continues ceaselessly through this movement of generation and corruption, they have attained perfect purification and radiance, and until they rest after acquiring it.

To everything resulting from this mixture of elements purified by this secret influence of seminal forms they have given

225.The author emphasizes the paradox of receiving dark and suffering qualities into a constitution otherwise described as pure, luminous, subtle, and incorruptible.

226.The Greek is accompanied by the author’s French gloss ‘corruption’. The final phrase remains incomplete and continues on the next page; the passage’s assertion that demonstrations are unnecessary is not altered.

227.The opening completes the preceding page’s description of darkness opposed to light’s vital principle. It presents deprivation of light as the comprehensive punishment.

228.The parallel is explicit: incorruptibility joined to impassibility sustains unending delight; joined to passibility it sustains unending suffering. The terms are kept distinct rather than treating incorruptibility as equivalent to blessedness.

229.The author imagines simultaneous rather than merely successive punishments, extending each agent’s action to the smallest parts of the suffering body.

230.The question distinguishes material fire acting on an immaterial soul from immaterial fire acting on a body. The answer is deferred across the page boundary and returns to quicksilver as an analogy.

231.The same quicksilver is expressly called a figure both of Christ and of the Demon. The analogy depends on the opposing properties united within it, as developed in the preceding pages.

232.The source’s assertion about comparative weight is retained as an assertion of the Hermetic authors. The Greek/French mixed lettering of the truth-word is preserved in the facing text and transliterated alētheia in English.

233.The sentence ‘the wind carries it in its belly’ is set apart by underlining in the manuscript. It reinforces the contrast between quicksilver’s weight and its asserted volatility.

234.The source reads tous les verres les plus solides des métaux. Its attachment is awkward; English preserves ‘glasses of metals’ without substituting a different list of substances. The claim is made for the material under discussion, within the author’s theory of corporeity and spirit.

235.The author distinguishes alteration of appearance from corruption or loss of the first form. Proteus supplies the image of many shapes within a persistent subject.

236.The asserted homogeneity accounts for the all-or-nothing behavior in fire. The text then returns to quicksilver as a receptacle of dark and corruptible qualities, preserving the opposition developed throughout this section.

237.The source calls quicksilver both ‘the image of the Demon’ and ‘the ape of Jesus Christ’. ‘Ape’ retains singe, the image of an imitator, within this deliberate combination of sacred and infernal analogies.

238.The syntax of qui sont hors de la première formation de quelques-uns is irregular and its reference uncertain. The translation keeps the claim that these impurities lie outside a first formation; it does not supply a theory of when they originated.

239.The manuscript reads n’en sont pas le plus souvent dépouillées. Its negative is retained even though the examples that follow concern purification. Volontairement is rendered ‘of their own accord’ in reference to natural processes.

240.The Greek sequence following art is only partly secure; the author supplies his own French explanation, deriving the name from Hermes. The actual letters are preserved in the facsimile register rather than replaced by a reconstructed standard Greek phrase.

241.The source separates de formes from séminales at the page boundary. English joins ‘seminal forms’ here and carries the still incomplete governing sentence onto the next page.