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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Reading language

The Incarnation and the Birth of the Stone

The mystery of the Incarnation represents, in a certain manner, our stone’s first operation, which is its nativity.

Nothing hitherto has held minds more undecided and in suspense than the mystery of the incarnate Word, the foundation and support of every wonder. Is it not a crime to disbelieve it, since it has been announced by so many prophetic and Sibylline oracles, signified by the Egyptians’ figures and emblems, confirmed by Jesus Christ’s very incarnation, and established by the

testimony of the Evangelists, cemented by the miracles and palpable proofs of Christian faith, and traced by nature itself in large, visible characters upon the bark and within the marrow of all things? This leaves us no doubt or uncertainty, since it establishes the truth of what falls under our senses, and faith in what we must believe, upon proofs so firm that one ought sooner to deny the Sun’s brightness than this truth.

Although this labor and undertaking exceeds our powers, being as far above nature as nature is above us, we may nevertheless say that God has adapted these mysteries to the capacity of nature and our minds. He manifested himself in his incarnation as in a vast volume, or in the book of nature, where the most secret mysteries of our religion and nature’s most hidden wonders are disclosed by operations; God reveals and manifests himself through his works in nature, in such a way

that it would overcome and confound unbelief, impiety, and even hell. Thus he has divided the entire universe into different orders or families, through whose lowest members one reaches what is highest.

All philosophers agree that every compound is filled with an incorruptible spirit through which it is said to be nourished, to live, grow, and multiply. For all generation, nourishment, and germination is the work of the soul, which mingles the elements and reduces them to unity. Metals too are thoroughly filled with a volatile spirit, since we see them live, grow, and increase. Therefore, the more this spirit or life-giving celestial heat multiplies indefinitely within a subject, the purer, subtler, and more incorruptible the body becomes. For it belongs to spirit to attenuate purified elements, bind them firmly once attenuated, and convert them into a pure, homogeneous body, as happens in metals

After this, can life and soul be denied to things composed of parts destined for generation, nourishment, vegetation, and increase—things that live, grow young again, age, and die like other animals; that regenerate by their own movement, at their pleasure, and according to their disposition; that possess a thousand faculties and perform a thousand operations surpassing all things, as we have explained at greater length above?

To leave no room for doubt, we must turn to experience. If we follow it, it will lead us along the royal road and make known an incorruptible spirit that we call burning aqua vitae in living things and in plants; subtle essence, and in animals; and quintessence in metals and minerals. Once entirely purified of their heterogeneous matter, they acquire such delicacy and subtlety that they cannot be contained in glass, altered, or corrupted, so great is their power. Nature is sustained and supported

the whole world subsists; Heaven and the stars renew themselves in this lower world. Without them everything would collapse and return to the primal abyss of chaos, for without them nothing could be generated, nourished, or increased. Although these incorruptible spirits issue from a single mercurial source, they are nevertheless many in number or nature according to their composition and different preparation; they have several names and are of different kinds. Before these compositions and preparations they retain their two mutually contrary natures, received from nature itself. They never lose these unless a natural mixture occurs which, through corruption, ends in unity—that is, by returning to the identity of a uniform substance.

Their first species comprises gold’s fixed, incorruptible spirits, representing the incorruptible, perfect, eternal, infinite, immense, and incomprehensible. We designated them by the seven golden lampstands in this book’s first table.

The second spirits, which differ, participate in the

incorruptible nature and essence of mercury’s spirit. Although incorruptible, this spirit is nevertheless volatile, spiritual, and subject to every alteration. Thus the second spirits serve first in corruption, alteration, generation, nourishment, and increase; for because of its natural incorruptibility, arising from its homogeneous substance, it suffers no corruption in generation. Without defiling itself, it admits the pure, chaste embraces of nature’s sulfur, its spouse, and even lies with her, disregarding conception’s laws. In this way it accomplishes the pure, unstained generation of the solar spirit, which is incorruptible and fixed. We intended to represent this mercurial spirit in the form of the young man seated on the cloud, resembling the Son of Man in the first and second figures. Who, beneath this coarse exterior, will not already discern the mystery of the incarnate Word, so frequently and powerfully announced by oracles and prophets—a mystery in which God becomes man, the Creator his own work, and the father his own offspring? In which he who is not subject

to time, because he is uncreated, is born in time; and he whom the whole world cannot contain is contained within blessed Mary’s womb. In it we see the impassible exposed to the blows of pain and death, splendor without light, the invisible known, the almighty weak and powerless. In it, finally, the king becomes a slave, the father a son, and the immortal a mortal creature. Our first fathers had long occupied their minds with this prodigy of miracles and awaited its coming in certain hope. They were enlightened and filled with the philosophers’ stone’s mysterious secret, which they kept described in their books through figures and riddles. Thus they appointed a time when people were to celebrate, with preparations and solemn, august pomp, this day which they awaited as not yet come, or believed to have passed, and which they celebrated whenever it arrived with a thousand signs of love and respect. Let us examine thoroughly the circumstances of this celebrated day of the Nativity: we shall find God made man in the womb

of a pure virgin, conceived through the Holy Spirit’s operation: a son who, in divine generation, is of the same age as his father, begotten without a mother and uncreated.

In this divine mystery of the Incarnation, who does not see a son without a father, without the embrace of father and mother, and without any mingling of seeds? A generation without corruption; a mother who has had no intercourse with any father; a virgin pregnant yet chaste? Although this mystery infinitely exceeds our weakness and is [unknown]—I do not say to men, but even to angels—we shall nevertheless do our utmost to draw it from its darkness. With the aid and light of our mercurial spirit, the image of the blessed, unstained Virgin, we shall endeavor to reach what the arguments of this mystery present to us. For as gold’s body is incorruptible, pure, and homogeneous, its purity prevents it from joining imperfect metals; it cannot be dissolved and altered through them. There must therefore be a pure, incorruptible substance that

will be its friend and unite with it. This substance must fulfill a spouse’s duties and enjoy its pure, chaste embraces, become pregnant independently of all intercourse, and bring forth a pure, chaste child without feeling any pain. The blessed Virgin’s unstained pregnancy, conception, and childbirth could not be expressed better than by this fourth figure depicted in the following table.

With all their intelligence, people can understand nothing of the truth of this mystery traced in the Apocalypse beneath the veil of figures unless nature and the art of Hermes enlighten them, since nature and art are its principles. For nothing becomes perceptible and easy for us to know without art and nature, given our darkness and blindness, which spring from our bodies’ matter and infirmity. We must therefore not reject the characters, emblems, and figures invented and so strongly recommended by the ancient sages, through which art and theory, by a

265.The side ends with témoi-; the next begins with the complete word témoignage. The English lets the sentence continue without duplicating ‘testimony.’ The asserted Egyptian and Sibylline testimonies are part of the author’s argument.

266.The French construction after où is compressed and irregular: its sequence includes qui étant découverts without a fully expressed governing verb. The translation preserves its intended sequence—mysteries disclosed through operations, and God disclosed through natural works—without presenting a reconstructed French sentence.

267.The account extends soul, nourishment, and growth to metallic compounds. These terms express the manuscript’s natural philosophy and should not be narrowed to their modern biological senses.

268.Réengendrent is retained as ‘regenerate.’ The passage attributes spontaneous activity and renewal to the compounds under discussion.

269.The sequence naming aqua vitae, subtle essence, and quintessence is syntactically compressed and does not unambiguously assign each term to a domain. Its order is preserved, including the uncompleted phrase ‘and in animals’; no missing name has been supplied.

270.Corruption here mediates the return of contrary natures to one homogeneous substance. The manuscript does not treat it simply as the destruction of the incorruptible spirit.

271.The source moves between the plural ‘second spirits’ and the singular mercurial spirit; the translation retains that shift.

272.The human figure and the marital language are explicitly interpreted as material analogies of the Incarnation. The author’s comparison should not erase the distinction between the substances and the sacred event he invokes.

273.Impassible means incapable of suffering; the paired paradoxes concern the Incarnation. ‘The invisible known’ follows the transmitted wording, rather than substituting the more familiar ‘made visible.’

274.The claim that the earliest fathers already possessed the stone’s secret and anticipated the Nativity is part of the manuscript’s account of primeval knowledge.

275.The first sentence places divine, eternal generation beside the temporal birth described on the preceding side. The differing references to father and mother are retained.

276.The word read inconnu runs into the gutter and its last letters are obscured. The reading is therefore bracketed rather than silently completed.

277.The prose calls this the ‘fourth figure’ and announces a following table. That ordinal is retained as written; it is not adjusted to an external plate count.