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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

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The Second Operation and the Death of Christ

That the second operation can be the symbol and proof of Jesus Christ’s death.

Granted that the fixed spirit of gold, incorruptible, eternal, and permanent, has assumed a body capable of suffering

volatile and incorruptible, eternal, within the pure and spotless womb of our celestial mercury, one will be able to understand that the uncreated is born, the impassible suffers, and the immortal is subject to death.

Although this is difficult and almost impossible because it contains a contradiction, if we nevertheless recall what we have already said, you will see that the matter requires neither proofs nor demonstrations.

But what connection has death with life, light with darkness, perfection with vices, and impassibility with corruption? These things have been united and adjusted within one matter and one subject so that we might be struck by the splendor of knowing such great mysteries, and so that the concord and harmony of invisible things with visible ones might be disclosed to us. Before proceeding, we must recall our quintessence, which, pure, spiritual and incorruptible though it is, remains subject to every imperfection of corruption and

alteration. Thus gold dissolved within it, however pure, fixed and incorruptible it may be, can change into a thousand admirable forms and figures and receive the qualities and accidents of water, air, earth and fire, spirit, salt, mercury, sulfur and others, without losing its essence as metallic gold. This is no small secret of nature, which half-philosophers use in mistaken boasting, claiming to prove the soul's immortality. To elucidate it, Ariadne's thread would be needed before anyone could free himself from this maze and labyrinth. Philosophers' opinions on this subject are so diverse and doubtful that one falls into still greater doubt when trying to decide which to follow. Consequently—said without offending Catholic religion and orthodox faith—no one, or very few people, would believe it.

Tell me, does anything approach folly more closely than what happens to the School's philosophers, who despise knowledge of nature, neglect to discover its secrets, and publish to the world the title

of fools rather than the name of sages. Had they actually learned that mercury contains a spirit subject to every kind of alteration, although it cannot be altered by any kind of spirits, and that through the nature of its incorruptibility it can acquire every quality and faculty of glorification, they would have perceived in compounds not only seeds of immortality but also means of glorification coming to them through alteration, corruption and death.

Lest some ignorant person break his leg against this rock by perversely taking the figure for the thing itself, by this spirit we do not mean every spirit wrapped in matter's swaddling clothes, although immortal in some fashion. We mean this pure, homogeneous and incorruptible spirit of mercury, which, being the basis of all generation, corruption, nutrition and multiplication, is also the basis of immortality and eternity. Through its incorruptibility it is an image and, as it were, a specimen of souls. From this one proves not only the immortality of Christ and humanity and the soul's incorruptibility, but also

the alteration, corruption and death of Christ and humanity. Nothing can engender or be engendered except through alteration and corruption. Corruption is so powerful that, after dissolving and breaking the chains and bonds of the matter in which the germinative spirit resides, it can produce the first image of form. This spermatic spirit is within the sperm a grain sown in earth to be purified and corrupted; otherwise it neither multiplies nor germinates. Likewise gold's fixed spirit cannot germinate, grow and produce its harvests unless reduced to the form of a volatile mercurial spirit, preserved in that spirit and purified through it to bring forth its germ. This is what teachers of theology say continually, and what Jesus Christ himself says: unless the grain falls into earth and dies there, it will not yield a hundredfold; and elsewhere, Jesus Christ had to suffer and enter into glory.

It is therefore certain and incontestable that the foundations of a new, better and immortal life lie hidden

within the spoils of death and corruption. What use would the mystery of incarnation have served if Jesus Christ had not died? What benefit would his death have brought if he had not risen from death by overcoming it? Before Jesus Christ's birth, sacred seers foretold through a prophetic spirit, oracles predicted, and nature proclaimed this truth, which Jesus Christ confirmed with his own mouth: unless the grain dies, it remains alone. No germ sprouts from this blessed seed of glorification, resurrection and immortality, and the grain of eternal life neither multiplies nor works within us on the day of glory.

We have already said how gold's incorruptible spirit clothed itself in quicksilver's body, through which it is dissolved, altered and corrupted, so as to bring forth this abundant harvest of gold in its season. We have likewise shown how Jesus Christ, clothed in our mortality and paying the penalties due to our crimes, satisfied his angered Father to merit eternal life for us. For a

mortal human being could not accomplish so great a miracle by himself. The metallic spirit cannot by itself free itself from the impurities with which it teems and clarify itself so as to glorify and clarify bodies. To work such great prodigies and wonders, it needs art and the hand of an industrious practitioner. Likewise, in the stroke of death that human beings presented, no remedy appeared for the poison of committed sin, and humanity saw no hope of future glorification, unless our restorer and mediator, after reconciling us and effacing or cleansing the stain of our crimes, had awakened and warmed the germ of immortality almost dead within them, to produce the eternal life that will never end, of the soul washed in the Lamb's blood, which is the analogous elixir or — universal medicine. Who can make pure what is conceived of an impure woman? This is the Almighty's work: it belongs to him alone, and not to a mortal human being. It is attributed to

God's power alone, and not to any creature. For several theologians, followed by the Hebrews' Kabbalah, believe and even affirm that Jesus Christ assumed a human body independently of Adam's sin. We share their opinion. According to nature's conditions, this profound mystery of incarnation was decreed before creation and Adam's sin, and visibly engraved with a burin upon all things, especially metallic things, as we have demonstrated above. It was established upon God's death and before the world's creation, not to obtain pardon for a crime not yet committed, but to fulfill the pledge of his love toward humanity. Being infinitely immense and infinitely good, God spared no means and omitted no manner of showing this to humanity, unworthy of such great benefits. He had destined humanity to be, as it were, the abridgment and compendium of all creatures. Thus he celebrated this mystery, greatest of all prodigies, to increase humanity's grace and glory. Mortal humanity had an

immortal God as associate and participant in all its miseries and infirmities. It took Christ as brother and kinsman, the incarnate Word as surety, and entered into a community of goods with Jesus Christ. It is therefore fitting and proper to imitate him in everything and show him every kind of love and zeal. Human appetite, running toward its destruction, bears itself toward its loss and death. Through its continual motions and the efforts it makes to overturn its judgment, it cries aloud that the lot and continuance of all things are passing and mutable. I say further that not only does Jesus Christ's death confirm this miracle of corruption in nature, but so do the dissolution and corruption of the incorruptible solar body and even our quintessence. These stand above the condition of the elements and have, as it were, something of celestial nature. Their alterations and corruptions, like the different ideas of forms they assume, openly announce what has happened in invisible things.

with regard to matter's frailty, and even among intelligences and intelligible things, with regard to violating the divine command and the goads of pride.

Moreover, if we thoroughly investigate nature's secret and the dissemination and functions of the universal spirit, we shall easily perceive that a continual movement of alteration, corruption and death has slipped into the world. According to it, the spirit of Antichrist spreads over the difference and universal multiplicity of the whole universe. From this, contrariety, alteration and death have sown everywhere this unhappy harvest of mortality, transience and corruptibility. This is explained at length in the book we call the sole Monas of the hieroglyphs of physics, magic and Christian Kabbalah.

But the Almighty's infinite goodness took pity on our misery and infirmity. Taking responsibility for the remedy suited to our weaknesses, he sent us his only Son as physician and as

300.Passible means capable of undergoing suffering or affections, opposing the earlier impassible. The section begins an analogy between the work’s second operation and Christ’s death.

301.Impassibility is the inability to suffer or undergo alteration. The author deliberately sets it beside suffering and mortality, and uses quintessence to explain how apparently opposed qualities can coexist within one subject.

302.Résolu is rendered 'dissolved', in keeping with the gold's reception of other qualities while retaining its metallic essence. The analogy is then applied to the soul's immortality, although the author criticizes inadequate philosophical arguments and expressly protects his religious allegiance.

303.The author explicitly cautions against confusing a figure with the thing represented. His analogy concerns a specified pure spirit of mercury, rather than every spirit clothed in matter; the distinction controls the ensuing account of corruption and resurrection.

304.Compare John 12:24 for the grain that dies and bears fruit, and Luke 24:26 for Christ's suffering and entrance into glory. The manuscript combines the grain saying with a hundredfold yield; its own wording supplies the translation. The theological comparisons explain the material sequence of dissolution, purification and renewed generation.

305.The phrase about the grain remaining alone again echoes John 12:24. The manuscript uses the same sequence—putting on a body, dissolution or death, and abundant renewed life—for gold and Christ, while preserving the distinction between the analogy's terms.

306.The manuscript leaves a ruled blank between ou and médecine universelle. The dash preserves that visible gap; no missing term has been supplied. The figure of washing in the Lamb's blood can be compared with Revelation 7:14.

307.The question combines themes found in Job 14:1 and 14:4: human birth from woman and the impossibility of bringing cleanness from uncleanness. Its wording here is translated from the manuscript.

308.The author explicitly endorses an incarnation independent of Adam's sin and says its pattern is engraved in nature, especially metals. This is his stated theological position within the analogy; the translation preserves the unusual phrase 'established upon God's death'.

309.The legal and social metaphors—surety and community of goods—express participation between humanity and the incarnate Word. The argument then returns to solar matter and quintessence as visible figures of invisible events.

310.The author refers to another book with the title or description 'the sole Monas of the hieroglyphs of physics, magic and Christian Kabbalah'. Monas is retained as a title-word; an identification with a particular surviving work is not imposed by the translation.