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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Reading language

The Dragon on the Cross and Corruption

setting sun; it could be seen that the cross was made of oak wood.

Explanation of the first emblem, containing the figure of a dragon fastened upon a cross with nails.

Corruption.

All the Hebrew masters and doctors have mentioned the cross and wished it to be held in great veneration, because it contains all the secrets and wonders of physics, magic, and religion. Holy Scripture testifies that God sent fiery serpents among the Israelites because they had murmured against him. Moses therefore made a brazen serpent fastened upon a cross, and this figure protected those who looked upon it. This led physicians to use serpent flesh against the bites of venomous beasts: so well does nature know how to hide her specific remedies beneath the greatest poisons.

The figure of the brazen serpent reveals the greatest of all poisons in the philosophers’ laton, which is the first and universal medicine. This same reasoning supports the secret interpretation of the serpent depicted in this emblem and fastened upon a cross: although a very venomous animal, it nevertheless serves to compose the most sovereign medicine and antidote. The natural philosophers understood the same thing by a brazen vessel dedicated to the goddess Minerva, in which all the mysteries of this secret science could easily be seen traced in ancient characters of gold.

Whether the poets had no knowledge of venerable antiquity’s secrets, or whether these were disclosed to them, it is nevertheless certain that they so enveloped them in fables that even the keenest mind can scarcely understand them without a most perfect knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Could one, without folly, interpret literally here the fable of Cadmus, son of Argenor, preparing to combat the dragon of Lerna that had devoured his companions and died fastened to an oak after its throat had been pierced

right through by this hero in single combat?

If, then, we wish to separate the grain from the straw, the nut from its shell, and truth from fable, we shall say that this serpent, covered with hard and ancient scales, must be understood as the body of gold, which other bodies cannot attack. It does not die or become corrupted unless wounded in the throat and then only in the head: that is, unless dissolved by mercury, which is its head and throat. For in less time it is found covered with scales that are not hard and are few in number, so that it is destroyed more quickly and more easily than gold. His pike is a common or philosophical fire, with respect to its effects and the resemblance of its shape: when kindled, it has the shape of a pointed, well-sharpened lance and produces the same effect, because, like a lance, it opens, penetrates, and destroys bodies, as we shall show more fully in its place.

This emblem presents a serpent that is not fastened to an old oak trunk, nor pierced and

broken by Cadmus’s pike, but fastened upon a cross with two nails. The scales upon its back are blue; those of its belly are variegated and speckled with yellowish and red spots, the colors attributed to the philosophers’ copper or brass. This is an amber composed of volatile gold or silver that is not yet ripe. Thus the chemists call it their sulfur or their gold before its perfect cooking and fixation, and name it copper or laton because it abounds in blackness, volatility, and foul smell. This gave rise to the ancient proverb of the philosophers: ‘Wash your laton and tear up your books.’ For when we have obtained this precious sulfur of nature that we call laton, nothing remains but to cleanse it through repeated digestions, irrigations, and imbibitions with our mercurial water until, having laid aside its blackness, venom, and foul smell, it becomes shining sulfur, fixed like talc.

The poet signifies the same thing by a bull that has several forms and brazen feet.

By the foot we understand the end of the operation and the creation of our laton or sulfur; and by its form when it changes into a river, its dissolution. Hercules had no little difficulty, and an artist experiences scarcely less in taming this monster, because it assumes the form of a river and of a bull—that is, of sulfur—and a moment later assumes others.

Then the body of gold becomes so subtle that it surpasses all spirits in subtlety, penetrates the most solid metallic bodies, and acquires so great a power of growth that the slightest warmth of the sun sublimes it. It puts forth branches, leaves, and flowers pleasing to the eye more quickly than another plant, and possesses such venomousness that it kills more quickly than arsenic. Later it becomes a remedy so effective and so powerful that it heals every kind of diseased body. We shall speak of this at length in its place.

It is therefore insufficient for the artist to have reduced gold to its first form, that is, to water, and to have prepared it by sublimation as the white sulfur of nature; one must also

marry these untamable bulls: that is, the volatile sulfur and volatile mercury, which have not yet endured the yoke or passed through fire. The serpent’s teeth must be sown—that is, the sulfur sublimed into the upper part of the vessel—with the mercury remaining in the fluid we call enriched vapor or Medea’s mingled juice, because the flesh of our solar viper has been cooked in it. It lives in order to be cooked and corrupted, for unless corrupted it will not generate. In this corruption the whole vessel fills with vapors rising from the corrupted matter, against which one must guard oneself with great care, as we remarked above. Once these vapors have dispersed, the matter appears shining like a drawn sword or like talc.

It is then that the dragon has devoured its tail, that Hercules has overthrown Achelous or torn from his forehead the first horn, which pours forth no little milk. It is then that Perseus has coagulated part of the Dragon into stone; and it is, finally, then that the artist has subdued the bulls by means of the yoke or fire and created the first white sulfur. What remains now,

except to plow the earth and sow the serpent’s teeth in it? That is, the sulfur that must be cooked with the remaining water becomes gold, which is sown in the white earth split into leaves—that is, plowed and thoroughly opened. This leads the poet to say most elegantly:

‘We dissolve a living body with the fire of Phoebus, to make what was formerly stone become spirit. From the midst of its entrails we draw the gold that purifies the brass filled with the impurities its mother left it. After separating its bones from the seed from which it was born, we wash it with a water with which it unites. From them is born a bird clothed in diverse colors, which, after becoming white, flies into the heavens. Then with a new fire we paint and color its wings, rubbing them with its own milk to perfect the work. We nourish it with blood until it is sufficiently matured to undergo the rage of Vulcan.’

From this fatal seed of the Dragon’s teeth there sprang from the earth a troop of soldiers who

fought one another and hurled themselves upon Jason. By these soldiers are understood the vapors or parts of the elements that fight one another until fixed as stone, just as Jason is said to have cast a stone into their midst so that they would turn their weapons against themselves and kill one another. For the active qualities of the Elements do not cease acting against the passive qualities until they coagulate and become fixed as white sulfur. For this reason Saturn’s wife gave the god who devoured his children a stone to swallow in place of Jupiter: all the colors of the metals we call by their names appear during corruption; and if they do not appear, we say that these metals have devoured their children.

For this operation is described in countless passages of the poets: in Adonis, killed by the Erymanthian boar; in Isis, torn to pieces by Tysiphone; in the tigers and dragons that strangle one another at the foot of the mountain we have described, of which we speak

77.The new heading in the manuscript is ‘Explanation of the first emblem, containing the figure of a dragon fastened upon a cross with nails.’ It follows the description of the ‘second figure’; both labels are retained.

78.This passage gives the author’s interpretation of the brazen-serpent story and his explanation of serpent remedies. ‘Upon a cross’ is the manuscript’s wording, not a substitution made by the translator.

79.Laton is retained as the alchemical material-name; later the same passage uses laiton and cuivre. Alexipharmaque is translated ‘antidote’, the function asserted for this medicine.

80.The names Argenor and Lerna reproduce the source’s account. The translation does not silently reconcile its mythological identifications with another version of the story.

81.The French ‘et puis qu’à la tête’ and the following change from the body of gold to the less protected mercurial body are syntactically difficult. The English retains the sequence and pronouns without supplying a more definite transition.

82.The pike is interpreted through both visual likeness and action: the flame resembles a lance and is said to penetrate bodies as one does.

83.The source calls the intermediate material an ambre, ‘amber’. This material-name is preserved alongside copper, laiton, and laton, without treating them as a modern chemical identification.

84.The injunction is quoted by the manuscript as a proverb. Its explanation contrasts possessing the prepared sulfur with the subsequent repeated cleansing of it.

85.The source’s sentence after ‘by its form’ is grammatically incomplete. Its contrast is between the end of the operation, figured by the foot, and dissolution, figured by the river.

86.The same prepared material is successively described as intensely poisonous and universally curative. The translation preserves these historical claims and the author’s promise of a later explanation.

87.The marriage of the two volatile substances and the yoking of the bulls are parallel images for bringing the ingredients together under fire.

88.The paragraph deliberately places several myths at one operational stage: the self-devouring dragon, Hercules’s victory, Perseus’s petrification, and Jason’s bulls all signify the production of the first white sulfur.

89.The syntax joins ‘the sulfur that must be cooked’ directly to ‘becomes gold’. The English supplies punctuation to make the clauses readable without adding another operation.

90.The passage is introduced only as the words of ‘the poet’. Its sequence is dissolution, purification, the many-colored bird, whitening, renewed fire, and nourishment; no author’s name is supplied by the manuscript.

91.The conflict of active and passive elemental qualities is resolved by coagulation and fixation. The mythic soldiers and Saturn’s swallowed stone are interpreted as images of this same transition.

92.The manuscript’s identifications of the boar and the destroyer of Isis are preserved. The latter name is provisionally read Tysiphone; neither name is silently replaced by another mythological version.