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Diotimos Library · Esotericism & Spirituality Collection · Bilingual Edition

Attributed to Abraham the Jew

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Book of Hieroglyphic Figures

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The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume IMultiplication and the Eucharist · Manuscript 138r · Scan 313

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English Page · Branch 304 of 351

Multiplication and the Eucharist · Manuscript 138r · Scan 313

French

Ms. 138r

et beaucoup au-dessus de tous les autres corps parce qu’elle contient non seulement toutes les vertus et qualités passives de l’esprit, de l’âme et du corps glorifié, ce que nous pouvons dire, mais aussi ses vertus et ses qualités actives puisqu’elle peut glorifier et espiritifier les corps imparfaits, puisque par la subtilité et pénétrabilité elle pénètre intimement et jusqu’aux moelles tous les corps les plus durs et opaques des métaux et du cristal, et qu’elle parcourt toutes leurs parties et qu’en s’insinuant en elles elle les convertit et transforme à l’infini en sa nature parfaite ou en une autre aussi parfaite. Or présentement il nous reste à expliquer la manière dont cela se fait.

Vous en doutez encore, ô hérétique, et vous ne rougissez pas d’être instruit par la nature même ? Que les noirs charbons des chimistes ne vous épouvantent pas, que leur nom vous fasse encore moins fuir et ne les regardez plus avec les yeux de travers comme les ennemis les plus déclarés du genre humain. Vous ne vous apercevez pas

Ms. 138r

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I: Multiplication and the Eucharist

Ms. 138r

far above all other bodies. It contains not only every passive power and quality of spirit, soul, and glorified body, as we may say, but also their active powers and qualities, since it can glorify and spiritualize imperfect bodies. Through subtlety and penetrability it intimately penetrates, to their very marrow, all the hardest, most opaque bodies of metals and crystal. It traverses all their parts and, insinuating itself within them, converts and transforms them indefinitely into its own perfect nature or another equally perfect. It now remains to explain how this occurs.

Do you still doubt, O heretic, and are you not ashamed to be instructed by nature itself? Let the chemists’ black coals not frighten you; let their name still less make you flee; and cease regarding them askance as humanity’s most declared enemies. Do you not perceive

Ms. 138r

About This Reading Edition

The first manuscript in the Manly Palmer Hall collection at the Getty Research Institute: the Book of Hieroglyphic Figures, presented in French and English with 463 explanatory notes, 13 manuscript plates, 25 source details, an introduction, chapter outline, glossary, bibliography, and register of readings.

Historical Text and Translation

Book of Hieroglyphic Figures (Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques), attributed in the witness to Abraham the Jew. Getty Research Institute, Manly Palmer Hall collection of alchemical manuscripts, accession 950053, Box 1, Hogart manuscript 3; French witness catalogued circa 1800. Manly Palmer Hall is the collector, not the author.

About Diotimos Editions

This historical edition credits Diotimos Editions as its English translator.

Rights

The circa 1800 source manuscript is public domain. The supplied 2026 French reading transcription, English translation, introduction, notes, outline, glossary, register, and editorial arrangement are published with the site owner’s authorization. Source photographs are credited to the Getty Research Institute and Internet Archive in the supplied edition.