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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 IThe Incarnation and the Birth of the Stone · Manuscript 87v · Scan 206

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The Incarnation and the Birth of the Stone · Manuscript 87v · Scan 206

French

Ms. 87v

aboient en regardant la lune ?

Ceux qui n’ont goûté la physique et la chimie que du bout des lèvres n’arriveront pas au but tout d’un coup. Ses richesses ne sont accordées qu’à ceux qui, avec une peine extraordinaire et une profonde méditation, comme Hercule le premier fondateur, auront terrassé les monstres innombrables de la paresse, de la fainéantise, de la liberté et de la témérité, etc., et qui auront rapporté comme lui les dépouilles du lion rouge et la massue. Ceux qui goûtent les fables des poètes ne les regarderont aucunement comme des contes faits à plaisir, car sous cette fiction apparente de la fable il y a des mystères de la nature cachés, afin qu’ils ne soient pas vus de tout le monde quoiqu’ils soient sous les yeux de tout le monde. Y a-t-il, je vous prie, rien de plus écarté du mensonge que ce qui est sous nos yeux ?

Ainsi il faut examiner avec toute la justesse possible ce que signifient les figures présentes de l’Apocalypse et leurs applications physiques dans les divins mystères. Qu’une femme devienne grosse

Ms. 87v

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I: The Incarnation and the Birth of the Stone

Ms. 87v

bark while gazing at the Moon?

Those who have tasted natural philosophy and chemistry only with the tips of their lips will not reach the goal at one stroke. Its riches are granted only to those who, through extraordinary labor and profound meditation, like Hercules the first founder, have overthrown the innumerable monsters of sloth, idleness, license, and rashness, and so forth, and have brought back, as he did, the red lion’s spoils and the club. Those who relish the poets’ fables will not regard them as tales invented for amusement. Beneath the fable’s apparent fiction lie hidden mysteries of nature, so that they may not be seen by everyone although they are before everyone’s eyes. Is anything, I ask you, farther removed from falsehood than what is before our eyes?

Thus we must examine as precisely as possible what these figures of the Apocalypse signify and how their natural applications bear upon divine mysteries. For a woman to become pregnant

Ms. 87v

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.