The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Passages: H001-S079

Operation

French: opération

An action or stage in the transformation of the subject. The sequence supplies the structure for the later Christian comparisons: an operative birth, death, resurrection, and multiplication are interpreted through corresponding mysteries of faith.

Passages: H001-S037; H001-S078; H001-S190; H001-S264; H001-S308

Orpiment

French: orpiment

A yellow arsenic sulfide known historically as a pigment. In the section Spirits of orpiment, the source places it among destructive material powers and interprets it through Cerberus and Geryon. The note keeps this imaginative explanation distinct from the material’s historical identity.

Passages: H001-S152

Passibility

French: passabilité; passibilité

The capacity to suffer or undergo affliction. It becomes a problem in the account of bodies that are luminous and incorruptible yet subject to torment. English passibility renders this theological and philosophical sense.

Passages: H001-S167

Pharmacy

French: pharmacie

The historical art of preparing medicinal substances and remedies, named in the extended title beside chemistry. The manuscript’s recurring relation between poison and medicine gives that title a concrete setting within the explanation of material powers.

Passages: H001-S009

Philosopher

French: philosophe

A possessor or interpreter of the art’s knowledge. The term frequently accompanies qualified material names, such as the philosophers’ mercury or laton, and marks a claim to specialized authority. It can also introduce a general account of nature or an argument about the soul.

Passages: H001-S009; H001-S074; H001-S165; H001-S234; H001-S301

Philosophical tree

French: arbre philosophique

The figure of mineral and metallic generation. Mountains and rocks are its matrices, mercury its vegetative stem, minerals its bark, and metals its fruit. The golden branch represents sulfur lifted by mercurial vapors toward the vessel’s top.

Passages: H001-S049

Physical stone

French: pierre physique

The subject perfected through the alchemical work. Its luminous, subtle, spiritual, and fixed qualities are presented as a condition toward which natural things strive and which the final universal purification will disclose more broadly.

Passages: H001-S274

Preparation

French: préparation

The making ready of the work’s subject and agents. The first exposition places preparation within the first septenary. Subsequent explanations relate repeated sublimations, the extraction of spirit or quintessence, and the required duration to the arrangement of leaves.

Passages: H001-S031b; H001-S053; H001-S117; H001-S198; H001-S294

Putrefaction

French: putréfaction

The breaking down or rotting through which an earlier condition yields to a new generation. It belongs to the vocabulary of death and renewal in the work. The translation retains the distinction between putrefaction and the more broadly used corruption.

Passages: H001-S265

Quenech

French: Quenech

A retained material-name in the expression green Quenech. Its water rises in rivers and participates in the passage’s account of moist greenness, vegetation, and nourishment. The source gives these associations without providing a secure modern material identification.

Passages: H001-S093

Quicksilver

French: vif-argent

The usual English rendering of vif-argent, often metallic mercury and also a name given to an extracted subject of the work. The author emphasizes its combination of weight and volatility and calls it a figure both of Christ and of the Demon. Its contrary properties support the argument about perfected and suffering bodies.

Passages: H001-S083; H001-S170; H001-S171

Quintessence

French: quintessence

An extracted or purified essence raised above the ordinary powers of the elements. Repeated sublimation is said to yield spirit or quintessence. Later passages describe all created things as striving toward this purified condition.

Passages: H001-S035; H001-S124; H001-S175; H001-S239; H001-S300

Rebis

French: Rebis

The mercurial spirit impregnated with solar spirit. The paired serpents express their combination and the conversion of bodies into spirits before fixation.

Passages: H001-S055

Reduction

French: réduction

A bringing into a specified condition. The section Reduction of the elements explains the massacre figure through the principles and actions of the art. Dissolution, the collection of tinctures, and the role of the receiving vessel make up its operative setting.

Passages: H001-S083; H001-S084; H001-S097b; H001-S283

Regulus of Mars

French: régule de Mars

The metallic preparation in which the author reports a visible star-form. Mars gives it an iron-related designation. The passage names the preparation as evidence within its argument without supplying a recipe.

Passages: H001-S260

Resurrection

French: résurrection

A return to life applied both to the Christian mystery and to the King or sulfur in the third operation. In the work’s account, corruption prepares regeneration. The comparison also develops the attributes of perfected bodies and the reunion of bodies and souls.

Passages: H001-S023; H001-S222; H001-S269; H001-S281; H001-S305

Salt

French: sel