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English Introduction · Branch 339 of 351
Glossary · Part 5
The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I: Glossary
p. 339The medium that discloses the tincture concealed within the metallic tree. Salts also appear in preparation, sublimation, and the discussion of dissolving spirits. The source qualifies different salts by their material or planetary associations.
Passages: H001-S041; H001-S085; H001-S156
Seminal form
French: forme séminale
A formative principle drawn into compounds and retained there by universal spirit. The source distinguishes the receiving subject’s disposition from the spirit’s office of attracting and retaining the form, and describes degrees of mixture governed by that spirit’s heat.
Passages: H001-S255
Sensible species
French: espèce sensible
A representation apprehended by the senses. The author explains the knowledge of celestial things through sensible species, phantasms, shadows, and figures. Here species names an apprehensible form or appearance rather than a biological classification.
Passages: H001-S233
Septenary
French: septenaire
A sevenfold grouping. The manuscript describes gatherings of seven leaves and interprets their numbers through durations of preparation and repeated sublimation. It expressly distinguishes the diversity of operations shown by the figures from a simple disclosure of their operative order.
Passages: H001-S031b; H001-S041; H001-S050; H001-S068; H001-S109a
Shadow
French: ombre
A likeness of bodily form distinguished from corpse, spirit, manes, and rational soul. In the graveyard account, tenuous vapors coagulated by cold air resemble the body. Their appearance is expressly distinguished from the return of its rational soul.
Passages: H001-S261; H001-S266
Solution
French: solution
The dissolving or resolution of a subject within the work. A section bearing this heading follows the initial emblem exposition. Rivers, wounds, weapons, and the action of mercury provide images for the power that breaks down or opens bodies.
Passages: H001-S038; H001-S049; H001-S116; H001-S244; H001-S287
Soul
French: âme
An animating or formative principle, and the spiritual subject of the theological discussion. Bodies desire reunion with their souls after separation. Purification prepares that reunion, which the source describes through conjunction, marriage, and lasting alliance.
Passages: H001-S177; H001-S261; H001-S268
Spirit
French: esprit
A term for a spiritual being, a subtle active agency, or the understanding and disposition of a person. The natural discussion distinguishes favorable and adverse spirits associated with substances and planets. The theological argument identifies light as the essence of spirit and examines its relation to bodies.
Passages: H001-S129b; H001-S138; H001-S159; H001-S170; H001-S255
Spiritualization of waters
French: spirituation des eaux
The operation named in the garden emblem’s heading. The explanation connects water, mercury, metallic growth, and the emergence of a spiritual condition. English spiritualization preserves the connection between material change and the vocabulary of spirit.
Passages: H001-S083
Stone of the philosophers
French: pierre philosophale
The perfected subject and goal of the work. Its descriptions unite material preparation with claims about purity, permanence, and an encompassing power. The final pages insist on a unity that can be named through many different natural forms.
Passages: H001-S187; H001-S195
Sublimation
French: sublimation
An operation repeated during preparation and the extraction of spirit or quintessence. The text relates its duration to the sevenfold arrangement of the book and uses winged figures to express the resulting subtlety and upward movement.
Passages: H001-S041; H001-S065; H001-S075; H001-S120b; H001-S203
Subtlety
French: subtilité
A refined or penetrating quality. Wings and Mercury’s equipment signify it in the emblem commentary. It also becomes one of the gifts of the perfected body, linking the earlier operative account to the theological discussion.
Passages: H001-S032; H001-S166; H001-S265; H001-S298; H001-S313
Sulfur
French: soufre
A principal subject of the operative vocabulary, associated with fixity, tincture, and the King. Sulfur arrests the spirit of quicksilver, while mercury separates sulfur from its body. The source also distinguishes volatile sulfur before maturation from a later fixed condition.
Passages: H001-S038; H001-S041; H001-S074; H001-S085; H001-S249
Sun
French: Soleil
The celestial Sun and an operative figure associated with brightness, gold, and solar bodies. The source discusses its relation with the Moon and mercury and places Sun and Moon together within an emblematic vessel. Each comparison retains its named celestial subject.
Passages: H001-S041
Tacamaque
French: tacamaque
A historical name for aromatic resins and the trees producing them. It appears unexpectedly in the opening curse concerning what a transgressor has planted. The translation retains the source’s name and records the unusual wording locally.
Passages: H001-S017
Tincture
French: teinture
The coloring or perfecting power held within a subject and drawn out or carried by the work. The garden exposition says salt reveals the tincture concealed in the metallic tree; other passages assign mercury the power of extracting and carrying tinctures.
Passages: H001-S038; H001-S065; H001-S085; H001-S103
Universal conflagration
French: embrasement universel
Socrates
Reading The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I · Glossary · Glossary · Part 5
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.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.
- Manuscript collection and Box 1 identificationGetty Research Institute: Hall collection finding aid
- Underlying manuscript photographsInternet Archive: Hall collection, Box 1
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