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Attributed to Abraham the Jew

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Book of Hieroglyphic Figures

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English Introduction · Branch 339 of 351

Glossary · Part 5

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I: Glossary

p. 339

The 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

339

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.