The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

The final universal purification. It separates good, pure, and incorruptible from bad, impure, and corruptible, and renews created species in luminous, fixed, spiritual bodies. Laboratory purification supplies a comparison for this promised transformation.

Passages: H001-S258; H001-S274; H001-S280

Universal spirit

French: esprit universel

Father, fashioner, and guardian of compounds: a magnetic intermediary that attracts and retains seminal forms and governs degrees of mixture. Metals are called its central center because of their asserted homogeneity and concentrated germinative power.

Passages: H001-S254

Vessel

French: vaisseau

A container for the work and a role assigned to pictured objects. The cross can signify a vessel, while the great receptacle in the massacre figure receives what the work draws from bodies. The manuscript also describes vessels directly among the teachings of the art.

Passages: H001-S020; H001-S054; H001-S068; H001-S125; H001-S286

Virgin

French: vierge

A figure or qualification used in the mythological and Christian comparisons. Its particular subject determines the relation: an account of classical fable and a discussion of the Incarnation can each use virginal imagery within a distinct argument.

Passages: H001-S023; H001-S196; H001-S203; H001-S207; H001-S287

Vitriol

French: vitriol

A historical name for metallic sulfates and related preparations. The work joins vitriol with mercury and salt in repeated sublimation and discusses vitriolic marcasites among adverse spirits. The particular preparation is determined by the source’s qualifications.

Passages: H001-S038; H001-S085; H001-S104; H001-S120b; H001-S155

Water

French: eau

A fluid subject, dissolving agency, or pictured stream in the work. Water can be described as dry and non-wetting, and the spiritualization of waters explains its role in growth and the making of spirit. The source’s qualifying phrases give each water its local character.

Passages: H001-S083; H001-S086; H001-S093; H001-S109a

Work

French: œuvre

The undertaking that joins preparation, successive operations, and perfection of the subject. Œuvre also retains its ordinary sense of a made work or achievement. The fuller phrase Great Work is used where the French supplies it.

Passages: H001-S031b; H001-S058