DiotimosReading Desk

Vessels, images and instruments

Alembic, ascent and descent

Upper and lower regions of the changing subject alambic, alembic; sublimation, sublimation; monte et descend, rises and descends

The alembic is a vessel whose head and body furnish the manuscript’s most repeated spatial explanation of sublimation, vapor, condensed water and prepared sulfur.

From the book

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Attributed to Abraham the Jew · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordThe alembic is a vessel whose head and body furnish the manuscript’s most repeated spatial explanation of sublimation, vapor, condensed water and prepared sulfur.
  • In the manuscriptMountains can mean its body; heaven and elevated rocks can mean its head. Mercurial water carries or raises sulfur, and what has risen can return below in watery form.
  • TranslationThe edition preserves the instrument and direction words. Ascent describes a stated material operation before it is used to explain a figure or a spiritual analogy.
  • A place to readManuscript 23r–23v, scans 65–66: sublimed white sulfur above and remaining mercurial water below organize the Andromeda explanation.

Meaning

Ascent and descent distinguish states and actions within a common subject. Compact or fixed material must first be opened and made capable of rising; a vapor can carry sulfur upward; a condensate can become water and return. These verbs give the reader a sequence that an image of a mountain or winged creature alone would not provide.

The alembic's head is a place of attained elevation and visible deposit. White sulfur attached there can be compared with stone, a maiden on a rock or a winged white eagle. The water remaining below can become sea, dragon or lunar river. The two positions express preparation and separation, while their later union belongs to another part of the work.

The source also uses the alembic to explain names that otherwise appear cosmological. Jupiter's brain, heaven, mountains and valleys are interpreted through its regions in different passages. This is a deliberate correspondence. It does not license reducing all the manuscript's statements about real heavens or divine things to apparatus: its own exposition moves between physical and higher meanings.

Use in the book

At 16r, scan 51, the mountain is the alembic's body and the flower the matter to be fulfilled. The next page says that the cold mercurial water opens gold's compact body, raises and spiritualizes it by rarefaction. The famous wind-axiom accompanies this action. At 17v, scan 54, the author distinguishes the lack of rising vapor during dissolution from the later filling with vaporous spirits. Those spirits rise along the sides, change colors and periodically resolve into water. The descending return is part of the same bounded scene.

At 23r the source gives a particularly exact account. Andromeda is white sulfur sublimed into the head, stone-like and exposed to the dragon below. Perseus is solar spirit hidden within that sulfur and made spirit or quintessence through sublimation. Wings signify the preparation that enables elevation; armor and mirror add other properties. The story is intelligible only when the head and bottom remain distinct.

At 24r, scan 67, Jason's bulls become vapors rising during the third work of corruption. Cooking must continue until none rises to fill the vessel's head. Ascent is therefore not always the desired final action: at one stage it makes a prepared subject, at another its cessation marks progress. The operator must know which stage is being described.155

At 40r, scan 105, heaven and the father's generative parts are interpreted by sulfur in the alembic's head. At 43r Pallas is formed in Mercury's belly and at the same head. At 44r–44v, scans 115–116, sulfur feeds on air, smoke and wind raised above, then grows into water and returns to the bottom. Water, dung-heap, air and fire name successive conditions in dissolution, corruption, sublimation, whitening and reddening.

At 46r, scan 119, Pithis is volatile mercurial water drawn from mountains, immediately glossed as the alembic's body. At 48v, scan 124, lifting Antaeus from his mother earth means subliming fixed gold sulfur to the head and reducing it to quintessence. At 86r, scan 203, highly spiritual volatile earth rises above and becomes the white-winged eagle or pregnant virgin; the silvery lunar water remains after sublimation. These different scenes share an instrument's spatial grammar while giving different substances and stages their own properties.

Places to read

  1. Manuscript 16r, 16v, 17v · Scans 51, 52, 5423Mountain, cold dissolving water, rising spirits and their watery return.
  2. Manuscript 23r, 23v, 24r · Scans 65, 66, 6723Andromeda’s position and the later requirement that corrupting vapors cease rising.
  3. Manuscript 40r, 43r · Scans 105, 1132Heaven and Pallas’s birth are interpreted through sulfur and the alembic’s head.
  4. Manuscript 44r, 44v · Scans 115, 1162The sulfurous subject feeds above and returns below as water.
  5. Manuscript 46r, 48v · Scans 119, 1242Mountain-water and Antaeus’s elevation supply distinct explanations of ascent.
  6. Manuscript 86r · Scan 203White spiritual earth rises as eagle or virgin while lunar water remains below.

Translation

Alembic renders alambic without substituting a specific modern design. Sublimation preserves the technical operation of raising a substance and its associated spiritualization. The edition also retains ordinary directional phrases such as rise, descend, top, head and bottom, because their recurrence makes the argument traceable.

Scan 51's phrase about the matter being fulfilled in nature is grammatically irregular; the English gives its apparent sense and records the French. Scan 116 doubles a word in the phrase for air and fire, which English reads once while preserving the source. These local interventions improve continuous reading without altering the vessel's sequence.156

corps de l’alambic

Attested: H001-S051; H001-S119. The vessel’s body interpreted as a mountain.

tête de l’alambic

Attested: H001-S065; H001-S067; H001-S105; H001-S113; H001-S115. The upper region for sublimed sulfur or rising vapors.

monte et descend

Attested: H001-S054. The motion of very volatile mercurial water within the vessel.

retourne au fond de l’alambic

Attested: H001-S116. The return of the subject in watery form.

Source note

Compare scans 65 and 67. The former positively locates sublimed white sulfur above; the latter requires cooking until the vapors of corruption no longer rise. The stage and subject determine whether ascent or its cessation marks the desired progress.

The edition records exaucée en toute de nature at scan 51 and the doubled un at scan 116. Neither is silently regularized in the French; English supplies an intelligible apparent sense or reads the repeated word once.