Conjunction, marriage and Rebis · Lexicon

From the book

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Attributed to Abraham the Jew · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordConjunction brings participating natures together, but the book distinguishes an embrace from a true mixture. Marriage names the desired enduring alliance; Rebis names the mercurial spirit impregnated with solar spirit in one explicit explanation.
In this bookThe work depends on knowing, separating and preparing the partners before their union. The author uses changing sexual roles, legitimate and illegitimate marriages, pure conceptions and mutual exchanges of qualities to examine this relation.
TranslationThe edition retains conjunction, mixture and marriage as different words. It also keeps the source's claim that each metal contains both sexes, preventing a fixed male-sulfur/female-mercury formula from overwriting the local account.
A place to readRead manuscript 11v, scan 38, alongside 102r–102v, scans 237–238: a reversible embrace is contrasted with the knowledge and purification required for legitimate union.

Meaning

Conjunction is not simply putting any two materials into contact. The same contact may be an embrace that can be undone, an improperly joined seed, or a true mixture whose constituents no longer separate. The operation's success therefore requires an account of the natures, their preparation and the stability of their bond.

Marriage carries both the physical and normative force of that distinction. It can be legitimate, chaste, royal and eternal, or monstrous, illicit and fleeting. Those judgments are explained through the participating substances and their purity; they are not an independent moral classification of every fluid or every metal.

Rebis has one explicit lexical occurrence. Rather than supplying a speculative derivation, the author glosses it by saying that the mercurial spirit is impregnated with solar spirit, spiritualized within it and dissolved in its resolution (18r; scan 55). That immediate description is the entry's secure starting point.¹¹⁵

Use in the book

The caduceus gives the clearest early distinction. The golden spirit must be subtle enough to receive the volatile spirits of mercury and vitriol, while they must be able to receive it. Their destruction and death are represented by their embraces, because sulfur arrests quicksilver and mercury separates sulfur from its body. Yet the serpents' intertwining can be an embrace rather than true mixture: without a fixed subject the partners remain separable (11v; scan 38).

The Rebis explanation describes what is carried in the paired serpents. Their wings mark bodies become spirits and ready for sublimation while awaiting fixation. The next side rejects the teaching that Mercury must be destroyed before conjunction with gold. The author insists on their mutual requirement, even while demanding transformation of their first conditions (18r–18v; scans 55–56).

Jason's quest then becomes the work of making an eternal marriage. He needs Minerva's science and Medea's experience to join the spirits into fixed, permanent matter, called the philosophers' stone or Golden Fleece (23v; scan 66). The image links knowledge with operative skill: recognizing the desirable bond does not remove the difficulty of forming it.

The broader account of purification makes union its end. Pure, incorruptible partners have eternal nuptials; impure and corruptible partners make a caducous, momentary marriage. The desire of bodies to rejoin their souls is read through this contrast, and the purgatory/lavatory analogy explains preparation before complete blessedness (75r; scan 177). Material and supernatural relations are compared while their settings remain different.

Before the Incarnation discussion, contrary mercurial natures keep their difference unless a natural mixture, through corruption, ends in the identity of one uniform substance (82r; scan 193). On the following side an incorruptible yet volatile mercury receives pure sulfur's embraces and generates fixed solar spirit. Here sulfur is called mercury's wife. The source's own gender assignment must not be reversed to fit a standard diagram.

The later account describes a reciprocal exchange: fixed golden spirit becomes volatile and receives mercurial conditions, while volatile, silver-like mercury acquires permanent solar gold. The author immediately calls this a coarse comparison of little relation to God (89r; scan 209). That qualification limits the use of material marriage to explain the union of divinity and humanity.¹¹⁶

The dedicated chapter on Sun, Moon and Mercury complicates the sexes further. Each metal contains both sexes and is hermaphroditic. The Sun acts as female in concealment and male in the open, while the Moon reverses agent and patient roles. Indiscriminate conjunctions therefore produce a monstrous marriage; the practitioner must recognize and separate natures before celebrating legitimate nuptials (102r; scan 237).

The next side compares this preparation to separating grain from straw and husk. Gold and silver's hidden seeds must be drawn out and freed from watery residues. Seeds remaining in the loins or mixed improperly with urine or another humor do not generate. The repeated insistence on separation before conjunction shows that union is the result of discrimination, not its opposite.

Places to read

Manuscript 11v · Scan 38Embrace and true mixture are expressly distinguished.
Manuscript 18r · Scan 55The source's immediate explanation of Rebis.
Manuscript 18v · Scan 56Mercury is required for conjunction with gold.
Manuscript 23v · Scan 66Science and experience prepare an eternal marriage.
Manuscript 75r · Scan 177Pure eternal nuptials contrasted with impure momentary marriage.
Manuscript 82v · Scan 194Mercury receives sulfur as his wife and generates solar spirit.
Manuscript 102r · Scan 237Both sexes within each metal; legitimate marriage requires discrimination.
Manuscript 102v · Scan 238Purification and extraction of seeds before conjunction.

Translation

‘Conjunction’ renders conjonction without making every embrassement or mixtion identical to it. ‘Embraces’ keeps the source's bodily image, ‘mixture’ its material relation, and ‘marriage’ its language of a bond. Rebis is retained and explained from its own paragraph rather than replaced with an externally reconstructed formula.

The translation uses ‘hermaphroditic’ where the source explicitly says hermaphrodite. Its unusual description of Mercury's nature at scan 237, provisionally read doutente, remains qualified. The uncertain opening ‘kings’ at scan 238 is also kept tentative; neither uncertainty changes the explicit need for purification before union.¹¹⁷

conjonction

Attested: H001-S056; H001-S238. The joining for which the partners must be prepared.

mixtion

Attested: H001-S038; H001-S193. A mixture, expressly distinguished from a reversible embrace at scan 38.

Rebis

Attested: H001-S055. The sole explicit source naming, immediately glossed through solar and mercurial spirits.

hermaphrodite

Attested: H001-S237. The source's adjective for the double sex of each metal.

mariage

Attested: H001-S066; H001-S177; H001-S237. An alliance whose legitimacy and endurance depend on its constituents.

Source note

The source's Rebis explanation is H001-S055. The entry makes no etymological claim beyond the book's immediate solar-mercurial account.

Manuscript 89r, scan 209. The author expressly restricts the comparison with God, calling the material example coarse and of little relation to divinity.

The provisional readings doutente and rois belong respectively to H001-S237 and H001-S238 and are documented with facsimile details in the main edition.