DiotimosReading Desk

Angels, celestial orders and natural spirits

Demons, central spirits and infernal orders

Démons, demons; Centraux, central spirits; Cacodémons, Cacodemons; esprits infernaux, infernal spirits

The infernal classification concerns hostile intellectual powers and their analogues among destructive natural spirits.

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 infernal classification concerns hostile intellectual powers and their analogues among destructive natural spirits.
  • In the bookCentral spirits are confined within matter, where contrary qualities produce corruption, injury, and resistance to generation.
  • TranslationDemon, infernal, central, and the source’s special names are retained with their different contexts.
  • A place to readRead scans 134–143 before the particular metallic examples: the distinction of classifications prevents a flat identification of every harmful substance with a demon.

Meaning

The manuscript gives infernal order a paradoxical beginning: there is no order in the underworld, yet demons have assigned offices and can be divided into ranks. This juxtaposition should be preserved. The first statement denies harmonious order; the subsequent classification names recurrent functions of disorder. It allows the author to compare bad powers with the differentiated offices of good angels without calling their moral character good.

The central spirits are a lower natural counterpart. They are said to be chained in the center of matter, a dark prison or sulfurous dwelling. Their elemental composition and destructive operations distinguish them from immaterial intellectual beings. Infernal language interprets their properties and effects within the author’s Christian natural philosophy. It should not remove the description of the substances and mixtures through which those effects are explained.

Use in the book

Scans 134–135 set out nine functions, beginning with false gods and spirits of lies and moving through harmful sciences, crimes, deceptive wonders, aerial powers, discord, accusation, and temptation. The sequence is followed by a possible sevenfold classification according to mortal sins. The author regards this alternative as compatible with faith and directs the reader to Agrippa. He does not supply a single immutable infernal table accepted in every later passage.266

The natural counterpart at scans 140–141 includes the lowest Tartarean or quasi-satyr-like central spirits. The text compares favorable spirits to glorious angels and adverse spirits of fields and woods to Cacodemons. Their places make them fiery, watery, earthy, or airy. This geographical and elemental differentiation matters: the spirits are recognized through where and how they operate.

Scan 142 places Pluto upon a sulfurous seat from which the four underworld rivers flow, interpreted as four worst elemental qualities. These sow enmity, antipathy, war, corruption, and death. Pluto’s rivalry with gold ends in dark confinement, yet his powers remain violent against subjects exposed to him: cooling the warm, burning the cold, breaking the hard, drying the wet, and condensing airy bodies. The account joins moral punishment with a catalogue of contrary natural actions.

The following metallic examples specify the harm. Common quicksilver mixed with sulfur or salts becomes especially destructive. Antimonial spirits at scan 145 are called vessels of iniquity, appear to offer a benefit, but deprive other things of their powers; Mars lays down its weapons before them. The dragon’s lethal breath and the double-edged blade are then interpreted through poisonous vapor and combustible sulfur. The specific descriptions should accompany the demonological names rather than be replaced by them.267

At scan 158 nitrous spirits, figured as Vulcan’s Cyclopes, fill air and earth with storms, disease, violent motion, and the equipment of war. Their destructive reach is extended through both nature and art. The writer condemns the shedding of human blood under demonic sacrifice while also describing powers available within material processes. The resulting rhetoric is intentionally comprehensive, but it does not eliminate differences among niter, mercury, sulfur, and antimony.

This account also prepares the later explanation of suffering. A body can remain incorruptible while receiving harmful impressions from many agents. The infernal condition depends on the relation of the subject to those powers, not solely on the existence of a substance called evil. The artist’s favorable task is to discriminate, separate, and prepare, overcoming heterogeneous obstacles while avoiding deceptive medicines. The demons and central spirits are consequently part of the book’s account of failed union and adverse agency as well as its religious warning.

Places to read

  1. Manuscript 53v · Scan 134The paradoxical introduction: no infernal order, yet differentiated offices follow.
  2. Manuscript 54r · Scan 135Nine ranks described through hostile functions.
  3. Manuscript 56v · Scan 140The lowest natural spirits identified as central and Tartarean or quasi-satyr-like.
  4. Manuscript 57r · Scan 141Cacodemons and spirits confined within elemental matter.
  5. Manuscript 57v · Scan 142Pluto, the four rivers, and contrary elemental powers.
  6. Manuscript 59r · Scan 145Antimonial spirits as deceptive medicines and opponents of Mars.
  7. Manuscript 65v · Scan 158Nitrous spirits, violent phenomena, and the equipment of war.

Translation

Central is retained as a technical spatial designation, not translated as important or principal. It refers to confinement in matter’s center. Tartarean and quasi-satyr-like preserve the writer’s mythological classification without silently replacing it with a modern list of elemental beings.

The edition distinguishes moral demonological agents from their material analogues where the text distinguishes them. It also preserves the author’s rhetoric of vice and punishment. A translation confined to neutral chemical properties would suppress the reason for the infernal comparison, while an exclusively supernatural paraphrase would suppress the operative explanation.

Démons

Attested: H001-S134. The beings whose infernal classification opens the adverse counterpart.

Centraux

Attested: H001-S141. Spirits chained in the center of matter.

Cacodémons

Attested: H001-S141. The name for bad or infernal spirits followed by lower natural agents.

esprits infernaux

Attested: H001-S141; H001-S145. Hostile powers in the correspondences of natural and infernal orders.

Source note

Hogart Manuscript 3, scans 134–136. The ninefold and sevenfold classifications occur together; the reference to Agrippa is the source’s attribution, not a verified quotation assigned here to a particular chapter.

Hogart Manuscript 3, scans 143–145. The harmful functions are explained through named common materials and mixtures, including quicksilver, sulfur, salts, and antimonial spirits.