Jason and the Golden Fleece · Lexicon

From the book

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Attributed to Abraham the Jew · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordJason is the prince who wins the Golden Fleece with Medea's aid. In the material explanation he represents a sulfurous and mercurial spirit; the Fleece is the fixed and permanent matter called the philosophers' stone.
In the manuscriptHis voyage, bulls, plowing, sown teeth and hostile soldiers form an account of preparation, volatile conflict and fixation. His prudence is as significant as another hero's weapon.
TranslationThe Fleece is capitalized as the recurring legendary treasure. The edition preserves the manuscript's separate uses of Jason as an agent, an example of prudence, and a name within later composite images.
A place to readManuscript 23v–24r, scans 66–67: the author defines Jason's spirit, names the Fleece as fixed matter and explains the bulls and plowshare.

Meaning

The Golden Fleece is the prize of an accomplished transformation. At 23v, scan 66, its meaning is stated alongside the philosophers' stone: spirits are joined in an eternal marriage so that they become fixed and permanent matter. The name does more than praise gold. It presents possession as the end of a difficult undertaking and gathers knowledge, skill, resistance and success into a single memorable figure.

Jason himself is distinguished from his prize. He is a spirit similar to the preceding sulfurous and mercurial spirit but different in nature and effect, as fixed as the other is volatile. The victor and victory are related without being identical grammatical objects. Elsewhere he stands with Hercules and Perseus as one philosophical fire or water considered through different substances and preparations. The reader must follow the stated stage rather than treating a heroic name as an unchanging material label.

The Fleece also broadens into the value and use of the completed treasure. It promises health and extraordinary material powers, but possession creates duties. The successful artist at 79v, scan 188, receives it as a treasure God grants. The image thus moves from the process of obtaining a subject to the ethical question of what its possessor should do with it.¹⁹¹

Use in the book

Jason's ship first enters the discussion of winds at 17r, scan 53. Favorable breath carries it to harbor; the two winds are explained through gold's dry, hot spirit and mercury's silvery water. Successful arrival becomes a figure of material passage through altered qualities. This early use prepares a reader to understand the voyage within the author's account of a philosophical subject rather than as geographical travel.

At 20v–21r the Fleece joins the explanation of Perseus's fixing power. Jason must yoke bulls, plow Mars's earth and sow the serpent's teeth. Medea helps him avoid the bulls' breath and overcome the vigilant dragon. At 21v, scan 62, the author emphasizes his stratagem, advice and prudence. The contrast gives the undertaking a practical intelligence: an agent is effective through preparation and appropriate assistance, not merely through violent strength.

The direct exposition at 23v calls the prize 'a fixed and permanent matter'. Minerva and Medea are required because joining the spirits needs extreme skill. The bulls at 24r are vapors rising in corruption; the work continues until their rise ceases. Plowing opens the sulfurous earth by the remaining mercurial water, and the teeth signify dissolving power. The account deliberately transfers an agricultural and military story into conditions within the vessel.

At 28r–28v, scans 77–78, the sown teeth become a troop of soldiers. They stand for vapors or elemental parts that fight until fixed as stone. Jason's thrown stone turns their violence against themselves. The explanation states that active elemental qualities continue acting on passive ones until coagulation as white sulfur. Here the stone is the means or image of ending conflict, whereas the Golden Fleece names the attained permanent treasure. The related images should not erase this difference in their roles.

Later the Fleece appears as a sought treasure in the interpretation of rich purple clothing at 87r, scan 205. At 127r, scan 289, it is declared more precious than jewels, gold and silver because its possessor can multiply crystal into precious stones and imperfect metals into gold or silver. These are the author's claims about perfected matter. The account links the treasure to the true Lion, promised land, river of life and tree of life, extending the heroic prize into Christian images of completion.

The name can also occur in a morally or narratively difficult setting. Scan 98 places Jason's cutting of Apsyrtus among acts of cruelty used to introduce the blood emblem; scan 228 joins him with the Hesperides' dragon. Neither occurrence supplies a reason to revise the local witness. They demonstrate how an author reuses names and episodes for selected features rather than maintaining a continuous heroic biography.

Places to read

Manuscript 17r · Scan 53Jason's vessel reaches harbor under winds explained through gold and mercury.
Manuscript 20v–21v · Scans 60–622 3The tasks and Medea's help introduce Jason's dependence on prudence and stratagem.
Manuscript 23v–24r · Scans 66–672Jason, permanent matter, the Fleece, vapors and plowing receive direct explanations.
Manuscript 28r–28v · Scans 77–782The dragon's teeth and self-destroying soldiers are explained by elemental conflict ending in fixation.
Manuscript 79v · Scan 188Possession of the Fleece becomes the beginning of the successful artist's obligations.
Manuscript 127r · Scan 289The Fleece's exceptional value is expressed through claimed powers of multiplication and transmutation.

Translation

Toison d'or is Golden Fleece throughout, preserving a recognizable recurring prize. Troupe de Jason is Jason's company; its surrounding explanation is about the spirits and operations, so it should not be expanded into a catalogue of Argonauts that the witness does not give. Industrie here is skill, and artifice stratagem, expressing purposeful practice rather than industrial manufacture or mere deception.

The translation keeps 'marriage compact', 'fixed' and 'permanent' together at scan 66 because their relation defines the Fleece locally. The later language of possession and multiplication is retained as the manuscript's assertion, with its religious and ethical setting. A reader should consult the corresponding entries on medicine, fixation and the artist's duties for those distinct aspects of the treasure.

Historical parallels

Ovid's Metamorphoses 7.100–158 joins the fire-breathing bulls, plowing, serpent's teeth, earth-born warriors and sleep of the guardian dragon. That sequence helps identify the narrative material being interpreted. The manuscript's elemental conflict and permanent sulfur are its own explanatory register, not meanings that the comparison proves Ovid intended.¹⁹²

Jason

Attested: H001-S053; H001-S060; H001-S066. The voyaging prince and the spirit whose preparation is unfolded through the Fleece story. Lemma: Jason.

prince Jason

Attested: H001-S053; H001-S060. The voyaging prince and the spirit whose preparation is unfolded through the Fleece story. Lemma: Jason.

Toison d’or

Attested: H001-S066; H001-S188; H001-S289. Fixed, permanent matter; later the completed treasure and its claimed extraordinary value. Lemma: toison.

prudence de Jason

Attested: H001-S063. Prudent assistance and the company interpreted by the author, rather than a full catalogue of the hero's companions. Lemma: prudence; troupe.

troupe de Jason

Attested: H001-S066. Prudent assistance and the company interpreted by the author, rather than a full catalogue of the hero's companions. Lemma: prudence; troupe.

Source note

The thought at scan 188 continues onto scan 189a, where the artist is warned about buying offices and instructed toward charity. Consult the dedicated entry on the artist's duties for that continuation; the Fleece here marks the possession that makes the question urgent.

Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.100–158. Narrative comparison only. The elemental and alchemical definitions are expressly supplied by the manuscript's exposition, especially scans 66–78.