From the book
The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I
Attributed to Abraham the Jew · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe regulus of Mars is a named metallic preparation in which the author says a star-like form can be seen. The manuscript supplies the name and its argumentative role, but no recipe at this point.
- In this bookIt completes an account of forms surviving or returning after material transformation. The author places a personal claim about dissolved metals alongside reports of forms recovered from ashes.
- TranslationThe edition keeps ‘regulus of Mars’. Mars gives the preparation an iron-related name within the book's material correspondences; the phrase is not silently replaced by an externally reconstructed laboratory formula.
- A place to readRead manuscript 112r–112v, scans 259–260. The name completes the preceding side's sentence about metals receiving the form of stars.
Meaning
The named preparation belongs to a passage about evidence for the persistence of seminal forms. Its importance is what the author claims it shows, rather than a compositional explanation of the regulus. A lexicon should retain that imbalance: the phenomenon receives a place in the argument while the method of producing the material remains unstated.
Mars has several uses elsewhere in the manuscript, including martial powers, iron and a planetary family. Here those associations help the reader understand the name. They do not authorize a full identification of every ingredient or process that later technical literature might attach to a similarly named preparation.96
Use in the book
The previous side asks how deeply seminal forms are lodged within the marrow of matter and answers by appealing to experience. The author reports forms reborn from ashes, then describes a member of his cabala demonstrating returning plant-forms before trustworthy witnesses. He follows the report with a first-person assertion that he too performed an experiment.
The final assertion concerns metals dissolved by vegetative water and receiving the form of stars. The sentence crosses the leaf: what everyone perceives, it says, is visible in the preparation of the regulus of Mars. Reading the name alone on scan 260 would conceal this chain of testimony and the particular visible effect for which it is cited.97
The argument then changes scale. Metals are said to contain especially pure, closely mixed elements and abundant germinative spirits. Their renewal, regeneration and glorification can therefore proceed more swiftly toward an excellent form. The regulus example serves as a bridge between a claimed observation and this account of metals' capacity for transformation.
Only after that transition does the author introduce Lucretius and Ovid to distinguish renewal, regeneration and resurrection. The regulus does not itself supply the whole distinction. Nor does a visible star-form, as reported here, independently establish the later theological conclusions. The entry should keep observation-claim, material explanation and religious analogy in their actual order.
This restraint also preserves the manuscript's unusual wording. Its metals are strongly and ‘analytically’ mixed; the edition retains analytiquement even though its exact technical force is unclear. Neither that adjective nor the regulus name should be regularized into a more familiar modern account.
Places to read
- Manuscript 112r · Scan 259The chain of reported experience and the first-person claim about metals receiving the form of stars.
- Manuscript 112v · Scan 260The regulus name completes the sentence; metallic renewal then leads into the poetic quotations.
Translation
‘Regulus of Mars’ follows régule de Mars. The phrase remains a material name, and ‘form of stars’ preserves the phenomenon the author says he observed. Calling it a visible or star-like form explains the immediate context without supplying an unstated cause.
The retained word chancres earlier on scan 259 belongs to a separate report about distillation and ash. Its uncertain animal identification should not be imported into the regulus preparation.
régule de Mars
Attested: H001-S260. The named preparation, occurring once; the sentence begins on scan 259.
forme des étoiles
Attested: H001-S259. The form that the dissolved metals are said to receive.
Source note
The facing edition's H001-S260 note distinguishes the preparation's iron-related name from a recipe, which this passage does not provide.
Read H001-S259 and H001-S260 together. The opening words dans la confection du régule de Mars complete the preceding side's claim that everyone perceives the star-form.