The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I Lexicon

About these entries

This lexicon accompanies Volume I of The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection: Book of Hieroglyphic Figures, Hogart Manuscript 3, prepared for Diotimos Editions. It follows the vocabulary, persons, images, and arguments of the French manuscript held by the Getty Research Institute as accession 950053, Box 1. The manuscript is attributed on its title page to Abraham the Jew and is catalogued at approximately 1800. The series title and Volume I designation belong to this modern publishing project; the archival collection is catalogued under Manly Palmer Hall.

The entries explain how this particular book uses its words. Its art of transformation moves among materials, operations, classical fables, angelic orders, and Christian mysteries. A word such as spirit can name a manner of understanding, a spiritual being, an active principle, or a subtle product of an operation. Mercury can be the god in a fable, a metallic subject, or a qualified principle within the work. The explanation of a passage begins with that passage’s distinctions and with the sequence in which the author places them.

Each essay begins with a brief account at a glance, then develops the word’s meaning and its use in the book. Places to read directs the reader to the passages on which the explanation rests. Translation notes describe the relation between French wording and the companion volume’s English. The attested forms give selected, checkable examples of the French forms discussed. See also connects entries that explain one another. Where a verified primary text provides a useful comparison, Historical parallels identifies it and states the relation as precisely as the evidence permits.

Entries are filed once under a principal category and alphabetized within that category. Related subjects meet again through cross-references. English and French indexes provide direct routes to the essays. A lesser name or a closely related word may be discussed within a larger entry: a labyrinth belongs to the account of suffering, for example, while the labors of Hercules are understood as a sequence. Grouping keeps the relation in view rather than giving each passing name an isolated biography.

The lexicon covers this first manuscript. It does not claim that the other texts in Hall’s collection employ the same vocabulary in the same ways. The Getty collection contains 243 manuscript texts bound in 68 physical volumes; those volumes gather distinct works and witnesses. Further volumes in the Diotimos series can establish their own usages before comparisons are made across the collection.

The companion edition includes the title, all 278 written sides of the continuous treatise, the laboratory frontispiece, and twelve inserted illustrations. This lexicon draws its textual evidence from that complete reading transcription and translation. It preserves consequential uncertainties rather than turning a difficult word into a familiar technical name. An entry may therefore explain a clearly stated function while leaving the material’s identification, a proper name, or an irregular Greek sequence qualified.

Using the lexicon

Words and passages

English headwords give readers a convenient way into the argument. The French forms underneath identify the words being discussed; their spelling follows the companion reading text. A headword may gather a family of forms or a connected theme. Selected attestations demonstrate those forms in named passages. They are not an exhaustive count of every occurrence, and the presence of a common word in a passage does not by itself settle its technical meaning.

Quotations from the manuscript are taken from the Diotimos English translation unless French is expressly given. The essays distinguish a quotation from a paraphrase or an interpretation. The same distinction applies to an author’s attribution: a heading naming Ovid establishes what this witness calls the passage, while an external parallel can establish how similar wording circulated. It need not establish which book the compiler directly consulted.

Finding a reference

References use the manuscript locator and the access scan number, followed where useful by the companion edition’s stable comparison identifier. For example, H001-S031b points to the portion of scan 31 that begins a new exposition; the suffix distinguishes it from preceding prose on that same side. These identifiers are independent of page numbers generated by a reader.

A locator such as 8r names the front of a numbered leaf and 8v its reverse. The source’s numbering is imperfect. The last written side, scan 316, visibly bears 140 although the physical sequence is catalogued as 139 leaves. The companion edition records that terminal number and retains the distinction between written numbering and physical sequence. Title and illustration scans are identified by their role when a leaf number would be misleading.

Figures and interpretation

A pictured object, the manuscript’s explanation of that object, and an editor’s further inference supply different kinds of evidence. The essays keep those levels identifiable. A dragon, a royal figure, a river, or a wound can express different powers at different stages of the work. Its meaning is established through the local explanation and its relation to neighboring figures.

The manuscript often offers etymologies and physical explanations of ancient fables. The lexicon reports them as parts of the author’s interpretive method. It does not silently substitute a modern reconstruction for a source name or treat an uncertain Greek spelling as established ancient usage. Historical comparisons are introduced when they help explain a specific passage; a resemblance is not presented as proof of direct dependence.

Historical terms

Names such as laton, niter, vitriol, and quicksilver retain the range and qualifications they have in the book. A modern chemical equivalent can sometimes clarify a historical name, but an equation that suppresses the manuscript’s distinctions would obscure its argument. Descriptions of substances and transformations explain the text’s historical account. They are not a modern laboratory specification.

The closing Christian comparisons depend on the author’s own vocabulary of figure, symbol, allegory, and proof. The essays follow those words closely. They explain what the manuscript claims and how its argument proceeds, while references to Scripture and other primary texts allow a reader to examine the comparison.

Sources and Further Reading

1 Corinthians 16:22, including the textual note to Marana tha. New American Bible, revised edition, at USCCB. Source

Académie française. Dictionnaire, first edition (1694), esprit. Source

Ovid. Metamorphoses 3.1–130. English translation by Brookes More (1922), Theoi Classical Texts Library. Source

Ovid. Metamorphoses 4.663–739. English translation by Brookes More (1922), Theoi Classical Texts Library. Source

Ovid. Metamorphoses 7.74–158. English translation by Brookes More (1922), Theoi Classical Texts Library. Source

Thomas Aquinas tradition. Summa theologiae, Supplement, question 82, especially articles 1–2. Source

Thomas Aquinas tradition. Summa theologiae, Supplement, question 83, especially articles 1–3. Source

Thomas Aquinas tradition. Summa theologiae, Supplement, question 84, article 1. Source

Thomas Aquinas tradition. Summa theologiae, Supplement, question 85, article 1. Source

Aristotle. Posterior Analytics I.2, 71b9–23. Historical translation by G.R.G.Mure at Logic Museum. Source

Macrobius. Saturnalia I.20.16–18. Latin text, von Jan edition, at LacusCurtius. Source

Isaac Newton. Translation of the Tabula Smaragdina, Keynes MS 28, fols. 2r–v. The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, edited by William R. Newman; transcription by John A. Johnson (2010). Source

Ovid. Metamorphoses 1.291–292. English translation by Brookes More (1922), Theoi Classical Texts Library. Source

Getty Research Institute. Manly Palmer Hall collection of alchemical manuscripts, 1500–1825. Accession 950053. Finding aid, especially the scope statement and Box 1 entry. Source

Internet Archive and Getty Research Institute. Manly Palmer Hall collection, Box 1. Original JP2 scan images and scandata. Source

University of Amsterdam and Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica. Catalogue record PH400, Livre des figures hieroglyphes avec l'explication des fables des poëtes, des mysteres du christianisme, de la chymie et de la pharmacie suivant les nombres. Comparable manuscript; not substituted for the Getty witness. Source

Bibliothèque nationale de France. Alchemy Instruments and Symbols. Description of Français 14765. Source

Biblical references are given by book, chapter, and verse. Locations can be checked at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Bible site, The manuscript's own French quotations and adaptations are translated directly. Source

Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. De occulta philosophia libri tres, especially 3.41 on opinions concerning the human being after death. Historical English translation, Of Occult Philosophy. Source

Académie française. Dictionnaire, first edition (1694), nitre. Historical distinction from salpêtre. Source

Académie française. Dictionnaire, seventh edition (1878), orpiment. Historical material and pigment-name. Source

Académie française. Dictionnaire, eighth edition, marcassite, reproduced by the Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales. Source

Encyclopédie, first edition. Tacahamaca. Historical description of the aromatic resin and its producing tree. Public transcription:. Source

Larousse. Dictionnaire de français, vitriol. Historical sulfate terminology. Source

Virgil. Aeneid VI, especially 126–131 and 726–727. Latin text in the Perseus Digital Library. Source

Note on this lexicon

The lexicon follows the companion edition’s stable source references. Selected difficult readings retain the qualifications recorded there.

This is a companion to a single-witness reading edition. It does not supply a systematic collation of the comparable Amsterdam and Paris manuscripts, an exhaustive French concordance, or an identification of every material and uncertain sign. The passage references and selected attestations allow readers to inspect the evidence and refine an interpretation. Verified historical parallels are distinguished from source statements and from editorial proposals.

The title The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection names the Diotimos series. Volume I identifies this publishing sequence, while Hogart Manuscript 3 preserves the bibliographical identifier used in the Getty inventory. The archive’s collection title and accession remain separately stated so that the modern book can be traced to its witness.