CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT WORK
To be ever rich, to be always young and to die never: such, from all time, has been the dream of alchemists. To change lead, mercury, and the other metals into gold, to possess the Universal Medicine and the Elixir of Life-such is the problem which must be solved to accomplish this desire and to realize this dream. Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is the sun: in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun1 All masters of science recognize that it is impossible to achieve material results until we have found the plenary analogies of the Universal Medicine and the Philosophical Stone in the two superior degrees. Then, it is affirmed, is the labour simple, light and inexpensive: otherwise, it consumes to no purpose the life and fortune of the bellows-blower.
The Universal Medicine is, for the soul, supreme reason and absolute justice; for the mind, it is mathematical and practical truth; for the body, it is the quintessence, which is a combination of gold and light. In the superior world, the first matter of the Great Work is enthusiasm and activity;
1 In another place Éliphas Lévi formulates four characters of the Absolute in the following terms: The Absolute is truth, reality, reason, justice: truth is the identity of being with the idea formed concerning it; reality is the identity of being with knowledge thereof; reason is the identity of being with the word which gives it expression; justice is the identity of being with action. See La Science des Espirits, p. 335. The essence of the Absolute escapes in these definitions.
in the intermediate world, it is intelligence and industry; in the inferior world, it is labour; in science it is Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, which, volatilized and fixed alternately, compose the AZOTH of the sages. Sulphur corresponds to the elementary form of fire, Mercury to air and water, Salt to earth. All masters in alchemy who have written concerning the Great Work have employed symbolical and figurative expressions, and have been right in so doing, not only to deter the profane from operations which would be dangerous for them, but to make themselves intelligible to adepts by revealing the entire world of analogies which is ruled by the one and sovereign dogma of Hermes. For such, gold and silver are the Sun and Moon, or the King and Queen; Sulphur is the Flying Eagle; Mercury is the winged and bearded Hermaphrodite, throned upon a cube and crowned with flames; matter or Salt is the Winged Dragon; metals in the molten state are Lions of various colours; finally, the whole work is symbolized by the Pelican and Phoenix. Hermetic art is, therefore, at one and the same time, a religion, a philosophy and a natural science. Considered as religion, it is that of the ancient Magi and the initiates of all the ages; as a philosophy, its principles may be found in the school of Alexandria and in the theories of Pythagoras; as science, its principles must be sought from Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel and Raymund Lully. The science is true only for those who accept and understand the philosophy and religion, while its processes are successful only for the adept who has attained sovereign volition, and has thus become monarch of the elementary world, for the Great Agent of the solar work is that force described in the Hermetic Symbol of the "Emerald Table": it is universal magical power; it is the igneous spiritual motor; it is the OD of the Hebrews and the Astral Light, according to the expression which we have adopted in this Work.' There is the secret, living and philosophical fire, of which all
1 Compare
La Clef des Grands Mystères p. 121: "This
light"---mearling the Astral Light-"called 
,
AOUR, in Hebrew, is the fluid and live gold of Hermetic Philosophy. Philosopical
Sulphur is its positive principle, Philosophical Mercury its negative, while
its equilibrated principles form what is termed Philosophical Salt." See
also Correspondence with Baron Spédalieri, No. 17.
Hermetic philosophers speak only under the most mysterious reservations; there is the universal sperm, the secret of which they guarded, representing it only under the emblem of the caduceus of Hermes. Here then is the great Hermetic Arcanum, and we reveal it for the first time clearly and devoid of mystical figures: that which the adepts term dead substances are bodies as found in Nature; living substances are those which have been assimilated and magnetized by the science and will of the operator. Therefore the Great Work is something more than a chemical operation: it is an actual creation of the human Word initiated into the power of the Word of God Himself.
This Hebrew text, which we transcribe in proof of the authentiticy and reality of our discovery, is derived from the rabbinical Jew Abraham, the master of Nicholas Flamel, and it is found in his occult commentary on the Sepher Yetzirah, the sacred book of the Kabalah.' This commentary is extremely rare, but the sympathetic potencies of our chain led us to the discovery of a copy which has been preserved since the year 1643 in the Protestant church at Rouen. On its first page there is written: Ex dono, then an illegible name, followed by Dei magni.
The creation of gold in the Great Work takes place by
1 Éliphas Lévi recurred later to this alleged proof of authenticity, making it abundantly evident (I) that he had discovered no Great Hermetic Arcanum, and (2) that in reality he had demonstrated nothing. I give this putative elucidation in full as follows: "Let us pass now to the Secret of the Great Work, which appears in the RITUAL OF TRANSCENDENTAL MAGIC only in unpointed Hebrew. Here is the whole text in Latin, as it occurs at p. 144 of the Sepher Yetzirah, with the commentary of the alchemist Abraham-Arnsterdam, 1642:
SEMITA XXXI
VOCATUR INTELLIGENTIA PERPETUA; ET QUARE VOCATUR ITA? ED QUOD DUCIT MOTUM SOLIS ET LUNAE JUXTA CONSTITUTIONEM EORUM; UTRUMQUE IN ORBE SIBI CONVENIENTE.
RABBI ABRAHAM F.'.D.'.
DICIT:
SEMITA TRIGESIMA PRIMA INTELLIGENTIA PERPETUA; ET ILLA DUCIT SOLEM ET LUNAM ET RELIQUAS STELLAS ET FIGURAS, UNUMQUODQUE IN ORBE SUO, ET IMPERTIT OMNIBUS CREATIS JUXTA DISPOSITIONEM AD SIGNA ET FIGURAS.
"Here also is the translation in French of the Hebrew text as transcribed in our RITUAL: The thirty-first Path is called the Perpetual Intelligence, and it rules the sun and moon, and the other stars and figures, each in its respective orb. And it distributes that which is suitable to all created things according to their disposition in respect of the signs and figures."
"It will be seen," said Éliphas Lévi, "that this text is still perfectly obscure for those who do not know the characteristic value of each of the thirty-two paths. The thirty-two Paths are the ten numerations, and twenty-two hieroglyphical letters of the Kabalah. The thirty-first refers to the letter SHIN, which represents the magical lamp or light between the horns of Baphomet. It is the kabalistic sign Of OD, otherwise the Astral Light, with its two poles, and its equilibrated centre We know that in alchemical language the Sun signifies gold, the Moon silver and that the other stars or planets are referable to the other metals. It is possible now to comprehend the thought of Abraham the Jew. The secret fire of the Masters in Alchemy was therefore electricity, and this is a full half of their Great Secret; but they knew how to equilibrate its force by a magnetic influence which they concentrated in their Athanor. It is this which emerges from the obscure dogmas of Basil Valentine, Bernard Trevisan and Heinrich Khunrath, who all claimed to have performed transmutation, like Raymond Lully, Arnold de Villanova and Nicholas Flamel."---La Clef des Grands Mystères, pp.. 233-5.
transmutation and multiplication. Raymund Lully states that in order to make gold we must have gold and mercury, while in order to make silver we must have silver and mercury. Then he adds: "By Mercury, I understand that mineral spirit which is so refined and purified that it gilds the seed of gold and silvers the seed of silver." Doubtless he is here speaking Of OD, or Astral Light. Salt and Sulphur are serviceable in the work only for the preparation of Mercury: it is with Mercury above all that the Magnetic Agent must be assimilated and as if incorporated. Paracelsus, Raymund Lully and Nicholas Flamel seem alone to have understood this mystery perfectly. Basil Valentine and Trevisan indicate it after an incomplete manner, which might be capable of another interpretation. But the most curious things which we have found on this subject are indicated by the mystical figures and magical legends in a book of Henry Khunrath, entitled Amphitheatrum Sapientae Aeternae. Khunrath represents and resumes the most learned Gnostic schools, and connects in symbology with the mysticism of Synesius. He affects Christianity in expressions and in signs, but it is easy to see that his Christ is the ABRAXAS, the Luminous Pentagram radiating on the Astronomical Cross, the incarnation in humanity of the sovereign sun celebrated by the Emperor Julian;' it is the luminous and living manifestation of that RUACH-ELOHIM which, according to Moses, brooded and worked upon the bosom of the waters at the birth of the world; it is the man-sun, the monarch of light, the supreme magus, the master and conqueror of the serpent, and in the fourfold legend of the evangelists, Khunrath finds the allegorical key of the Great Work. One of the Pantacles of his magical book represents the Philosophical Stone erected in the middle of a fortress surrounded by a wall in which there are twenty impracticable gates. One alone conducts to the sanctuary of the Great Work. Above the Stone there is a triangle placed upon a winged dragon, and on the Stone is graven the name of Christ, qualified as the symbolical image of all Nature. "It is by Him alone," he adds, "that thou canst obtain the Universal Medicine for men, animals, vegetables and minerals." The Winged Dragon, dominated by the triangle, represents therefore the Christ of Khunrath---that is, the Sovereign Intelligence of Light and Life. It is the secret of the Pentagram; it is the highest dogmatic and practical mystery of Traditional Magic. Thence unto the grand and ever-incommunicable maxim there is only one step.
The kabalistic figures of Abraham the Jew 2 which imparted to Flamel the first desire for knowledge, are no other than the twenty-two Keys of the Tarot, imitated and
1 Khunrath was a Christian theosophist of his period, which was the second half of the sixteenth century, and his Christ was God incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth.
2 We have seen previously that, according to Éliphas Lévi, Flamel's Book of Abraham the Jew was the Aesh Mezareph, a collection of Latin paragraphs apart from "figures" of any kind and neither approximately nor remotely connected with Tarot Keys.
resumed elsewhere in the twelve Keys of Basil Valentine. There the sun and moon reappear under the figures of Emperor and Empress; Mercury is the Juggler; the Great Hierophant is the adept or abstractor of the quintessence; Death, Judgement, Love, the Dragon or Devil, the Hermit or Lame Elder and finally all the remaining symbols are to be found with their chief attributes, almost in the same order. It could have been scarcely otherwise, since the Tarot is the primeval book and the keystone of the occult sciences: it must be Hermetic, because it is kabalistic, magical and theosophical. So also we find by combining its twelfth and twenty-second Keys, superposed one upon the other, the hieroglyphic revelation of the solution of the Grand Work and its mysteries. The twelfth Key represents a man hanging by one foot from a gibbet composed of three trees or posts, forming the Hebrew letter t; the man's arms and head constitute a triangle, and his entire hieroglyphical shape is that of a reversed triangle surmounted by a cross, an alchemical symbol known to all adepts and representing the accomplishment of the Great Work." The twenty-second Key, which bears the number twenty-one because the fool which precedes it carries no numeral, represents a youthful female divinity, veiled slightly and running in a flowering circle, supported at four comers by the four beasts of the Kabalah. In the Italian Tarot this divinity has a rod in either hand; in the Besançon Tarot, the two wands are in one hand while the other is placed upon her thigh, both equally remarkable symbols of magnetic
1"Alchemy derived all its signs from the Kabalah, and its operations were based on the law of analogies resulting from the harmony of opposites. Moreover, the kabalistic parables of antiquity veiled an immense physical secret, which secret we have been enabled to decipher, and we surrender the letter of it to the investigations of makers of gold as follows: (I) The four imponderable fluids are but diverse manipulations of a single Universal Agent, which is light. (2) Light is the fire which is employed in the Great Work under the form of electricity. (3) Human will directs the vital light by means of the nervous apparatus, an operation which is termed magnetizing at the present day. (4) The secret agent of the Great Work, or AZOTH of sages, the living and vivifying gold of philosophers, the metallic universal producing agent is MAGNETIZED ELECTRICITY.... Therefore to all who demand what is the greatest agent of prodigies, we reply: It is the First Matter of the Great Work; it is Magnetized Electricity."---La Clef des Grands Mystères, PP. 207-213. It must be said that "magnetized electricity" is a proposition from the world of nonsense.
action, either alternate in its polarization or simultaneous by opposition and transmission.
The Great Work of Hermes is therefore an essentially magical operation and the highest of all, for it supposes the absolute in science and volition. There is light in gold, gold in light and light in all things. The intelligent will, which assimilates the light, directs in this manner the operations of substantial form, and uses chemistry solely as a secondary instrument. The influence of human will and intelligence upon the operations of Nature, dependent in part on its labour, is otherwise a fact so real that all serious alchemists have succeeded in proportion to their knowledge and their faith, and have reproduced their thought in the phenomena of the fusion, salification and recomposition of metals. Agrippa, who was a man of immense erudition and fine genius, but pure philosopher and sceptic, could not transcend the limits of metallic analysis and synthesis. Etteilla, a confused, obscure, fantastic but persevering Kabalist, reproduced in alchemy the eccentricities of his misconstrued and mutilated Tarot; metals in his crucibles assumed extraordinary forms, which excited the curiosity of all Paris, with no greater profit to the operator than the fees which were paid by his visitors. An obscure bellowsblower of our own time, who died mad, poor Louis Cambriel, really cured his neighbours, and, by the evidence of all his parish, brought back to life a smith who was his friend. For him the metallic work took the most inconceivable and apparently illogical forms. One day he beheld the figure of God Himself in his crucible, incandescent like the sun, transparent as crystal, his body composed of triangular conglomerations, which Cambriel naively compared to quantities of tiny pears.
One of our friends, who is a learned Kabalist but belongs to an initiation which we regard as erroneous, performed recently the chemical operations of the Great Work and succeeded in impairing his sight through the excessive brilliance of the Athanor. He created a new metal which resembles gold but is not gold, and hence has no value. Raymond Lully, Nicholas Flamel and most probably Henry Khunrath made true gold, nor did they take away their secret with them, for it is enshrined in their symbols, and they have indicated, moreover, the sources from which they drew for its discovery and for the realization of its effects, It is this same secret which we ourselves make public now.
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