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THE GREAT WORK
DISCITE CRUX
THE Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emanci- pation of his will, assuring him universal dominion over Azoth and the domain of Magnesia, in other words, full power over the Universal Magical Agent. This Agent disguised by the ancient philosophers under the name of the First Matter, determines the forms of modifiable sub- stance, and we can really arrive by means of it at metallic transmutation and the Universal Medicine. This is not a hypothesis; it is a scientific fact already established and rigorously demonstrable. Nicholas Flamel and Raymond Lully, both of them poor, indubitably distributed immense riches.2 Agrippa never proceeded beyond the first part of the Great Work, and he perished in the attempt, struggling to possess himself and to fix his independence.
Now, there are two Hermetic operations, the one spiritual, the other material, and these are mutually dependent. For the rest, all Hermetic science is contained in the doctrine of Hermes, which is said to have been originally inscribed upon an emerald tablet. Its first articles have been already expounded, and those follow which are concerned with the operation of the Great work:
1 "The number twelve is cyclic."--La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 47.
2 It would be difficult to cite worse instances in support of the alleged "scientific fact". There is a very strong feeling on the part of scholarship that the Flamel legend is a comparatively late invention; while the alchemical tracts which pass under the name of Lully are the work of a writer who assumed the name falsely, and the evidence for his transmutations rests upon his own claims and another forged document by an alleged Abbot of Westminster. See my Raymond Lully: Illuminated Doctor, Alchemist and Christian Mystic, 1922.
"Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently, with great industry. It rises from earth to heaven, and again it descends from heaven to earth, and it receives the power of things above and of things below. By this means shalt thou obtain the glory of the whole world, and all darkness shall depart from thee. It is the strong power of every power, for it will overcome all that is subtle and penetrate all that is solid.
Thus was the world created."
To separate the subtle from the gross, in the first operation, which is wholly inward, is to liberate the soul from all prejudice and all vice, which is accomplished by the use of Philosophical Salt, that is to say, wisdom; of Mercury, that is, personal skill and application; finally, of Sulphur, representing vital energy and fire of will. By these are we enabled to change into spiritual gold things which are of all least precious, even the refuse of the earth, In this sense we must interpret the parables of the choir of philosophers, Bernard Trevisan, Basil Valentine, Mary the Egyptian and other prophets of alchemy; but in their works, as in the Great Work, we must separate skilfully the subtle from the gross, the mystical from the positive, allegory from theory.
If we would read them with profit and understanding, we must take them first of all as allegorical in their entirety, and then descend from allegories to realities by the way of the correspondences or analogies indicated in the one dogma: That which is above is proportional to that which is below, and reciprocally. The word ART when reversed, or read after the manner of sacred and primitive characters from right to left, gives three initials which express the different grades of the Great Work. T signifies triad, theory and travail; R, realization; A, adaptation. In the twelfth chapter of the "Ritual", we shall give the processes of adaptation in use among the great masters, especially that which is con- tained in the Hermetic Fortress of Henry Khunrath,1 We may refer our readers also to an admirable treatise attributed
1 See No. 3 of the folding plates appended to Khunrath's Amphitheatrum Sapientæ Aeternæ Hanover, 1609.
to Hermes Trismegistus and entitled "Minerva Mundi."1 It is found only in certain editions of Hermes and contains, in allegories full of profundity and poetry, the doctrine of individual self-creation, or the creative law consequent on the harmony between two forces which are termed fixed and volatile by alchemists, and are necessity and liberty in the absolute order. The diversity of the forms which abound in Nature is explained, in this treatise, by the diversity of spirits, and monstrosity by divergence of efforts. Its study and understanding are indispensable for all adepts who would fathom the mysteries of Nature and devote themselves seriously to the search after the Great Work.2 When the masters in alchemy say that little time and money are needed to accomplish the works of science, above all when they affirm that one vessel is alone needed, when they speak of the great and unique Athanor which all can use, which is ready to each man's hand, which all possess without knowing it, they allude to philosophical and moral alchemy. As a fact, the strong and resolute will can arrive in a short time at absolute independence, and we are all in possession of the chemical instrument, the great and sole Athanor which answers for the separation of the subtle from the gross and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world and precise as mathematics, is represented by the sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or five-pointed star, which is the absolute sign of human intelligence. I will follow the example of the wise by forbearing to name it: it is too easy to divine.
The Tarot symbol which corresponds to this chapter was misconstrued by Court de Gebelin and Etteilla, who regarded it as the blunder of a German cardmaker. It represents a man with his hands bound behind him, having two bags of money attached to the armpits, and suspended
1 Otherwise, "The Virgin of the World." See Mead's Thrice Greatest Hermes, 3 vols., and L. Ménard's Hermes Trismégiste, 1867.
2 "The great Work is not the chimerical art of creating gold; it is that of directing the natural fire as a gardener directs water to nourish his plants. In this manner minerals are not created but matured."--Correspondence with Baron Spédalieri, No. 17.
by one foot from a gibbet formed by the trunks of two trees, each with the stumps of six lopped branches, and by a cross- piece, thus completing the figure of the Hebrew TAU t The legs of the victim are crossed, while his head and elbows form a triangle. Now, the triangle surmounted by a cross signifies in alchemy the end and perfection of the Great Work, a meaning which is identical with that of the letter TAU, the last of the sacred alphabet. This Hanged Man is, consequently, the adept, bound by his engagements and spiritualized, that is, having his feet turned towards heaven.
He is also the antique Prometheus, expiating by everlasting torture the penalty of his glorious theft. Vulgarly, he is the traitor Judas, and his punishment is a menace to betrayers of the Great Arcanum. Finally, for Kabalistic Jews, the Hanged Man, who corresponds to their twelfth dogma, that of the promised Messiah, is a protestation against the Saviour acknowledged by Christians, and they seem to say unto Him still: How canst Thou save others, since Thou couldst not save Thyself?1 In the Sepher- Toldos-Jeshu, an anti-Christian rabbinical compilation, there occurs a singular parable. Jeshu, says the rabbinical author of the legend, was travelling with Simon- Barjona and Judas Iscariot. Late and weary they came to a lonely house, and, being very hungry, could find nothing to eat except an exceedingly lean gosling. It was insufficient for three persons, and to divide it would be to sharpen without satisfying hunger. They agreed to draw lots, but as they were heavy with sleep: "Let us first of all slumber,"
said Jeshu, "whilst the supper is preparing; when we wake we will tell our dreams, and he who has had the most beautiful dream shall have the whole gosling to his own share." So it was arranged; they slept and they woke. "As for me," said St Peter, "I dreamed that I was the vicar of God." "And I," said Jeshu, "that I was God himself."
"For me," said Judas hypocritically, "I dreamed that, being in somnambulism, I arose, went softly downstairs, took the gosling from the spit, and ate it." Thereupon they also went
1 Lévi says otherwise that the HANGED MAN signifies the completion of the Great Work.--Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum, p. 45.
down, but the gosling had vanished altogether. Judas had a waking dream. This anecdote is given, not in the text of the Sepher-Toldos-Jeshu itself, but in the rabbinical commentaries on that work.1 The legend is a protest of Jewish positivism against Christian mysticism. As a fact, while the faithful surrendered themselves to magnificent dreams, the proscribed Israelite, Judas of the Christian civilization, worked, sold, intrigued, became rich, possessed himself of this life's realities, till he became in a position to advance the means of existence to those very forms of worship which had so long outlawed him. The ancient worshippers of the ark remained true to the cultus of the strong-box; the Exchange is now their temple, and thence they govern the Christian world. The laugh is indeed with Judas, who can congratulate himself upon not having slept like St Peter.
In archaic writings preceding the Captivity, the Hebrew Tau was cruciform, which confirms further our interpreta- tion of the twelfth symbol of the Kabalistic Tarot. The Cross, which produces four triangles, is also the sacred sign of the duodenary, and on this account it was called the Key of Heaven by the Egyptians. So Etteilla, confused by his protracted researches for the conciliation of the analogical necessities of this symbol with his own personal opinion, in which he was influenced by the erudite Court de Gebelin, placed in the hand of his upright hanged man, by him interpreted as Prudence, a Hermetic caduceus, formed by two serpents and a Greek TAU. Seeing that he understood the necessity of the TAU or CROSS on the twelfth leaf of the Book of Thoth, he should have seen also the manifold and magnificent meaning of the Hermetic Hanged Man, the Prometheus of science, the living man who touches earth by his thought alone, whose firm ground is heaven, the free and immolated adept, the revealer menaced with death, the conjuration of Judaism against Christ, which seems to be
1 He has begun by saying that tile "singular parable" occurs in Sepher-Toldos-Jeshu and now transfers it to a source which no one can check. In the absence of all reference one can say only that it does not sound like a Jewish parable.
an involuntary admission of the secret divinity of the Crucified, and lastly, the sign of the work accomplished, the cycle terminated, the intermediary TAU, which resumes for the first time, before the final denary, the signs of the sacred alphabet.1
1 This is exceedingly obscure, and "an intermediary Tau" is of course nonsense in Hebrew. But Levi is trying to say that the Hanged Man is suspended from a gallows like a TAU, though his symbol is referable otherwise to the letter Lamed, according to his invented tabulation, which happens, however, to be wrong. He calls it intermediate because it is midwise in his Tarot sequence, according to which the TAU proper of the alphabet answers to the symbol of the World, being the last of the Trumps Major.
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