Great Work, the

St. Jerome—the artist/alchemist/humanist is transubstantiated through the alchemical/artistic process. The female is absent from the scene, but her very absence signifies a passage toward the fulfillment of the Great Work, the dissolution of matter. 

Alchemists identified numerous symbolic pairs of opposites that need to be combined and transformed in the Great Work. The polarities are always masculine and feminine pairs, such as the Red King and White Queen, Sun and Moon, Gold and Silver, or Sulphur and Mercury. These pairs are listed in masculine and feminine columns in Table 5.1. 

Besides the four elements, the Great Work was divided into four stages and each was characterized by a color black, white, yellow, and red. The Great Work consisted of separation of the Primary Material into separate masculine and feminine parts that were joined in what was called the lesser conjunction. This substance was subjected to various chemical operations until the substance was killed and left to rot in a process called putrefaction. Next the substance was separated again, bathed and purified, and then recombined in the greater conjunction. This process brought the substance back to life in a spiritual form. Because of the Great Work, the substance... 

The alchemical dictum Ora Et Labor a (pray and work) was the ancient guideline for practice. Our word "laboratory" comes from it. The lab is a temple and oratory wherein we labor. The laboratory work provides us with some powerful tools for accomplishing this Great Work. The creation of our tinctures and elixirs is a first step in correcting the imbalances in our own Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt. But there are many improvements that can be made to augment their power and effectiveness. Some are simple others require much more time and effort. 

GREAT WORK, THE — One of the names which Chemical Philosophers have given to their Art because of the difficulty of succeeding therein, and on account also of its two great objects — the confection of a universal medicine for the treating of all maladies in the three kingdoms of Nature, and, in particular, the transmutation of imperfect metals into Gold purer than even that of the mines. 

MARVEL OF MARVELS — This is the true name of the Perfect Elixir, because there is no greater wonder upon earth. It is for this reason that the majority of Philosophers call the Great Work the Work of Divine Wisdom. 

SEVEN — This is the Mysterious Number of Holy Scripture, and it is that also of the Great Work. The Philosophers speak of Seven Planets, Seven Kingdoms, Seven Operations, Seven Circles, Seven Metals. They say that their work resembles the creation of the world, which was accomplished in seven days. St. Thomas Aquinas in his Epistle to Brother Raynang, his friend, says that the work is performed in three times seven days and one day. 

The phrase comes from the title of Norbert Elias s great work. The Civilizing Process, vol. 1 of The History of Manners, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York Pantheon, 1982), but it applies also, as we shall see, to the self-descriptions of the modernizers outside the West who have implemented these schemes. See also Elias s Power and Civility, the second volume of The History of Manners. 

The Hermetics knew of, besides the ambiguous Mercury, various kinds of Sulphur and Salt at least three different kinds of Gold four kinds of Fire three kinds of Water several kinds of Earth and three different Materia for the Great Work. The Initiate must know how to distinguish all of them from each other. 

Left another of the figures of Ahraham described hy Flamel has come to he called The Fair Flower on the Mountain. The red and white flowers stand for the red and white stages of the Great Work the dragons for sophic mercury, which the adepts identified with the "essence" of silver and the griffins, which were a comhination of lion and eagle, were interpreted as both the fixed and the volatile. 

Three stages of the Great Work— the creation of the Philosopher s Stone— from Splendor Soils. 

The beginning of the Great Work. The materia prima gathered from eloths wrung out after having been exposed in the fields to sun and rain. Some authorities interpret this as meaning that May dew is essential others that the materia prima is simply natural substances, despised because they are ordinary, but which the alchemist by his art can transmute into the Stone. The cow and bull in the field symbolize the male and female principles, used to indicate opposites in traditional alchemical theory. 

This book is written by an undoubted master in the art and no treatise, ancient or modern, is so explicit in the directions for conducting the great work. The directions are very short, but much to the purpose, provided the reader has an idea what part of the work is alluded to. The author, agreeable to his title, delivers his doctrine by way of aphorisms. But to return from this digression. 

In the operations of the Great Work, the union of masculine and feminine principles was associated with the process known as conjunction [coniunctio] .Sulphur was said to bestow, and mercury to receive, the form assumed by the material resulting from their conjunction— just as wax takes and retains the impression of a seal. There were innumerable synonyms for each of these principles, many of which were used also to denote the Philosopher s Stone. Sophie sulphur was called Sol, king, male, brother, Osiris, lion, toad, wingless dragon,..., etc. 

Lead, the heavy, base metal, joined in alchemy with Saturn, the slow, gloomy planet, is often represented by a darkened symbol (Fig. 13) it is also sometimes brought into the black stage of the Great Work. The central figure in Uiirer s design likewise leans forward massively with darkened face, because, in Milton s words, her... 

By the time the priest had wypcd away the wctc, the prepared piece of charcoal had found its way into the crucible, and the alchemister was working away assiduously with his bellows, intent upon this crowning operation of the Great Work. The heat volatilised the quicksilver, and the equal weight of molten silver sank down to the bottom of the crucible, which was eventually broken in order to expose the solidified noble metal. now, good sirs, what ye better than wel exclaimed the sarcastically indignant yeoman at this point in his narrative. 

A tree bearing moons signiFies the Little Work, the white stone, IF it bears suns, it is the Great Work, the red stone. IF it bears the symbolsoFthe seven metals,or the signs oF the sun, moon and five stars, it is treating oF theprima materia Form which the metals are born. 

Adam Smith s Wealth of Nations was published in the year 1776, seven years after James Watt (1736-1819) obtained a patent for his version of the steam engine. Both men worked at the University of Glasgow. Yet, in Adam Smith s great work the only use for coal was in providing heat for workers [1]. The machines of the eighteenth century were driven by wind, water and animals. Nearly 2000 years had passed since Hero of Alexandria made a sphere spin with the force of steam but fire s power to generate motion and drive machines remained hidden. Adam Smith (1723-1790) did not see in coal this hidden wealth of nations. 

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