Eliphas Lévi
"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 emancipation of his will." [Eliphas Lévi]
Carl Jung
"Quoting Raymond Lully as his authority, the same author says that owing to their ignorance men are not able to accomplish the work until they have studied universal philosophy, which will show them things that are unknown and hidden from others. “Therefore our stone belongs not to the vulgar but to the very heart of our philosophy.”
Dionysius Zacharius relates that a certain “religiosus Doctor excellentissimus” advised him to refrain from useless expense in “sophisticationibus diabolicis” and to devote himself rather to the study of the books of the old philosophers, so as to acquaint himself with the vera materia. After a fit of despair he revived with the help of the Holy Spirit and, applying himself to a serious study of the literature, read diligently, and meditated day and night until his finances were exhausted. Then he worked in his laboratory, saw the three colours appear, and on Easter Day of the following year the wonder happened: “Vidi perfectionem”—“I saw the perfect fulfilment”: the quicksilver was “conversum in purum aurum prae meis oculis.” This happened, so it was said, in 1550.
There is an unmistakable hint here that the work and its goal depended very largely on a mental condition.
Richardus Anglicus rejects all the assorted filth the alchemists worked with, such as eggshells, hair, the blood of a red-haired man, basilisks, worms, herbs, and human faeces. “Whatsoever a man soweth that also shall he reap. Therefore if he soweth filth, he shall find filth.”
“Turn back, brethren, to the way of truth of which you are ignorant; I counsel you for your own sake to study and to labour with steadfast meditation on the words of the philosophers, whence the truth can be summoned forth.
The importance or necessity of understanding and intelligence is insisted upon all through the literature, not only because intelligence above the ordinary is needed in the performance of so difficult a work, but because it is assumed that a species of magical power capable of transforming even brute matter dwells in the human mind.
Dorn, who devoted a series of interesting treatises to the problem of the relationship between the work and the man, says: “In truth the form, which is the intellect of man, is the beginning, middle and end of the procedure: and this form is made clear by the saffron colour, which indicates that man is the greater and principal form in the spagyric opus.”
Dorn draws a complete parallel between the alchemical work and the moral-intellectual transformation of man.” [Collected Works of Carl Jung, Volume 12]
See Also