Great Work Great Work The term Great Work (magnum opus) is a term used in Hermeticism and in certain occult traditions and religions such as Thelema. The Great Work signifies the spiritual path towards self-transcendence in its entirety. This is the process of bringing unconscious complexes into the conscious awareness, in order to integrate them back into oneself. Accomplishing the Great Work, symbolized as the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, represents the culmination of the spiritual path, the attainment of enlightenment, or the rescue of the human soul from the unconscious forces which bind it. Eliphas Levi (1810–1875), one of the first
Great Work the personality, this perspective deals with the transcendence of duality altogether, in order to unite with the Great Ultimate. The daoists say that the perfection of the Great Ultimate, whose nature is unity, is obscured by Yin and Yang, or duality. Thus, the accomplishment of the Great Work (which is the restoration of the wholeness of the Great Ultimate), occurs from the unification of opposite principles, which are represented in daoism as Yin and Yang. This same idea of the uniting of opposite principles is seen in western alchemy as well, where the attainment of the Great Work is described