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
Quiddity Quiddity In scholastic philosophy, "quiddity" (; Latin: "quidditas") was another term for the essence of an object, literally its "whatness" or "what it is". The term "quiddity" derives from the Latin word "quidditas", which was used by the medieval scholastics as a literal translation of the equivalent term in Aristotle's Greek to ti en einai (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) or "the what it was to be (a given thing)". Quiddity describes properties that a particular substance (e.g. a person) shares with others of its kind. The question "what (quid) is it?" asks for a general description by way of commonality.