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
A priori and a posteriori is metaphysical. The phrases ""a priori"" and ""a posteriori"" are Latin for "from what comes before" and "from what comes later" (or, less literally, "from first principles, before experience" and "after experience"). They appear in Latin translations of Euclid's "Elements", of about 300 , a work widely considered during the early European modern period as the model for precise thinking. An early philosophical use of what might be considered a notion of "a priori" knowledge (though not called by that name) is Plato's theory of recollection, related in the dialogue "Meno" (380 ), according to which something like "a priori"