Magnum Opus (Latin for “Grand Work”) in alchemy is the realization of the philosopher’s stone, its reduction into powder, known as “projection powder,” or the philosopher’s elixir, an active tincture with properties similar to the stone. This stone is considered capable of transmuting metals, providing infallible healing (panacea), and bestowing immortality. At the core of the theory of the existence of such a stone lies the alchemical tradition, suggesting that various metals within the Earth undergo slow maturation to attain the ideal metallic state, gold.
The Magnum Opus is the acceleration of this maturation, employing the active agent of this evolution as a catalyst. Isolating this principle of evolution (or transmutation) leads to possessing in stable form (stone) the principle capable of bringing life, perfection, and realization to impure bodies. According to this tradition, all bodies are composed of active principles specific to alchemy, in various proportions.
This perspective prevailed until René Descartes, who denied that matter contains spirit. However, it was Antoine Lavoisier who contributed the most to overcoming alchemy, even though his research still bore the terminology and certain alchemical visions (the word alchemy comes from the Arabic Al Kimyâ, simply meaning “chemistry,” a term itself derived from another Arabic word, Al Kammiyâ, meaning “the [science of] quantity”).
The Principles of Magnum Opus
The alchemical operation of the Magnum Opus involves numerous and challenging stages to separate sulfur from mercury from the prima materia. Mercury must, furthermore, be understood in an essential sense, symbolizing the receptacle of divine fire, which is also divine intelligence, the principle of life, or universal energy (prâna, Ka, Ki, Önd, Noûs, Spiritus mundi, etc.).
Alchemy literature and iconography provide information on Solve (dissolve) and Coagula (coagulate), the respiration (exchanges) of work, or the stages Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo (blackening, whitening, and reddening). These data are complicated by being encrypted, expressed in jargon (slang, cabala, bird language), incomplete, or deliberately distorted. Additionally, alchemy is a deliberately esoteric practice, filled with multiple and polysemic correspondences from one category or keyword to another.
Some “adepts,” like Nicolas Flamel and Cagliostro, claimed to have achieved the Magnum Opus, but nothing has ever substantiated these claims.
| Alchemy | ↔ | Elements | ↔ | Singular | ↔ | Principle | ↔ | Humanity | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sulphur (Dry) | Fire | & | Air | Spirit | Conscience | Masculine | ||||
| Mercury (Hot) | Air | Water | Soul | Thought | Female | |||||
| Salt (Wet) | Water | Earth | Body | Matter | Hermaphrodite | |||||
Phases of the Magnum Opus
The classic phases of alchemical work are three in number (four if we include yellowing, or even more). They are distinguished by the color the matter takes on gradually. They also correspond to types of chemical manipulation: calcination (black), washing (white), sublimation (yellow), and incandescence (red). These phases are found as early as the Egyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis (end of the 3rd century):
“In seeking to precisely divide philosophy (chemical) into four parts, we find that it contains: firstly, blackening; secondly, whitening; thirdly, yellowing; and fourthly, dyeing in violet.”
The scientist Jacques Bergier attempted to describe these different phases in his language as a chemical engineer:
- BLACKENING (melanosis in Greek, nigredo in Latin), under the sign of Saturn: there is death, dissolution of mercury, and coagulation of sulfur.
- “Our alchemist begins by preparing, in an agate mortar, an intimate mixture of three components. The first, which accounts for 95%, is an ore: an arsenical pyrite. The second is a metal: iron, lead, silver, or mercury. The third is an acid of organic origin: tartaric acid or citric acid. He will crush by hand and mix these components for five or six months. Then he heats everything in a crucible… Finally, he dissolves the contents of the crucible with an acid… He then evaporates the liquid and recalcines the solid, thousands of times, over several years… After several years, he adds an oxidant to his mixture: potassium nitrate, for example. In his crucible, there is sulfur from the pyrite and charcoal from the organic acid… He will start dissolving and then calcining again for months and years… The mixture [sulfur, charcoal, nitrate: explosive] is placed in a transparent container, made of rock crystal, closed in a special way [‘Hermes closure or hermetic’]… The work now consists of heating the container… The mixture changes into a blue-black fluid [‘crow’s wing’].”
- WHITENING (leukosis, albedo), under the sign of the Moon: there is purification, washing.
- “In contact with the air, this fluorescent liquid solidifies and separates… Residues remain. These residues, [the alchemist] will wash them for months with tri-distilled water. Then he will keep this water away from light and temperature variations… It is the universal solvent [alkaest] and the elixir of long life…”
Here ends the small work, the “spiritualization of the body.”
- “In contact with the air, this fluorescent liquid solidifies and separates… Residues remain. These residues, [the alchemist] will wash them for months with tri-distilled water. Then he will keep this water away from light and temperature variations… It is the universal solvent [alkaest] and the elixir of long life…”
- YELLOWING (xanthosis, citrinitas), under the sign of Venus:
- The alchemist “will now attempt to recombine the simple elements he has obtained.” Michael Maier speaks of sublimation, that is, the action of purifying, transforming into vapor through heat.
- REDDENING (iosis, rubedo), under the sign of the Sun:
- There is the union of mercury and sulfur. The alchemist would obtain “alchemical copper, alchemical silver, alchemical gold… Alchemical copper would have an infinitely low electrical resistance… (A substance, soluble in glass, at low temperature), upon touching the slightly softened glass, would disperse inside, giving it a ruby red coloration, with mauve fluorescence in the dark. The powder obtained by grinding this modified glass in the agate mortar is what alchemical texts call the ‘projection powder’ or ‘philosopher’s stone’… This stone would be a kind of suspended nuclear energy reservoir, manipulable at will.”
Thus ends the Magnum Opus, the “incarnation of the spirit.”
- There is the union of mercury and sulfur. The alchemist would obtain “alchemical copper, alchemical silver, alchemical gold… Alchemical copper would have an infinitely low electrical resistance… (A substance, soluble in glass, at low temperature), upon touching the slightly softened glass, would disperse inside, giving it a ruby red coloration, with mauve fluorescence in the dark. The powder obtained by grinding this modified glass in the agate mortar is what alchemical texts call the ‘projection powder’ or ‘philosopher’s stone’… This stone would be a kind of suspended nuclear energy reservoir, manipulable at will.”
More or less, the three phases of black, white, and red are found among all alchemists. Pantheus distinguishes four phases in his Voarchadumia contra alchimiam (1530): corruption, generation, augmentation, and fixation.
How Does Magnum Opus Work?
Salt does not come from sulfur from which its mercury has been “removed.” Everything, regardless of its kingdom—animal, vegetable, mineral, or metallic—contains a sulfur principle, a mercury principle, and a salt principle. The sulfur principle can be considered “the soul,” the mercury principle as “the spirit,” and the salt principle as matter, the body, the most physical aspect (according to the contributions of the physician and hermetist Paracelsus).
These principles, in manifestation (in the world), have a form as their support: in the plant world, for example, the sulfur principle manifests as a fatty substance, which is the plant’s essential oil; mercury manifests during fermentation (“putrefaction” in alchemical language) and is characterized by alcohol (originating from Arabic, alcohol from the vine, for example, is called “spirit of wine”); the support of the salt principle is represented by the plant’s soluble and insoluble mineral salts.
Mercury is the link that connects sulfur and salt. Alchemy aims to achieve the most perfect separation possible of the three principles (through their respective supports) by performing an absolute purification on each support. Then, the reunion of purified supports—which have thus been able to “fix” the principles—leads either to the elixir or to the stone, both of which constitute the completion of the work in its liquid (elixir) or solid (stone) form. Mercury (alcohol) extracts sulfur (through maceration); thus, a tincture is obtained. Filtration separates the tincture (sulfur-mercury mixture) from the salts, which then change color.
If the tincture is distilled, sulfur (which presents as a fatty honey) is separated from mercury, which undergoes distillation. This mercury is the essence of the plant; it is marked because it holds the memory of the plant’s “soul” that it extracted in the form of sulfur. The salt isolated by filtering the maceration is reduced to ashes through carbonization so that it no longer contains carbon (organic) particles but only mineral elements (it is then called “fixed salt”).
Through repeated washing and filtering of these ashes, soluble salts are separated from the insoluble salts (“Caput mortem”) of the plant. The three supports can then be worked separately through solve-coagula (dissolutions-evaporations), successive distillations, and carbonizations (in the oven—the athanor).
These operations aim to both eliminate impurities and progressively “fix” the sulfur and mercury principles onto the completely purified salt. It is noteworthy that the salt, the most “material,” the most physical part of the raw material, will serve as the material support for the soul and spirit. Naturally, adepts establish a similarity, a simultaneous occurrence, with the alchemist’s body. By purifying themselves, they gradually open up to divine principles, following the metaphysical principle of the microcosm-macrocosm correspondence.
Psychanalytical Perspective
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung is known for connecting traditional categories of alchemy (principles, operations) to psychic processes, which are, by definition, unconscious.
The Magnum Opus, prefiguring the path of development of the human soul within the worlds of matter and alchemical work, is inseparable from the operator’s own transmutation. According to the principles of the Emerald Tablet, what is changed externally also changes internally, and what changes the “microcosm” also changes the “macrocosm” (and vice versa).
In this perspective, alchemy becomes a discipline of inner work, of extracting and sublimating mercury, sulfur, and salt to reunite them so that the operator himself becomes the Philosopher’s Stone (encouraging other souls to become “gold,” a symbol of the fulfilled spirit) and this elixir of long life (analogously, it could be compared to the Father’s word, giving life to what was dead and promising eternal life in the Christian perspective).
