Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic
The Great Work in Lévi
Lévi describes the great work first as the creation of humanity by itself: the conquest of faculties and future. He couples an interior operation with a material one, treating them as mutually dependent. His moral reading assigns wisdom to salt, skill to mercury and the energy of will to sulphur. Separating the subtle from the gross becomes a change in the person before a claimed material result.
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In the sources
Principal account
InterpretationLévi describes the great work first as the creation of humanity by itself: the conquest of faculties and future. He couples an interior operation with a material one, treating them as mutually dependent.
Further detail
InterpretationHis moral reading assigns wisdom to salt, skill to mercury and the energy of will to sulphur. Separating the subtle from the gross becomes a change in the person before a claimed material result.
Context & interpretation
This entry follows Lévi’s argument in Waite’s English translation. The entry concerns the interior reading; the author’s metallic and medical claims are not presented as experimentally established outcomes. The correspondences are attributed to this occult synthesis rather than presented as a universal account of every earlier tradition.
Original passages
Source 1
Transcendental Magic
the creation of man by himselfOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic; active reader leaf 138
Exact passage checked against active scan text and original-leaf mapping; scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0026-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0026-E001-P0138
- Original scan leaf
- 138
- Recorded leaf number
- 138
- Current Reader position
- 132
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed
Source 2
Transcendental Magic
philosophical salt, that is to say, wisdomOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic; active reader leaf 139
Exact passage checked against active scan text and original-leaf mapping; scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0026-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0026-E001-P0139
- Original scan leaf
- 139
- Recorded leaf number
- 139
- Current Reader position
- 133
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed