THE GREAT WORK

XII MEDITATIONS
ON THE ESOTERIC WAY OF THE ABSOLUTE

GRILLOT OF GIVRY

THE MYSTERIUM MAGNUM

Above us, in the eternal spheres from which Light and Life emanate, reigns the mystery, unfathomable and splendid, of the Absolute.

The Absolute surrounds our being like an involucrum, and limits the narrow circle of our precise concepts; in all things he stamped his commonefaction.

Darkness, Unknown for those who do not have Science, it is only a veil which covers the First Cause, and which rises before the Initiates.

Happy is he who knows how to tear it up before its time! for the Light he will already know will not dazzle him with his unexpected vision.

But let those who have taken pleasure in the non-existent fear that, for them, the guardian of the threshold will be obliged to remove it himself!

Then, at the sight of what they had never suspected, of what they had perhaps concealed, they will fall annihilated into the depths of the chasm, where, no longer being aware of themselves, they will lose their entity and will no longer find themselves!

O the paucity and parvity of the learned, at this decisive moment! How many regrets for acts not accomplished, for projects not carried out! How many, unable to repair omissions and errors, will have to, imperfect, incomplete, impure, accept their definitive realization!

Follow me then, my Disciple, in the Way of the Absolute that I am going to teach you; follow me, and I promise you that one day you will gird your forehead with the crown of light, with the golden diadem of the Sages, reserved for those who, during their lifetime, will have accomplished the Work that sums up all Work.
Many have heard of the Great Work. Some propose to indulge in it, but very few address the issue.

All say: "Later, when we have conquered leisure and calm". But leisure and calm never come, while the Absolute will claim you without fail, since you emanate from it.

Oh ! to pass on this earth without having deciphered the enigma, without having penetrated the inexsuperable secret that some, among our ancestors, knew, could you, you who have already begged for Sapience from so many men who did not possess it?

The Great Work! The Great Work! Prestigious term! Dazzling splendour! Some, in past ages, would have contemplated this marvel, would have possessed it completely, and you, you would leave it, unexplained, in the books!

And in the beyond, endowed then with the plenitude of your perceptual lucidity, you would see the triumphal phalanx of the Sapients, flooded with a radiant joy, distraught with happiness and joy, delighting in the STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS, feeding on it for eternity and you would have no part in this feast!

And you would hear the white theories of the Initiates shouting at you like Dante:


Guai a voi anime prave

Non isperate mai veder lo cielo!


as they fade away forever, triumphant, into the Light, and leave you alone in the growing darkness, their sinister diazome spreading around you!

May this thought suffice to inspire you with regret for your neglect of the Magisterium of the Sages.

Would to God that it is not too late, and that you do not find yourself already too advanced in life to undertake to complete it!

Because if asceticism did not begin at the end of adolescence, it is doubtful that you can achieve perfection. It is in this sense that Nicholas Valois said: "Spring advances the Work". And Saint Thomas Aquinas: “In the early days, it is important to get up early in the morning and see if the vine is in bloom”.


Apply therefore without delay, and with the blessing

of Jesus Christ, to his math and his agnition

It is, my Disciple, to direct you in
this path that I have undertaken, the Holy
Spirit invoked, to write the
twelve meditations
following. Laus
farewell.

FIRST MEDITATION

THE ARTIS SUBJECTUM

NICHOLAS Valois the alchemist, said: “The Science of the Philosophers is the knowledge of the universal power of things. »

In the dark night of your soul, you have sometimes aspired, my Disciple, to an immeasurable Light which would come, in a distant and indefinite day, to illuminate your distress.

You dreamed, confused vision, of joys, of superhuman harmonies, of omniscience, of unlimited power.

You sensed - after the darkness and the gloomy sadness of the chaos where, confusedly, you struggle - of splendor.

And now the horizon line of your life turns purple, and lets you glimpse something better and more perfect.

Hasten to move towards this still undecided light. Am here ; it is the star of the Magi which rises for you and which will lead you, if you do not take your eyes off it, towards the Master of the World.

Left to your own devices, you are characterized by the disorder of ideas and the disorder of acts.

The specific to this disorder is the return to yourself.

Returning to yourself requires continuous and lasting effort of will.

The continuous and lasting effort of the will requires a rule of life.

The rule of life includes a series of spiritual acts that you must perform scrupulously.

The first norm, which sums up all the others, is disinterest in the words and actions of men.

Wrap yourself in indifference like a cloak; this is the key to magical life. Free yourself from contingencies. Deliver yourself from all hylophilia. Shut yourself up in your thought and in your science. Be the lonely one, the real one



; build yourself a cell in your own heart.

Accepting a dark life when starving for glory is the pinnacle of alchemical perfection; thus, rigorously, the Saints accomplished the Great Work.

The ideal you have created for yourself is a kingdom in which you reign as sovereign master; what more do you want?

You are King when thrones crumble! You are priest when the hierophanies are tottering!

Despise the crowd, despise the people, despise the mass; flee the sinister faces. The exceptional being alone is worthy of your interest.

The popular expansion is considerable only hierarchically. A disciplined crowd has built the occult monument par excellence, the monument that casts no shadow: the Pyramid; the unruly mobs have only known how to shout and pillage, which is within everyone's reach; do you want to join, simple unity to these? Then renounce the Great Work; the Way of the Absolute will never open up for you.

Wanting to possess Sapience and at the same time popular approval is ridiculous.
"To act consists in not acting", said Lao-Tseu; remember. When the crowd screams and battles outside, you, my Disciple, watch over the athanor of your soul, and do not interfere in advelitions and struggles.

If you find it easy to ignore what people think and say about you, courage! you have already progressed in the Way of the Absolute.

Reputation is nothing; the testimony of conscience alone matters. What's the use of passing yourself off as a saint if you don't have hermetic peace in your heart?
It is therefore necessary, according to the Scala Philosophorum, to begin the work when the Sun is in Aries, and the Moon in Taurus.

Riplée and the Rosary assure us that it takes a year to obtain the Philosopher's Stone in all its stability and firmness; and Bernard le Trevisan adds seven days to it.

Understand and meditate on these words. Strive to develop the latent forces that remain within you. Order your life according to occult norms. You are the very matter of the Great Work: albicify yourself, spiritualize yourself, purify your astrality, free yourself from the Cimmerian shadows.



But if you prefer to abandon yourself to chance events,

then weep without hope; you won't know
than failure and disappointment
and you will never enter
the assembly of
Philosophers.

MEDITATION II

PREPARATION AND PURIFICATION

PHILALETHE said: "However one treats vulgar mercury, one will never make of it philosophical mercury".

If your soul is of a boor, it is in vain that you pretend to the Magisterium.
Have you ever felt the need to rise to the sky, to get out of your gangue, to break your chrysalis?

If you do not possess this leaven, this ferment of choice, be persuaded that it is useless to undertake anything.

If you are of clay, you will remain of clay. If you have placed your ideal in the mire, you cannot dream of sublimation, of definitive transmutation, of the egression from earthly Gehenna. Vulgar man, you will never become a Sapient.
It is a transcendental alchemy, it is the alchemy of oneself. It is necessary beforehand to perfect the alchemy of the elements. The nobility of the work requires the nobility of the work.

Build the athanor; prepare the philosophical egg; features the aludel; separates the subtle from the thick; collect the tears of the eagle and the blood of the lion; make what is occult become manifest; these are the preliminaries of the Work without which you cannot succeed.

The transmutation must take place in your soul. The Stone, in its definitive state, is the Absolute itself; the purifying solvent are the formulas of beauty and perfection with which you will adorn your life.

The Magisterium is Sulphur, Salt and Mercury; thus your sublimated soul, which is the true Mercury of the Philosophers, will unite with the Sulfur of divine love, through the Salt of mortification and trials.

Coordinate therefore all your actions and all your impressions in order to form a perfect harmonic whole. Strive to acquire the extreme lucidity of your understanding. Turn away from what defiles the view. Do not listen to what pollutes the ear. Exalt in you the feeling of the personality, to endeavor then to absorb this one in the bosom of the Absolute.

Inflame your soul with alchemical fire, fire that does not burn. I will teach you to collect it; and it will form around you a protective circle, which will isolate you from Evil Influences.

Beware of wanting to taste the fruits of mystical life before you have done anything to possess them.

Do not say - oh the strange paradox: - "The Way is too arid, and to triumph over the difficulties of the Way one must be a Saint".

But, on the contrary, the Saints only became such because they first knew how to triumph over these difficulties. They started like you, in nothingness; they have climbed the philosophical ladder like you, beginning with the first degree.
So do not ask for faith in order to be able to pray afterwards. Pray first, and faith will flood your soul.


But I have said enough for you to know that you must now form a mystical body,

which will substitute itself in all your actions for your visible body to use usefully
your immaterial forces. And so you will live
in the hyperphysical;
and this is where
Way.

MEDITATION III

IGNIS PHILOSOPHICUS

President d'Espagnet said: "The regeneration of the world is done by means of the spirit of fire which descends in the form of water which removes the original stain of matter".

It is from above that you must send down the philosophical fire which will purify your concepts and abstain your soul.

There is a great mystery here.

This enigmatic fire, you will obtain it only by a marvelous effort of will and by an ardent efflagration.

These things have the mercy of God, as Basil Valentine says. Pontanus confesses to having erred more than two hundred times, although he was working on real matter, because he was ignorant of the nature of philosophical fire.

Let your hands and your intentions be pure, otherwise this celestial adjuvant will be totally refused to you.

He is the astral influx, the coeligous lightning springing from the clouds on the athanor, the link uniting the macrocosm and the microcosm. Without him you can accomplish nothing, and with him you are strong with all might.

Zarathustra called him Berezesengh, the fire that stands before Ormuzd. Mosche named him and the Magi expressed it thus on the Khaldean bricks; contemplate this effigy:




It is the very Spirit of God which descends impetuously into the Philosopher, and which, combining with the central fire, that is to say, the interior propensity of his soul towards the Mystery, makes him prophesy and gives him the power to perform miracles.

Collect yourself, my Disciple; you must be the temple of this fiery spirit which works great things.

Remember that the ashes of the Philosophers contain the diadem of their King. Close your soul to external impressions. Fight your athanor with the lut of Sapience. Do not look out into the darkness; stay in the center; come as near as possible to the ignition, lest you be swept away in the circumversion, in the icy whirlwind of the Accursed who roars, quoerens quem devoret.

Beware of deadly lemures, catabolic spirits that roam around you. See the empuses that lie in wait for you; invoke the egregores: warm the bird of Hermes in your bosom.

The Halcyon will be born, my Disciple; rejoice; and if you know how to provoke this magnetic current which must be established between you and the superior spheres, you possess the Magisterium, and the rest is only child's play.


See, carved on the right portal of Notre Dame de Paris, the bishop perched on the aludel where sublime, chained in limbo, the Philosopher's Mercury. It teaches you where it comes from

the sacred fire; and the Chapter, leaving, by a secular tradition,
this door closed all year, tells you that it's here
the non-vulgar way, unknown to the crowd, and
reserved for the chosen few
of Sapience. But he is
not allowed to say
more on
this subject.

MEDITATION IV

DISSOLUTION

ROGER Bacon said: “The body must become spirit and the spirit must become body”.
This is the Work's solution.

To realize it, your own body, set ablaze by the philosophical fire, corroded by the ardent water of contritions, must reach such a degree of purity that it becomes truly immaterial.

Then, transfiguring itself as on a Tabor, it will become unalterable; it will no longer be an impediment to the spiritual life, but on the contrary, like the glorious bodies, it will participate in it and contribute itself, - oh prodigy! - at work.

Then corporeify your spirit, that is to say cast a scrutinizing gaze on this impalpable substance of you; whose mysterious nature you may never have dreamed of knowing, although it constantly accompanies your body.

Carefully study all its occult workings in order to know how to direct it, to be able to manage its power and sustain it with the intellectual nourishment that suits it.

You possess, my Disciple, an immense treasure of hidden forces of which you are unaware, considerable and invincible forces, bent in you, and which surpass all bodily forces; learn to make use of them, to make them obey your will, to make yourself absolutely master of them.

And for this you must first cut off from your intellect all that is superfluous and obsolete. Vigorously prune the foliage of your vulgar thoughts. Boldly carve out commonplaces and banalities that can still occupy you in this forest. Prune away everything that does not represent vigor and strength; it is an unhealthy vegetation which only produces losses of spiritual energy.

Thought is a substance of an almost fluidic nature. Once emitted, it exists.
Thought is immutable. It causes in the sphere of pure existence an echo which resounds in eternity. So beware of the infernal cogitations that you can create and which will stick to you for your damnation.

Be pure, for it is your virtue itself that you must project onto the athanor to animate it. Avoid acts that are indifferent in themselves. Let your gaze never wander over objects that are not worth a moment of your attention; it's a piece of your being that you would lose without ever being able to recover it.

Then, freed from the burden of uselessness, carefully collect what you want to keep of the living forces, and direct them to the Work with vehemence. Observe carefully the colors of the Magisterium, and make your smallest actions converge towards the final goal.

Some will tell you that miraculous power is acquired and transmitted by a breath, a kabbalistically murmured word in the ear, a reading of a few pages in a grimoire or the making of a wand.

Learn, on the contrary, that such a power will be conferred on you only by a laborious and slow cultivation of the psychic forces subsisting in you in a latent state.

You must abstract yourself in the higher life by powerfully exalting your will, effect a real segregation of yourself from the physical and external world.
Raise around you like a wall that retains what emanates from you towards sensitive things; thus shut yourself up in the hermetic citadel from which you will emerge one day, invulnerable.

Undoubtedly, you already see the light dawning a little that I promised you, and you rejoice.

Patience ! think of your inadequacy! You are only at the IVth degree of the Way of the Absolute. You have more than halfway to go, and you can still stumble on the road, and fall.


More skilful than you have fallen, who almost touched the goal. One finger on

the mouth, like Harpocrates, and
pray, my Disciple, in
the silence of your
soul.

MEDITATION V

CONJUNCTION

BROTHER Basile Valentin said: “And the melodious voice of the Royne will greatly please the ears of the igneous King; he will embrace her amicably for the great affection he has for her, and will be sated with her until they both disappear, and of them two is made only one body”.

The Great Work is a transcendental ethic.

Now, it is easy for the Adept to eliminate from his existence the impediments of superfluous thoughts and importunate beings.

But he will encounter serious difficulties, if he wishes, obeying the norm of activity and passivity according to which the macrocosm is constructed, to reconstitute in himself the Edenic androgyny by the assimilation of another life to his own. There is the obstacle, the true offendiculum.

It is in vain, my Disciple, that you perform the preparatory ablutions and put on the sacred linen robe. If your heart is not pure, it is not the garment which will mondify it and which will know how to hide you from the eye of the Divinity.

There is no loss of psychic forces comparable to that which will be caused in you by the multitude of lusts. It's a spell that Schelomoh himself couldn't resist.

Qui purus est, is certainly augur; it is Paracelsus who teaches you, and the word of this master is precious..

Do not walk in unspeakable pleasures. Don't gird your leg with the wolfskin garter. Take care not to light the green candle which directs the woman towards tenebrous lusts. Fear incantations and love potions, and wear on your finger the topaz which restrains lubricity and chases away the phantasms of the night. Beware of the witch's toad, and don't fall asleep, like Merlin the Enchanter, in the forest of Brocéliande, where the perfidious Viviane will chain you for centuries.
If you choose a companion, the link that attaches you to her must be indissoluble, since both of you, one day, will contemplate the Absolute face to face.

With her you must share the eternal joys. His thoughts, like yours, must therefore all converge towards the possession of the Absolute.

You can only live with the one who walks, hand in hand, with you on the Way, who searches with you for the thing at three angles, and adds you to the Great Work.
The alchemist's wife is Perenelle, discreet and learned, wearing the ring of the sovereign link on her finger, reflecting all the thoughts of the master, and in turn watching over the athanor when the hour demands it.

If you have chosen badly, take a last look at this mystery which is not intended for you; fill your eyes with its clarity, and close this book.

You can leave the Way of the Absolute, which you will never reach. Descend to Gehenna, you wretch! with the useless being that you have attached to your flesh, with the empty bark that you drag with you, and enter the path of mediocrity which is now yours, and from which you should never have left.

But if your companion really adorns your life, continue with her the contemplative progression towards the Absolute.

She must shoot - the wonderful! - the same fruit as you of the present meditations.
But do not forget that his way of perfectability, despite the homoeomerism of the final goal, is different from yours, which you will know by carefully studying his microcos-mic constitution.

Paracelsus teaches it expressly: Archœus alius in, viro, alius in foemina.
It is from you that she must receive the initiation, as you yourself receive it from the Divinity. Remember this essential point, and beware of directing it in a way that is not its own. Place the golden apple in one hand and the lit torch in the other.

Fire and the dissolving menstruation, here is the key of the Major Art.

If you know them, then you are on the Royal Path

and you will soon see the day
eternal, the day that
does not end, which necessitates
occasion
die.

MEDITATION VI

PUTREFACTION OR HYLATION sive MORS

The Cosmopolitan said, "He who does not descend shall not ascend."
Behold, my Disciple, the ordeal of ordeals, the one where the Evil Influences await you, sneering and pallid, in the hope of seeing you stumble and fall back into outer darkness.

If you resist it, the Phoenix, succeeding the AIcyon, will hatch for you.
The world is unaware of emerging superiorities. So take the holy habit of suffering the contempt of those who are worth less than you.

Penetrate yourself with this truth that justice will never be done to you, except when you come into the Light.

You need to become completely indifferent to the opinions of men, which is easier said than done.

What does it matter to you to pass in the crowd for a vague unity, when you are conscious of your intellectual royalty?

Work according to your conscience, without worrying about the result.

Accept glory as a burden, and do not desire it, except eternal glory, that of the Philosophers: the Absolute.

If you seek human assent, you walk towards darkness; you are out of the way.

If you want to be a Saint so that you are recognized as such, it is certain that you will never become one.

The miraculous power will become hyper-concentrated within you when you no longer covet it, when you have killed the ambition to possess it.

So, by using this power which will amaze men, your heart, which has become insensitive, will not be proud.

But what a long way to go to obtain this result!

Destroy yourself, my Disciple, in an abyss of humility. Be the least among the least. Become obscure. Hide like that disciple of Khoung-Tseu who tore tears of admiration from his master and made him say: “Oh! How wise he was, Hoei! He lived in a den at the end of a narrow and abandoned street, and yet that did not change Hoei's serenity! Oh ! How wise he was, Hoei! ".

Remember this saying: "Patience is the ladder of the Philosophers and humility is the gate of their garden".


Lower yourself and you will transfigure yourself one day, and you will awake, shining and radiant, in the amplexion of the King of Glory, of the Eastern King seated on his throne, as the old masters say, and you will enter the Crimson Sea which is the Magisterium of the Philosophers.

But you are still only leprous mercury

who killed the Sun
justice on the effigy
of the quaternary,
remember
don't worry!

MEDITATION VII

SUBLIMATION DISTILLATION

NICOLAS Flamel said: "This operation is truly a labyrinth, because here a thousand paths present themselves at the same moment, besides the fact that you have to go to the end of it, precisely to the reverse of the beginning".

Affliction is the seed of perfection.

It is truly the menstruation of the Sages; it is the green Lion of the Philosophers, the Pontic water which does not wet the hands, the acetum acerrimum or very sour vinegar by means of which is extracted from the crow's head, the true Milk of the Virgin, and the Elixir for multiplication.

You must make every circumstance of your life converge towards the supreme goal, but mainly the sorrows and the daily sufferings; and many will happen to you, for "the disciples of the Sapients find no rest in this world", says Rabbi Issacha Baer.

You can make marvelous use of these, obtain from them aqua regia which will corrode all impurities.

Knowing how to extract from the very difficulties of life, a ferment of perfection, and to transmute them into so many living forces in the hyperphysical plane, is the major alchemy against which nothing prevails; it is the magnificent dealbation, the aurum de stercore of Virgil, the morbus quilibet purgutorium of Paracelsus.

Do not utter a murmur when one of your projects is not crowned with success. You will soon understand that it was necessary that it should be so, and that momentary disappointments were to prepare you later for unexpected advantages.
Geber teaches that it is almost obligatory for the alchemist to wander several times.

So content yourself, in adversity, with thinking, without exacerbation, that your intellectual sight is, at this moment, obscured, and that the way from which you were rejected and which you believed to be excellent, was not so. You will soon acquire the certainty of it, and you will recognize the always admirable sequence of effects and causes.

Beware above all of envying the triumphant of the day and the hour. You will hear them, my Disciple, mocking your asceticism and despising your effort.

“We do not pray: they say, - the inaniloquies! - we do not pray, and yet our
business is prospering! We blaspheme God, and God does not paralyze our tongue! »
But what does this prove? That their Heavenly Father is good and that they are bad; nothing more.

For you, my Disciple, pursue with perseverance your inces in the Way. Don't get bored. The masters themselves have, several times, restarted the Work.

But know how to understand that no acroamatic or erotematic teaching could replace the slow assimilation of the alchemical doctrine, by a thorough and conscientious study of the books of the masters.

It is only after long years that the Light will begin to dawn for you.
So, in texts where the layman sees nothing but cause for smiles, you will already perceive subtle connections, milestones guiding you through the obscurities of the Way.

Alchemy is not hemeresis; it is the work of the whole life; it is one with the Adept's existence. The possession of the Great Work is the crowning achievement of life. You will only get it once, just as you will only live once on earth.

Reaching the Absolute at the age of twenty or thirty is therefore illusory; at this age you are only on the Way; and you cannot abandon this one without at the same time losing the hope of ever returning to it.

It is therefore gradually that you will discover the truth in the words of the masters; does not ask to be at the end of the journey before having traveled the path necessary to reach it. If you are a little advanced in the Way, you will recognize that it is impossible to speak more clearly.

But how, later, the words, now obscure and incomprehensible, will seem luminous to you if you have not ceased to work according to the prescriptions of the masters!

You will smile then, knowing so simple, the notions which seemed so abstruse to you when you were only a layman, and you will confess that there was no possible explanation, before the personal investigation, intended to prepare your mind to receive the seeds of truth.

And it is in this sense that it is said that

no one can be initiated
only by itself
even.

MEDITATION VIII

COAGULATION MUTATIO COLORS, CAPVT CORVI

Blessed Raymond Lully said: “And thus, you will have a perpetual treasure which you will be able to increase indefinitely, and by which you will accomplish the Work until infinity. »

And now, here is the great mystical page, the one that must not be read and that will not be understood by those who are not totally detached from the concern for contingencies and the din of human opinions.

Have you removed from your soul all the sensations that could introduce imbalance there, disturb your astral serenity?

Are you ready enough to start acting effectively in the immaterial?

So practice collecting your soul and psychic forces. Coagulate them. Give substance to each of your thoughts. Strengthen them by specifying them, with care and by concretizing them in your mind.

They are numerous, but they escape you because you do not know how to control them.
Take care not to lose any, to let this precious power flow, to disseminate it on useless and vain notions.

Determine exactly, on the contrary, those on which you want to fix your attention: eliminate and reject all the others. Then gather, as in a bundle, your voluntarily emitted thoughts and consecrate them by uttering them verbally with energy and will; and thus you will accomplish great things.

Arnauld de Villeneuve calls this the Angle of the Work.

Carefully collect the Pelidor water, which is an incipient green. Transmute Dead Waters into Living Waters. Prepare the resurrection of the bird of Hermes.
Here above all, you must purify your intentions and your heart. May your volition be directed towards the good alone.

Beware, my Disciple; you run in this phase a very great danger. Any bad will, by you emitted, would be turned against yourself. Do not seek to remove impediments by uttering, against those by whom they come to you, the formula of curse. This one is irrecoverable and his sinister wish, once formulated, always comes true.
Power is not given to you for revenge. Don't get confused. It is the Royal Way, the Way of the Absolute that you follow, and not the tenebrous way.

Curb the unhealthy outbreaks of your troubled thought. Do not compromise with the Cursed. Repels infernal consumption and morbid cogitations.

It is the Sulfur of the Philosophers, the Sulfur which illuminates every body because it is itself light and tincture, which you seek with avidity; fear to meet in his place the Asmodai who seduced Aisha.

But I said. I cannot, my Disciple, reveal to you all the hermetic mysteries;


it is enough that I indicate to you the Way which

leads to these mysteries. It's your
will and your intelligence
which will complete, with
God's help,
the Work.

MEDITATION IX

FIXATION

MESSIRE Jehan de Meung, in his Mirouër d'Alquimie said: “Our science is corporeal science, of ung and by ung simply composed”.

Unique, in fact, is the modality according to which the Absolute is sought and conquered.

He who moves towards true perfection rises above nature; and he who is above nature can command nature.

This is how you can perform miracles and transmute metals and gems.

Have you understood here, my Disciple, the subtle difficulty of the Work?

You will only get the Stone when you have become perfect. And you will never be perfect, if you seek the Stone because of the riches that accompany it. Therefore, when you possess the Stone, you will inevitably have, by your very perfection, only a sovereign contempt for the material advantages which it will lavish on you.
For then you will be in ecstasy; you will be able to make yourself invisible, evoke the dead and instantly cross the greatest distances; you will live a super-exalted life that will feed and sustain itself, leaving you free from all need and desire.

See then the vulgar being confined in strange sophisms: "If you possessed the Stone, you would be powerfully rich, they say, scommatic, and you would exult in joy and joy!" »

And others, without faith in their soul and without purity in their heart, have opened the books of the alchemists. They manipulated substances, blew into athanors, calcined mixtures, without understanding that one must have had a long stasis in the Oratory before daring to enter the Laboratory.

And in the face of fatal failure, puffed up with vanity, they declared the words of the masters deceptive and illusory, rather than admitting that they had deceived themselves!

Leave there the obstructions and the scurrilities of these ignorant and vain censors.

They mock the Alchemists who died destitute and inops; but know, my Disciple, that when you possess the Stone, you will literally disdain to make physical gold.
Because you will be a Saint and you will command the elements.

What emotion, when you reach the threshold of the Infinite; lost in the supreme contemplation of the Absolute, will you still be able to experience the sight of temporal riches? Would you be perfect if you were still subject to vital necessities, if you hadn't killed all human desire within you?

This is why Grosparmy affirms that “never was memory that Avarieux possessed the Stone”.

It is obvious.

The practice of the Stone and the desire for gold are incommiscible. To undertake the Great Work to enrich oneself would be to enter the Way of the Absolute backwards.

You would then obey an evil instinct, and there must no longer be one in you. How could you command nature if you had not first commanded yourself?

It is not that you cannot, one day, for some higher motive, attempt the Work in the
physical plane, and materially transmute the metals. Several followers, Nicolas Flamel, Jehan Saunier, Zachaire and others, have done it; and perhaps you will be forced to do so, although disillusioned with the world, by transcendent obligations.


But remember that another, and not you, will then use the wealth thus produced which will spring

with profusion of your athanor. And this being, endowed with an ardent and wild life, shining
and impetuous like the animal of the forests, but like him, cruel and soulless,
will sow disorder, terror and misfortune everywhere,
until the day he succumbs to
the invisible blows of one of your
brothers in wisdom, who will have
recognized in him a
embodiment of
Damn !

MEDITATION X

LILIUM ARTIS. QVINTESSENCE OV PERFECT ELIXIR

MASTER Albert the Great, Archbishop of Regensburg said: “Invaluable treasures are hidden here, and no one knows them except those to whom God wishes to reveal them. »

Shine in glory, my Disciple!

I took you to the tenth grade; and on the True Way, you have learned to purify your concepts, to refine your thoughts. The bird of Hermes has now transformed into a Pelican; and soon the veil that covers the Absolute will rise before you!
You now find yourself, like the universal man in the Pardes, in the presence of two trees: the tree of Life and the tree of Science.

The first is the spiritual path of mystical contemplation; it is anagogy, ecstasy; The other is the way of reasoning, objection and doubt, the way of the sophists and the logodaedales.

Choose the one whose fruits you want to reap, and beware of all error.

It is here that the dereliction of the Way of the Absolute is particularly dangerous; but know, to enlighten you in your choice, that all that science teaches us, in thousands of books, you can acquire in a few seconds by mystical illumination, because your spirit, finding itself face to face with the Absolute, then seizes the Key of universal harmony.

And this Key, the books will never give it to you!

It is in vain that you will read all that the masters have written. If you don't have it, you won't understand their language.

Can you overcome the preliminary test of doubt? Be careful ! your eternal future is entirely committed to it. If you succumb, you will never see the splendor; and remember that the opportunity to be initiated is once in a lifetime. If you let it escape, it will never be repeated.

Ask the Light of the Light itself. You won't get it otherwise.

“Whiten the brass and tear up your books, lest your hearts be torn with worry! exclaims the wise Morien.

The books are only too numerous, indeed; but it is the energy and the will that most often lack to perfect the Stone.

The Great Work! but it is written everywhere! it is exposed to all eyes, as clearly expressed as it is possible to do without violating the secrecy of the Adepts.

You can read it on the right portal of Notre Dame de Paris and on the tower of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. I found it isagogically drawn on the stained glass windows of the choir of the Madeleine, in Troyes, and sculpted in the palace of the alchemist Jacques Coeur, in Bourges.




It is revealed in the Milesian Letters, in the


of the Greeks, in the


and the


Kabbalists. You will be taught it in Benares in the formula:





"Whitewash the brass and tear up your books!" Yes, my Disciple, the entire Work is there.



Conquer Urim and Thummim. picking

the fruit of the tree of Edot gnos-
tick. The jewel is in the
Lotus! remember
don't worry, and the Uni-
to east to
You !

MEDITATION XI

MULTIPLICATION

BERNARD, Count of Marche Trévisane said: "The Mercury of the Philosophers sometimes sublimates itself into a resplendent and coagulated body".

Already, my Disciple, you can reap the fruits of the Magisterium, if you have skillfully and powerfully exercised your will, according to the norms that I have taught you.

The diatheses of your mind and your soul will manifestly indicate this result to you.

When all the circumstances of your life will begin to follow one another according to the expression of your desires, when the difficulties will miraculously be leveled before you, when you will see all the wills bend before yours, and your enemies contribute themselves unconsciously to the accomplishment of your projects and the realization of your destiny, you will then be able to have the certainty of having arrived well ahead in the Way.

And here is the ultimate operation of Hermetic Philosophy, reserved for those who have reached the peak of Sapience, and whom I entrust to your prudence and your discretion.

The forces you have acquired remain in you in a latent state, like a hidden treasure. It is the Stone in its whiteness, which you obtained through Mercury, Fire and Elixir.

It is therefore necessary, to implement these secret forces, to know and practice the Multiplication of the Sages.

When you stand in the midst of your brothers assembled for prayer, their hearts being perfectly contrite and their souls sublimated, and when you judge the astral atmosphere saturated with right intentions and ardent wills, take hold with callidity and energy of these scattered irradiations, and unite them in a single current which you will direct at your pleasure, and by means of which you will convey the expression of your specially formulated wish.

You will thus raise between the earth and the sky, and all charged with your volitional power, a kind of fluidic column which will come alive with a violent gyratory movement by producing the noise of a torrent or an impetuous wind, and which sometimes, will be able to become visible by suddenly igniting with a dazzling light.

And then you will see great things being accomplished by yourself, and without men knowing your power, nor calculating the splendor of your soul.

Rejoice therefore, O my Son, in being, in your obscurity, one of the elect, one of those who know!

Here you are called to collect the heritage, to continue in your century, the tradition of these illustrious masters who preceded you in the Absolute.

See, my Disciple, the Gebers and the Raymond Lulls, see Arnauld de Villeneuve and Morien, and Artéphius, and Schelomoh, and Mary the Prophetess, who contemplate you in their glory.

You possess their secret, the supreme mystery, which they have preciously concealed from the vulgar and the crowd.

So know how to show yourself worthy of these magnificent and superb ones.


That they can greet with the kiss aditial ton

entry into the Absolute, and than ever
they don't reject you like
perjury in the
external darkness
higher.

MEDITATION XII

INCREASE OR PROJECTION

HERMES Trismegistus said: “Come, Son of the Wise; let us all rejoice together; Let us burst out our joy with cries of joy, for death is consumed. Our Son reigns, and he is clothed and adorned with his purple! »

Hosannah! my Disciple! You have come to the last bend in the road; you have climbed the ultimate rung of the ladder of perfection.

Dress the Stone with his royal mantle. Exults; rub yourself up!

Behold, you are invested with splendid power. You are in anagogy, in Pardes. You can, at your will, enter into ecstasy, flood your eyes with celestial Light, abstract yourself far from here below, in the contemplation of the Absolute.

The exposition of all mysteries has been accomplished in your eyes. Your power is truly limitless.

Arrived at this pinnacle of perfection, you have completely subjugated your physical energies to the forces of your soul.

You possess the paraclesis for all ills, the universal panchrest!

Your life will sustain itself, because you will know how to draw directly from the source of vitality.

Distance and obstacles will no longer exist for you; you will command nature and the elements; you will see into the future and you will read people's consciences.
And you will thus have reconstituted the primordial Edenic state; and this elevated life will be similar, for you, to immortality, into which you will enter without break in continuity or transitory stasis.

This, my Disciple, is the Resurrection of our King of Glory, who comes to you, shining in splendour. Remember the masters; they all accomplished the transmutation of Mercury on Easter day, to the sound of the bells and the joyful chants of the Alleluia, that is, at the end of the long night during which our King, the paschal victim, died and suffered.

Rejoice in this divine gift given to you today!

It is the true carbuncle, the rubified vitriol, the triangular balm of life, the balsamum perfectum, which the hand of God himself offers you; it is the morning dew, the nobly distilled quintessence, the boneless fish which swims in the philosophical sea, what the Alchemists call with a single word: the Universal!
And now you have become the Eagle whose gaze fixes the Sun. So I kept my promise and I led you by the hand, to the threshold of the Absolute.


If you have gained anything from reading these pages, give thanks to the Lord,

and when you enter into glory, grant, my Disciple,
some remembrance to your Master, to him who told you
the true Way, which does not deceive, the
Royal Way of
the absolute !

TEVEYTH

I - The Absolute is the synthesis of universal perfection.
II - The being who possesses in himself the feeling of perfection, is on the Way of the Absolute.
III - The being who has introduced into himself an element of perfection, has walked on the Way of the Absolute.
IV. The Way of the Absolute leads to absorption in the First Cause.
V - The First Cause is abstract perfection. She is the Absolute itself.
VI - The First Cause is one, infinite, eternal.
VII - The being who has exalted in him the three notions of unity, infinity and eternity to the point of assimilating them to himself to the exclusion of any other, has absorbed himself in the First Cause; he has achieved supreme perfection; he has traveled the Way of the Absolute.
VIII - The reaction of movement on immobility and of immobility on movement manifests itself in all perceptible things.
IX - Movement is perfection and stillness is perfection.
X - The First Cause is immutable and is the universal mover. It is both movement and stillness.
XI - The destruction, in being, of this duality, the rejection of this binary by the union of these two principles, in imitation of the First Cause, therefore leads to perfection. It is the Way of the Absolute.
XII - The first cause possesses pure existence.
XIII - Everything that moves away from the First Cause tends, by successive degrees, towards non-existence.
XIV - What does not tend towards pure existence is not in the Way of the Absolute.
XV - Everything has its perfect archetype in the Absolute.
XVI - The restoration of each thing in its true effigy according to this archetype, constitutes the universal redemption.
XVII - To seek the universal Redeemer is to walk on the Way of the Absolute. It is working effectively in the Great Work.
XVIII - The keys of the Absolute are inscribed in the numbers, because these reflect the economy of the First Cause and of the plane of pure existence.
XIX - But the Way of the Absolute is not in numbers, because infinity is neither the sum nor the limit of numbers.
XX - The reduction of all numbers to unity must therefore be carried out beforehand before the possession of infinity.
XXI - For unity and infinity are the two names of one and only thing, and the Way of the Absolute is not a true progression, but an asceticism; and this is the Great Work that the Philosophers have taught.
Such, my Disciple, is the whole Magisterium.
Understand and find the twenty-second key, the mysterious Tau that cannot be written.
Remember: There is only one work; there are two works, three regimes, four operations, seven degrees in each of the regimes and twelve celestial houses in which the four operations are accomplished.
The formula for the Stone is as follows:






Then the four elements, or Tohou-va-Bohou, enclosed in the Athanor magnetized by the Ruach AElohim, the whole for one year and seven days.

When you know the spagyric diameter, you will be able to square the philosophical circle. Contemplate unity and its logarithm, infinity and its logarithm, zero and its logarithm, and you possess the Key to the Universe.

So here you are, my Disciple, with the viaticum of supreme Science.

You have received the laying on of hands from the masters.

Clothed in this priestly anointing, you are now going, alas! to return to the misty and dreary world of your former days! You must lose yourself again in the crowd of men, let your ear hear, as before, vulgarities, platitudes and blasphemies.

No doubt the singular bitterness of this ordeal brings here some sadness; but it is easy to triumph over it, for you are the hieracophorus of ancient Sapience; you carry in your heart a treasure which must console you for all earthly pain, a light which must illuminate your life eternally. Your mission places you above all men and your happiness is incomparable, because for you the word of Hermes has come true: "What was occult and hidden will become manifest".

And no anguish can embrace the one to whom the Royal Way of the Absolute has been taught!

Listen to Saint Paul telling you the great mystery:

Patres nostri omnes biberunt de spiritali, consequente eos, petra:
PETRA autem erate CHRISTUS
(I Cor X 4)




Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1906, Epiphany Day.