The alchemists said that their art perfects what nature has left unfinished. They meant metals, and they meant themselves. Every branch of the Hermetic tradition comes at last to the same point: the human being is unfinished, capable of far more clarity, steadiness and goodness than ordinary life draws out, and there are methods by which the work of completion can be taken in hand.
This section is about those methods. They are not exotic. They consist of sitting still, paying attention, telling the truth to oneself, keeping one's word and doing these things every day for a long time. The symbols and ceremonies of the tradition exist to support that effort and to give it a shape, and without it they are a costume.
No one can promise what the work will bring. Those who have gone some distance report that it makes a person harder to deceive, slower to anger, more capable of sustained effort and more at home in the world. That is a modest list, and it is worth a life.
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The Great Work
What the tradition means by transformation, the three phases of the path, and how to tell real progress from its imitations.
Understand the aim -
Meditation
Stillness, breath, concentration and the Western art of meditating on a symbol, in six graded exercises.
Learn to sit -
Will and Attention
The two faculties on which everything else depends, and how they are strengthened in the middle of ordinary life.
Train the will -
Shadow and Integration
The black stage of the work: meeting what has been disowned, and bringing it back into the whole.
Face the shadow -
Daily Practice
How to build a practice that lasts: morning, noon and evening, the week, the month, and what to do when it all goes flat.
Build the habit -
Course of Study
Twelve months of reading and practice, drawn from every part of this site, at twenty minutes a day.
Follow the course
Before you begin
Two things should be said at the outset. The first is that this work is not therapy and not a substitute for it. If you are in distress, look for qualified help first, and read our page on ethics and safety. The second is that it cannot be hurried. The texts compare it to the ripening of fruit and the slow cooking of a substance over a gentle fire. Most of the mistakes that students make come from turning up the heat.
Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying you will find the hidden stone.
Alchemical motto