What Is the Great Work?
Most people go their whole lives without ever hearing the phrase “The Great Work.” And if they do come across it, it’s usually in some obscure esoteric text, buried in language so dense and archaic it might as well be written in smoke. But the Great Work isn’t some elitist spiritual riddle or an intellectual indulgence for occult hobbyists. It’s not a metaphor, not a mystery school password, and not something to be left to dead philosophers. The Great Work is the purpose of your life. It’s why you’re here.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been locked in a prison cell, wandering in grief, or simply working a job that drains your soul dry—if you’ve ever felt like there’s something more, something you were meant to remember or become, then you’ve already brushed up against the edge of it.
The Great Work is the process of remembering who and what you really are, and then living as that.
But to explain what that means—really means—we have to go back to the beginning.
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The Alchemist’s Journey: Solve et Coagula
The phrase “Solve et Coagula” is carved into the arms of Baphomet, the symbolic figure often misunderstood as demonic. But in truth, these two words—Latin for “dissolve and recombine”—hold the essence of all true spiritual practice. They represent the stages of breaking down the false self and reassembling the soul around something real.
In the early stages of the Great Work, everything begins with “solve.” You dissolve your old identities, your illusions, your wounds, and the programming you inherited from culture, family, and trauma. Not all at once—but slowly, layer by layer. You begin to see that what you’ve taken to be you—your name, your habits, even your pain—are not the true Self, but constructs. Shadows on the wall of your consciousness.
This stage can feel like death. Sometimes it literally mimics it. I went through my own version of this behind bars, sentenced to die for a crime I didn’t commit. That cell became a crucible. In the isolation and silence, I had to confront every broken part of myself. Not just the pain of the prison, but the pain I had carried long before it. The rage. The fear. The shame. I wasn’t just trying to survive—I was trying to strip away everything that wasn’t essential, everything that was keeping me from the light.
But dissolution isn’t destruction. It’s purification.
The second half of the formula is “coagula”—reassembly. Once you’ve burned away the dross, you begin to consciously, deliberately rebuild yourself. You choose what you want to become, what you want to embody, what kind of energy you bring into the world. You are no longer a passive product of your circumstances or programming. You become a spiritual artisan, shaping your own soul with intention, like a sword being folded and reforged.
That’s the Great Work in a nutshell: to dissolve the false and coagulate the true.
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The Philosopher’s Stone Isn’t What You Think
Popular culture loves the Philosopher’s Stone—the mythical object that turns lead into gold and grants immortality. But here’s the secret most people miss: the Stone isn’t a thing. It’s a state of consciousness.
The Stone is Presence.
It’s what happens when you’ve stripped away everything that distracts, fragments, or enslaves the mind, and you become fully awake in the here and now. Not just aware in a casual way, but radiantly conscious, able to see clearly and act deliberately. When you train your attention—through meditation, ritual, martial arts, or any path of discipline—you begin to accumulate presence like a kind of spiritual mass. Eventually, that presence becomes so solid it starts to transmute everything it touches.
That’s what the Stone really does. It doesn’t turn metal into gold. It turns experience into gold. It takes pain, and turns it into wisdom. It takes discipline, and turns it into liberation. It takes ordinary life, and sanctifies it.
When you live from this place of presence, you’re no longer chained to the past or hijacked by fear of the future. You become sovereign over your own consciousness. That’s the real immortality—not living forever in a body, but stepping outside of the wheel of reaction and conditioning. You’re no longer tossed around by life—you shape life from within.
That’s the Great Work.
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The Elements of the Self
In Hermetic alchemy, the self is divided into elemental layers: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit. These aren’t just poetic metaphors—they’re descriptions of your actual energetic anatomy.
• Earth is your body. The bones, muscles, and daily rituals that make your life tangible. Mastery of Earth means discipline, groundedness, and care for the vessel you live in.
• Air is your intellect—your thoughts, your ability to learn and reason. Training Air means studying, sharpening your mind, and learning to think consciously instead of reacting out of habit.
• Water is your emotional body—your capacity to feel, to empathize, and to flow through pain without being drowned by it.
• Fire is your will—your life force, drive, and direction. This is where kaizen lives—the fire of constant, deliberate improvement.
• Spirit, the quintessence, is what integrates all the others. It’s the part of you that is eternal, untouched by the chaos of the world. It’s your connection to the Source.
In the early stages of the Work, you focus on each of these separately. That’s the solvephase. You heal the body. You clear the mind. You balance the emotions. You redirect the will. Eventually, though, everything is brought under the conscious rule of Spirit—the part of you that knows why you’re here. That’s the coagula phase.
This process is the Great Work applied to the individual. And it changes you—not just spiritually, but physiologically. When you discipline your thoughts, your brain chemistry shifts. When you regulate your breath and rituals, your nervous system rewires. When you train your body and redirect your energy, you literally become a new person.
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You Are the Laboratory
One of the most profound realizations I’ve had is that you don’t need a temple, a robe, a guru, or a wand to do the Great Work. Your life is the temple. Your mind is the training ground. Your body is the alchemical laboratory.
Every thought you choose to believe or dismiss… every breath you take with presence instead of panic… every time you act from integrity instead of impulse—you’re performing real magick.
We live in a time when the spiritual world has become bloated with escapism. People chase visions, theories, conspiracy, and aesthetic. But true alchemy doesn’t take place in fantasy. It happens in the daily grind of showing up to your practice even when you’re tired. It happens when you track your progress with a journal, or choose the harder path of honesty in a conversation, or train a form until it becomes prayer in motion.
The Great Work is not something you do once. It’s not a weekend workshop or a ritual you burn once and forget. It’s a lifelong transformation of the self through small, continuous acts of will and awareness.
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Kaizen: The Secret Fire
One of the most effective tools for living the Great Work is the Japanese philosophy of kaizen—continuous, incremental improvement. It’s how I survived death row. It’s how I rebuilt my body and my life after release. It’s how I still train today.
Kaizen is sacred discipline. It’s choosing to be 1% better today than you were yesterday, even if no one notices. Especially if no one notices. It’s planting a seed of presence in every action and trusting that the fruit will come when the time is right.
We often think enlightenment comes in flashes of insight, in peak experiences. But in reality, it shows up slowly—quietly—in the way you fold your clothes, wash your dishes, bow before training, or take a single conscious breath before speaking.
Kaizen is the fire that turns ordinary life into spiritual gold. It’s the fuel of the Great Work.
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The Battle Within
There’s a story a friend once told me about a dream where he was fighting himself. He was both people at once—the attacker and the defender. When the fight ended, he felt the thrill of victory and the sorrow of defeat at the same time.
That’s the perfect metaphor for the Great Work.
You’re not trying to conquer the world. You’re trying to conquer yourself—not by suppression, but by transmutation. You are your own opponent, your own forge, your own master.
When you begin the Work, you start to realize just how fragmented most people are. How full of contradictions and compulsions and distractions. The Great Work is about bringing all of that into alignment. It’s about becoming whole. Not perfect—whole.
This takes time. It takes devotion. But once you taste even a moment of true coherence—when your body, heart, mind, and spirit all move as one—you’ll never want to go back.
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Where It Leads
So where does the Great Work take you?
It doesn’t take you away from the world. It brings you deeper into it.
It doesn’t make you better than other people. It makes you more yourself.
It doesn’t erase your wounds. It turns them into medicine.
The Work doesn’t end. That’s why it’s called “Great.” It’s a path you carry until your last breath—and maybe beyond. But if you stay with it, if you keep walking the path, something begins to happen. Life becomes radiant again. You start to notice synchronicities, patterns, deep peace under the noise. You begin to walk through the world like a tuning fork—calm, present, alive. Other people feel it. Animals feel it. Children feel it.
You become a living invocation of what’s possible.
And not because you’ve ascended some mystical plane. But because you’ve done the hardest thing anyone can do: you’ve returned to the moment, over and over again, and claimed it as holy.
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One Complete Prayer
Dōgen, the great Zen master, once said that when you bow, the entire universe bows with you. That’s how I live now. Every moment becomes a form. Every action becomes an offering. Tang Soo Do, journaling, ritual, even sitting in traffic—if you bring presence into it, it becomes part of the Great Work.
That’s the truth I try to live every day. That’s the path I offer to anyone reading this. Not a belief system. Not a fantasy. A practice. A path. A way.
The Great Work is not a destination.
It’s how you walk.
It’s who you become while walking.
And it’s the flame you carry so others can find their way home, too.