by Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.

Qabalism greatly influenced medieval thought, both Christian and Jewish. It taught that within the sacred writings there existed a hidden doctrine, which was the key to those writings. Eventually, the simple Qabalism of the first centuries of the Christian Era evolved into an elaborate theological system, which became so involved it was next to impossible to comprehend. Possibly, alchemy and Qabalism split off here. Certainly we can date the principles of alchemy back in time to the ancient Egyptians, for whom it was the master science. The Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and Baby-lonians were also familiar with the principles of alchemy, as were many of the Orient. It was practiced in ancient Greece and Rome, and during the Middle Ages it was a science and a religion as well as a philosophy. Often seen as rebels against the religion of their day, alchemists would hide their philosophical teachings under the allegory of gold-making. In this manner they were able to continue their art and ways, receiving only ridicule rather than persecution and ultimate death.

Most modern dictionaries popularly dismiss alchemy as an immature, empirical, and speculative precursor of chemistry having had as its object the transmutation of base metals into gold. Although chemistry did evolve from alchemy, the two schools of thought never really had much in common. Whereas chemistry deals with scientifically verifiable and objective phenomena, the mysterious doctrine of alchemy pertains to a hidden, subjective, abstract, and higher order of reality. This reality constitutes the basis of all truths and spirituality. Perceiving and realizing this reality is and was the goal of all alchemists. They called this goal the Magnum Opus or Great Work—the Absolute Realization. It was seen as the Beauty of all Beauty, the Love of all Love, and the Highest High. To witness it required that consciousness be radically altered and transmuted from the ordinary (lead-like) level of everyday perception to a subtle (gold-like) level of higher perception, so that every object is perceived in its perfect archetypal form—the Absolute, the Holy of all Holies.

This transmutative process, the Magnum Opus, is at one and the same time, both a material and spiritual realization. This fact is very often overlooked. Some commentators claim alchemy to be wholly a spiritual discipline, while others seem interested only in finding out whether gold was actually made and by whom. Both attitudes are misleading. It is essential to keep in mind that there are precise correspondences, fundamental to alchemical thought, between the visible and the invisible, above and below, matter and spirit, planets and metals.

In his book, Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi wrote

The Great Work is, above all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will, assuring…full power over the Universal Magical Agent. This Agent, disguised by the ancient philosophers under the name of the First Matter, determines the forms of modifiable substance, and we can really arrive by means of it at metallic transmutation as well as the Universal Medicine.

The processes of "the creation of man by himself" begin with a primary or archetypal image of that man. Creating this image requires some doing. It appears to me that we must use symbolic tools to do so. I have discovered the Hebrew letters themselves are just the tools needed. Chris Monnastre, in her introduction to the fifth edition of Israel Regardie’s The Golden Dawn, explains