The Great Work

The twelve ideas

Each idea is one chapter of the film: its headline is the caption on the painting, and its words are what the Oracle says. The tag says what kind of claim it is: a fact from history, what a tradition teaches, what a symbol stands for, or a question for you.

1. Fact

   Alchemy began in Egyptian workshops.

   Alchemy grew in Greek-speaking Egypt, among craftsmen who coloured metals and dyed cloth. Around 300 AD, Zosimos of Panopolis wrote of the work as a purifying of the soul as well.

2. Fact

   The word came through Arabic.

   The word alchemy came to Europe through Arabic, al-kimiya. Arabic writers, and the books under the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan, carried and grew the art for centuries.

3. Symbol

   Seven metals for seven planets.

   Alchemists gave each metal a planet: gold to the Sun, silver to the Moon, quicksilver to Mercury, copper to Venus, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, lead to Saturn.

4. Tradition

   The goal: the philosopher's stone.

   The goal of the Great Work was the philosopher's stone, a substance said to turn base metal into gold and, in some books, to heal the body and lengthen life.

5. Tradition

   First the blackening: nigredo.

   The work began with nigredo, the blackening: the matter broken down, rotted and reduced to black. Many books compare it to death and to the grave.

6. Tradition

   Then the whitening: albedo.

   Next came albedo, the whitening: the black matter washed and purified again and again, until it shone white, like silver and like the Moon.

7. Tradition

   The yellowing: citrinitas, the dawn.

   Some books add citrinitas, the yellowing, like the first light of the Sun on the white. Later writers often folded it into the stages around it.

8. Tradition

   Last the reddening: rubedo.

   The work ended in rubedo, the reddening, when the stone appeared, red as blood or as the rising Sun. In the old pictures, a king and a queen are joined as one.

9. Fact

   Newton kept a furnace for thirty years.

   Isaac Newton worked at alchemy for some thirty years and wrote about a million words on it, most of them never published in his lifetime.

10. Fact

    Chemistry grew from the same benches.

    Robert Boyle, a founder of modern chemistry, sought transmutation too. Chemistry did not simply defeat alchemy; it grew from the same benches, flasks and furnaces.

11. Tradition

    Jung read the stages as the soul.

    In the twentieth century, Carl Jung read the stages as a map of the inner life: the black of despair, the white of clarity, the red of a life made whole.

12. Reflection

    Which stage are you passing through?

    Blackening, whitening, reddening. The alchemists said the work cannot be rushed, and that every stage is needed. Which stage are you passing through now?