The Great Work

I trun your attention to two posts. 

The first here, where Frater RO argues: 

"K&CHGA is the means to attain the authority to conjure and command the demons. The point is not to attain spiritual enlightenment. It is to attain the power to control the world by gaining authority over the spirits that manage it.That, brothers and sisters, is the Great Work."

The Second is here, where Frater BH argues:

"Doing the Work is about manifesting as much of human version of 'God' here as possible. It is about controlling your evil daimon for your own purposes and letting your 'good' daimon reign."

For myself, I truly do not understand the need to forsake one for the other. RO seems to think that the infiltration of Theosophy and eastern mystecism into ritual magick is a bad thing. I completely disagree. I think Theosophy is crap of course, but if you take a look at genuine Eastern Magickal systems they have a lot to offer a more broken and diluted western magick. If you don't think its more broken and diluted, than you are just kidding yourself. 

BH seems to emphasise the "your demon" part as opposed to "demons". The "spiritual" work over the "material" work. This is a dichotomy that is completely false. Indeed, nothing is quite so un-spiritual in my book, as the person who is feeding his ego by worrying about destroying it, or causing further dis-union with teh divine, by worrying about uniting with God. We are here for a reason. There is an upward flow and a downward flow. Matter ever strives towards spirit while spirit ever strives towards manifestation. 

The important point that I want to make here is that both seem to be confusing K&C of the HGA with THE GREAT WORK. Truth be told, I don't really even like the term "Great Work". It means something specific in Alchemy but has been so overused over the centuries that it essentially means nothing anymore because it can mean anything to anyone. Its crap. It also indicates a final enlightenment outcome, which I just don't believe in. 

However, if we want to play with this term, than attaining K&C of the HGA is a step on the attaining of the Great Work, not the great work itself. In fact, I would argue that it is not even a necessary step. There are other ways to go about doing things. 

RO is right that Abramelin is a book primarily about Demonology. Its a book. Thats what its about. He than takes the statement a bit more broadly, and I can't quite follow him there. 

For me, the great work is about awakening. It is about Realization. Transformation possibly. The term comes from Alchemy after all. I think to say that The Great work is about controling the evil little bastards that run things is a bit narrow. I could point to a dozen people that I would say have "attained the great work" that had no interest in such things. But again I point out that to be a mystic or even an alchemist, one need not be a magician. In fact, as I have said before, if you want union, and realization of God than magick is a bit of an ass-backwards and inefficient way to attain it. But make no mistake: the mystic, the alchemist, the magician, the witch, the yogi, the priest, the monk.... they are all concerned with the great work. 

But again, I pretty much find that term useless.