The Great Work is the name given to the mission that an adept finds themselves involved in which will carry them through the stages of their initiation all the way up to and beyond the threshold of their mortality itself.
The Golden Dawn emblemized the Great Work as a cross atop a triangle - which then found its way into the symbolism of the Hanged Man, who is suspended upside down in a position which suggests this figure.
The Great Work involves a surrender - of mundane concerns and of petty short-term visions of the self in the world. The act of hanging upside down from a fixed point is a release of control over the myriad superficialities and a total surrender to the true and unique character of one's Way.
This is not about thinking, or identifying. The Work is what is left over when ideas and plans and identities are turned over to the divine - by whatever name you choose. The Hanged Man's restriction - their limitations - becomes the code that supports a far greater and deeper freedom than their egoistic selves could possess.
It is as if this figure is transferring their ground of operation from the tangible - and changetive - to the intangible and fixed - and this transfer operates like a distillation which allows the most important essential insights to crystalize.
With nine days on the World Tree Yggdrasil, Wotan sacrificed one of his eyes in exchange for the knowledge of the Elder Futhark - the 24 key runes that govern the forces of the world. This was only possible because of the gravity of the sacrifice - Odin who "sacrificed himself to himself....".
Here is where, following the path of death, the mortal and contingent world steps back in terms of the centrality of it's importance, and the fundamental transcendent principles from which appearance hangs take central stage.
This moment exists in Plato - coming out of his cave, or in DesCartes, refining the I AM into clarity and distinction. This moment exists in Christ's Passion, and in Spinoza's mighty perception of a God or Substance that subsumes all change and all strivings.
This is the ascetic path, the gymnosophist Yogi, the alchemist in their Laboratory. This is where the Great Work begins. True self-discipline is not the symptom of a lack - it is the fruit of devotion.
Let devotion carry you into the Gung Fu, let devotion carry you into the Magnum Opus. Let devotion carry you into the Great Work.
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