Lex Magna Operis

What you find without looking is directly proportional to what you learn when you understand that chance is just a form of divine dialogue.

At an antiques fair in the city of sand, a very venerable sheikh, with the appearance of a whirling dervish in shabby clothes, interrupted my wanderings in all directions. I was amazed by everything I saw - old objects, dusty books, amulets with strange inscriptions - when he approached and spoke a few words to me in an unknown language. His voice was deep, sonorous, like an echo from a deep cave. I did not attach importance to this completely accidental fact, for the sheikh was immediately lost in the crowd, as if he had existed only for that moment.

Only a few minutes later, searching my coat pocket for some money, I found a folded note. I didn't remember putting it there. The paper was old, yellowed, and bore a mysterious signature in the bottom corner: Nun (ن). It was the Arabic letter of depth, which hides the secret keys of knowledge. On the note were written, in precise calligraphy, the three laws of the Great Work – Lex Magna Operis – which are nothing more than the transposition of a story into living reality.

What you receive without asking often carries a deeper meaning than what you spend a lifetime searching for.

Leadership: Does your ideal-centered vision prevent you from becoming, through compromise, a version you didn't choose?

The first law was simple in its wording, but infinite in its implications: "Think about your dream daily, without ceasing."

I don't think it was about reverie, about pleasant fantasies that distract you from reality. But, rather, about that central vision that gives meaning to your life, that inner beacon toward which you direct your steps even when the fog is thick and the path is invisible. Thinking about the dream daily is not escape, but anchoring – it is the act by which a steadfast ideal descends from abstraction to matter, from the possible to the inevitable.

The second law sounded like an oath: "Never side with evil."

It seemed obvious, almost banal. But I understood that it wasn’t about blatant evil, murder, or betrayal. It was about small compromises, imperceptible concessions, those moments when, tired or discouraged, you accept taking a small step in the wrong direction, telling yourself it doesn’t matter. It’s when you sell not just your body but your soul, when others take full advantage of your intelligence while constantly minimizing your value. The law reminded me that evil never conquers by frontal assault, but by slow erosion—and that every small step you silently tolerate brings you closer, without you knowing it, to a version of yourself you didn’t really choose.

Leadership: Are you willing to give up passivity so that your ideal becomes a work that gives meaning to your supreme calling?

The third law was the most mysterious, truly difficult to decipher: "You must do something for God."

But what exactly? Here is a clue that flashed before my eyes: God loves science and the discoveries it brings to light. I stared at these words for a long time, understanding that the true offering is not obedience, but active understanding. In fact, it was a law that overturned what I had learned about faith and reason, about the sacred and the profane. God does not ask for prayers and rituals—he asks for knowledge, for research, for the deciphering of the mysteries that He Himself has hidden in the fabric of the world so that people may come to know Him fully and truly.

This call to transform research into an offering finds historical confirmation in the passage from the novel "The Name of the Rose", where science becomes the shield of the spirit in the face of the degradation of the world:

"He who spoke very clearly and distinctly about the Antichrist discerned his signs in the corruption of the world and in the distortion of wisdom. But he taught us that there is only one way to take action when he comes: to study the secrets of nature, to use the sciences to improve the human species. You can prepare to fight against the Antichrist by researching the healing virtues of herbs, the nature of stones, and even by designing the flying machines that many smile about."

Science is not the enemy of faith, but the instrument through which faith materializes in redemptive work. And the only way to know God is to transform knowledge into living prayer, guarding yourself from the evil of this world. Here, then, are the three great ways in which the human spirit participates in the divine work: creation, discovery, invention. And today the Internet is the easiest means by which the light of discovery can instantly pierce the darkness of ignorance.

Leadership: Do you assume your relationship with the Divine as an act of creation, in which prayer is a living participation, not an inert submission?

I looked in all directions. I searched for the sheikh in the crowd, but he had vanished without a trace. Perhaps he had never been there in the usual sense of presence. Perhaps he was a Nuntius Velatus—a disguised messenger, slipped into reality in the form of a symbol. The note, however, was real. The letters, real. And the three laws remained with me, not as external commandments, but as mirrors in which I check my direction daily.

Think about your dream. Do not side with evil. Do something for God through knowledge. These are the three simple laws that, intertwined, form the Magna Opera – the Great Work of a life lived with meaning. It is not about perfection, but about direction. Not about reaching, but about progressing. Not about understanding everything, but about seeking ceaselessly.

And so, the desert scribe wrote in his sand book:

"The relationship between man and Divinity is not one of passive submission, but of creative coresonance. The true essence of prayer, I realized, lies in the act of mirroring divinity, in the form of knowledge, through secrets torn from darkness. And if I have tried so many times to understand the mechanism of destiny, and if the meaning of any quest is reflected in its final resonance, then all that remains for me is to fulfill the Great Work.

I don't know, however, whether this vision represents certainty, strictly philosophically speaking, but I continue to naively relive the events told by others, but first of all experienced by myself. And my amazing story, as if taken from the forgotten volume of One Thousand and One Nights, will surround the world precisely because it vividly transcribes the three laws."

Leadership is not the art of absolute planning, but the ability to recognize a revealing direction in a message received from an anonymous passerby.

Lex Magna Operis is the symbol of that mysterious note that confirmed to me that I already knew what I needed to know – but I needed a stranger to remind me. At that antiques fair, I understood that life is not a search for meaning, but a recognition of God when He appears in unexpected forms.

The three laws were not new – they were ancient, written in the heart of every man who dared to dream, to remain pure, and to seek the truth. And God, far from being the enemy of knowledge, is its first lover – for every discovery is a prayer spoken in the language He created.