Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

The line equates steady work with three legendary instruments of transformation: a magician’s wand (instant change), the philosopher’s stone (turning base matter into gold), and a cap of good fortune (luck or prosperity). By stacking these myths, the speaker argues that what people often attribute to magic, alchemy, or sheer luck is more reliably produced by labor—effort applied over time. The imagery also suggests labor’s power to convert the ordinary into the valuable: skill from practice, security from discipline, and opportunity from persistence. In a broader moral sense, it frames work not as drudgery but as an enabling force that “makes” outcomes that otherwise seem unattainable.