Initiation into Hermetics is…incomplete.
Many people really don’t want to hear this, but it’s true.
The whole system is outlined exactly once in all of this books. In the Merkur edition of The Key to the True Kabbalah. The passage is entitled “the Symbolism of the Third Tarot Card.”
It explains that you are to learn the powers of the Sephirot (Akasha/Void), the Zodiac (mind), Planets (astral) and elements (the letter/physical). FWIW, this references a very old mandala in Western esotericism that has been used by both Hermeticists and the Jewish Kabbalists for at least three millennia.
Keep in mind only the first book was published in his lifetime. On a practical basis, the first book lacks any meaningful breath (i.e. pranayama) or physical (i.e. body) training. That’s a problem as well. He also leaves out the fact that the European practitioners relied upon a tremendous amount of alchemical use to generate clairvoyance and clairaudience. The exercises in the book were auxiliary. And his clairvoyance, and clairaudience, were the result of something very terrestrial. Unfortunately, I cannot provide details on that due to some promises I made. But the actual story, despite the many attempts of his family to create a myth around him, is very normal.
A more complete, and longer explanation, of the enlightenment path application of the mandala can be found here: Bardon’s Enlightenment Path
The other two books were constructed from notes left behind after he died and have many errors. FX, the second book’s intelligences of Jupiter are actually Saturnian and plenty of German sources document this. FWIW, any discussion of Jupiterian entities that lacks mention of money, rulership and wealth is more than a little weird. This is one of the areas where studying the classical texts gives a modern practitioner a warning that something is off.
None of the sigils for the Martian intelligences are listed, but you could get them using magic squares from the names. He also left out the outer planets and some legitimate reasons exist for this. They are dangerous in a way the inner planets are not. But a careful reading of the book details entities engaging these regions as well. When you have an entity dedicated to the extra-solar region it goes to figure that an exploration of that is in order.
FWIW, my coursework on the Planetary Kabbalah is the only place in modern esotericism that covers this. Interestingly, I’ve discussed the topic with other senior practitioners who all admitted in private to have done this kind of work. And a few concede that it almost killed them upon occasion. I would have loved to have spoken with Jean Dubuis of the Philosophers of Nature about this topic, but sadly he had died by the time I made the exploration myself.
The third book gets organ placement wrong, amongst other things. A variety of minor errors exist amongst the letters as well. FWIW, he got the letter descriptions from an unknown Martinist text that was most likely taken from an ultra-orthodox work on letter magic. I’m having my sources attempt to locate this, but keep in mind the Hebrew letters are only 22 in number. So, some things will be missing.
Both provenance, and source, of the material in the third book appears to be intentionally obscured. Perhaps this has to do with the Soviet Union’s, and by extension Czech Communist Party, long term anti-Semitism or just the overly paranoid Martinist rules of secrecy. It is hard to say. But it clearly indicates the whole, “I channeled it out of my nether regions,” schtick is nonsense. But this is more of a long term frustration on my end than practical.
And how much of this is simply the efforts of his family to deify Franz Bardon over how he would have presented himself is an entirely other issue…
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He also practiced far more traditional ritual magic than most realize. Out of the three books he wrote, only the second is what he definitely practiced in person. The signals of the 360 heads of the earth zone appear to be unique to him. The exercises of the first book can all individually be found elsewhere. He did a lot of work organizing them and explaining the theory.
Ultimately books on the Zodiac and Sephirot would have been written, but he got himself killed in a Czech prison first. Was it really an act of self controlled death or just Bardon freaking out over the fact that the secret police arrested him again? Then again, none of the Soviet Era police forces were fun for the local population to deal with. Who knows, in the end it is all lost to time and the Czechs aren’t exactly the chatty type when it comes to embarrassing things of this nature. We will probably never know and honestly with the man being almost eighty years dead it really does not matter. The books need to be rewritten to be kept alive in any event. Note the one hundred year rule in this regard.
To my knowledge, the work of my private practice group and the upcoming video coursework are the only efforts to have been made to systemically solve this problem. Why this has eluded the efforts of others is beyond me. That said, the magical inertia opposing my release of this material has been substantial. And weird given how easy most of it is to do.
Bardon did us all a great service. He was however, very, human and still put his pants on one leg at a time.
And keep in mind this same statement applies to the magician writing this. I am extremely human, prone to error as all are and probably doomed to being a minor religious figure at some point just as Bardon was.
The cult of Paracelsus lasted almost 800 years. Any school should be so lucky. Of course, mine will lack the weird hippy veganism and free love vibe. Or at least it will until I am dead. The school is 86% male right now in any event. I take no responsibility for what happens afterwards.
Until next time, train hard and be well…
SixtySkills
