Tracing the Roots of Bardon's System of Hermetics

Source: www.verlag-dr.de

Among the circle of students practicing Bardon's system of hermetics, there has always been speculation on who his teachers may have been or what prior teachings had formed the basis of his system. Although the accounts in Frabato the Magician allude to Franz Bardon as a fully developed adept from the start, the more skeptical tend to think that while perhaps gifted, he still must have gone through the normal process of magical development under the tutelage of adepts belonging to an already established magical order.

The candidates commonly brought up as Bardon's sources or teachers were the Czech mystic Karel Weinfurter, the occultist Wilhelm Quintscher and Paschal Beverly Randolph, particularly his magnum opus Magia Sexualis. Karel Weinfurter was a Christian Mystic, same as Franz Bardon's father, so it's easy to see how Bardon could possibly have come under his tutelage. Furthermore, Weinfurter's development seemed to follow the occult path to mysticism, which is similar to how Bardon approaches the concept of magical development.

About Wilhelm Quintscher, in Frabato the Magician it mentions a time when Bardon and a fellow occultist were being tortured by the Nazis. Unable to bear the pain, the occultist uttered a kabbalistic formula that temporarily paralyzed his tormentor but resulted in him being shot to death by a nearby guard. Supposedly, this occultist was Quintscher himself, although this account has been disputed.

Dieter Ruggeberg, who oversees the dissemination of Bardon's works in English, once wrote to Wilhelm Quintscher's son Ernst in order to clarify the matter but unfortunately did not receive any reply. Ernst Quintscher has since passed away, so it seems the issue will never be fully resolved. However, Mr. Ruggeberg still believes that, while both Bardon and Quintscher were good friends, they arrived at their magical attainments separately and that neither copied from the other.

Paschal Beverly Randolph was an American occultist and Rosicrucian who lived and died well before Bardon's time. However, it seems Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics (IIH) contains some materials that bear striking similarity to some of the topics discussed in Randolph's book Magia Sexualis (aka Sexual Magic). Among the subjects discussed in Magia Sexualis that are also found in IIH are the concepts of fluid condensers, volts, magic mirrors and living pictures. Supposedly, no other source material discussed the above subjects before IIH was published, so it strongly suggests a link between the two works. Bardon also mentioned sexual magic briefly in IIH but refrained from giving any details owing to how easily such knowledge could be abused.

With all that being said, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that there are sources that would have influenced Franz Bardon. He certainly wasn't opposed to the idea of reading the occult publications of other hermetics. In fact, Bardon's direct students recalled that he had a respectable collection of occult manuscripts. To cite one instance, Bardon was so impressed with Georg Lomer's Seven Hermetic Letters that he had it translated from the original German into Czech so that his Czech students could easily read them (later on, the Seven Hermetic Letters would be mistaken as one of Bardon's works although that mistake has since been rectified).

Given the above details, the question would be, is Bardon's system of hermetics unique or did he just put together a hodgepodge of systems and call it his own? I'm not here to prove or disprove the speculated sources (or teachers) of Bardon because I think the answer is not so simple.

To illustrate, even Master Choa Kok Sui had a lot of references when he was formulating the workings of modern pranic healing and arhatic yoga. Some of those references influenced his work, while others were used to corroborate the results of his research. The rest was received through direct inner transmission and validated through experiments. He also had incarnated spiritual guides who helped him in his research.

And I think the process Master Choa went through was similar to what happened when Franz Bardon was tasked to publish the first three tarot cards (i.e. Initiation Into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation and Key to the True Quabbalah). If there were elements from other works that made their way into Bardon's books (as what seems to be the case from Paschal Beverly Randolph's book), it could simply be for the reason that the information was good enough to be deemed a natural part of hermetic practice and would otherwise have been largely overlooked or lost to obscurity if left out.

But in order to provide another point of view, I'd like to present another system that has striking parallels to Bardon's own teachings, and that system is Taoism. While it may be surprising that an Oriental philosophy could have anything in common with hermetics, it really isn't that far-fetched and I'll explain this later.

I base my observations on a book I'm currently reading, Opening The Dragon Gate: The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard by Chen Kaiguo and Zheng Shunchao (translated from the original Chinese by Thomas Cleary). It's the biography of a living Taoist master named Wang Liping, 18th generation Transmitter of the Dragon Gate branch of the Complete Reality School of Taoism (a form of Taoism that integrated Buddhism and Confucianism into its philosophy; it spread in China during the Middle Ages and continues to thrive).

Wang Liping was born in 1949 and started his Taoist training at the same time the Great Cultural Revolution, one of the most tumultuous times in modern China, was underway. Three Taoist masters oversaw his training over the course of 15 years.

I will now quote select passages from the book and then point out the similarities between the Taoist training Wang Liping underwent and the hermetic exercises of Franz Bardon. The following passage describes exercises that are similar to the first three Steps of magic mental exercises in IIH.

The first exercise the old masters taught Wang Liping, therefore, was a practice called "repentance." What this means in the context of Taoism is cleaning the mind, clearing away mundane influences already infecting the consciousness, getting rid of the rubbish. The way this is done is by temporary isolation and self-examination. 

Now Liping sat quietly in the dark room practicing structured thought according to the directions of his mentor. First he reflected on the fact that even though his body was restrained in a small dark room, his thought could not be locked up and prevented from going out and about.... With this in mind, Liping deliberately focused his thought on his father....Now Liping began to go through books inside his brain. Here is a textbook, he began, and he started to look through it mentally from the first lesson. There is a picture of the Great Wall, very grand and impressive....He began describing it to himself. The wall is several meters in height, made of boulders and blocks, built along the spines of the mountains.

The following passages look like a combination of "mental wandering" and the magic physical exercises.

After sitting quietly for a while, Wang Liping felt his whole body become nothing. Inside his brain was a complete blank. Then, all of a sudden, images began to appear. These images were not the same as those that had appeared before when he was practicing deliberate thinking in the dark room. Those earlier images had been deliberately mentally formulated; these images appeared spontaneously. They were very real, distinct, and clear.

The Wayfarer of Pure Emptiness laughed and said, "You have again progressed further in quiet sitting. Now you have already entered into the second step of the method of developing mental capacities, which is called 'clear distinction of the real and the unreal.' When you gaze inwardly at your own body after entering stillness, even though your eyes are closed and you are in utter darkness, you can see the internal conditions of your own body with perfect clarity. When this happens, you should never be startled or frightened, and you should not engage in any activity. You must observe and make distinctions with accurate precision. See exactly how many bones there are in your head, what shape they are, and how they are joined together. What are the shapes of your internal organs? What colors are they? Are there any spots? When you can see these things plainly and register them clearly, then this becomes useful. This exercise is basic when it comes to diagnosing and curing disease. People may look well from the outside, but when you can see the internal condition of their bodies you know whether or not they are sick, and where the ailment is if they are. So this exercise method is called 'clear distinction of the real and the unreal.' Now that you have entered this domain, you should continue to practice, observing the structure of your body, remembering every detail."

Here is a short discussion of the microcosm and the macrocosm, which Bardon also emphasized in his work:

The "mechanism of heaven and earth" refers to the laws by which the universe operates. Humanity is born between heaven and earth. A human being is a microcosm that is influenced and regulated by the macrocosm. Unless you know natural laws, proper timing, and appropriate method, there is no succeeding in learning the Way. Polish away the temperamental nature of acquired habit, and fundamental essential nature appears of itself. Casting aside the ordinary mind, keep the true mind. Where does the true mind resort? To Nature.

The following reminds me of the "depth point exercise" in Step V of IIH:

A Taoist scripture says that there are 84,000 miles between the heights of heaven and the depths of earth, so the center of heaven and earth is 42,000 miles up. If the human body is a miniature heaven and earth, and the heart and navel are 8.4 inches apart, then the center is 4.2 inches from each. This opening is right in the center, where all channels connect, an empty opening with a tiny pearl hanging in space. This is the true center of the universe in the body, the aperture where the original generative energy is stored. Therefore the master teacher Chunyang said, "The mystic female, the mystic female, the true mystic female; it is not in the heart and not in the kidneys. Find out the beginning of life where energy is received; do not think it strange the celestial mechanism has been divulged." From this the importance of that aperture can be seen.

About the importance of balancing the elements in the human body

Liping's mentor had him walk along a certain prescribed route, based on the interrelations of the five elements to tune the internal five elements within the human body, using the external five elements to exert a pull on the internal five elements, so as to arrive at equilibrium of the internal five elements, in order to get rid of diseases and prolong life. 

Hygienists consider heaven and earth to be the greatest things, and humankind to be the most intelligent of beings. The human body is a microcosm, a miniature universe, having within it a sun and moon, yin and yang, and the operation of the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—fostering each other and overcoming each other, taking advantage of each other and dominating each other, thus achieving balance.

This looks like something out of the Practice of Magical Evocation:

That night, there was a fierce rainstorm, with lightning and thunder. The wizards hurriedly shut the windows; aware of the emergence of an abnormal condition,they changed into Taoist garb, took up ritual swords, burned incense, and performed a rite....Immediately they sat in a battlefront formation, held their precious swords upright, and performed an esoteric rite. The grand master first caused the wind and rain to stop in the area, and saw to it that the spirits did not interfere; he also forbade pure yin entities from approaching. The two younger masters both exercised their extraordinary arts to create a protective seal around Wang Liping's body. 

And finally, a passage about hand rituals and kabbalistic formulae:

Having spoken, the Wayfarer of Pure Serenity made a hand gesture; suddenly his whole body shook, and a peculiar stream of sounds poured from his mouth. At the same time, there was a lightning flash, followed by a distant rumble of thunder. The Wayfarer pointed both hands in the direction of the lightning, making a gentle stroking motion. The clouds in the sky began to part, opening up a strip of pale light.

I think I've already quoted enough passages so that students already familiar with Bardon's books can see enough of the parallels in both systems. What then is the significance of these similarities?

Aside from the above mentioned training, Taoists also study and practice alchemy (both internal and external), physiognomy, fortune-telling and divination, and Chinese medicine (which includes herbology and acupuncture). Franz Bardon is supposed to have said that there are 22 initiations in hermetics, each initiation represented by a tarot card. Rumor also has it that Bardon was actually tasked to release the first FIVE tarot cards, but unfortunately only three came out before fate intervened. While we don't know for sure what the other two tarot cards were going to be about, some say that at least one of them was going to be about alchemy (see again the similarity with the Taoist system?).

What I'm getting at is this, perhaps in Taoist training we see an example of what a "full deck" of Tarot cards would have looked like. Bardon was certainly fully initiated, and he did heal people using herbal and alchemical mixtures, same as the Taoists did. In fact, Franz Bardon would have fit the description of a Taoist master.

This is not to say that Taoism is "superior" to hermetics. It's just that the Taoists were more successful in preserving their lineage while hermetic science has, for the most part, become quite fragmented. I think Bardon was trying to piece together those hermetic fragments into a coherent whole while removing all the fluff that had accumulated. Of course, the whole is far from being formed but at least Bardon planted the seeds for its eventual fruition.

What does this all mean for us? Towards the end of Frabato the Magician, among the supposed previous incarnations of Franz Bardon were Lao Tzu and Hermes Trismegistus. Whether these were his actual previous incarnations or not is beside the point. What is significant though is that Lao Tzu is widely believed to have written the Tao Te Ching and is credited with the start of Taoism, while Hermes Trismegistus is the author of the Emerald Tablet and is credited with the start of the hermetic tradition. In essence, both systems come from One Source! I'm not only referring to the personalities that started these inner sciences, but rather Divine Providence that opened a way for all this occult knowledge to make its way into our physical realm.

In the end, it doesn't really matter as much what system one is following, as long as one is sincere and pure of heart. As the Taoists say, the level of one's attainment is not important, as long as you are able to help and do a lot of good deeds. And in that way can we be confident that we are representing the will of Divine Providence.

You Don't Have to Be Perfect (All The Time)

Source: mashedpotatobulletin.com

A Hindu story about the god Indra goes:

The Hindus tell a tale of one of the great gods — Indra — who, following a caprice, incarcerated himself in the body of a pig. He took unto himself a pig mate, and raised a brood of little pigs. He lost all sense of his own identity, and was thoroughly hypnotized with the idea that he was a pig. The fellow-gods, grieved at his illusion and his pitiful state, called upon him to come out of the pig-state, telling him that he was a great god and not a swinish creature wallowing in the mud. He grunted out a denial, saying: “I am a pig, not a god—let me alone!” They persisted, and he continued to repel them. They killed his pig-mate, and his little pigs, but he squealed out his sorrow and rage, and tried to destroy the gods in his wrath.

Finally they killed his pig-body, as a last resort, and lo! Indra, the god, stepped forth in all his glorious power, and laughed in astonishment when he realized the extent and degree of his late illusion.” By this parable, the Hindu teachers impress upon their chelas the fact of their Real Self. (excerpt from The Arcane Formulas by William Walker Atkinson)

And I suppose that one of the chains that prevents us from realizing our Real Self is the fear of being wrong. I sometimes think that it's the fear of being wrong that fuels a lot of the conflicts in our lives.

Why do I say it's a driver for conflict? Because being wrong is usually punished. In school, it can get you an "F." At work, it can get you fired or demoted. Contrast this with the fact that those with the fewest mistakes get the A's and the honors, and at work, minimal mistakes get you the fast track to promotion (especially if you can successfully let someone else take the fall for your mistakes) and it's easy to jump to the conclusion that "being right" is the only way to get ahead or be rewarded.

It's just my opinion, but I think most people subconsciously think and act that way. Maybe that's why it's harder for people to back down when they get into a public confrontation, because backing down means being wrong, and being wrong doesn't work out so well in school or at work.

It's okay to make a mistake, just try not to repeat it. It's just a marker for learning, but it never takes away anything from You, the Spirit. Your personality might react, but just remember the story of Indra above.

I'm not saying we should avoid striving for excellence. We should. After all, there are activities that, if botched, could harm a lot of people if not get them killed. But we should also have a reasonable acceptance that everyone is fallible. Trying to avoid getting something wrong can be as stressful, if not more so, than actually getting it wrong in the first place when done from the point of view of trying to avoid judgement from others.

Let me ask you this. How many people do you know are emotionally mature enough to realize that being wrong does not diminish their worth as a person?

Life is more than about being right or wrong. The great hermetic Franz Bardon once said, "We must enjoy the good, and learn from the bad." And while bad things may happen from making mistakes, it doesn't change the fact the we are eternal Spirits, still part of the Divine, and still loved by God. And I think if we can remember that realization in our everyday encounters, differences among people can become an opportunity for dialogue and learning, rather than as an arena for conflict and character assassination.