Franz Bardon
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Franz Bardon (1909 - 1958) was a Czech occultist best known for his three volumes on Hermetic magic. These volumes were Initiation Into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation and The Key to the True Kabbalah. Additionally there was a fourth work attributed to him by the title of Frabato the Magician, supposed to be a disguised autobiography, though the factuality of its contents and its authorship are questionable.
Bardon's works are most notable for their simplicity, their relatively small theoretical sections, and heavy emphasis on practice with many exercises. Many consider him to have written the best training programs of any magician of the 20th century. They were written with the intention of allowing students who wished to practice magic the means to do so if they could not study under a teacher (which Bardon recommended if possible).
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Metaphysics
Bardon's metaphysical system starts out simplest in Initiation Into Hermetics and is expanded on in the subsequent volumes. The highest reality is the akasha, which is associated with both God and the platonic "world of ideas", and which gives rise to (and binds/balances) the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water. These four elements make up the sum of all forces and processes in each of the three worlds. Bardon also posited "electric" and "magnetic" forces, which are used more as terms for the universal active and passive forces, respectively. These are expressed in the positive and negative aspects of the four elements. Air and earth are both considered pseudo-elements as they arise only out of the interaction of fire and water (this view is probably a variation of the cosmology of the Sepher Yetzirah).
The three worlds or "planes" are as follows: the mental plane is the highest reality, save for the undivided akasha, and is the true and eternal ego. Where the akasha is in a sense the world of ideas, it is the mental plane that sets these ideas in motion. The astral plane is the next one down and contains the archetypes of the physical world and to some extent the vital energy behind it; the physical world is the lowest of the planes and requires little explanation. Each of these worlds forms a matrix for the world below it. Since humans also have three bodies corresponding to their presence in each of the three worlds, severing the link between any two of these bodies will cause the dissolution of the lower forms (or death). Such things as astral projection are still possible as they only involve loosening the hold between the bodies.
Humans are considered to be special because they alone are "tetrapolar", or inherently containing all four elements. This concept is the basis of much of Bardon's training, which requires developing deficiencies and coming to a proper tetrapolar balance -- only then could the initiate progress spiritually. Bardon repeatedly emphasizes that the initiate can only develop an understanding of himself and his universe within the scope of their awareness and spiritual maturity. Thus the more balanced, more evolved student has access to a more comprehensive reality and more magical power.
Initiation Program
Bardon's training system is comprehensive. 'Initiation into Hermetics' is divided into ten practical steps. The program further subdivides each step into three areas -- Mental, Astral, and Physical -- with the intent of developing all areas of the self simultaneously and in a balanced way. This is to ensure that the student maintain a balance of the three bodies, which accelerates progress in the long run and minimizes injury to oneself in the process of growth.
Mental exercises begin with simple observation of the mental contents and progress from there, with each subsequent exercise building on the previous. The Astral exercises focus on systematically cataloguing the positive and negative aspects of the self and, later, transforming and purifying the negative aspects into positive. The Physical exercises stress physical health and development as well as the integration and use of the physical body and physical environment into magical techniques such as rituals.
Evocation
Bardon's second work, dealing with the evocation of spirits, outlined first the symbolic meaning of the traditional ritual tools and temple designs, then goes on to describe a method of evoking spirits. In essence, the magician creates an environment hospitable to the entity in the temple or other medium of contact. They then enter a trance, projecting their consciousness into the sphere of the entity in question, and call it back. Bardon emphasized two points about doing this sort of thing: first, that one must complete the necessary prerequisites of the training program or no success was possible; secondly, that the magician must call the spirit back under their "divine authority", not as a peer, otherwise they are liable to be manipulated by the entity.
Kabbalah
Franz Bardon's third work doesn't seem to have its ideas as well developed as his first two. The idea is that the True Kabbalah is not a mantic art, as some perceptions of it (primarily relating to gematria) suggest, but a method of empowering the letters of the alphabet to create magickal effects through their combination. Bardon links this to the Tantra of the east, but the basis of this comparison is not quite clear. Unlike evocation, the student is supposedly able to begin at this form of magic without having gone through the training program, though those who have will have an easier time of it.
Criticisms of Bardon's Work
First, Bardon makes a lot of claims that the information he presents can be found in no other books, and that he is presenting the first full self-training program. A look at the time at which Bardon lived suggests that this is a somewhat unbased claim as Aleister Crowley published many books before Bardon's and was a far more prolific author. Crowley's Liber ABA was originally published in 1913, about forty years before Bardon's books, and contain comparable, if not greater, amounts of information and practical material (though perhaps more cryptic in form). This discrepency can, however, more than likely be attributed to the different languages in which they wrote and the lack of available translations of certain material in Bardon's area. From another point of view, the Golden Dawn system of Magic is claimed to be different (in goal, fundaments and practice) from pure Hermetics Initiation from several students of Franz Bardon's work.
Second, many aspects of Bardon's training program are considerably outdated, which may hinder their utility. For instance, one of the exercises involves learning self-hypnosis, but the neurology he describes is not currently considered accurate, and both the method and view of hypnosis have changed considerably in the last 40+ years such that using the described method may be a practical dead end. Also some modern magical training progams, such as those in Peter Carroll's Liber MMM, contain much shorter training programs that include the same range of basic skills as Bardon's, and are generally completed in under a year. By comparison, many proponents of Bardon's system claim that it can take a decade or more just to get through the early stages.
External Links
- Hermetic Research (http://www.hermeticresearch.org) is a Portal on serious Hermetic study and discussion.
A Bardon Companion (http://www.abardoncompanion.com) is a very comprehensive web site run by Rawn Clark. It features many articles, essays, correspondence extracts and downloadable resources relating to Franz Bardon and Hermetics.
William Mistele (http://www.lava.net/~pagios/) has written many articles about his experiences as a practitioner of Bardon's system.
FranzBardonMagi Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FranzBardonMagi/) is an unmoderated online forum dedicated to the discussion of Bardon's teachings.de:Franz Bardon