---
title: "From Star Wars to Hermetics: One Magician’s Journey Through Practical Magickal Training"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/from-star-wars-to-hermetics-one-magicians-journey-through-practical-magickal-training/
date: 2024-07-13
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction In this interview, Riothamus opens up about their magical and hermetic journey from Star Wars-inspired teenage dabbling to full-on magical practice, touching on everything from concentration exercises to the..."
categories:
  - "Franz Bardon"
  - "Interviews"
tags:
  - "Ceremonial Magic"
  - "Franz Bardon"
  - "Hermetics"
  - "Magic"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/80207421-1-907x1024.png
word_count: 4770
---

# From Star Wars to Hermetics: One Magician’s Journey Through Practical Magickal Training

## Introduction

In this interview, Riothamus opens up about their magical and hermetic journey from Star Wars-inspired teenage dabbling to full-on magical practice, touching on everything from concentration exercises to the practical applications of elementals in daily life. Please enjoy and do let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Huge thanks to Riothamus for sharing so openly.

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![](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Default_In_a_mesmerizing_digital_art_piece_vibrant_iridescent_2-1-1024x1024.jpg)

## Interview

**PAA: Please introduce yourself while maintaining your anonymity, let us know what you have trained and how you arrived at magick, Franz Bardon and Sixty Skills.**

Hey Perseus and Perseus readership, you can call me Riothamus!  I've only been practicing select modules inside the 60s skills master course for about a year, but I have additional experience that I'd like to relate to offer others some context as to how I've arrived at where I'm at with my practice.  Hopefully others can relate and be able to pull from this something to help enter on their own path or motivate them to continue on a path they've already embarked on.  

I've always been interested in the occult since first seeing the original Star Wars movies growing up. Yoda and Luke were fascinating figures for me and served as the Magician archetype in my mind for a long time. The religious environment I grew up around was an interesting amalgamation of Roman Catholic Italians (complete with evil eye mudras) on one side and very progressive minds with a strong current of interest in meditation and new age thinking on the other.  Looking back on it now, this sort of egregore soup was very fertile ground for magician making.  There were other more personal events that spurred me towards a very specific type of truth seeking. Ultimately, the nature of reality and the mind was something I've been interested in since I was young. 

I flirted with Western occult practices as a teenager and practiced some very basic magic. My experience with exposure to other practitioners at that time was less than stellar, bordering on cult-like, as most teenage magical practice is a reflection of a teenager's psychology: a desperate grasp for identity amidst a sea of angst and change.  However, this was also my first exposure to IIH.  I remember it distinctly as it seemed almost superhuman in practice yet deceptively direct. 

I continued to dabble into my twenties.  My time in college was spent studying classical philosophy and translating dead language while grinding away at my blackened death metal band, of which the lyrical content revolved around dreams, psychology, and the occult.  This hit a peak in 2003, when I invoked Mars on stage during its zenith and closest distance to Earth in 60 thousand years and subsequently managed to project my mind into a very high energy vibration, one in which the words can't justify other than “I am that”. It took me 21 years to really understand how and what happened that night. 

Afterwards my life imploded and I didn't touch Western occult practices until about 2-3 years ago. If I was aware that I was also basically self-initiating myself into the Mars sphere at that time it probably wouldn't have changed much as I was pretty reckless and magic being “real” wasn't something I completely believed. But like all things of this nature, these points in time serve as a nexus between life events and change. 

As I was suffering the brunt of my own actions, I was also being maneuvered by the Spiritual Genius into the correct path for myself.  I married, had a family, and a career.  My interests were redirected from the occult into interest in internal martial arts and I began a robust practice that included Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, Baguazhang, and Systema.  I was never with a teacher long enough to embarrass them with a name drop from someone who is not of direct lineage, the longest being two years. At my peak I was working 10 hours a day doing physical labor and would come home and train for another 2 hours.  This allowed for a very effective feedback loop at the physical and vital level, where I would train energy arts and then test with weight constantly, rinse and repeat. I did this for over a decade. This set a more than solid foundation for me going into the Rasmus/60 skills/Bardon methodology.  

Eventually, I felt like I was spinning my wheels with martial arts and moved on.  A few years afterwards I would come to the realization I had when I was younger: that I really just wanted to be a wizard. I started with Greer and expanded to Levi, Crowley, and Regardie. However, despite my stint as an altar boy and in theater when I was younger (and despite the fact that I was getting results), the energy paradigm used in Golden Dawn Hermetics was not 1 for 1 with what I was used to and that was a deep hurdle for me initially.  Also, ensuring success in ritual magic is partly an investment in tools and though I do have some tools I use, it's not near to the extent of the menagerie of magical gear that any GD Hermetic worth their salt would have at their disposal. I'm just not really into the arts and crafts of it. 

So when I got reintroduced to Initiation into Hermetics, this time via Mark Rasmus YouTube channel, it was sort of a godsend.  I bought a copy of IIH and Rasmus’ [Back Door into Hermetics](https://www.amazon.com/Back-Door-Into-Hermetics-Initiated/dp/1735771406) and began to immerse myself in the first few stages.  With my previous experience I had a very solid foundation in almost the entirety of the physical chain of practices so having Rasmus’ book helped immensely in saving time.  I had gotten to the point where I was experimenting with elemental training when I discovered  [Sixty Skills](https://sixtyskills.com/).  The 3 transfers alone was enough to hook me and it was easy to understand. I practiced that for weeks, just moving energy up and down the chain. While I had already started elemental practice and adapted a qigong practice to it to learn to transmute the energies, the 4 elements video was my first purchase and well worth it.  Bob's method for the elements was like jumping in the deep end of the pool.  I took a week off work, quit smoking with self hypnosis the very same week, and worked the elements in pairs back to back daily, taking 30 min to an hour long breaks in-between to allow my mind to rest. I made it my job for 7 days straight.  I was able to set magical equilibrium shortly after that.  

There has been a ton that has happened in just that year since then, a year with a lot of growth for me and quite a few intense spiritual supramundane experiences. Most recently, I've been able to use the skills in the system to reverse engineer my previous non-dual experience. I'm very stoked to start working on it as a skill!

**PAA: What have been some of the challenges for you in your training?**

I have ADHD.  This is a pretty big hurdle when it comes to concentration practices but like most things, it's all in how you approach it.  Being very aware of what you are using as an object for meditation is super important as you want something that is going to help induce that union.  The relative frequency of the object has to be higher than normal for the mind to retain that level of hyperfocus you need for the world to melt away. 

For those in the same boat as me you want your object to be something interesting.  Also, using multiple types of focus on the same object is also viable.  Once you can tap into that on command you'll be able to integrate that into other practices. Don't be afraid to just start small or experiment with multiple points of concentration as there is a good chance your mind will build some foundation in these. Also, building up the magnetic fluid will help calm things down as the matrices are dependent on it and ADHD seems to effect the matrices. Once you can start to slide your mind into Akasha the game changes. I can still struggle with concentration at times but with enough Akasha you can leverage things much easier. 

Time in the day is also a big one.  I have accumulated enough practice methods that I could work 8 hours a day for years and not master all of them. I have a very full life also and have to break my training up during the week into multiple discrete 15-45 minute windows a day.  Luckily the methodology revolves around 3 basic practices: 3 transformations up/down, working the elements, and expanding/contracting focus.  If you can do those 3 things really well the system just unfolds in front of you and you can pick up any of the practices in the system and progress quickly with them.  Many of the practices are just variations of those 3 things and all the practical work is combining those things in different ways, in different bodies, etc. 

Also, using the ABT method (Always Be Training) is integral to success.  You are training to be a magician, you should be doing magic in your daily life almost out of the gate.  Vital breathe when walking from place to place, take in an area, its context through connecting with it in the three bodies.  Take a 5-minute break from your work to settle your thoughts occasionally.  Get creative with it, with your interaction with others.  These things will become second nature and will effectively transform your life. There is no way to get in as much training time as needed if you have a family and work 9-5 but you can take an hour a day (or more if you can) for yourself to focus on training and then ABT throughout the day. 

## On General Theory of Practice

I take a certain approach to practice that I feel is both objectively sound and subjectively advantageous. Basically, it's extremely important to understand that this system is mapping out the normal function of your mind.  Contracting in union, expanding out of it, modulating focus are all normal aspects of the mind.  The different flavors of astral energy are all normal aspects of the emotional energetic field.  The main process of IIH in the beginning is naming and reassigning mental function so it can be refined to a great degree. We're altering the framework and changing the paradigm.  When we refine it to such a degree that we begin to notice the platform that it stands on, these aspects separate and the prima materia underneath reveals itself.  The more we name and refine those aspects the more of the original substance we can become aware of.  Akasha is the space where those things manifest, essentially. 

I tend to believe we are always interacting with our own hardware and software; our own psychology.  The physical apparatus is geared to be responsive to external stimuli in such a way that the feedback given is always human relevant.  Color, sound, emotion, they all follow semi predictable patterns of human relevance and one of the prime objects is to clear the astral so the reflection from physical to mental is accurate.  This doesn't mean an emotionless void, but quite the contrary, a world full of color…just color uninhibited by preestablished patterns of habituated thinking and stuck astral energy. That energy gives us the tools to get things done. 

Additionally we prime the imagination to be receptive to a high degree of internal stimuli.  The inner genius knows more than you.  Even your body picks up more information quicker than your conscious awareness and is capable of processing behavior at a far quicker rate than conscious understanding.  Associations that normal people would not make become apparent and give us a greater deal of meaning and understanding than normal Jimmy Joe on the street. What we view as clairvoyance others may see as synesthesia, but we are literally building these into our system and these connections are meant to pick up on far more than just normal stimuli (or at least what we might consider as normal). I prefer the term supramundane for these things as it implies the structures *underneath* our reality.  Operative word in subtle skills is “subtle”.

So we want the information of the body, the information from the deep mind and self, and the information from the outside (and beyond!) to all come into a well prepared container of sensation and imagination.  We prune our thought forms through release and journaling to keep the space clear and things in line.  We pull thought forms that don't belong back into the Akasha.  We keep the space between the bodies open and fluid so we have everything at our disposal. We are mastering the microcosm and our tools are the same tools we had since birth.  We are just clearing the way.  

**PAA: Depth Point - How significant do you think this part of the training is for the magician?**

Depth Point was a life saver for me. In my quick movement through the system I glossed over it, preferring to generate Akasha from above the head as my crown is very open at this point.  This can be hard to shut off, however, and I adapt to breath practices very quickly. After a few months I'd find myself generating Akasha above the head everytime I started generating any mental energy.  This became a real issue at work where being in zonked out trance is most definitely not appropriate. I had to take a break from the system because of this alone. 

Once I started zero point training it became a viable alternative for me.  The zero point lies in that empty zone underneath the heart center and is an ideal place for the mind when you want the Akasha and stillness but aren't trying to train a Kabbalistic letter or work a direct enlightenment practice. Your dwelling in a much more balanced “control center” than the head.  This is especially true since the heart center makes more decisions than people would care to admit. This is NOT a bad thing, we have three brains! One for each of the 3 major energy centers! Bottom line is it's just more stable and less intense to be there for longer periods of time and just meditate on the Akasha itself. 

In retrospect, having experience and some degree of talent was a double edged sword.  I was able to crush through to get to my goal (Akasha and “Non-dual” light) but I came to that goal missing tools I needed to cross the finish line.  Luckily, me spiraling back through the system means I actually have a better knowledge of how to train these things so there is less of me meandering around wondering if I “got it”. 

> Be very thoughtful of the finger rituals you create as it takes time to build them. 

**PAA: Do you make use of the hand gestures (finger rituals)? If so, how and to what degree?**

I'm in a period of reset. I had three sets of gestures, including a 4 stage magical equilibrium set, but as I'm heading into the next layer of my practice I'm letting them wither on the vine to create a more “logically consistent” set of gestures.  They are super valuable though. My knowledge of the system is more broad at this point and I'm looking to create a “system” of gestures that I can use indefinitely.  This is a sort of warning for others also.  Be very thoughtful of the finger rituals you create as it takes time to build them. 

I also use natural mudra, as the body has its own set of positions it likes to be in to accomplish certain goals, like concentration.  We often overlook the body's natural intelligence when that is half of what tuning into vital force is supposed to accomplish. 

**PAA: Is there anything else you would like to say about the work of the first book**

Transfer your consciousness into everything. Crystals and stones are great. Trees and plants are great to work with also.  Spend time with these things and they can enrich your practice greatly. I like to use a quartz crystal to filter life force when I'm clearing other energies that I work with.  After you work with a frequency a few times I find you don't even need the crystal anymore, you can just tune your mind to the frequency and your energy will follow, like everything else.  

Breathing vital force into the organs can get pretty trippy.  At this point, I'm 90% convinced there is a direct correlation between the electric and magnetic fluids and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.  If you are very (VERY VERY VERY) gentle, you can tune the vital force magnetic and go down through the organs to stimulate the vagus nerve.  Start at the thyroid and move down, not storing, just breathing the vital energy in and out like the organs are sponges.  Then go back up the chain of organs until you get to the thyroid with only one breath per organ.  Since you've been magnetic your inside should be somewhat chilly, but one side of your neck should still be warm.  Compare it to a map of the body's nervous system . The cold side of your neck should map up to the dorsal vagus nerve.  Don't go up to the brain with this (DON'T GO UP TO THE BRAIN).  I've given myself a crippling migraine accidentally following the nerves higher up. You're going to have a bad time. Stop at the throat.   

My new favorite thing is creating Elementals.  Not the big boys, the Elementaries, just the little “single serving servitors”.  I'm sure people have high hopes for using servitors in all sorts of clever ways but I'm pretty low brow with mine.  I create elementals like they are a post-it note system on the mental plane. My job is very high pressure and moving very quickly. Also, short term memory is not the greatest with ADHD.  I just throw a little bit of elemental energy at something I need to remember, give it a name, a shape,  and a short life span (“Remind me to do X after I finish with Y, dissolve after I finish X) and I can go about my life without having to keep a hundred plates spinning in my head constantly.  It's like Alexa for magicians. 

There are so many little tricks you can do to enhance your experience of the IIH material.  These are just a couple of mine, but I'm sure there are a ton of others that people can share and benefit from.  One person's side method can generate so many variations just based on a different person's mind getting a hold of the same method.  

**PAA: Is Evocation (perhaps using a mirror) and exploration of the Magical universe via mental wandering part of your practice?**

My mental wandering attempts have been  pretty weak, mostly because it was outside of my training goals (or so I thought!). I was also initially reluctant to train the clair skills necessary  as I have some naturally occuring mental clairvoyance and it can be distracting. I don't need that kind of thing interfering with my day to day. This calmed down substantially though as I progressed through the system and I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to start on that section of my training. 

I have started to become proficient in mental wandering through the dream gate (lucid dreaming) and that has been very interesting. I'm still getting my bearings on navigation as it's counterintuitive to moving in the physical world.  Length of time is the greatest barrier for entry.  

I don't do any evocation currently. 

**PAA: How does a student ensure Mental Wandering is a true reflection of what is and not a reflection of what is inside us?**

At my stage and with my current understanding, I view this as a false dichotomy.  All information is a reflection of what's inside us as all external information has to pass through us to be realized consciously.  However, that's a really “wizardy” statement and while true isn't helpful.  The unconscious (our medium of vision and influence) communicates in symbolism.  We have to unravel that symbolism to understand what the information is.  That symbolism is going to be personal to you and you have to figure out what that subjective information means objectively.  Functioning this way has saved me a lot of trouble with things like clairvoyant visions and in the aforementioned lucid dreams.  I've been able to pull fully functional information this way with a 70-80% accuracy that I tracked in my journal. However, these are very personal things I was tracking.  I'm not going to have the same level of advantage if I'm trying to pull lottery numbers. Not even close and for far too many reasons to mention.  

Ultimately, this is about your relationship with the medium of communication which is your imagination and your subconscious.  The better understanding you have of you, the easier this becomes.   

## Kabbalah

**PAA: Do you practice Kabbalah? As it is taught by Franz Bardon? If so, what has been your experience?**

I love Bardon’s Kabbalah.  I used to lay on my bed and hit notes on my guitar and just analyze and dissect the vibration and how it sounded and how it made me feel.  Bardon’s Kabbalah is an entire system of sound and color and feeling which is pretty much the exact same thing only on a magical level.  It's very much right up my alley.  

I've gone through the first few preparation exercises for the letters but even those exhaust me.  However, I received instruction from my spiritual genius on a 3 letter formula and I can pretty much practice this with little ill effect so I focus on this formula as mantra and I train those 3 letters individually separately.  All 3 of these letters are particular to my path personally and I find them to be a huge benefit in my day to day. 

## Internal Arts/Physical Training

**PAA: Do you have a Martial practice? If so, does this compliment your magical training?**

As mentioned I trained in internal martial arts for quite a while. Yang Taijiquan, Shanxi Xing Yi, and Sun Baguazhang.  I don't train much of any of it anymore aside from occasionally brushing off my Xingyi for fun and experimentation. The 5 element fists are a tremendous power generating method and there will always be a place in my heart for them. The system is like a moving biological expression of triangles, of sacred geometry. There are some interesting results when Xingyi is practiced with magical equilibrium in place.  Also, I'm fairly convinced that the 5 fists have a sigil like quality to them. I've practiced the fists with their corresponding planetary alchemical symbols using the ball above the head and was quickly “advised” by a non-local entity that I was not ready for this yet.  I haven't worked this method since then, but I still have it on my agenda once I start working on planetary energies.

**PAA: Do you include any tendon, connective tissue work to enhance energetic sensations? Are these traditional exercises or something of your own creation based on your experience?**

I've toyed with some basic sets and adapted them to element work.  If you have a solid foundation in internal strength practices this isn't that difficult.  The physical level manifestation of the 4 elements appears in some manner across many different systems. It makes transitioning into this more syncretic version of Hermetics pretty easy and straightforward to someone with decent internal experience. 

**PAA: How important is physical/martial training to your magical training?**

It was extremely important for my success but I really just focus on maintaining it at this point.  I was almost overly physically in both vocation and my free time for over a decade and personal injury does happen.  It was small stress injuries over a long period of time.  A reminder to the young practitioners out there that you can over do it.  Make sure to give yourself recovery time.

I still do some training using steel mace and Indian clubs, but it's exclusively for the ability to reach meditative states while practicing with them, focusing on energy states, etc.

## Other - Breathwork, Yoga, Rainbow Body, Ritual Magick

I've gone through various periods practicing Golden Dawn ritual magic.  It’s effective, I'll give it that, but after several months of continuous daily practice I think there are some conflicts between the two systems. Really it’s that the pace of Bardon's system is under your control. You put in an hour's effort and you get an hour's worth of effect.  With Ritual magic, some of it is a bit out of your control and how long it takes for the egregore to sink in, how your subconscious reacts before you start getting results.  You also don't really know how wild that ride may be.  Mileage may vary so it might be that others have better experiences.  

I will say that basic circle casting can be beneficial to the combined practice as it banishes thought forms to the periphery of awareness allowing things to be a bit more prominent than usual.  However, knowing what I know now, having Akasha to work with is extremely helpful.  While getting rid of unwanted thought forms with Akasha is a skill unto itself, it's a skill you want to have.   I currently use a modified version of the circle casting used in 60s “[Merge with Light](https://courses.perseusarcaneacademy.com/b/pNjLk)” module only with elemental pentagrams and a hexagram. These are pretty well installed in my mental sphere from previous practices so I take advantage of that. 

A big help on my journey, really the gigantic lever, has been the creation of a hypersigil. My return to magic in the past few years also spurred on my return to music and I taught myself sound engineering as well as Hermetics. I wrote a solo album during this same period with its lyrical content being my experiences that I planned on creating during my initiation, effectively creating an astrally charged road map for my own progress.  This was ridiculously effective and the ecstatic experiences I had while I was creating this *and* doing Merge with Light meditations really rocketed my progress. 

**PAA: Anything you would like to add or discuss**

Some of this can sound very whacky to some and that's understandable.  I think for people on the fence about whether they should pursue esoteric knowledge because it seems way out there…I get your reluctance.  I don't really buy into the mythos either and I'm a practicing magician.  But not all things exist inside the same framework. The longer you practice magic the more this becomes apparent.  

For those with a more scientific mindset I would direct you towards the works of Dr. Michael Persinger and Todd Murphy, both neuroscientists. They have very interesting theories and lab research on the relationship between consciousness, enlightenment experiences, electromagnetic fields and parts of biology.  Todd Murphy has a peer reviewed and published theory on reincarnation and it sounds strikingly similar to the “zone Girdling the Earth”.  

Ultimately, you don't need to know how an internal combustion engine functions in order to drive a car. You just need to turn the key and know how to turn the wheel, shift into gear, and so on.  If I were to venture a guess on how a car operates by looking at the controls of that car (key, gas, brake…)  I would not even be close to figuring it out. Being able to rebuild an alternator is not the same as driving the car.  Navigating objective reality and navigating subjective reality may have some overlapping skill sets, but they are not really the same thing at the end of the day.  I've found that in order to make progress in these things it helps to know where these skills overlap and leverage those that don't to enhance those that do. Everything feeds back into a gigantic web of skills and there is nothing inherently stupid or crazy about leveraging your subjective experience to understand yourself, your life, and the universe around you.  

**PAA: Thank you very much for sharing your journey with us, really interesting answers you provided with lots for people to go on and research for themselves. **

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