---
title: "Sixty Skills Curriculum Explained"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/sixty-skills-curriculum-explained/
date: 2025-05-13
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction Welcome. The aim of this post is to provide what is currently the most in depth look at the five part SixtySkills curriculum, below I post the video version..."
categories:
  - "Franz Bardon"
  - "Guest Post"
  - "Meditation"
tags:
  - "Evocation"
  - "Franz Bardon"
  - "Kabbalah"
  - "Magic"
  - "Meditation"
  - "Sixty Skills"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SixtySkills_Mystical_Background-1024x683.jpg
word_count: 5043
---

# Sixty Skills Curriculum Explained

### Introduction

Welcome. The aim of this post is to provide what is currently the most in depth look at the five part SixtySkills curriculum, below I post the video version and the transcript below.

##### 2026 UPDATE: We now have a new and improved page showcasing EVERY course in the 5-pillar curriculum. HERE.

https://youtu.be/cdCUS5zRlOo?si=N-LLUOyy_fk5stjs

### Comprehensive Overview

**PAA: Can you provide a detailed explanation of the five stages within the Sixty Skills curriculum? How does each stage contribute to a practitioner's journey towards magical independence? **

Okay. We start with the [master course](https://sixtyskills.com/sixty-skills-curriculum/), which is essentially Sixty skills that are universal in meditative practice that you need to master to engage all of the different magical, meditative, and yogic phenomena that are out there. It's pretty comprehensive. It covers everything from mind to energy, or, if you will, uh, astral-type work, to body training and physical work. That's the first stage. These are the basic skills, again, you need to engage in magical practice to begin with.

Following that, we get into what is now known as letter magic, or sometimes referred to as [quabbalah](https://courses.perseusarcaneacademy.com/b/sixty-skills-kabbalah). This is probably the oldest form of known magic out there, and essentially you start with the elements, then you work with all of the sub-variants of the elements. This allows you to manipulate reality at an aosic, mental, astral or energetic, and physical level, depending upon how it's applied.

Following that, we go into [planetary work](https://courses.perseusarcaneacademy.com/b/planetary-kabbalah). Now, the planets are largely energetic, or, if you will, magical in nature, but the reason why you want to learn to work with them is they are, unlike the elements, intelligent. By being able to work with the planets, you can engage various intelligences that cover every possible field of human endeavor. Additionally, the planets have a huge effect upon your emotions and mental stability, so by staging your exposure to them you become more immune to their effects and therefore more independent in your ability to act.

Following that, we work through the zodiac, or the stellar or celestial formations. There are, in fact, 12 of these, and these are the ones associated with astrology, but, unlike in astrology, we will harness the forces of these directly. While they are largely mental in nature, they have a huge impact upon how people perceive the world.

Following this, we reach the final stage in the Sixty Skills system, which is working with the powers of the Sephiroth at an akashic, or void, level, as these are essentially the foundation stones, if you will, of all material reality. This represents the path of mana, the path of enlightenment, or the upward arc. There is a path of manifestation as well, where you learn how to work with these things in a more terrestrial manner, but, as many individuals have said before me, and great masters included in this, if you achieve enlightenment first, magic is easy. If you only work on magic, you're probably not going to get around to enlightenment. So that's the whole of the Sixty Skills system.

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### Skill Progression and Integration

**PAA: Two, skill progression and integration. How are the skills distributed across these stages designed to build upon one another? Can you elaborate on the integration process as students advance through the curriculum?
**
Sure. Again, the master course gives you the basic skills necessary to do the work.

Now, as we start to advance our way from the power of the elements, which we quantify by the letters, to the power of the planets, to the power of the zodiac, to the power of the Sephiroth, we work through a process of what's known as magical equilibrium. You learn how to generate all of these independent forces, let's say at the planetary level, teach them to neutralize one another so you become more immune to their effects, and then you take those neutralized forces and elevate them up in a process of enlightenment. You do this at each level of reality. Therefore, by the time you get to Kether, or the top end of the Sephiroth, making that jump into non-dual light—or what we sometimes call the Godhead, or some people refer to as God, or complete enlightenment as in some other camps—is relatively easy to do and much more under your control. Most systems use a blunt-force method where they just build energy and then explode into that state of awareness, and while this works, it makes it very difficult to repeat.

### Time Commitment and Expectations

**PAA: What is the anticipated time commitment for each stage, and how does this align with the overall 18-month framework of the master course? **

It really depends upon how quickly you want to do things. Truthfully, what I've found over the last few years of teaching publicly is that if a student practices two hours a day, every day, they can easily complete the master course curriculum within a year and a half. A lot of people do it quicker because, quite frankly, they've had training and they don't need the whole program.

When it regards the letters and the planets and so on and so forth: the letters themselves should take you about six months to a year; the planets should take about six months—two weeks each; the zodiac, for practical purposes, will take a year; and the Sephiroth can probably be done in about six months. That represents the complete upward arc. You can do the math on that, but easily I'd say within 18 months for the first course, 28 months, 30 months—I'd say easily within three to four years you should be able to finish the whole system on the upward progression. The downward, or what I prefer to call the path of manifestation, should take about as long, so in theory, if you wanted to do everything, it would take two hours a day for about seven years, maybe eight.

### Foundation Importance

**PAA: The master course encompasses the entire 18-month curriculum, offering over 30 separate courses. How does this comprehensive approach establish the necessary foundation for advanced practices in the subsequent stages? **

Well, pretty easily. Mind training teaches you how to focus and relax your mind. The energetic training gives you the sensitivity to work with these various energies and establish things like clairvoyance and clairaudience. The body training makes everything work better, and the body training is somewhat key, because without this most practitioners get stuck at the mental or akashic level of performance because they can't bring the energy down into their body very effectively. This is one of the unique aspects of the Sixty Skills curriculum: it's one of the few places out there where you can find this openly explained. It also makes the mental and akashic-level work, or void-level work, much more effective. Of course, along the way you learn out-of-body projection and a bunch of other skills, but these allow you to engage with the latter portions of the curriculum effectively.

**PAA: Upon completing the master course, students are introduced to the quabbalah course. How does the master course prepare practitioners for the complexities of cabalistic studies and other advanced topics within the Sixty Skills framework?**

Well, as I said, it gives you all of those basic skills you need to engage things like the power of the elements via the letters, the planets, the zodiac, and, of course, the Sephiroth. What's interesting about this form of studying, which is grounded in hermetics—specifically the Franz Bardon school of hermetics—is it gives you the ability to distinctly identify which level of reality you're working at and specific tools for working at each of those levels of reality. Most schools expect you to figure this out, and it is one of the reasons why it takes so long in a lot of other traditions.

### Understanding Akasha and Its Variations

**PAA: Conceptualizing akasha. In various traditions, akasha is considered the first element created, serving as the basis and essence of all things in the material world. How does Sixty Skills define akasha, and what role does it play in your practices? **

Well, akasha is literally the power of the void, that thing out of which everything else came. In practical experience, terrestrial accasha is often perceived as a purple or dark-purple-colored energy that tends to dissolve things, has a penetrating aspect to it, and sometimes can be associated with the sound of shearing metal.

In the Sixty Skills curriculum we give you very concrete ways of engaging with this, specifically through the creation of equilibrium using the four elements, which in this system are fire, air, water, and earth. By learning to establish the elements clearly and cleanly, and then doing them in a kind of balanced equilibrium manner, this allows you access to your own akasha. It is by far the fastest way to do this and, quite possibly, the safest way as well. Once you can generate your own akasha, this gives you access to non-dual light, or the power of the Godhead. At this point you are essentially an esoteric adult.

This is the important part about the Sixty Skills system. When you do a lot of energetic practice you tend to attract the attention of various spirit entities, and they can be quite bossy, but there's a catch: if you have your own akasha—non-dual light, on the other hand—you are more in the driver's seat because you have the ability to banish or send those entities away that someone who does not have conscious control of this generally lacks. It really changes the nature of the relationship of a lot of these entities.

**PAA: Exploring different types of akasha. Some philosophical traditions classify akasha in different categories, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the element. Can you elaborate on these classifications and how they influence your teachings?
**
Sure. In our system we basically have five types of akasha we work with. These are defined according to letter magic, or Kabbalah. You have the letter E, which is that purple, terrestrial, penetrating akasha. You have the letter Y, which is a pink, kind of floating akasha. You have the letter A, which is an earthy, kind of yellow or gold-colored heavy akasha. You have the letter umlaut O, which is a kind of orange, hot, heavy akasha. Finally, you have the letter U, which is a silver, mercury, black-mercury-colored cosmic akasha. The main difference between the letter E and the letter U is the letter E grounds back to the body, whereas the letter U does not, which makes it a little trickier to work with. We break it down into five different basic categories. If you look at what we do with letter magic as a tuning-fork system, you can see how there are actually many other variations on this, but by learning to work with these five variations of akasha it tends to give most people the refined level of, let's call it, attachment or discernment that allows them to work with akasha at large.

**PAA: Addressing knowledge limitations. Given the vast and subtle nature of accasha, our understanding might be limited. How do you approach these limitations in your practice, and what strategies do you recommend for practitioners to deepen their comprehension of akasha?
**
Well, first of all, we encourage journaling. In fact, if you're not journaling while doing these practices, you're probably making a mistake. Additionally, we have an online community that is by private invitation only to course members, where you can meet and communicate with others regarding your experiences. You need to understand the power of the void is vast, tremendously vast, and predates time and form, so there's really no ultimately knowing accasha; there's just knowing it better than you did yesterday.

**PAA: Practical applications of akasha. Your teachings emphasize the importance of akasha in achieving magical independence. How do practitioners effectively harness akasha in their meditative, ritual practices? Are there specific methodologies or exercises that facilitate this connection?
**
Absolutely. The basis of learning to control or work with akasha on your own is through, again, equilibrium—this balancing of fire, air, water, and earth. You'll learn how to do it internally to your body; you'll learn how to do it externally to your body. Once you have active control of this, achieving access to your own non-dual light—or what some would call the fine providence—is relatively easy. More importantly, because you now have the ability to dissolve the subtle bodies of various spirit entities, they tend to become very respectful. Also, in turn—and this is part of the path of manifestation—you gradually gain the ability to pull the other elements out of the akasha directly, instead of only being reliant upon what is available in the ambient atmosphere around you. This greatly reinforces your position within the universe and is a hallmark of an internal-power practitioner.

**PAA: Experiential outcomes. Based on your observations, what transformative effects have practitioners experienced while engaging deeply with akasha? Are there noticeable enhancements in spiritual awareness or capabilities?
**
Absolutely. Access to akasha is often coincided in more traditional systems with activation of the kundalini or activation of the siddhis writ large. Most people develop some degree of clairvoyance and clairaudience upon working with akasha, and this, in turn, allows them to see the world as it is and not as we wish it to be, which is the case with most people, because belief really influences your perception of reality in ways that are quite profound. Akasha strips away some of these rose-colored lenses. Additionally, akasha allows you to see both your past and future on a limited level and allows you to deal with those issues directly, whereas most people have to deal with them passively. It is, to be blunt, a transformative experience.

### Integration of Zodiacal and Sephirothic Energies

**PAA: Conceptual framework. In your work you discuss the synthesis of zodiacal influences with sephirothic energies. Could you elaborate on the theoretical underpinnings of this integration and its significance within the Sixty Skills curriculum? **

Sure. On a basic level the letters represent the power and energy of the phenomenal world; the planets, that of the astral or energetic world; the zodiac, that of the mental world; and the Sephiroth, that of the akashic world. By the way, you have akashic, mental, astral, and physical bodies that you work with. These stack one on top of another, and by working with the zodiacal and sephirothic forces you begin to understand the mental influences and the akashic influences that occur to everybody in a very refined and tangible manner.

Where this is important is it's unclear if, say, the planets are the source of astral energy at large, but it's very clear that they generate a lot of astral energy. It's unclear if the zodiac is the source of mental energy, but it certainly generates a lot of mental energy that can be worked with, and the Sephiroth the same with the various aosic forces. By working with these, it gives you a more complete mastery of your environment around you and makes you a more effective magician.

**PAA: Practical applications. How do practitioners effectively combine the powers of the zodiac with the Sephiroth in their meditative or ritual practices? Are there specific methodologies or exercises that facilitate this fusion? **

Absolutely. Take something like Aries. Aries is part of the zodiac. It's also associated with Mars and with a specific form of fire energy. In our system you learn how to stack these different forces one on top of another in your meditative and yogic practices. This results in a very powerful ability to generate unified forces with which you can work in your environment around you. So, for example, if you're dealing with someone who's ill from a kind of deficiency disease, this combined force of Aries, Mars, and fire energy can counteract that in them. If you want to take it one step further, you can use Geburah at the sephirothic, or akashic, level. That's how this works. What's interesting is you can generate very similar or like effects strictly using letter magic, but by learning to stack the forces things become much more potent, as it represents a more clear representation of reality at large.

### Explorations of Pluto and the Outer Planets

**PAA: Esoteric significance of Pluto. Your writings highlight Pluto's role in refining the physical body and its association with hidden magics and nuclear power. How did your private practice group uncover these attributes, and what methodologies were employed in working with Pluto's energies? **

Sure. Mainly by accident. I hadn't really understood how the letters, the planets, the zodiac, and the Sephiroth stack one on top of each other when we began these explorations. My private practice group had finished their build-out of the letters of the elements, or Cabala, and we decided to start working with the planets. As we got further into that we were contacted by various entities through a process known as pathworking that encouraged us to explore Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and later on the extra-solar region. It was through this process of pathworking—by going from one planet to another—that every time we finished a planet we'd be given just a little bit of information about the next one. We had expected to stop at Saturn, but when we got to Saturn it was made clear that there was more to go, and that's how we wound up in Pluto. So it was a combination of doing pathworking to develop the sigils and out-of-body projection into these planetary systems in which we engaged with various spirit entities there and were made aware of the properties of those places.

**PAA: Energetic strengthening through Pluto. You mentioned that after a month of working with Pluto your group experienced a notable increase in energetic strength without altering daily practice. Could you delve into the mechanisms behind this phenomenon and its implications for practitioners?
**
Sure. Pluto is involved with a further refinement of the physical body. Depending upon who you ask, it has to do with three planets: Earth, Mars, and, interestingly enough, Saturn in its aspect of rebirth or regeneration. One of the skills that you learn when you work with Pluto is how to vibrate the power of the elements at a cellular level within the body. This is a very potent way of generating energy that doesn't require you to pull energies from the outside world into you. You actually use the body as a crucible, if you will, or mandala. It's quite potent and very interesting, and this was the first time I gained real experience of this method.

**PAA: Inner vibratory sensations. The discovery of generating inner-vibratory sensations without vocalization was a significant outcome of your Pluto work. How does this capability impact the practice of cabalistic letter magic, and what are its broader implications within the Sixty Skills framework?
**
By being able to vibrate the letters at the cellular level it greatly increases your throughput of energy, and as you work your way through the Sixty Skills curriculum you learn additional methods that enhance your ability to generate these forces on your own without having to use more conventional approaches. In practice you end up stacking all of these, like the vibratory-mantric-type work, along with the inner vibration, establishing better equilibrium, and being able to increase your throughput, all of which, over time, greatly increase your ability not only to pinpoint which energies you're working with but also your ability to increase the volume of energy, if you will, that is being employed.

**PAA: Challenges and safeguards. Engaging with outer-planetary energies, particularly Pluto, can be overwhelming and may pose risks such as psychological distress. What precautions and remedial measures do you recommend for practitioners to ensure safety during these advanced practices?
**
Well, first of all, there's counterbalancing. With the outer planets you're going to be counterbalancing with solar energy, which, in turn, will need to be counterbalanced with lunar energy, so this can result in these meditations taking quite a lot of time. Additionally, the outer planets can result in the development of suicidal ideation amongst practitioners, so you have to watch out for this. However, in Bardon's second book the first solar genius, or angel, in the sun sphere is known as Imnixut. Imnixut can literally draw that out of you and does so very quickly. So there are that and a few other things that are built into the system, but, suffice to say, there are many safeguards and let's call them remedial techniques designed to address these problems in the greater curriculum.

### Private Group Practice and Methodologies

**PAA: Formation and objectives. Could you provide insight into weekend private practice groups? What were the primary objectives, and how did collective efforts enhance the exploration of advanced esoteric practices?**

Sure. The private practice groups we offer pretty much every weekend, unless I'm on the road, and I'll work people through the letters and the planets and the zodiac and now the Sephiroth. By working in groups it is said the amount of energy, if you will, being developed squares or cubes, so two people working together have the power of four people working independently; three, that of nine; so on and so on. I don't know if that's exactly true, but what everybody will tell you is working in a group greatly enhances the overall effect. This serves as a kind of initiatory experience that your body remembers. This way, even when you're working on your own with this—and it can be years or decades later when you actually choose to do this, which is why you should do it, quite frankly, now—your body will know, based off that experience, that specific frequency or wavelength of energy that it's interacting with. This is super valuable, because if you don't have this and you're strictly working on your own it can take a really long time to figure out how to do things, and you'll make mistakes, and I say this from experience. So working in a group enhances and speeds up your development.

**PAA: Collaborative discoveries. In the course of your group's works, what discoveries emerged that might have been challenging to achieve individually, and how do group dynamics contribute to these insights?
**
Well, one: the living-crystal device. When you're working with the outer planets, and particularly the zodiac, the energies can become very subtle, and if you're working by yourself it's really easy to miss out on things. It's frequent in my private practice group that, you know, I'll have a bad day, or one of the other members will, but the other people who were there didn't, so they can fill in the details. If I were working on my own through Bardon's mandala on the cover of his third book, "Key to the True Quabalah," I don't know if I would have finished, because, again, some energies you're just not going to resonate very well with, and that's where working with others is really handy.

**PAA: Balanced individual and group work. While much of magical practice is solitary, what advantages do group settings—such as those in your private group—offer? Are there specific skills or experiences that are best cultivated in a communal environment?**

Like we talked about, working in a group environment allows for a higher volume or flow-through of, if you will, energy. This makes it particularly attractive or helpful if you're working with a more advanced practitioner to positively identify an energy the first time you're doing it; otherwise, a lot of times you're sitting there wondering just what happened. Also, because of the profound nature of what goes on with some of these practices, it's easy to second-guess yourself and say, "Did that really happen, or was this my imagination?" By working with others you have people to bounce this off of, and it's just really, really, really valuable. Again, the majority of the work will be done on your own, but having others definitely speeds the process and results in additional insight, because, largely speaking, the entities reflect off the individual doing the practice, and we're all different. The result is we all gain additional insights by talking to others and working with others that we could not gain on our own.

### Curriculum Development and Evolution

**PAA: Incorporating outer-planetary work. Given the profound experiences and insights gained from working with outer planets like Pluto, how have these findings influenced the evolution of the Sixty Skills curriculum? Are there plans to integrate these practices more formally into the training modules?
**
Yes. These are living courses. Updates don't happen very often, but they do happen from time to time. A good example is the continuing evolution of including pranayama, or breath retention, across the five levels of the curriculum. The fact of the matter is the courses work on their own. Now, there will be, like I said, improvements made from time to time as I simply find a better way to do things, and, keep in mind, by the time a course is released I've already worked multiple groups of people through the coursework before I choose to record it. This allows for a more nuanced discussion of what's going on.

**PAA: Addressing contemporary practitioner needs. How does the curriculum adapt to meet the needs of contemporary practitioners, especially those interested in exploring beyond traditional hermetic practices? Are there resources or guidance provided for such advanced explorations?
**
Sure. All the tools you need to do it with are there. But here's the thing: it's a commonly understood phenomenon in magic, or, if you will, meditative works, that when a work gets more than 70 to 100 years old it's no longer directly perceivable by the person in the modern era. The Buddhists get around this by having their commentaries, which are invaluable; it keeps those older works alive, if you will. This video presentation of hermetic practice is just such a thing. It's for the modern era.

Keep in mind, historically finding teachers and working with people was really hard. You were moving at the speed of your feet or your horse if you were really wealthy. Now we can communicate across the planet almost instantaneously. I like to say that this helps contemporary practitioners more effectively dial into what they're doing. A good example in the curriculum is the need for body training. If you were alive 100 years ago you didn't have a whole lot of need for body training because it was a much more physical world than we have now. Also, back then you would have needed to spend more time on general-purpose visualization exercises. Things like television and the internet make modern people really good at visualizing things; in the past this simply wouldn't have been the case. However, modern people aren't nearly as physical as people in the past were, so there's more remedial work on physical training in the coursework.

### Practical Applications and Outcomes

**PAA: Real-world benefits. How do the skills acquired in the master course translate into practical benefits in a practitioner's daily life? Can you share examples of transformations or capabilities that students have reported upon completing this stage?
**
Sure. There's what we often refer to as the process of ennoblement. This is a fancy way of stating someone loses all their bad habits. In the case of a practitioner, this is done for purely selfish reasons because bad habits make it harder to practice, but the people in your personal life on the receiving end of your improved behavior don't care; they just know that they treat you better. I've seen amazing transformations over a period of years in the behavior of people—overcoming addiction, sexual-behavior problems, financial irresponsibility, you name it—all because they simply wanted to be able to practice without being bothered. That, my friend, being able to change yourself, is the greatest magic of them all.

On a more practical basis, very quickly, within learning to work with the power of the elements, you can increase your run times, get stronger, speed the rate of healing from injuries—so on and so on and so on. It's a very practical form of doing things, which is the reason why it's survived. Magic exists because, if you don't have the technology to do something, there is one other way by which you can do it.

**PAA: Customization and personal focus. Given the comprehensive nature of the master course, how can students tailor their learning experience to focus on one specific area of interest or address individual weaknesses within the broader curriculum?
**
You'll know when you're weak at something because it'll be hard to do. Here's the difference between a magician and a chi-guy or a dabbler: a magician, just like a pro athlete, works on things not until he can do them but until he or she cannot fail at them, which means you're going to spend a lot of time working on things you're not very good at. This practice can be pretty boring, but that's where the magic happens.

In terms of tailoring things, it really depends upon what you're doing. If you're working in a hands-on healing clinic using energetic healing, you're going to want to do a lot of standing or movement-based practices that generate very terrestrial energies— a lot of the weightlifting. On the other hand, if, let's say, you're an industrial engineer and you want to get one step ahead of your contemporaries in terms of state-of-the-art design, you're going to be doing a lot of out-of-body exploration of the planets to get your hands on that technology that can be manifested in the here and now. Functionally speaking, it gives you about a 10-year head leap on most people because of the availability of the things you would need to implement the technology.

### Conclusion

That's just a basic breakdown of the Sixty Skills curriculum and what goes on. If you have any other questions you can contact Perseus Arcane Academy and they will forward these to me. As per usual, train hard and be well.