--- title: "Who Was Franz Bardon’s Teacher?" url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/who-was-franz-bardons-teacher/ date: 2024-09-12 modified: 2026-07-03 lang: en author: "Perseus Arcane Academy" description: "Who Was Franz Bardon’s Teacher? By S.H. I wish to discuss a question commonly wondered by Bardonists – “Who was Franz Bardon’s teacher?” In other words, who was the one..." categories: - "Franz Bardon" - "Guest Post" tags: - "Franz Bardon" - "Hermetics" - "Magic" image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/FranzBardon-2.jpg word_count: 1648 --- # Who Was Franz Bardon’s Teacher? ## Who Was Franz Bardon’s Teacher? **By S.H.** I wish to discuss a question commonly wondered by Bardonists – “Who was Franz Bardon’s teacher?” In other words, who was the one who guided Franz Bardon as he undertook the journey from being a mere aspirant to being the great adept we know him as today?   The traditional explanation of how Bardon became a great adept is that he was a so-called “walk-in.” In other words, the body of Franz Bardon was originally inhabited by the soul of a normal human boy, but was then taken over by the soul of a great adept around the age of 18. Lumir Bardon himself believes this story and says in *Memories of Franz Bardon* that Franz’s teachers all noticed a great change in his character and handwriting around that age. Basically, what this means is that Bardon didn’t really have a teacher who guided him to adepthood; at least not during his life as Franz Bardon. He was already an adept when he took over the teenager’s body. Of course this doesn’t mean that Bardon never learned anything from anyone. There are a small handful of people I personally know whom I consider to be adept magicians, and one thing all of them have in common is that they are all constantly learning from everyone and everything in their lives. I’m sure Bardon was no different, so from a certain point of view he had many teachers. But he didn’t have a teacher in the way most Bardonists use that term when they ask who his teacher was.  Whenever the question of who Bardon’s teacher was comes up, many Bardonists are quick to dismiss the walk-in story. They immediately jump up and claim that Bardon was taught by Czech occultist A or Czech occultist B, or that he received training while he was a member of this or that Czech occult organization. The purpose of this article is not to try to argue for or against the walk-in explanation of how Bardon became an adept, but rather to explore the interesting question of why so many modern-day Bardonists immediately dismiss it. But before we dive into this topic, I have a question for you.  *Do you believe in magic?* At first, you might answer “Of course I believe in magic! I’m working through a system of magical training after all.” But what I’ve found is that many Bardonists think they believe in magic, but really don’t. If you asked them if they believe in magic, they’d say they do. But when their belief is tested, it’s found not to exist. The question of who Bardon’s teacher was is an example of the sort of test I am referring to.  ## Filing Cabinets and Drawers So why do many Bardonists automatically dismiss the walk-in story and instead jump up to claim that Bardon was taught by Czech occultist A or Czech occultist B? The answer can actually be found in an old article by Frater Acher called “Occult Topography – or how to help your brain learn magic,” which can be read [here](https://theomagica.com/blog/occult-topography). As anyone who has read that article can clearly see, the minds of many modern-day Bardonists are like filing cabinets that simply don’t have the sort of drawers that can accommodate supernatural phenomena like walk-ins. But if you’re going to walk the magical path, then the filing cabinet of your mind really needs drawers that can accommodate supernatural phenomena. Without such drawers, you are basically handicapped and will be greatly limited with regards to how much progress you can make.  Just to clarify, having a drawer that can accommodate supernatural phenomena like walk-ins does not mean we automatically believe every walk-in story we come across. But it does mean we’re open-minded enough to consider them possible, and that we therefore don’t automatically dismiss them, especially when the story is coming from someone like Franz Bardon’s own son.  ## The Value of Wonder In his books, Bardon mentions astrology several times. It’s pretty clear that astrology is real. But if astrology is real, then this implies fate is real. After all, isn’t part of natal astrology using one’s birth chart to figure out one’s fate?  If fate is real, then this has some disturbing implications. It implies that everyone is either fated to successfully work through IIH or fated to fail to work through IIH. Roughly two decades ago, I was active on a Bardon Yahoo Group called Franz Bardon Magi. I recall interacting with some Bardonists via that group who were stuck on Step 1. Now Yahoo Groups is no more and most Bardon groups are on Facebook. On these Facebook groups, I recognize Bardonists who were stuck on Step 1 almost two decades ago and who are still stuck on Step 1. How is it that they are still stuck on Step 1, even after almost two decades? We can come up with many answers, all of them correct from a certain point of view. But the one answer underlying all of the other answers is that they are fated to fail in their endeavor to work through IIH.  So if people are fated to fail in their endeavor to work through IIH, is there no hope for them? Actually, there is still some hope for them, because there are seven things that can be used to change a bad fate into a good one. One of those seven things is wonder. In one of his articles, William Mistele explains that wonder is the most valuable out of all the things that can be used to change a bad fate into a good one. In that article, he states that to have wonder means to be aware that at any moment anything can happen.  When people automatically dismiss the walk-in explanation of how Bardon became an adept, this shows me that they don’t have wonder. As someone who does have wonder, I don’t just believe that at any moment the soul of an adept can take over the body of a teenage boy. I believe that at any moment things far more incredible than that can happen. Some Bardonists just aren’t capable of wonder. The filing cabinets of their minds don’t have the drawers needed to accommodate the idea that at any moment anything can happen, and these filing cabinets are already too solid and rigid to change, so new drawers can no longer be added. If such Bardonists are fated to successfully work through IIH, then this is fine. They have a good fate, so they don’t need to change their fate. But if such Bardonists are fated to fail in their endeavor to work through IIH, then this is very unfortunate. They have a bad fate, so they’ll need to change it into a good one. It is true that even without wonder, there are still six things that can be used to change a bad fate into a good one, but it’s much more difficult to use just these six. Wonder makes the task a lot easier. But hey, even if you succumb to your bad fate of failing to work through IIH, that’s probably better than succumbing to a fate of killing your father and marrying your mother like Oedipus did. Hopefully that’s some consolation.  ## Bardonists vs Nyingma Buddhists In the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, there are people known as tertöns who reveal spiritual teachings known as termas to the rest of humanity. The tertöns don’t come up with these teachings themselves. They receive these teachings in supernatural ways. One of the Dzogchen masters in my lineage was a tertön who received terma teachings from spirits called dakinis who visited him in dreams. In one of his essays, William Mistele tells the story of how a physical scroll containing terma teachings manifested in the hand of a young boy who was a tertön. The boy’s uncle, an advanced Buddhist, took a look at the teachings in the scroll, decided that humanity was not yet ready for them, and burned the scroll.  Practitioners of Nyingma Buddhism have no trouble believing that tertöns receive their teachings in supernatural ways. They have no trouble believing in supernatural phenomena in general. Yet if you tell the typical Bardonist that Bardon was a walk-in and became an adept in one of his previous lives rather than in his life as Franz Bardon, they’ll go “Nah, that’s impossible. Bardon must have studied with some Czech occultist or trained in some Czech occult organization.” Similarly, if you tell the typical Bardonist that Bardon learned the information in KTQ from the Earth-zone spirit Amalomi, they’ll go “Nah, that’s impossible. Bardon must have adapted that information from some version of the *Sefer Yetzirah* or learned it from some Czech Qabalist.” Nyingma Buddhists have no trouble believing that tertöns receive teachings in supernatural ways. Catholics have no trouble believing that bread and water turns into the flesh and blood of Christ during Mass. Followers of Haitian Vodou have no trouble believing that during their rituals the lwa possess certain participants. Why then do so many Bardonists have trouble believing in magic? Based on all this, it honestly seems to me like the Bardon tradition has fallen behind other spiritual traditions in a major way. So let’s catch up. Let’s do whatever it takes to develop our filing cabinets so that they have drawers that can accommodate the supernatural. For those who may not really understand the filing cabinet metaphor in Frater Acher’s article, what I am basically saying is to have some wonder. Or to quote one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”  **S.H. is an up and coming Bardonist writer whose first book, *****The Gospel of Dreams*****, is set to be published by Azure Rose Publishing if and when Divine Providence wills it. ** **Image Attribution: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FranzBardon.jpg** ---