---
title: "Why We Practice Hermetic Initiation: Frater IAC on His Franz Bardon Journey"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/why-we-practice-hermetic-initiation-frater-iac-on-his-franz-bardon-journey/
date: 2025-05-14
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction I am so pleased to have this interview, we discussed this back in 2024 but it was not yet the right time. Now out nowhere we have a 17,000..."
categories:
  - "Franz Bardon"
  - "Interviews"
tags:
  - "Franz Bardon"
  - "Hermetics"
  - "Magic"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/featured_image-1024x683.jpg
word_count: 17866
---

# Why We Practice Hermetic Initiation: Frater IAC on His Franz Bardon Journey

## Introduction

I am so pleased to have this interview, we discussed this back in 2024 but it was not yet the right time. Now out nowhere we have a 17,000 word interview! This is another that goes into the special category as this is a practitioner just like us, he is not a famous name. Frater IAC’s journey through Franz Bardon’s Hermetic path is a testament to both rigorous discipline and transformative insight. With over sixteen years of metaphysical practice behind him—and having completed Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics before dedicating the past year and a half to the Key to the True Kabbalah—he offers rare, firsthand perspective on the trials of soul-mirror work and the deep rewards of steadfast commitment. This interview serves as an essential guide for any aspirant seeking to walk the Bardon path with clarity and purpose. Thank you very much Frater IAC.

If you enjoy and appreciate this interview then please do let us know. We love to hear from those that read our blog.

---

Table of Contents

- Introduction- 1 · Why We Practice- 2 · The Discipline & the FunStart a Course on Perseus- 3 · Healing & Service- 4 · Mindsets & “Isms”- 5 · Tools of the Trade- 6 · Working with Spirits- 7 · The True Kabbalah Frontier

## 1 · Why We Practice

**PAA: What inner or outer call first nudged you toward Franz Bardon’s system, and how has that call matured since you began?**

In December 2024, James asked if I would be willing to share a bit about my journey as a Hermetic Initiate. I was gratified but wanted several months to continue my work prior to actually doing it. 

I have finished Initiation into Hermetics and have worked with the letters in Key to the True Kabbalah (KTQ) for nearly a year-and-a-half. I have also interacted with a number of spirits. So, I am very much still on my own journey. My hope is that each one who reads my answers to these questions may find something that will materially help them on their own journey.

I have been practicing metaphysics for over sixteen years now, and what I still do not know could fill a library. That is the truth. When I first began studying this in earnest, I was just over fifty and at first it seemed very daunting. Where to start? Astrology? Witchcraft? Ritual magic? The Kabbalah? There is just so much. 

*Certainty* can be the enemy of truth. I am in the latter half of my sixth decade in this incarnation, and have lost count of the times I have been absolutely sure of something and then been proven wrong. So, I’m going to be honest here. I know a lot about this, I really do, and have done many magical workings in the time I have practiced, some of them quite powerful. After all, why do this if you aren’t going to use it? But by no means do I know everything. This is why we have a Bardon community here on Perseus and also on a number of internet sites. It is good to compare notes so we can all get better together. 

A great awakening of human consciousness is underway, and as Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, “Come, Watson, the game is afoot!”

My calling? Well, a number of family members had more than a touch of the gift. On my father’s side, which was quite intellectual, there was quite a bit of interest in Theosophy and its offshoots, and both paternal grandfather and my father were 32nd degree Scottish Rite masons. On my mother’s side, a bit more earthy, there was a strong element of what we might call conjure, folk magic or mountain magic. My grandfather on that side was a powerful root doctor who knew much about herbs and folk medicine. He spoke prophetically on a number of occasions, and could weave powerful word-spells. He never would have called himself those things though because he was also a devout member of the Church of Christ. A farmer, deputy sheriff and churchman, he was born in 1876 in the hills of Arkansas, had a fourth-grade education and could recite whole chapters, even books of the bible by heart. Quite a man, and I’m proud he was my grandfather. 

When I think back, my first external call was at around age four when he spoke to me magically. I won’t say more, but somehow he set me on the right track because later events in my life could have led me down some very dark paths. The second call was external as well. When this call came, I was just twenty and had gotten some bad news. I was having a real pity-party, let me tell you. Through my tears I saw an old King James bible on the shelf, and without thinking I picked it up, opened it to a random page, stuck my finger on some text and read, “Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver. I have molded thee in the furnace of affliction.”

> That blessed being we know as the HGA or Holy Guardian Angel spoke audibly to me for the first of two times in my life. He chewed me out, told me that I would never amount to anything if I kept waiting for other people to do it for me. Anything I would ever do or be was totally on me. Not exactly a gentle experience.

That was a cheerful message! Speaking from the perspective of 66 years, that furnace of affliction is a real frolic. But there was more. That blessed being we know as the [HGA or Holy Guardian Angel](https://courses.perseusarcaneacademy.com/b/courses-1-3-attaining-your-guardian-angel-by-denny-sargent) spoke audibly to me for the first of two times in my life. He chewed me out, told me that I would never amount to anything if I kept waiting for other people to do it for me. Anything I would ever do or be was totally on me. Not exactly a gentle experience.

So why not get into this thing we call Hermetics right then and there? Because I was busy making a living to support myself. I met my first wife, we married and began raising a family. I finished college, got a good job, went to grad school, and built a reasonably successful career. Had kids, got divorced, got remarried, had grandkids, generally just living a normal life. You get the idea. Life happens and I had hearth, home and career as a focus and both metaphysics and spirituality took a back burner.

The internal call came in the mid-2000s  when I was in my forties. I was reading a book by Itzhak Bentov called *Stalking the Wild Pendulum*. Somehow I ran across the term Hermetics and this led me to the *Kybalion*. There is a sentence in there that hit me like a ton of bricks. It said the book would not have come to me if I was not ready to learn what it held. I took that at face value and begin studying about Hermetics in earnest. You will note that the word I’m using here is ‘study.’ I did not actually begin practicing until a bit later. 

I suppose we could consider this my first real lesson in magic – it begins with an idea arising from some inspiration or gestalt, then the mind studies and learns. All the while, the soul yearns to begin doing it. Then, at a certain level of maturity, one sets foot on the Initiatory Path and at that point the Universe moves.

How has the call matured? Well, I’ve been lucky. In my work, I have spoken to many people who are quite successful in life, and without exception these people are mission-driven. The truly successful have set themselves a purpose in life that usually involves helping others in some significant way, and they act according to that purpose at all times. For them, this raison d’etre is never far away, because it has become their north star.

For myself, I can say that for decades my own mission has been to *wage peace against economic violence*. This mission was mundane for a career that has spanned nearly 40 years, and only became a magical mission when I completed the basic Bardon Initiatory Path as set forth in Initiation to Hermetics (IIH). I now routinely amplify my mundane efforts using the power of focused intent, which we refer to as ‘magic,’ because this mission truly needs magical help. I still find myself going back and reviewing this IIH material and revisiting the exercises when and as needed. These tools stay with you for the rest of your life and each time you repeat an exercise from this book, the experience deepens, grows richer.

Lately, maybe the last few years, I have expanded this mission in a number of shamanic or pastoral ways. I now think of my ‘magical mission’ as being a guardian of the human heart, to *provide good and loving service to the life and collective soul of the people.* The ultimate objective is to awaken humanity, to raise the levels of human consciousness, ideally to the highest realms of love, joy, peace and enlightenment. Perhaps we could say to help people realize they are called to live in a way that respects the Divine and this sacred earth at the same time. Humans are the bridge, if you will, between Father Sky and Mother Earth. 

**PAA: What personal transformations should someone realistically expect—physically, emotionally, mentally—during the first year on the Path of Hermetic Initiation?**

This is a great question. For me this transformation has brought great inner peace and happiness. I marvel at how wondrous this path is daily. It seems to me at this point my entire life has become magical, sparkles with universal light. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I still have adversities that crop up. All of us do. But life is now lived in a state of profound gratitude and nearly continuous joy.

I will tell you that if you are just beginning your work with Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics, you will be a completely different person when you finish the final step than you were going in. You will not care about the same things, or perhaps you will care about the same things, but differently. Part of this transformation is internal, a result of your own hard work, but the other part is the help you get from Divine Providence. You will need to be diligent, and persevere even through adversity and challenges because you *will be challenged on this path*. The universe will test your resolve to ensure you are worthy of these gifts. You will likely undergo what St. John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul. Don’t give up. Ever. When things seem darkest, that is the time to buckle down and redouble your effort. Don’t ever let up.

In the first two steps of IIH, you begin applying thought control, mindfulness, concentration, vacancy of mind and construct your soul-mirrors. You are given real techniques to perform the spiritual alchemy that will change your astral and mental lead into spiritual gold. Those techniques work. You will systematically change your vices into virtues, purify body, soul and mind.

Physically, many Bardonists are into Yoga or various martial arts. This is excellent, and if you can you should. But not everyone can. I have never had full use of the body I was given in this incarnation, but I do as much as I can. There are disabilities I will carry to the death of this clay vessel, and those must be patiently borne.

The main thing here is that you remember that your body, such as it is, is a temple, so you want to take as good a care of it as possible. We all must play the hand we are dealt as effectively as we can. Remember this – if the body that carries around your soul, mind and spirit in this lifetime is not as strong as other bodies, or cannot do the same things at the same level physically, do not worry about that. Do the best you can. That will have to be good enough. Having disabilities has never stopped me from doing what is important, so don’t let things like that stop you. Even if it seems daunting, try anyway. 

Taking control of your emotions and thoughts is a fascinating discussion because it has to do with passing the first veil in your ascent wherein you master those emotions and thoughts that no longer serve you – essentially, you begin exerting control over the heretofore wild elemental forces within. These are things like rage, resentment, self-pity, fears around suffering, death, not being popular, shame – the list goes on. I had well over 100 at the start and the mission is to transmute them, all of them, into their respective virtues. 

This is the *initial work* with the soul mirror, and it is the 32nd Path (Tau) between Malkuth and Yesod on the Tree of Life. Its Tarot card is the World or Universe, which denotes mastery of the elements within yourself. In the Rider-Waite deck, she is presented as a woman (some say androgyne) who has learned to control the elemental forces within and now floats in a wreath. She holds two identical wands – one representing her will and the other God’s will. We cannot tell the difference between these wands because her purity of soul and mind has allowed her to connect with the Godhead and join her will to that of Divine Providence. She floats, in other words, in the currents of Divine Intent. She has become a powerful instrument in service to that Intent.

So what is beyond this first veil? On the Tree of Life, Yesod, Hod and Netzach together make up the triangle of Personality. Yesod is the Moon, called the plane of Formation. It is where the archetypes arising from Netzach, whose planet is Venus, join with the Mercurial intellect from Hod to create new realities, new conditions that eventually manifest in the physical plane. This is where you begin learning to work with the elemental forces, the fluids and vital energy – practicing real magic. 

On a personal note, when I finally finished Step 2 sufficiently to move safely into this work, I was very happy because I knew with certainty that even if I died that very day, my work with the soul mirrors alone signified a life well spent. Learning to tame yourself is one of the most worthwhile things you can do. It is well to remember that life on this plane is a transitory thing, and the best use of it is to learn as much as you can before you move on. 

Why do some Hermeticists (even very competent ones) operate anonymously, and how do you decide what to share versus keep private? 

The answer to this question is simple, short and obvious. Let’s say an advanced Hermeticist is an elected official, or a ‘C-Suite’ officer in a multinational corporation. Their abilities to make positive changes in the context of these and a plethora of other careers – teachers, counselors, communicators, physicians, physicists, life and social scientists, engineers, service providers – would come to a screeching halt if they went around blabbing about magic, wouldn’t they? Some Hermetic Initiates can and do use their real names. Others do not. Respect all.

Remember this community runs deep. There are many who practice under the radar, remaining strictly silent, revealing nothing. Some of these are powerful almost beyond the imagination. Many serve the light, helping people learn to live in harmony with Divine Providence and all life. Some serve the darkness, practicing selfishly, advancing only their unbridled lust for wealth and temporal power. Again, respect all, because even the most odious and cruel actors have their purpose in this great moving tapestry of destiny, shaping either the evolution or involution of human consciousness.

All humans learn. Most learn through fate. They do dumb stuff, and keep getting hit over the head with the consequences of that dumb stuff until they eventually learn. Others, pure of soul and more mature, take control over their spiritual ascent. That is us, and we make up only a tiny bit of humanity, but hopefully we Hermeticists who serve the light make an outsized contribution to the awakening of our species to its birthright of connectedness with God and our sacred earth.

I’ll leave this question with a quotation from an essay written by Frater Acher:

> *Anyone who has set foot on the magical path knows that surrendering one’s name is a fundamental step in initiation. Often, the mundane name is replaced by a pseudonym or a motto — something that encapsulates the aspirant’s magical intent. Yet even these magical names are temporary by nature; they are assumed to serve a purpose and discarded once that purpose is fulfilled. Beneath them all, the advancing aspirant begins to recognize, over the years and through the changing of names, something profoundly nameless. He comes to see himself as the bench upon which an endless procession of names has taken a seat. Some remain, others vanish, a few carve themselves into the wood and are still forgotten. Yet, the bench itself has no name — or rather, it is too shapeless, too impermanent, too withdrawn to be bound by letters. And yet, this bench is the very thing that has borne all names and will bear them still*.
>
> Frater Acher

## 2 · The Discipline & the Fun

**PAA: Some steps feel like a sheer grind. Which exercises did you find hardest, and what concrete tactics turned them into something you actually looked forward to?**

I have plenty of stories around that and may hopefully offer some suggestions that can help others work through these times, because we all experience them in our ascent. First, let us consider the ‘occult.’ The word simply means ‘hidden,’ but there is great meaning in that. Many begin this work thinking to forcefully penetrate this veil, reach in and slurp up all knowledge and power and all of a sudden become godlike in their might. Not so fast!

It doesn’t exactly work that way. The occult hides in plain sight and no matter how many times you read something or attempt to master it, until you are mature enough spiritually, it will continue to elude you. Why? I have come to realize it is for our own good, because if we are able to access and wield these powers before we are physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually ready, we would become like a three-year-old fooling around with a chain saw. If we are really lucky, nothing at all will happen. If we are not, then we may face disaster. 

So this learning is a two-way street. Your part of it is to make the effort every single day to purify your heart and mind, then learn to control these forces rather than allowing them to control you. The part of the unseen, the spirit realm – your HGA, ancestors known and unknown, guides, other spirit beings, and Divine Providence itself – is to reveal its ‘occult’ secrets when and as you mature.  

Examples? Well, I can remember puzzling long and hard over which element to assign to both vices on the dark mirror and virtues on the light one. I was not nearly knowledgeable enough about the elemental forces to do this at all, let alone do it well. So I found another way. Since I’m Christian, I hit on the Seven Deadly Sins as the rubric to organize these vices and virtues. I made much better progress after this, and it became easier as I worked the soul mirrors to understand the element or elements that had to do with the trait I was trying to transmute. 

I did make a serious mistake. I got impatient and tried to skip ahead to pore-breathing the elements in Step 3 before I had completed the basic soul mirror. The raw power of the fire element came upon me and it hurt me in a number of ways. As a result, I was out of the Bardon game for a couple of years, maybe three or four. But I’m not one to give up. I still read, but focused on more innocuous things like learning the Tarot. I found a really good book called [*Tarot Skills for the 21st Century: Mundane and Magical Divination* by Josephine McCarthy. ](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tarot-Skills-21st-Century-Divination-ebook/dp/B08B45X6TP/ref=sr_1_4?adgrpid=1174279329829202&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sVjeLs9tYbLafer5YAVY2-9w--bHrxZ29gskKaq5E5z0RSOiB-kgNXk3XI1tSVJBahDmAi0_0sj1nCzxC60InOJ131Mux1ehdk03UdI7qVbrdpB67m9r4SStwQUyDIKJguFNhQynAwPMqAF2-nXzOJtdOrIWt0wrkoC_S-omHJWXinycKYRRWdro-tvr8KVit17AOrs9FPLaTflYLsTM8xOy-R_5eqQvqkkEbt9iilA.m7gZ0gy2CjlI5rr-IFY_UA_nAQ602YubrJIZOEOeZkE&dib_tag=se&hvadid=73392659649176&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=40887&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=p&hvtargid=kwd-73392613183409%3Aloc-188&hydadcr=10538_1819784&keywords=tarot+skills&mcid=60e773e880cd3472a36ef22a4367c292&msclkid=eaaaa377ee611a124dcccb539f04c464&qid=1747218810&sr=8-4)

This lead me to read all of Josephine McCarthy’s books, which are quite good, and I spent a couple of years going through the Apprentice exercises in [Quareia](https://www.quareia.com/), which is a balanced and complete training program in and of itself, but in the end I did not commit to that because I dislike failing and I had failed at Bardon. So I went back and got serious about the soul mirror work.

Another mistake I made was forgetting about the white mirror because the black mirror was so time-consuming. But you must work them together, black and white, dark and light, vice and virtue. Know why? Transmutation. The very process of spiritual alchemy calls for you to transmute the vices that no longer serve you into virtues that do. I found the soul mirror process worked best for me when I worked on getting rid of a dark-mirror characteristic and at the same time worked on strengthening its corresponding virtue on the white mirror. That was when I began making real progress.

Soul-mirror work: do you ever “finish,” or is it a lifelong diagnostic? How do you keep it fresh after Step 2? 

I’m not sure what year I found Bardon, but when I read Initiation into Hermetics I knew right then it would be my initiatory path. The value of Bardon’s path is in its balance. One of the main reasons I chose it is that I recognized that if someone diligently performed the painstaking work in Steps 1 and 2 of IIH and then made it through Step 10 of that initiation, they would be balanced, wielding these awesome powers from a pure soul and clean mind. That is the group I wanted to be in. 

How do you talk about the soul-mirrors? It is by far the most difficult part of this whole thing because even though you are doing some of the most powerful magic there is – spiritual alchemy, it doesn’t seem like it. In fact, the rewards can be so slow in coming that it can feel like you are working really hard and not making much progress at all. Based on my own experience it can be a real slog. 

Only late in IIH did I realize something really important about the soul mirror work. The work you do in Steps 1 and 2 of IIH is *only the first pass*. You work the mirrors until you are balanced enough to move on to the more advanced work in Steps 3 through 10. But you have within you an unconscious mind and it has all kinds of repressed stuff swimming around in it. Carl Jung called it the Shadow. 

Let’s take an example. In my mundane career I focus on social and economic policies and how they look ‘on the ground’ when applied through various levels of government and in the private sector. I have fought the proverbial ‘good fight’ for decades only to see policies that work reversed or hamstrung so the many are hurt for the sake of a greedy few having just a little more. What is it Galadriel told Frodo? She said she had fought the great defeat for three ages. 

And that made me angry. Furious. Enraged. My blood boiled with righteous indignation. And that fury was ever with me because I was helpless in its path. I watched seemingly minor policy changes ripple out to great destructive effect. This was the first hurdle in what I call ‘soul mirror 2.0.’ This kind of fury or wrath degrades one’s life with bitterness and cynicism. The onus here is the old 10-step admonition to have the courage to change what you can, the serenity to accept what you cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference. I had to work the white mirror on this one because we are talking about acceptance, agape love, and inner peace. 

The second hurdle was a bit more subtle and I will address it in the next question. 

> Then I saw it writhing, this astral larva, struggling to stay hidden, to burrow more deeply into the noisome swamp of that memory. But it could hide from me no longer. It was the root cause, the hidden emotion from which arose these other toxic things. It was the larva of shame and I realized it had been feeding on me for decades. 

**PAA: Additional purification—do Bardon’s alchemical methods cover everything, or have you found other practices (somatic, psychological, devotional) that accelerate vice-to-virtue transmutation? **

What I found when going through the later steps of IIH and after completion of that volume is that imbalances continue to surface from the deep unconscious, the shadow self. 

We humans are complicated creatures, created in the image and likeness of God, or Divine Providence if you prefer that term. The ‘image’ part of that is easy. It doesn’t even require thought because it is simply your free will. This free will is an irrevocable gift to humanity. We can choose at any moment, no matter how ‘advanced’ we may or may not be in our spirituality, to turn away from the Divine and trust only in ourselves.

Since I was very young, I have had a deep reverence for God but waffled around giving myself fully in service to this God because I was afraid I would miss something life had to offer – you know, wild sex, nice cars, nice home, toys, various other hedonistic pastimes. I know now that this is not true. One misses nothing and gains everything by connecting with the Godhead (IIH Step 10) and other deities, which I consider aspects of this one Divine being.

Ah, but it is the second gift we concern ourselves with here, and that is the ‘likeness’ of God. Likeness to the Divine means making the effort to become like God. This is scary to many people because it means absolute purity of body, soul and mind. Bardon and other advanced Hermetic Initiates all address this purity in one way or another because achieving it begins with mastering the elemental forces within ourselves before we try to control them externally. 

So we work through the soul mirrors and move on, but as one progresses, repressed things that have hidden in the dark recesses of our psyches bubble up, often at inconvenient times. I had nearly finished working through IIH when an event happened. I mentioned this to a Hermetic Initiate I trust, have learned from and corresponded with. His response: “What desperation do you have inside that has caused you to build a wall of pride?”

It is a great teacher who can ask a question like this that forces you to stop and really go deep within. Try as I might, I did not discover the source of the imbalance for a number of months. I thought and thought but could not get to the root of it. 

Then another event happened that left me in a white-hot rage, literally beside myself. At this point, I knew I had to do something different to address this thing that was so deeply buried in my innermost being because it stemmed from a series of traumas I underwent in childhood. It wasn’t one thing, you see, but a compound, an interrelated web which resulted in attitudes and behaviors that manifested in a variety of destructive ways. I no longer even remembered these traumas, but deep inside my psyche they still lived on. 

Earlier, perhaps months earlier, I had read portions of [Andre Consciências](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/andre-consciencia/) book, *[Through the Soul Mirror to the Sphere of the Sun](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Soul-Mirror-Sphere-Sun/dp/1838459871)* and it gave me an idea. I have read deeply in various magical disciplines including shamanism, and so hit on soul retrieval and recapitulation as two techniques that could help me here, but I wanted to use a real mirror, not an imaginary one. 

I will talk more extensively of mirrors and their uses in subsequent questions, so here I will only tell you how I constructed and then used this new mirror. It is white and designed specifically to help me with this additional purification. I chose an 8” disk of selenite, which is a gentle moon stone that can enhance spiritual awareness and purity, and I had a frame laser cut for it from birch, which is a wood known for its spiritual use in cleansing. 

The first time I used this white mirror I began by invoking the Godhead, and enclosing my being in an egg of Akasha to protect myself on the journey. That is important, by the way. It is sound practice to begin any work you do using your mirrors or anything else in later steps, really. Otherwise the practice of travel, what the witches in olden days called ‘flying,’ can be quite dangerous.

When I had constructed the mirror, painted it with the compound condenser and then charged it to the purpose, it was ready. In the first session, my consciousness entered the mirror through its depth point and used it as a portal through time. I traveled the sea of years and went far back in time to locate hidden shards of my soul and retrieve them. On the wings of this intent, I came to a dark and boggy place where I beheld the first of many of these barely-remembered early traumas. 

It was an ugly place, this noisome memory, but this time I was armed with my current level of gnosis (maturity) and the light of Divine Providence showed forth from me. I had come in power and light. The darkness receded and the event revealed itself in stark detail with nothing hidden. Tears flowed and the fists of my spirit body clenched. Again, I felt the cold rage that arose from this child within – rage, resentment, the desire to strike back, to have vengeance, and saw how I had put up walls of pride and desire to please as childish defenses. And worse, I perceived a more subtle thing that I cannot say more about. 

Then I saw it writhing, this astral larva, struggling to stay hidden, to burrow more deeply into the noisome swamp of that memory. But it could hide from me no longer. It was the root cause, the hidden emotion from which arose these other toxic things. It was the larva of shame and I realized it had been feeding on me for decades. 

When as a child this blanket of shame covered me again and again, parts of my soul fled in terror and hid deep in the shadows of my unconscious mind. I beheld one such shard illumined by the Divine light and I reached out with loving feelings of safety, love, joy and peace. I asked this shard to come to the light, to rejoin me and make my soul whole again. I felt it rise as a mist and enter my astral body. When this was done, I used the sword of the Divine Word to dissolve the larva into nothingness. It is a letter formula given to me in a dream for just this work. I did this memory by memory over many hours and a number of mirror-sessions.

This is how soul retrieval works for me. It may well work differently for you should you choose to attempt it when faced with stubborn shadows. There are other ways to do it than mine, though, so you should read up on it. Consciência’s book on the soul mirrors is a good place to begin but there are many books out there on these shamanic practices of active introspection. James Endredy comes to mind. He is trained by Huichol shamans and presents other techniques you may find more useful than mine. 

Now, let us consider an example of *recapitulation*. This is different than soul retrieval, and if anything, a bit more difficult. It is when you go back in time and take back the power you lost, either from those you wronged, or from those who have wronged you. This power is a form of vital energy that is your birthright, but that you cannot use until you take it back.

In the first case, you search your memory for times when you have bullied someone, betrayed someone who trusted you, inflicted pain, acted evilly, been mean spirited, or otherwise hurt someone. Then you go through the mirror and relive that event in detail, remembering everything possible about it. You may well be surprised at how much you can remember. Then put yourself in the other person’s place and feel what they felt. Experience their horror in your inner vision – their pain, anger, frustration, anguish, whatever they may have felt, depending on what you did. 

After remembering, experiencing as much as possible, really feeling it, you then use your Pillar of Volition, the Divine Will to call any personal power you lost in the event to return to you. Sometimes it may be a shard of your soul that hid in shame from the perfidy of your own actions. As I did this operation time after time, these pieces of returning power usually appeared as wisps of white mist that fly toward you and are absorbed into your astrosome. 

After this, apologize to the shade of the person wronged, and surround them with Divine light. Finally, make the image dissolve, crumble into nothingness, be dismissed as if it never happened. And – this is important – never think of it again. If you catch a thought, dismiss it immediately. This is what repentance actually is – you relive the event, regret it, repent of it, forgive and release, and then move on. You have the rest of your life to live, after all.

The procedure for someone who wronged you is a bit easier, except that not only do you want to feel again the raw emotions you experienced in the event, but try also to see the other person in light of their own pain. What were they going through that may have caused them to inflict pain on you? Is there a story behind it? Here you are using the God-powers of omnipresence and omniscience together – to know and love anyway. 

As you ascend on the Initiatory Path, you will find it is much easier to perceive such things, to read the auras of others even in memory of shades long past. When it feels like you are done with the memory, take back the power you lost, then forgive and release the person. This is important, this forgiveness. It is not for the other person but for you because if you hold a grudge then you have made yourself a slave to that grudge. Forgive and release, and as you release, allow the memory to crumble into nothingness as if it never happened. 

Now comes the challenge. Don’t think about these events again. I know I’m repeating myself here, but whenever one of these memories comes to mind, dismiss it. You may either allow the cloud of the memory to float away without engaging it, or if you are more mature, simply banish it. Either way it is only a shadow that has no more power over you unless you allow it power by engaging it.   

I will end this with a word about the cosmic letters Bardon presents in KTQ. The letters all do magical things, but they also serve as a very real aid to the deep introspection necessary to achieve the soul- and mind-purity you must have for doing powerful works in metaphysics. I’m going to address the letters and what I have discovered about them in subsequent questions, so enough said here. 

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## 3 · Healing & Service

**PAA: Should every Hermeticist learn healing, or is it a specialized calling? How do you gauge readiness to apply magical healing without harming yourself or the recipient?**

I would suggest that it is a specialized calling. There are many types of healing and I will flatly state that healing is only a subset of the shamanic or pastoral duties that I believe fall to Initiates in all metaphysical disciplines. 

For example, we can have imbalances at the physical, emotional and mental levels. At the physical level, we may be born with certain defects, such as some deformity or an organ that doesn’t quite work the way it should. Or we may come down with a cold or be diagnosed with some form of cancer. You also may find yourself disabled in some way after an accident or the onset of a debilitating illness. 

Emotionally we may be affected by the loss of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, layoff, traumatic stress, a whole variety of phobias, or be depressed over some other temporary adversity that arises. 

We can also be so hurt by life we become bitter, cynical or chronically angry. These strong negative emotional states can manifest in physical illnesses. For example, a person I knew was so bitter and full of anger they ended up coming down with leukemia – their bitterness had poisoned their mind and soul, and eventually manifested in a poisoning of the blood. 

The Bardon path grants us awesome powers, but what of responsibilities? It can be quite uncomfortable for most people to think of those, yet I strongly suggest that we Hermeticists do in fact have responsibilities to our fellow humans. The Hermetic Initiate may find themselves called to help in a time of trouble, strengthen faith, give comfort, light the fires of hope for those who may be in despair. A number of Hermeticists I have great respect for have alluded to these duties. 

We had better believe that the old proverb ‘to whom much is given much is expected’ is true. As I say, we very seldom talk of those expectations in this community, but I am sure many reading this are nodding for they sense and may even perform such duties. I think Andre Consciência is really on to something good with this concept [neo-shamanism](https://courses.perseusarcaneacademy.com/b/journey-to-the-spirit-world-exploring-neo-shamanism). 

Hermeticism definitely has a shamanic element which manifests in many ways. Valentin Tomberg says anonymously in [Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meditations-Tarot-Journey-Christian-Hermeticism/dp/1585421618), that our role as Hermeticists is to be *guardians of the heart*, to provide good and loving service to the life and collective soul of the people. I paraphrase here, but I cannot articulate a better way to state this shamanic mission. 

These duties are many and permeate our relationships at home, at work and in our neighborhood. We are shepherds in a very real sense. For an example of this, we can begin with the duties of a Hermetic Initiate in the face of the death of a loved one. Now, as Hermeticists, we are well aware that what we call death is merely the casting off of the clay vessel and subsequent entry to a realm in which one is no longer constrained by space, time, or the necessities of physical survival.

But often the grief experienced by those left behind is paralyzing because they do not know these things. They just know their pain at the passing of someone they love. In such situations, even in his or her own family, there are two sets of duties that the Hermeticist may perform.  

It is said that tears cleanse, and they do. People must grieve, but the Hermeticist can make themselves quite useful in helping people grieve and come to acceptance of the loss. Readers will know that in 1971, American psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a seminal book called ‘[On Death and Dying](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Dying-Doctors-Nursess-Families/dp/B001VJIJOS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LJ06R45F040T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.fmQsEg3pwdKREJU0HFOxNYBPCKyoM9fLK7NQu45GDAd97qyX1U8xF15Rlprn2big6n8nkP5YbKBP9QKLI5mjMsNkfkscCD29AwpNdFX_pN3Lypxlum_HU6_iAe8Sjc7JrrX3n6dx-teLnbxySZTKFRllbErZkbXP0vlEQpxW3zqd0Furfbz99OvFBMd3oq2Y-HG-SXkk1EN1zaQp8_YhkTYhW3wObgZwLKXRBerJsF4.nwG714T5ktlNrkEIFlARQvccv09GVBYKqolo8C4asFw&dib_tag=se&keywords=On+Death+and+Dying&qid=1747219390&s=books&sprefix=on+death+and+dying%2Cstripbooks%2C121&sr=1-1).’ In this book, she spoke of grief as a process, and this process came to be known as the *grief cycle*. 

Later, it was discovered that this grief cycle happens with any loss of anything important to us – a job, a relationship, one’s home or anything else we hold dear. I won’t elaborate on the stages of this cycle because that is easily researched, but I will say that the Hermeticist can do this work in the physical, astral, mental and Akashic realms to aid those who grieve, depending on level of need. 

Sometimes, consolation can be as simple as being present with a gentle touch or hug. Or listening to reminiscences of fond memories or participating fully in wakes, celebrations of life or traditional funerals. These rites of passage are not done for the sake of the deceased, because they have no further need. Rather, they serve as rites of passage, or permissions, for those attending to grieve one last time and then accept the loss and move on with their own lives.

Other cases may be a bit more troubling. A newly deceased elementar, which is [Mouni Sadhu’](http://www.mounisadhu.com/)s word for the departing astral, mental and spirit bodies of a newly deceased person, may become confused and refuse to move on because of unfinished business.  

**PAA: Here is a true story of how a Hermeticist with whom I am acquainted assisted a confused elementar.**

The story involves a young woman we will call Kay. Her beloved grandfather passed away. He was a genuinely good man, so he had no problem finding the light and moving on, but he mysteriously appeared to Kay in dreams over a number of years for she is quite sensitive and possesses a great deal of the ‘touch.’ Finally, he learned to communicate from the beyond, and came to her in a dream where she answered her mobile and he spoke to her from a beach saying, “We are all connected.”

Now this was profound, but the story becomes even more curious. His wife, Kay’s grandmother, known as Gram, passed after a long battle with stomach cancer. The problem was, the elementar that was Gram in this life stuck around, appearing to Kay in dreams several times a week over a period of months. 

In the dreams, Kay would find herself at either the former city home or summer cabin of Gram and see her wandering around confused, trying to touch things, searching. And the beloved grandfather would be in the dreams, trying to beckon Gram on, but Gram’s elementar could not see him. 

Our Hermetic initiate worked with Kay to develop two rite of passage ceremonies to help her Gram move on. The particulars are not important but mainly these rituals involved a loving recitation of fond memories, and then an exhortation for Gram to move on and meet the shade of her husband, who was waiting for her in the beyond. 

Kay performed the ceremonies at the location of each house at agreed upon times so that the Hermeticist, who was not present, could perform a ritual of elemental influence simultaneously in support of Gram moving on. 

In such a working, signs are always given signifying success. The sign at the city home is that both Kay and her cousin, who participated in that ceremony received frissons in which they got goosebumps. In other words, they felt the ‘magic.’ 

At the location of the mountain home, Kay went on a hike afterward, and the sign given was a single columbine flower blooming early in a meadow. Gram has not appeared in any dreams since, and a simple divination done by the Hermeticist indicated success. Gram had moved on. 

Before entering the branch of social science I pursue now, I was trained as a mental health and vocational counselor, and did it for around 12 years. Philosophically I come at healing in the mental and emotional realm with the belief that people are basically healthy, and if there is an imbalance, then a simple intervention may bring them back to functionality if not full mental health. This isn’t always true though, as I learned in some cases.

We do not speak of it much here, but people may also be attacked spiritually. For example, Perseus just published an [interview](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/from-exorcist-to-hermeticist-a-journey-through-spiritual-warfare-and-magic/) on its blog with a Hermeticist who is also an exorcist. Such spiritual attacks may originate externally, either from astral larvae or people so toxic they suck away your very life force to feed themselves. These people are emotional vampires. Dion Fortune wrote a whole book about being mentally and emotionally attacked over a period of time by a person she worked for. Many reading this will be nodding as well, because there are few adults who have not been bullied or dominated in some way and at some time at work or in a relationship.

It is rare but a person may be attacked magically. You should note that in such cases, the attacker may not even be aware they are doing it. Some people are just really powerful in the sense they are magical without intending to be. Others consciously intend the magical attack. People may also be possessed, not by a larva, but by some demonic entity from the abyss. No matter how curious you are, there are places in the astral realm where it is not wise to venture. What is the ancient warning? Here be dragons.

Later, I will speak of turning one’s ‘isms’ into ‘wasms.’ It is possible for a person to go so far down some social media rabbit hole that they become a walking conspiracy theory. This also is a form of illness or imbalance that renders the victim incapable of responding to any new event or person except through the lens of their own ‘ism’. 

So when I work with healing of heart and mind, I read the aura, or perhaps the karma, of the person in question first. See, all this work you did on the soul mirrors in Steps 1 and 2 of IIH, and your subsequent work with the letters very much widens this spiritual perception. Tanya Robinson just published a very good interview with William Mistele on her Falcon Books blog where he touched on this very subject. When you learn to understand what is in your own psyche through this painstaking soul-mirror work, you find you are much more perceptive of these energies in others.

But I digress. The question is when do you know you can apply magical healing without harming yourself or the recipient? You have to have connected to your personal Godhead, as Bardon has you do in the tenth step of IIH. If you have not successfully done this, then it may not be wise for you to attempt magical healing. Remember when I said earlier that certainty can be the enemy of truth? This applies very much in this situation. I do not think I have the words to explain this beyond saying that if you are ready then you will know. And I don’t ever work to heal someone without their permission, though I will work with the elemental forces to amplify the voice of someone’s conscience without their knowledge because this is lawful – you are not interfering with their free will. 

**PAA: Where does the boundary lie between healing karma-appropriate illness and interfering with someone’s necessary lesson?**

To my mind, the objective of magic is in the larger sense to restore balance, either in the micro- or macrocosm. Some healers such as Stylianos Atteshlis, known as the Magus of Strovolos or Daskalos, knew how to get the permission of Divine Providence to take the karma of someone he was healing onto himself, leaving the patient completely well. Daskalos would then work through that karma, dissolving it with the light of his own purity of soul and Oneness with God. 

I have to say at this point that I am not yet at this level and may not even achieve it in this lifetime. Healing physical maladies is not something that has been given to me. That said, since completing IIH and working with the letters for nearly a year and a half, plus all the other studies I have done, I can say that I have become much better at perceiving the analogous connection between a physical illness and its root in the soul-mind, but again am nowhere near being able to relieve someone of their own karmic burden and take it upon myself to work through.   

As I said before, if you are ready to do this you will know. If not, don’t try. 

One other thing. Remember the gifts God gives – wisdom and mercy. Sometimes if someone is really hurting, I will attempt healing but leave it up to God, asking for mercy. If it doesn’t work, so be it. But sometimes it does. It never hurts in these situations to try.

## 4 · Mindsets & “Isms”

**PAA: You’ve said Hermeticists should turn their ‘-isms’ into ‘wasms.’ What common mental idols had to die for you, and what replaced them?**

Since I practice Hermeticism through the lens of Christianity, I will begin with this quote from the book of Galatians: *I am crucified with Christ. Henceforth it is not me who lives but Christ who lives in me*. That is the essence of connection with God – you must let God in, invite God to live in you. At first the experience is fleeting, but then after time it is not. What happens then is that it creates a well of inner silence inside you that is filled with this God-ness. This well becomes a deep source of comfort and strength.

My occupation has compelled me to amass ‘wonk-level’ knowledge of economic and social policies in terms of what they do on the ground as opposed to the rosy picture often put forth by their adherents. I had to work very hard to ‘crucify’ these ego-attachments and fears to get to my current state of maturity. 

An ‘ism’ is an ideology, but if we are Hermeticists then we have embraced what some have called a primal religion or spiritual path – Hermeticism, whereby we systematically take control of ourselves and our destinies at the material, astral, mental and spiritual levels. Hermes was called Thrice-Great or Trismegistus because he is the archetype of mastery over our own fears and earthly ego-attachments so that the Higher Self can be joined with Divine Intent.

Reflect a moment on the old parable of the five blind men who encounter an elephant. One grabs the tail and says that the elephant is like a piece of rope. Another feels one of the elephant’s legs and says no, it is like a tree. The third takes hold of the ear and tells the first two they are both wrong because it is like a fan. The fourth feels the elephant’s side and tells the others they are all crazy because it is like a wall. The fifth happens to feel the elephant’s tusk and says no, the elephant is like a spear point.

Who is right? What is the truth? Each one perceives only the part they grasp onto and ignores the rest. In the parable, each man becomes convinced the others are lying and they actually come to blows over it. 

*This is what ‘isms’ do to us*. We look at everything through the bias of our own particular ‘ism.’ Consider our current sorry state of polarization. Any time you hear some deluded soul forcefully touting their own ideology, awaken your inner Observer and reflect on what they are saying. Though it may make you feel a bit uncomfortable, particularly if you agree, you should be asking whether the ideology the person is spouting actually benefits that person, or if it benefits someone else. And what about you? How does it affect you and your loved ones. In Latin, the question of who benefits is ‘cui bono?’ This is an extremely useful question to ask when faced with one of these ‘isms.’

This is how to free yourself from being indoctrinated to think in the way the cable ‘news’ show or radio talk show host is telling you to think. Instead ask who actually benefits from what they are saying. In the United States, nearly all the cable and network media are publicly traded. You can buy stock in all of them if you want. FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post – all publicly traded.

Why is this important you may ask? Because publicly traded companies in the US operate on a legal doctrine called ‘shareholder primacy’ which was established by a 1919 Michigan Supreme Court ruling against Henry Ford in favor of the Dodge Brothers. Here is the technical citation so you can look it up yourself: Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich 459; 170 NW 668 (1919). 

In this case, the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford *had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers*. In other words, shareholder profits are king and rule over every other consideration in corporate governance. This is why many corporations act sociopathically.

The back story is interesting, too. Ford wanted to build more cars so he could sell more cars and make more money. He got the idea somehow of mounting a conveyor belt on his factory floor and pulling each chassis along that belt while his factory people stood along the line and each one put on one or two parts. An assembly line. 

I know we have all heard this part of the story, but there is more. It seems Ford reasoned that if he had raised his factory output exponentially then he needed to expand his market, otherwise the new cars would pile up without buyers. So he started in his own backyard by giving his factory people a big raise so they could afford to buy the cars they built. Good thinking, right?

The Dodge Brothers, who machined parts for Ford, didn’t think so. They sued on the basis that paying excessively high wages to his workers deprived them of profits to which they were *entitled* as shareholders. And they won. 

Interesting story, right? So how does this play out with cable ‘news?’ Well, NBC is owned by Comcast, ABC by Walt Disney Company, CBS by Paramount Global and FOX by Fox Corporation. This means the fiduciary responsibility of all their senior news producers is always and only to generate shareholder profits. There is nothing at all in the charter about ‘truth’ in news. 

Truth in news content was governed by a law Ronald Reagan killed in 1987 which was called the Fairness Doctrine. It was created after the second world war to ensure that propagandists like Joseph Goebbels would not be able to propel demagogues to power in the United States. My father fought in the second world war. He was wounded in the Battle for New Guinea in 1944-45 in the Pacific Theater. At least I think he was. There was a purple heart in his box of medals but he wouldn’t talk much about it. 

So what’s the point here? You must open your eyes and realize you cannot count on cable news, talk radio, podcasts or other social media to just give you the truth. Instead you have to dig through the biased message of each, consult a number of other sources, compare them, decide who is credible and who is not. 

Because what is the truth? [Robert Monroe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Monroe) tells us in his second book on astral travel, called *[Far Journeys](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Far-Journeys-Trilogy-Robert-Monroe/dp/0385231822)*, that life for us humans in this world is a ‘compressed learning experience,’ and the side-stories he introduces to drive this point home all have the theme of releasing all fears and ego-attachments so you can truly free yourself and move on. Think of the world’s religions – all provide guidance about living your life purely so you can leave here upon the death of your physical body and not be compelled to return in another incarnation to work out unfinished karma. 

Bardon says in IIH that this is a magical/mystical path and that one cannot have one without the other and remain balanced. In the Epilogue to that book, he says, “Anyone who seeks the path to God should take Christ’s words to heart, the words of the great Master of the Mystics: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ These words should be a sacred command for every seeker who is on the spiritual path.”

Last, *and this is quite important*, we may benefit by considering the difference between the upward spiral of evolution and the downward spiral of involution as it applies to our discipline of Hermeticism. Both Valentin Tomberg and Mouni Sadhu discuss these concepts in their respective books on the Tarot. Essentially, evolution is the upward spiral of ascent of one’s spirit to higher realms while involution is the downward spiral, or descent of one’s spirit to lower, denser realms. 

In fact, Mouni Sadhu goes so far as to say,

> “Involutionary tendencies, sometimes occurring in evolutionary beings (for example, humans) are unnatural for them and against the law of evolution which binds men. Therefore, tendencies such as attachments to material things, sensuality, and so on, are an EVIL for those beings.”
>
>
>
>
>
> Sadhu, Mouni. The Tarot: The Quintessence of Hermetic Philosophy (p. 45). Aeon Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

So if you attach yourself to some ‘ism’ out there that is designed to put you in conflict with others so you don’t notice something else that is happening, then you have taken an involutionary path straight down the rabbit hole offered by whatever ‘ism’ you have embraced. Again, cui bono?

To my mind, the only ‘ism’ that is worth embracing is Hermeticism, the magical-mystical path wherein we ascend to become god-men and god-women, to ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’ So it is a good idea as part of your introspective purification to take a truthful inventory of your ‘isms’ and turn those that do not serve you on this path into ‘wasms.’ 

**PAA: How do you stay ideologically nimble in a world that rewards strong labels and hot takes? **

By freeing myself from my own set of ‘isms’ and remembering that this is a mystical magical journey whose objective is freedom from inner fears and ego-attachments. 

To answer this question properly we must address two things. First, we must speak of the laws of Saturn because as airplane pilots are fond of saying, “Whatever else is happening, fly the plane.” You have to take care of earthly business, you know? The bills won’t pay themselves. Second, we must address the concepts of quality and quantity in the context of the Hermetic discipline. 

The most succinct definition of Saturn’s laws I’ve seen is in Judeo-Christian wisdom literature where we find the statement, “You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.” Pretty clear, right? It is from Chapter 3 of Genesis.

We seldom talk about the Moirai, or the Lords of Saturn if you prefer. So let’s do it now. I often shake my head when I see books about money magic or sex magic. Many people buy them, for sure, because they sell the quantity of material gratification without addressing the quality of the mystical path. This world presents us with many distortions of basic survival, and many unfortunates are trapped by circumstances, desperate, broke, simply horny or wanting a nice car or house or (fill in the blank). 

This truth may seem harsh, but if I think I’m going to ‘magic’ myself into a fat bank account, a cushy job, a nice shiny new car, or someone’s bed, I will find that approach is futile at best. Such things seldom work and if they do work the price may be a bit more than I would be willing to pay. 

I was lucky because I learned about these laws early in life. When I was 15 and my dad taught me how to drive, I asked him if he would ‘help me’ with a car. He said not only would he not give me any money to buy a car, he would not pay for insurance, maintenance, repairs or gas. “If you want a car,” he laughed, “get a job!”

Since I wanted a car I got a job and I’ve worked full time for nearly forty years, including through graduate school. The real truth that all of us must face is that we do not need magic to feed, water, clothe, shelter and transport ourselves. We have to make a mundane effort to do so. Only when we have successfully met this basic requirement of physical survival on this plane can we lift our eyes and begin ascent to the mystical/magical realm. This is the joy and burden of practicing Hermeticism. 

Now let us address the twin concepts of *quality and quantity* on this Bardon-path. In IIH, Bardon says this is a magico-mystical path, and he lays out the coursework to address both. I think of this as being akin to traveling a dirt road or old wagon path. These paths have two ruts worn deep by wheels. One represents the mystical or spiritual path, which is our spiritual quality as a human being. This is why we begin with the soul-mirrors – it is how we work on elevating our spiritual quality to allow us to eventually perform magical acts that actually work. 

Let’s not forget either, that Bardon says in IIH that the objective is to connect with the Godhead and other deities and that the magic (quantity) is simply a byproduct of that. Every step of IIH and your initial studies with the letters in KTQ address this issue of quality, which we can also read as mind- and soul-purity. After working this path for a number of years, I have concluded that there is a positive correlation between your purity and the power of your magic. In non-mathematical terms, as your purity grows, so does your magical power or quantity on the path. 

We will address this concept of quantity in the questions below. 

## 5 · Tools of the Trade

**PAA: Magic mirror training: what daily drills refine perception without frying the nerves? **

My nerves are generally pretty steady because I have always had guts. I have experienced much adversity in life, and have worked under tight deadlines for many years. Like anything else, you form a habit. What’s the old saying? *The harder I work the more luck I seem to have*. That is not always true of course. One must also work ‘smart.’ And sometimes even that doesn’t work and we suffer. That’s just the way it is. 

As one who is often asked to research and educate people around complex issues, I have found that approach is everything. Working successfully through IIH is no exception.  

The thing is, when I constructed my first mirror, I didn’t even know what it would do or how to use it. Oh, I constructed it, but I did not see the need for many of the things Bardon suggested in his discourse on the mirrors in the late steps of IIH. I only learned how to use it later after some trial and error and even now I cannot claim complete mastery. I made this first mirror from an 8” disk of polished obsidian and a circular pine frame I had laser cut for it. Pine is linked to spiritual purification, while obsidian has fiery properties because it is volcanic glass born from great heat and pressure. It is quite protective and enhances mental clarity. 

When I was done with it, I set it on the table in front of me. It sure looked cool. I was real excited, but alas, I had no idea how to even use such a mirror so it just sat there and languished for several months. Bardon goes on at length about these mirrors in Steps 8 and 9 of IIH and devotes a whole section to it in the Practice of Magical Evocation, but I’d stare into it and see nothing. I had to train it. Over time it allowed me, through the transfer of consciousness into it, to use it as a portal to engage in mental and spiritual travel. I learned many things through this process and certainly developed my ‘clair’ skills.

The pieces finally began to fall into place, and I found out these magic mirrors are really useful. In Step 8 I had a wonderful initiation from the spirits of the plants when I created and tested each of the tinctures, which Bardon calls ‘fluid condensers.’ Several of these spirits appeared to me strongly in dreams and even spoke to me. I was initiated into the plant consciousness by the spirits of the 14 herbs that Bardon combines into the ‘compound condenser.’ They seem a form of earth spirit, perhaps akin to gnomes. 

So, when things began arising from my shadow, naturally I went into my fiery obsidian mirror for this new purpose of additional soul purification. It worked grudgingly and I got the definite message from it that it did not particularly like being used in this touchy-feely fashion. An aside – interestingly, the plant spirits also made it known to me that I could ask when I had need but discouraged me from overdependence on them. One actually said to me in a dream that I would be better served doing my own work in a specific case. 

So I made the selenite and birch mirror mentioned above to address the further purification, and it works well for its purpose. I am certain I will construct other mirrors for different purposes moving forward, but the need has not arisen as yet. Both mirrors are revealing their respective personalities to me as I go. 

**PAA: Fluid condensers—what actually happens under the hood, and how do you troubleshoot a condenser that “feels flat”? **

I love this question because very few people talk about these tinctures or how to use them. And Bardon is pretty skimpy with his instructions on how to charge the condenser to actually condense the ‘fluids.’ I shook my head at this, asking myself what this verb ‘condense’ actually meant. Still, when I got to the point where I was ready to make the condensers, I thought, “Oh good! Tinctures! Here’s something I’ve really been looking forward to!” 

So Bardon starts off saying that we can merely gather the 14 herbs to be used in the compound condenser, toss equal parts in a jar and cover them with grain alcohol to macerate for six weeks. No! I’m not doing that, I thought. That just seems sloppy to me and disrespectful to the plant spirits. 

Then, he said there was another better method. Great! But this method still called for all 14 herbs to be unceremoniously tossed into a pan, covered with water, boiled a half hour after which the solids are strained out and an equal part grain alcohol and some aurum Metallicum is dumped in. Nope. Not doing that either. 

Finally, he presents what he says is the best way. OK, now you are talking. Let’s do it right, with the proper respect. This ‘best way’ involved decocting each herb following the steps immediately above, but individually, one herb at a time. So I did this with a respectful process I worked out. Soon I had a nice little row of 14 four-ounce jars, each filled with a tincture. 

I stared at them. Now what? What does it ‘condense?’ Is merely making the tincture enough, or is there some magical procedure, some ritual of intent that must be undergone to power up the condenser? 

A bit of research seemed quite in order here. So I looked up the metaphysical or spiritual properties of each herb and wrote it all out. Some are quite powerful. Acacia, for example, and tobacco, and violet surprisingly so. But all have their own specific powers. Like the poplar – I live in an area where aspen trees are common so I used aspen leaves. 

But again, how to gain a working familiarity (gnosis) with each tincture and its spirit? After some meditation I hit on an approach that seemed sound. 

Before even creating this ‘compound condenser’ from equal parts of the 14 individual tinctures, I needed to get to know each one separately to understand its spirit and what that spirit would bring to such a compound. 

*Approach is everything in this or any other worthwhile endeavor*. Figure out what you are going to do, when you will do it, and in what sequence – make a plan, gather the resources and then work the plan. Execute.

My approach was to put a couple of droppers of tincture in 2 ounces of distilled water, then ingest it after prayer. This was done each night prior to bed. First, I would drink the solution, then silence myself and just perceive with all senses. How did it feel? Any physical sensations? Did any feelings or thoughts arise? 

Then I would go to bed and enter dreamtime. Needless to say, I created a Word document for each tincture (and some others I made as well), and here is the experience I had from the Withy or Willow spirit, which initiated me into the plant consciousness in a Bardon sort of way:

*To begin, I ingested a dropper full of tincture I had made from willow bark, wood and leaf in a couple of ounces of filtered water, then went to the room where I do magic. I assumed the throne asana posture, and silenced my mind so the willow could whisper its secrets to me.*

*In the stillness, I felt it as a great tree growing rapidly throughout my body, and that growth happened through the circulatory system. It was more of a flowing than a growing, and its coolness flooded all through me. I felt like the spirit of a great tree, and my blood ran through its root, trunk and branch. *

*The willow weeps, and through that mourning it comforts. It is a mighty healer that sings and whispers age-old secrets. It grows along river bottoms and was called Withy in days past. Willows do not have taproots, but instead their roots spread wide and are fairly shallow. The branches grow upwards in the light, but the leaves seem to be bowing back toward the earth. *

*The coldness I felt in my lower abdomen told of its correspondence to the water element, and I became acutely aware of my flowing blood. I found myself contemplating the rhythm of my heart, and the blood coursing through my arteries, veins, and capillaries. I thought of how the plasma carries fire and air through the body. That energy I think of as the healing light of Christ came to mind and tiny flames of violet danced behind my closed eyelids. *

*Willow is very powerful, but gentle at the same time. A loving tree spirit, it is a sort of wounded healer, a Chiron that comforts and offers guidance through dreams. *

*Deep feelings of love, kindness and mercy came upon me. Life, wholesomeness, healing and peace flowed through my body with my blood, just as sap flows through a willow. It touched the spirit, soul and body. Such powerful healing energy! I felt the Withy Spirit become my ally at that moment. *

*Before Sleep*

*Part of testing a fluid condenser is to see if it does anything to make the onset of sleep any easier, and once sleep has come, will it induce dreams, deepen them, open the way for guidance to come? To ascertain this, I again took a dropper of the tincture in a couple of ounces of water prior to going to bed. *

*Sleep came reasonably quickly, and the resulting dream was one of the most powerful I have had in some time. I know it was a direct communication because of the symbols the willow spirit used. There were two footprints in gray dust. They were the footprints of an astronaut who walked on the surface of the moon. One was a full footprint, and the other looked as though another footprint had been superimposed on the front half. This was the print of my foot. When I came awake briefly and then laid back down, the experience continued as a lucid dream. *

*Much was revealed to me. I cannot say more, but it was ecstatic and initiatory in the fullest sense of those words. This was one of most powerful external communications I have ever experienced from the spirit world. During the lucid dream portion, the dark violet light of Akasha was strongly present. It was very intense and left me in no doubt it was the willow spirit speaking to me. *

*Depth-Point Test*

*The depth-point is the spiritual fulcrum of any object or being, including yourself. It is the Akashic gateway leading to that non-dual realm where all is one and one is all. *

*To conduct this test, the next day, I took the jar of willow bark, leaf and wood condenser, held it and went to its depth-point to ascertain if there were any other things the willow spirit would reveal. *

*I began by expressing profound gratitude because of the dream experience. The willow spirit responded and instructed me in a specific working I could use to create magical influence through the water element to raise the consciousness of several policy makers around the sacredness of biodiversity and its importance to all life on the planet. It will be a pleasure for me to do this using the willow bark fluid condenser. *

Now let us address the follow-up question about what to do if a fluid condenser seems ‘flat.’ 

All of these condenser spirits have shared things with me, but some communicate in more straightforward ways and others more subtly. When you get to the point where you are doing this work, you will find you are far more sensitive, able to perceive a great deal more. You notice many things and can discern among these things what may be meaningful. So, if the spirit does not visit you in the dream, that does not mean it will not communicate.

I experienced this with both the aspen leaf and pumpkin seed tinctures. I didn’t think the word ‘flat,’ but did feel a certain disappointment that those spirits did not appear in dreamtime as the others did. Still, one must be patient, and not lust after results. So I silenced myself in meditations during the days following those experiments, and sure enough, insight came on how to use both in interesting ways, and what each would bring to the compound condenser. 

Several of the plant spirits told me how to use their respective tinctures for works of elemental influence, which are a great favorite of mine in terms of useful magic.

It is important to remember that all of creation is conscious. Never forget this – stones, crystals, soil, trees, plants, fish, clouds, the sky, all of it. The earth itself is conscious. The spirits are ever with us, and willing to communicate, most of them, if we learn how to perceive their messages, which often come in symbols or omens. I cannot stress enough the importance of simple humility in your interactions with other beings. It is good to have respect for everything – your tools, the tinctures, all of it. These are different intelligences but like you, they also have a right to be here, and like you, they all have a function within the great web of life. 

I will cover charging the compound condenser, and the mirror for that matter, in the next question.

**PAA: Talismans & tool consecration: your step-by-step charging protocol and one memorable success story. **

There are amulets and talismans, and they have different functions. The amulet is a ward, which takes us into the realm of protective magic. For example, in the newly channeled Human Design/Gene Keys rubric I am a reflector which means I’m a mirror. Not surprisingly, based on my natal astrological chart, I had no self-defined energy centers. I am blank inside and if I do not guard myself, when I enter a room all of the emotional and mental energy in that room will come upon me. When I was younger this was quite overwhelming. 

Years ago, I obtained a hag stone from Ireland. This is because my paternal ancestors were Irish Catholic peasants on a potato farm in Roscommon about fifty miles from Galway Bay. I made it into an amulet that protected me from being barraged by these energies. For charging this amulet, I used a mix that is called Abramelin Oil, which is made from calamus, myrrh, galangal and cinnamon in a carrier oil, usually olive oil, and I add another special ingredient that is secret. 

The charging process involves the use of candle flame and incense, prayer followed by focused meditation on the amulet, then anointing it with the oil. In this case I also used planetary hours in the ritual because I wanted it to be a powerful ward of these feeling-infused thought forms that would barrage me. 

I performed the charging ritual three times, once during the hour of the Moon, once during Mercury and a final time during Venus. Why? Because in the triangle of Personality – Yesod (Moon), Hod (Mercury) and Netzach (Venus) represent the air mixture of emotions and thoughts through which we govern our actions, and certainly through which we perform magic. This amulet served me well, but after a time I found I didn’t need it any more except on occasion. Perhaps its power rubbed off on me, or maybe I grew spiritually beyond the need for it. I am holding it now and can still very much feel its power. 

As to talismans, they either serve to attract something to you, or to amplify something coming from you. So how you charge a talisman depends on what function you want it to fulfill. The talisman or amulet doesn’t necessarily need to be a permanent thing either. I often use the Psalms as talismans, because they are quite powerful in spell work, particularly if a certain outcome is desired. Warning – do not use the Psalms to get something selfish, only when righteousness is on your side and you throw it to the mercy of Divine Providence. A conjure woman I know says don’t do this unless you’re ‘right with God’ and you want to do something lawful. 

Lawfulness is a vital ingredient to any charging of any amulet, talisman, tincture, compound condenser or magical tool, period. There are spiritual laws that govern Hermetic operations. Do not break these laws in your magic.  

So, in the case that I’m using a Psalm, I will write it out on a piece of parchment, anoint it with the appropriate tincture or oil, and if it is an amulet, I will power it with strong protective intent and keep it until I perceive it is no longer needed. Then I will burn it and allow the ashes to go back to nature. If it is a talisman, I will limit its time of life to coincide with a certain desired condition and then put it in a drawer. When the condition happens, I will again burn the paper to ash and let it dissipate. 

But I had a special amplification talisman I wanted to make from a quartz point I have and consulted Orova the Gnome about it. I can say more about this in the next question. 

As a last word on talismans I will say this. Crystals make great and powerful talismans but research the properties – both physical and metaphysical of the crystal or rock you wish to use, because you want to work to its strength. For example, a quartz point amplifies things or can store things. 

Also, customize the charging rituals. Think through what you want the talisman or amulet to do and work to that purpose using the laws of analogy. 

As to the tinctures, you must work with their respective spirits to charge them to amplify, or *condense* your focused intent, juice it up, give it more power. In the days of the old V-8 muscle cars, people used to do all kinds of things – dual carbs, fuel injectors, racing gears and glass packs. Again, you must work out a respectful procedure that works for you and the tinctures to charge individual condensers or compounds. 

Magical tools are also conscious in their own way, particularly after charging. Don’t let anyone touch your magical tools or else you will have to purify and recharge them. And respect the tools. Take care of them. Get them nice wrappings. I have lined cloth pouches for mine, silk or satin and colored appropriately. 

I have a magical sword which was made in the early 19th century by Nathan Starr, the first weapons contractor for the US government. I have charged it over time with the powers of the letters, as well as both the liquid and solid compound condensers. I did this by drilling a small hole in the wood of its handle, spooning in a tiny bit of both the liquid compound and the solid (planetary metals) condenser you also create in Step 8. I sealed it carefully with wood filler and sanded it smooth. Then I performed a charging ritual to activate the condensers. 

I’ve also done this with my wand, which is an 18-inch rod of ebony – I center-drilled it lengthwise three inches from each end and inserted a piece of copper tubing with the compound fluid condenser sealed inside with putty. Then I drilled a small hole in the center of the wand and sealed in the solid compound condenser. I have also charged it with the fire letters though I am not quite finished. This does take a bit of time to do right.  

I’ll leave this question with some really good advice that applies here. I had a professor in grad school many years ago who told us at the end of the term, “We have gone over many theories of counseling. They ALL work, all of them. Pick one and learn it really well. Only after this can you become ‘eclectic.’ Also, remember that you cannot ever be Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, Alfred Adler or Carl Rogers. You can only be yourself. In the end, you will become your own theory.” 

So, you can never be the same as another magus. You can only be you. All your charging rituals need to grow from your own gut, your own heart, manifest through your own Word, Breath and the fire of your will. By charging these things you make them your allies, enter into a living and growing relationship with them. 

## 6 · Working with Spirits

**PAA: How did you know you were genuinely ready for full evocation, and what red flags still make you hit pause? **

I have said that everything is conscious in its own way so we are never alone within the unity that is Divine Providence. What we must speak of here is Bardon’s concept of magical authority. In the Practice of Magical Evocation, he says,

> “By exactly observing the guidelines which have been recommended here in regards to the appropriate attitude and the preparation of all magical instruments, the magician calls forth within himself an extremely strong state of manifestation of belief, will and all the attributes of the law. By so doing, *he thereby increases his magical authority* considerably and hence exerts the necessary influence upon a being or a power so that the desired results or effects are actually realized.” Bardon, Franz. The Practice of Magical Evocation (p. 24). Merkur Publishing. Kindle Edition.  

Valentin Tomberg also addresses magical authority in his chapter on the Emperor in his Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. In it he states that magical authority stems from becoming an instrument of the Divine will and so gain the ability to perform sacred magic. This authority, he says, is the synthesis of mysticism and gnosis – concentration without effort, work as play fueled by inspiration that arrives on the wings of Divine Breath. 

If you have not yet developed this authority then you are not ready. When you interact with spirits, your own worthiness is a very big deal. Evocation is akin to calling up a powerful person. When they answer, you’d better have a good reason for the contact. And, in mundane life this works a LOT better if you have first warned the person, communicated the subject matter you wish to talk to them about. 

I do not evoke spirits very often because sometimes insight from them will come after simply meditating on their sigil with your question in mind. With the example of Orova the Gnome, I invoked the Godhead, created the protective circle of Akasha and supplemented this with a cotton rope I have soaked in salt water and then charged with protection that makes the physical circle. I then placed his sigil, drawn by me, in my Triangle of Evocation. I set up my obsidian mirror on a stand within the triangle and entered the Gnome realm while simply meditating on my question. 

In this case, with my question of supercharging a quartz point to amplify a certain intent, I didn’t feel that forcing him to appear to me would add anything. The objective is the answer to the question, not the appearance of the spirit, right? That’s true most of the time. So I just went in there, stated my question and waited. Orova did communicate with the image of the cover of Andre Consciência’s book, A Guide to the Elementals. Of course. I opened up that volume and read what Orova had communicated when Andre evoked him. Cool. Everything I needed. I’m good. 

It is important to remember that there are probably billions of spirits around, elemental, planetary, angelic, demonic, not to mention the powerful collective egregores, which themselves are conscious in a way. Each one of these travels in its own lane, has its own specific job. 

Thus, most information needed can be obtained by either actively reaching out through focused meditation to various entities, with the answers coming in a variety of ways. Sometimes the spirits who have become your allies may send you information through omens. For example, I was driving north one day, and saw the shadow of a bird flying on the road in front of me, pacing the car (I was in a residential area, so going slow). I pulled over and saw the bird was a magpie, flying north. This was a communication from a certain spirit to inform a problem I was working on, and it came to me without my having to ask. This is akin to the quantum physics property of entanglement. The ally heard my desire and simply sent me a message. 

What we are talking about here are two important aspects of magical authority: geniality and heightened perception. First of all, have you ever seen a powerful entrepreneur work a room? This is geniality. I know a venture capitalist who is so skilled at doing this it is like magic. He puts people at ease, makes artful small talk and gracefully elicits information on opportunities to invest in new ideas and innovations. As Hermeticists, we also need this geniality with our tools and with the spirits that have agreed to be our allies.  

Heightened perception is an aspect of wisdom and the god-powers of the four Pillars of the Inner Temple. It is a gift that was given to me through prayer. I pray each day many times, and this is a prayer I say daily, which has been and is being answered on a daily basis:

*O Lord Jesus Christ, let me perceive as You do, speak with Your Word, breathe the Breath of Life. Let me love with Your heart. Let me be an instrument of your Will upon this earth to awaken humanity to the presence of Divine Light. I am a pure and humble vessel without fear or attachment. In the womb of Silence let us be One.*

God always answers prayers like this. 

**PAA: Alternative ways to collaborate with spirits before classic triangle-and-circle evocation—what methods keep it safe and productive? **

Besides the communications you can receive through heightened perception, I quite often will gain insights through dreams from my ancestors, guides, HGA and the Christ spirit. As you gather more spirit allies around you in mutual service to Divine Providence, you may also ask their realm to share insight with you in dreams. I do this by using the obsidian mirror to enter the realm I’m seeking insight from and state the question/desire. Then I retire for the evening and sometimes the answer will come in what I call dreamtime. 

But spirit communication is organic. It is like looking up at the clouds, seeing a butterfly or a covey of mourning doves, a flower, the sylphs playing in tree branches. If you learn to pay attention the spirits are communicating constantly. You only need listen. In Step 1 of IIH, we learn an exercise called ‘thought control’ wherein we awaken the Observer (Higher Self) and simply notice ideas that float through the clear blue sky of our mind. Later Bardon introduces mindfulness and then focused meditation, wherein we contemplate a certain idea, thought, feeling action. Take that a step further and focus your meditation on a question you are trying to answer. The universe will communicate with you and you will pick it up with your heightened perception. 

Be careful, though, because the message that comes may not be quite true or straightforwardly understandable. Part of heightened perception is the virtue of discernment. Hold up each insight and look at it through the lens of the Divine Laws. Read up on any symbol or number you receive. All these may have meaning. Analogy, cause and effect, polarity, gender, vibration, and so on. If you have connected with the Godhead as a guardian of the heart and collective soul of humanity in good and loving service, you walk in power and light in any realm. A special forces soldier I know well is fond of saying, “Remember the mission!”

## 7 · The True Kabbalah Frontier

**PAA: For someone who’s completed Initiation Into Hermetics, what preliminary training bridges the gap to reliably shaping Akashic letters? **

I nearly did not begin work on the letters at all. When I first read the book, maybe ten years ago, I was very put off. I felt like the title, Key to the True Kabbalah, was misleading at best, because there is nothing in the book about the Tree of Life, either the involutionary bolt of lightning or the evolutionary path of the serpent. He doesn’t even talk about the Sephirot. And the letters are from the western alphabet. Where are the Hebrew letters? Why did he not use those? What use is this? With a sense of indignant disappointment, I put the book on a shelf where it gathered dust. 

Until I received a strong intuitive urge to open it again and look a bit more carefully. 

What happened is that I had gotten stuck in Step 8 of IIH. I’d done the condensers and made the mirror. But then I was given a major work project that had me working 80-hour weeks for a month, and when I was on the home stretch, I got COVID. There was little time for anything but basic daily prayers. 

My hiatus from Bardon work ended up being around six or seven weeks long, and when I opened IIH back up, I found myself flailing around, trying to get back in the swing of it. I became convinced this was why I caught COVID at that time – something was lacking in me, some immaturity that was making it impossible to go further. Generally when something bad happens, some adversity arises, I express gratitude to Divine Providence and ask what I should be learning from it. The answer seemed to stem from something that was lacking in my soul-mind purity. The problem was an unhealthy pride arising from my shadow. I discussed this in a previous question so I won’t belabor it, but th fact remined I was also having a crisis of faith in my own magical authority, my own ability to finish the Hermetic Initiation. 

I just felt empty and a feeling began nagging at me that this whole thing was a crock, a useless bunch of exercises that had no real purpose. Instead of the term ‘mission creep’ coined by NASA scientists, I was experiencing a crisis of mission-lessness. I marveled at my stupidity for throwing myself down this whole magical rabbit hole and studying years and years – for what? Why? Was the cosmos laughing at the fun joke it had played on me?

But then, as so often happens in dark nights of the soul such as this one, light shined back through and it illumined KTQ. I got the strong feeling there was something in there that could help. 

So I opened it up in Kindle because I cannot read the tiny font in books any more, called up the little magnifying glass icon and typed in ‘faith.’ I opened one of the search links and read the words, “In the mental world, this letter vibration corresponds to the state of manifestation of belief. The Kabbalist who is able to call forth the vibration of the letter K in the mental body will achieve a state of manifestation in which any thought, any wish, will at once become a reality in whichever plane the Kabbalist wishes it to be realized.” Bardon, Franz. The Key to the True Kabbalah (p. 132). Merkur Publishing. Kindle Edition.

K it is! I had no clue what I was doing but I read all the sections about K and then began working with it intending to strengthen my faith. This led me to extensive research into the intersection of science and faith, and I ended up repeating the litmus paper pH testing done with bowls of water charged with the certain elements. I reread David Hawkins’ Power vs Force and several of his subsequent books. I read Masaru Emoto’s books. I found an author, Nisha Manek, a physician practicing neurology, who wrote a brilliant book called [Bridging Science and Spirit: The Genius of William Tiller’s Physics and the Promise of Information Medicine](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bridging-Science-Spirit-Information-Medicine/dp/1950559009/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3L868RY5V4C8N&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pcvOSEQcg2ulTJFEa-y9aw.0wts569zSZUbvLsWNboEJLZjU7w0Ai3VTOcpd6PX3DE&dib_tag=se&keywords=Bridging+Science+and+Spirit%3A+The+Genius+of+William+Tiller%E2%80%99s+Physics+and+the+Promise+of+Information+Medicine&qid=1747224248&s=books&sprefix=bridging+science+and+spirit+the+genius+of+william+tiller+s+physics+and+the+promise+of+information+medicine%2Cstripbooks%2C346&sr=1-1). 

In a spirit of play, I worked with a colleague to try and replicate Emoto’s experiments with how water forms different crystalline patterns when it is charged with various intent. I used glass petri dishes, filled them with one tablespoon of water, charged each with a specific element and then froze them. I proved I could create a ‘face’ of each element that showed in the crystallization patterns of the various dishes and then replicated it. 

So I had my faith back. 

**PAA: Bardon’s letter keys: in plain language, what does “vibrating a letter” accomplish inside the microcosm and in the outer world? **

I will address vibrating the letter a bit later, but first I must say KTQ is a difficult book. It really is. Bardon put it together so you begin from the bottom up without  understanding the big picture first, which is not how I learn. So I read it and reread it. I took notes. I made spreadsheets showing the attributes of each letter.

It did not help there are blinds in the book. For example, in Step 1 of KTQ, the letter F is assigned to the water element, but in Step 4, Bardon says it has the elemental attribute of earth. Same with the letter H. In the first step, he assigns it to water, but then in Step 4 it is fire. So…which is it? What? And why is there no E note assigned to the letters? What does the color vibration do? 

To answer these nagging questions, I thought it would be a good idea to determine an approach I could use to really learn the letters, from macrocosmic big picture down to the microcosm. 

After experiencing failure with several approaches, I hit on a way that was right for me. I began by fleshing out the Excel document I’d made earlier where the first tab had a table showing all the letters, their elemental attributes, the organs associated with them, the musical notes, and the color, which I coded using Microsoft’s RBG (Red, Green, Blue) numeric scale. I always want to use my senses, so I translated each musical note into Hertz, which is how you find tones on YouTube. I also have a tone generator on my mobile ([Phil Rice made this helpful suggestion](https://philrice.substack.com/)). 

Then I put in four more tabs where I copied and pasted what Bardon said each letter does at the Akashic, mental, astral and material levels. Just starting with this made me feel like I was armed with the necessary knowledge to begin, but how?

I created a Word document for each letter. I colored the page using the RGB scale assigned to the letter, put in the note, elements, organs and a link to the YouTube Hz tone. Then I copied and pasted in what the letter did at all four levels, and then created a rubric for each meditation session – a heading with date, level (Akashic, mental, astral, material), begin time, end time, duration in minutes, the planetary hour of the session. I learned how to calculate Agrippa’s planetary hours from a book by the late Joseph Lisewski but I have an app that does it easily on my mobile. And then notes below for each session. I created another tab in the spreadsheet to track the number of minutes I spent with each letter on each level.

I did not know if the planetary hour made much difference, but thought I’d put it in anyway. I learned how to calculate Agrippa’s planetary hours from a book by the late Joseph Lisewski but I have an app that does it easily on my mobile. This level of overkill is part of my nature, but if you reflect on it, such thoroughness is akin to dressing for a social event. You can be overdressed and people will be cool with that, but if you’re underdressed not so much. Plus a thorough approach allows focus with single minded intensity, a real concentrated effort. Why do it at all if you’re not going to go full out?

So I began doing it. I started this January going through each letter at the Akashic level until I felt like I was through. I ended up spending a total of 5,792 minutes (95.9 hours)  on the KTQ alphabet at the Akashic level, an average of 213 minutes or 3.6 hours per letter. These Akashic meditation sessions happened between January 21, 2025, and April 30, 2025. I do it every day and have become comfortable with sessions averaging fifty minutes. 

I am now done with that and on May 4, 2025, I began cycling through the alphabet again at the mental level. Note – good idea to take the letters in order because they seem to build on each other in a cumulative effect. 

As to chanting them, the Golden Dawn made a big deal about vibrating letters and when I was doing those rituals for a time I didn’t get it. 

But then I read Robert Monroe’s work on hemi-sync tones for astral travel and begin listening to those. Plus a Hermetic colleague is musically gifted and I consulted her. And then I understood! When I meditate on a letter, I have the tone playing through headphones and I chant the letter in resonance with the tone. This allows me to really feel the letter, begin to understand its personality. 

Then, I began experimenting with visualizing geometric shapes in the letter’s color and movement concurrently with the auditory vibration. You can read more about this process, if you wish, in Mouni Sadhu’s The Tarot. He calls these moving shapes tourbillons or whirlwinds. It is the moving structure of Kabbalistic magic. 

Finally, with one of the letters, as I was chanting the shape seemed to come from me and fill the universe. I think this was the first experience with what Bardon calls tetrapolar pronunciation. Seriously cool.

**PAA: One experiment with a single letter that surprised you—what you tried, what happened, and what you’d change next time. **

So, what I have I found out about these letters so far? 

First of all, they are transformative. While you may begin your study of them with the idea of making them do magical things in accordance with your (higher) will, that is not what they did initially with me. I have come to believe these letters are each conscious in a certain way, imbued as they are with characteristics at each level, and as you chant the letter, immerse yourself in its energy, you are fed spiritually, and gain insight into additional purification work you still need to do. 

These letters, then, aid you in continuing the initial purification you completed in the first two steps of IIH. I found this to definitely be true at the Akashic level and in my early work at the mental level. Here is a direct quote from Bardon on the letter C at the Akashic level that illustrates this point: 

> “The C vibration symbolizes the mystery of self-spiritualization and, at the same time, the great mystery of transformation. Whoever masters this mystery well shall comprehend and recognize the profundity of the Eucharist and its aspects and will master all the practical methods relating to the Eucharist. From the Hermetic point of view, the practices mentioned in my first book, Initiation into Hermetics, in the chapter dealing with the magic of water, belong to the practical application of the Eucharist in its lowest sense. In the Kabbalistic use of the letter C, however, the point in question is a higher aspect of the Eucharist, for it has to do with the transformation or incorporation of a divine idea, a higher virtue, into a certain form.” 

So there it is. These letters are a gift to the serious Hermeticist that can help with the final purification of the astrosome so that it is completely clear, unblemished by any spots of darkness, even tiny ones. When this condition is permanent, Bardon hints at the astral level of some of the letters, the astral-mental body then becomes ‘mummified’ or immortal so that you walk whole into the next realm. I’m still working out that part, so this verbiage may be clumsy. 

The Initiate can then become a clear mirror that can shine forth (project) magical intent powered by the clear light of Divine will. But you have to allow the letter to work on and in you first before it will let you use it to do stuff. Quality first, then quantity after. 

The letters helped lead me to discover these dark and hidden places, and I have already spoken of the white mirror processes I’m using. 

Well, wait a minute, you may be asking, what about levitation, mastery of the electric and magnetic fluids, charging tools and the like? I have been allowed so far to use the letters to charge my magical tools and some talismans, but I have not thus far been permitted the maturity to levitate objects or move a compass needle with a magnetic-fluid charged finger. Yet. 

But this is the thing about magic, isn’t it? It grows within you organically, first in quality and only grows quantitatively within you as your quality matures. 

Why? Because as [William Mistele said in his latest interview with Tanya Robinson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35-NPC-31AI), what Bardon was getting at was to help you, if you work very hard, take on the powers of an earth-zone spirit while still in your current incarnation. 

That’s heady stuff. Now I will end with a final thought from the perspective of an ongoing journey that has taken just over 16 years of solid study. 

I’m human. So are you. Each of us is deeply flawed, experiences self-doubt, makes dumb mistakes, and a number of Initiates may carry around karmic loads from past lives that rival the fetters the ghost of Jacob Marley dragged along in Dickens’ *Christmas Carol*. I cannot ever be Agrippa, Levi, Bardon, Sadhu, Tomberg or anyone else. Instead I can only be me and you can only be you. So be genuine. Formulate a mission that addresses your own ‘why’ on taking this difficult and dangerous path. Work to your own strengths. Work these things out as I have done. You will fail many times. When you do, get back up, put a smile on your face, roll up your sleeves and climb back in the ring. Don’t ever give up. 

And, lest you fear that your efforts won’t be up to snuff, here is quote from a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 that sums it up pretty well. 

> *It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.*

**PAA: On behalf of myself and the entire community, thank you—we truly appreciate you. This interview stands out as not only one of the most inspiring I’ve ever read, but also one of the most practically helpful for students of the Franz Bardon tradition. You’ve shown that genuine effort and consistency can carry you all the way to the summit. Your thoroughness in IIH has borne its fruit in KTQ. **

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