Franz Bardon

Born:  1 December 1909 in Troppau/Opava, Czechoslovokia.

Died: 10 July 1958 in Brno, Czechoslovakia.

Franz Bardon was a Czech occultist and student and teacher of Hermetics.

Life and death:

Franz Bardon was the first and only son of twelve siblings. Only four of these siblings lived into adulthood. Franz Bardon's father, Viktor Bardon, worked in a textile factory and studied Christian Mysticism and Hermetics in his spare time. During World War II Bardon was held in a concentration camp for refusing to participate in Nazi mysticism. Bardon was rescued by Russian soldiers who raided the camp. Bardon continued his work in the fields of Hermetics until 1958 when he was arrested and imprisoned in Brno, Czechoslovakia. Bardon died from pancreatitis on 10 July 1958 while in the custody of police.

Works:

Bardon is best known for his three volumes on Hermetic magic. These volumes are Initiation Into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation and The Key to the True Kabbalah.

An additional fourth work attributed to him by the title of Frabato the Magician, supposed by many of his students to be a disguised autobiography. Though the book lists its author as Bardon, it was actually written by his secretary, Otti Votavova. While some elements of the story are based on Bardon's real life experience, most of the book was written as an occult novel with much embellishment on the part of Votavova.

Bardon's works are most notable for their simplicity, their relatively small theoretical sections, and heavy emphasis on practice with many exercises. Students of his, such as Emil Stejnar, Walter Ogris, Martin Faulks, William Mistele and Rawn Clark consider him to have written the best training programs of any magician of the 20th century. They were written with the intention of allowing students who wished to practice magic the means to do so if they could not study under a teacher.

Metaphysics:

Bardon's metaphysical system commences with Initiation Into Hermetics and is expanded on in the subsequent volumes. The highest reality is the Akasha, which is associated with both God and the platonic "world of ideas", and which gives rise to (and binds/balances) the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water. These four elements make up the sum of all forces and processes in each of the three worlds. Bardon also posited "electric" and "magnetic" forces, which are used more as terms for the universal active and passive forces, respectively. These are expressed in the positive and negative aspects of the four elements. Air and earth are both considered pseudo-elements as they arise only out of the interaction of fire and water.

The three worlds or "planes" are as follows: the mental plane is the highest reality, save for the undivided akasha, and is the true and eternal ego. Where the akasha is in a sense the world of ideas, it is the mental plane that sets these ideas in motion. The astral plane is the next one down and contains the archetypes of the physical world and to some extent the vital energy behind it; the physical world is the lowest of the planes and requires little explanation. Each of these worlds forms a matrix for the world below it. Since humans also have three bodies corresponding to their presence in each of the three worlds, severing the link between any two of these bodies will cause the dissolution of the lower forms (or death). Such things as astral projection are still possible as they only involve loosening the hold between the bodies.

Humans are considered to be special because they alone are "tetrapolar", or inherently containing all four elements, plus the fifth, the Akasha or Divine element. This concept is the basis of much of Bardon's training, which requires developing deficiencies and coming to a proper tetrapolar balance—only then could the initiate progress spiritually. Bardon repeatedly emphasizes that the initiate can only develop an understanding of himself and his universe within the scope of their awareness and spiritual maturity. Thus the more balanced, more evolved student has access to a more comprehensive reality. And because of that, more magical power as a side effect.