Book Review: Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon

Ah, finally, we’ve come to discuss one of my most favorite occult books of all time – Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon.

My Personal Story

And that’s where it stayed. I moved at least one time, probably twice, at which times it was transferred to another book shelf. And then another. Years passed. I never gave it a second thought.

Sometime later, I found myself on a peculiar Google rabbit hole involving search terms like “best book,” “hermetics,” and “magic.” Many sources kept mentioning this book, Initiation Into Hermetics, a title that I did not recognize or remember, as the book to read on the subject. I pulled it up on Amazon and saw the current price was listed at $450. “Wow!” I thought. “Maybe I’ll get to read that one day, but no way am I ever going to pay that price for a book.” But as I stared at the image of the cover on my laptop screen, a strange feeling of deja vu came over me. I remember turning to my wife and saying “I feel like I’ve owned this book before.”

“I Feel like I’ve owned this book before!”

-Me

Sidenote: If you haven’t noticed, Amazon book prices skyrocket when there’s low stock. It’s basically highway robbery. Over the past few years, I’ve seen the price for Bardon’s books fluctuate anywhere between $20 and $1000. Now there’s a Kindle edition and a reprint edition, so prices are back to being reasonable. Anyway, back to my story…

That deja vu feeling kept nagging me for days, until the point where I knew I had owned the book. Eventually I tore through the bookshelf. I found Initiation Into Hermetics hidden behind some other texts.

“Aha!” I probably shouted. Satisfied, I ran upstairs to show my wife. “I knew I owned this book!”

Having closed the matter, I contentedly placed it back on the bookshelf for another six months before I finally decided to try reading it.

I now have a confession. After reading “Lesson I” in the book, I became severely discouraged at the amount of time required. Bardon lists about ten exercises, then writes, “We should allow anywhere from 14 days to one month for each of these.” He goes on to say that for anyone inexperienced in Hermetics, this will take much longer. Well, that sounded like it was going to take a year to get through the first lesson, so I promptly shut the book and returned it to it’s home on the bookshelf.

Again, time passed by and I forgot all about Initiation Into Hermetics. Now, it may seem as though my opening claim of the book “magically appearing” in my life was hyperbolic and that it’s more of a case of absentmindedness and laziness. I’ll give you that, but I’m not quite done with the story.

Eventually, a friend gifted me Bardon’s second book, The Practice of Magical Evocation. She said something along the lines of “I haven’t read it, but my dad always said this was the best book on magic.” Well, that certainly piqued my interest. And besides that, the title sounded a bit cooler. I went straight to reading it!

I made it all the way to the end of the introduction, where Bardon says:

It is important that the reader know that he will not achieve any results with the practice of magical evocation unless he has successfully completed Step VIII, at the very least, of my first book, Initiation Into Hermetics.

The Practice of Magical Evocation

There are ten lessons in total for Initiation Into Hermetics. Getting to Step VIII would basically require reading the entire book. I felt like the universe was telling me to hurry up and do that already. So I did. And it completely changed my magickal practice.

The Author, Franz Bardon

Lucky for us, all of Bardon’s books were not lost. Eventually, they were translated into English.

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Now, Finally, The Book Review

Initiation Into Hermetics can perhaps be summed up as an explanation of the first tarot card. The book’s cover art and introduction both feature an image that Bardon refers to as “The Magician.” It is nothing like any tarot card I have ever seen and, indeed, was probably of Bardon’s own design. Following the introduction are ten lessons, each with a series of exercises.

One such exercise, which is to be repeated each morning forever, involves taking a cold shower and brushing your entire body with some sort of stiff brush.

But there are useful exercises, like pore breathing, building a magic mirror, and visiting the elemental realms. For these things alone, the book is worth the read. It also contains one of the best explanations of fluid condensers that I’ve ever found.

The word “initiation” should not be confused with the word “introduction.” It is not an easy book — it is a focused, self-study course that requires action and dedication. The interesting part is that your level of involvement depends entirely on your own self analysis. Bardon gives exercises after each lesson. The guidance generally follows this format:

1. If the exercise comes naturally to you, move forward
2. If you struggle, keep practicing it for weeks (or sometimes even months)

When the first lessons have such titles as “Thought Control,” “Thought Discipline,” and “Mastery of Thoughts,” you can tell this isn’t for the faint of heart. It is also reiterated several times throughout the book that you must master each lesson in order. Skipping ahead is strongly cautioned, at first with rather vague warnings. Later, you learn that experimentation with advanced techniques could potentially lead to the unwitting creation of malevolent spirits, trapping yourself in an elemental realm, developing a strong urge to commit suicide, or ultimately death itself. Those are pretty big cautions.

After accepting the fact that I would not ever do things like take a cold shower, I had to develop my own personal way of reading the book. I decided to take each lesson in order, meditate on the information and exercises, and come up with my own evaluation for what everything meant. Sometimes I felt as if my previous experience with magick allowed me a solid foundation to continue, but other times I felt as if I had significant work to do. In the latter cases, I practiced!

Oftentimes the language and associations are slightly different than what you might expect from a typical Western perspective. A good example of this might be the colors attributed to the elements.

Fire = Red
Air = Blue
Water = Greenish-blue
Earth = Yellow, gray or black

Initiation Into Hermetics

Bardon also uses terms like “Akasha” to describe a fifth element (which we might more commonly call Spirit) and “Divine Providence” which is kind of like a mixture of unstoppable god-consciousness and fate. For me, it took some time to get used to his particular vocabulary, but it was mostly smooth sailing once I acclimated.

The difficulty of the reading varies depending on which page you’re on. I found some pages flew by and then some I had to stop and re-read several times. This is partially due to the fact that, although he is extremely thorough, Bardon writes in a very assuming manner. He talks as if everything he says makes sense — but it doesn’t. Not always. In fact, someone else wrote an entire book to try to explain it — It’s called A Bardon Companion and I will discuss it below.

This assuming manner also allows Bardon to speak with extreme conviction. So much so, he almost makes everything believable. Take this for example:

Any magician who has been trained in this manner has the ability to condense an element to such a degree that it becomes a physical power or energy. Therefore you can set a fire ablaze even from the farthest distance with the Fire element. In the beginning, practice compressing a fireball which has been drawn directly from the universe without having it pass through your body into a small bead with your imagination to the point that it becomes a glowing spark. Then direct this spark into a previously prepared cotton swab moistened with an easily ignitable substance such as ether, gasoline or alcohol.

Initiation Into Hermetics

Yes, in the above paragraph, Bardon is saying that I can literally shoot magic balls of fire through the air and light candles with my mind. That sounds pretty crazy, right? But when you read the full chapter, it almost sounds plausible.

Initiation Into Hermetics really did empower my own magickal practice. It greatly enhanced my visualization techniques, helped me better understand the elemental realms, and aided in my ability to manipulate energy. It also did more than that, but I won’t spoil all the secrets.

As a final note, I’ll mention that the system of Hermetics presented by Bardon, which is lovingly referred to as Bardonics, is not necessarilyy the same system used by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

TLDR

I bought a book, forgot about it for years, then failed at reading it several times. When I finally read it, it took a lot of work, but there was a huge amount of spiritual payoff.

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A Bardon Companion

The thing is, all of this is open to interpretation. Read Initiation Into Hermetics on its own and form your own interpretations, or read it alongside A Bardon Companion and assimilate some of Rawn Clark’s interpretations. Either way, the knowledge will be beneficial to you as long as you put it into proper practice.