Be Good To Yourself – That Which is Above,Is Below

August 22, 2009 at 9:13 pm (Bardon's IIH) (, , , , , , )

Be good to yourself.

If your goals are to get rich or wield power over others then you will have no true success in Hermetics. Start thinking of your reasons for taking this on.

The person we most often lie to is ourselves, please be prepared to be brutally honest with yourself while you go through this book…it is extremely important. Admitting to ourselves what our weaknesses are is the first step in making ourselves stronger. Bardon spends a good deal of time having the student examine themselves. It is the only way to recognize what the individual needs to work on. Denying you have any weakness or not fully admitting those weaknesses to oneself will only defeat the purpose. And good luck. :D

Here we go

Initiation I – Theory
“That which is above is also that which is below”, Hermes Trismegistus

**We hear this often these days. Especially in the wake of the creation of Wicca. Though it may modernly be treated as a new thought, it obviously is not. Remember that this is not just about god/goddess…it is about everything that is… from the astral plane to the physical to the mental. That which has a place at the top of things, is a reflection of what is below.

Example: Consciousness is “above” the subconscious…they are reflections of each other. Subconscious thought manifests in our conscious life, however not always as we may think. How you behave in waking life is an affect of the driving force of our subconscious and our past. In order to break out of habits in daily life, we must reconcile what is in the subconscious. Changing the subconscious then changes the conscious.

Someone mentioned higher consciousness to me yesterday. I commented that it is a fancy way of saying talking to oneself. As above so below. If a person has something to aspire to, higher consciousness, then you can only tap into that resource by changing your consciousness…which is only changed by changing your subconscious. If you start to understand things in a dual process…even if the processes become more and more complex…if you just break them down into the above/below thing… you will find it easier to understand how things work according to Bardon. Reading U.S Andersen may also help.

People try to take the above/below concept and apply it to say…angels and demons….but we must remember that between the realms of angels and demons there are other realms…one is not directly below the other. So you cannot get closer to angels by changing your relationship with demons. Angels are considered “above” the material plane…demons are considered below the material plane. Which would mean that below angels is you…and above demons is you. By changing your relationship to demons, you are changing your relationship to the earth, which then changes your relationship to the angels.

Sure, some may say that what I describe has no significance because by changing the relationship to demons you are changing your relationship to angels…true..but if you forget the middle step…it will leave holes in your greater understandings.

Elementals are in a realm sort of with us… they are in that space also between angels and demons. The relevance here is…when you change your relationship with demons, you change your relationship with the earth…which changes your relationship with the elementals as well as any other higher dimensional “being”…like angels. If you have a poor balance with the universe/earth/elementals…you will have a poor time associating with any religious stuff like angels and demons. You are not grounded in the universal pulls that exist here…this is how people get possessed.

And you can be possessed by an angel, just as well as you can be possessed by a demon, elemental, another person or even an idea.

I’ll throw in here that I am not religious, but I do not throw away angels and demons because they don’t “fit into” Hermetics. For me, the nature of them absolutely fits in…though the dogma does not. I do not carry a dogmatic understanding of angels and demons. If it were up to me I would come up with two other terms…but it’s not up to me.
Bardon does not really talk so much about angels and demons, though like I said, I believe they fit in.

So now, I have gone on and on so far with about 700 words explaining just one sentence….and Bardon did not even write it lol.

Remember as you go through the book (Initiation into Hermetics)…there is deeper meaning and a deeper significance to just about everything in it.

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Der Weg zum Wahren Adepten (Initiation Into Hermetics), Franz Bardon, 1956

August 22, 2009 at 9:09 pm (Bardon's IIH) (, , , , , , )

I would like to begin by saying that the only true teacher is experience. Proof is the undertaking of task and the results of the experience. I’m not here to prove anything to anyone. I don’t have to and have no desire to go around trying to convince anyone of what I believe and how I think. It’s not my purpose and not my issue if anyone has a problem nor does not have the patience to put in the work to achieve results.

For future reference:

IIH = Initiation Into Hermetics, by Franz Bardon
PME = The Practice of Magical Evocation, by Franz Bardon
KTQ = Key to the True Quabbalah, by Franz Bardon

The information in IIH forms the foundations that PME and KTQ were written and outline the basic training and guidance useful in coming to an understanding and becoming a Hermetic magician. Theory and practice, as it were.

One item you will note over and over again is how important balance or equilibrium is in Hermetics. Also I will add that if you have no intentions of understanding or functioning in a balanced way, then you will very probably not finish IIH.

Because this book has been translated, and because Baron himself was a bit “different” not all of what he has written is that easily understood by a great deal of people. So it is my hope to answer questions and somewhat explain what the man is saying. (even though Rawn Clark has done this basically…eh…you never know what might come up)

There are people that say they took less than a year to go through IIH. I am suspicious of that and would like to say that in the Hermetic world, it is considered a life work…not something you do to the end of the book then suddenly you are a Hermetic magician. Personally…it took me five years just to get to the end of the book. (I’m not kidding) And still I continue to study it along with my own Hermetic research and interests.

Though I do not expect everyone to do things the way I did and I do not expect everyone to take this as seriously as I do…and granted there is much fun in magic, no matter what you are studying…or there should be anyways.

What a student of this book should concentrate on is not how long it takes or does not take….but that they master each step…and I mean really master it. Before they go onto the next step. I don’t mean to read it, practice for a week and then decide you have mastered it…you need to feel that mastery into the depths of your being…and you will…and you will know when it is time to move on. And if you do move on before you have mastered that exercise…you will find a lot of stress as you move on through the book. Or you should, if you are doing the exercises correctly.

By design, this book is left a bit open to the students own thought process, natural abilities and etc…this is why a lot is seemingly “left out” and a lot of it is designed to simply make a person think. Bardon did not believe in giving everyone the answers, as the true student would be a seeker of the answers and not just accept anything that is thrown their way. A magician needs to be able to think and reason for themselves….another reason why this book is not popular for some…because they want to be fed answers. This book is designed to make the student work and think for themselves…as it should be.

Please keep in mind I am not teaching Hermetics nor am I teaching this book…I will offer insights through my own practice of this book and will answer some questions if I get any…however, the deeper more personal questions must be left up to the student. Any “proof” must be in the experience of doing.

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