Bardon's system related to experiences from the inside out

[AlfrunGrima]

Hi all, as I promised in the other Franz Bardon topic I played with the idea to start another topic about the Franz Bardon's system 'Initiation into Hermetics. But this time related to how people experience it from the inside out. Just the method as working system and nothing theoretical. About what the methodology added to your magic path, about the results and how you measured them, about which patterns you initially missed while working with another system or having earlier experiences with magic, which possibilities it added to how you work and your awareness.

So, nothing from a theoretical point of view. Nothing about Franz Bardon himself. Nothing thought with another tradition or school as a starting point or posts with another system as a main focus. So that are the fences I push in the ground to define the topic.

I started with IIH after 12 years of doing magic from which 2 years of formal training, so not from a beginners point of view. I discovered that it is possible to work in different components with IIH. After worked through steps I to III, it was for me quite possible to pick just one component, test and try things separate from the rest of the system. This amazed me and it was not what I expected. It gave me aha-moments because with working in components I was able to do an identification where my workflow was flawed for that particular skill. I had repeatable results after that.

The system has exercises I could test separate from mythology, just as exercise on itself. I want that because I had already a good working relationship with local spirits and a very local craft with local symbolism, stories and correspondences. So I just needed a trainingssystem without connections of mythology and it turned out that IIH was right for that.

Another thing is that IIH trains the practitioner in a very holistic way. As a magician you are not only your mind, but your soul AND your body. And that was where my patterns were incomplete. As a person I tend to live in my mind and head and had forgotten the very bodily part of my existence. I had forgotten that the body is a tool also. The methods of element-accumulation in the body came here to help. (Step IV mainly, but the experiences of transmuting myself in an object from step IV openend up my consciousness for a lot of other possibilities)

 

[iseht]

The emphasis on whole body awareness and utilizing visualization through that awareness was pretty big for me. The use of pore breathing and bringing one's attention to the totality of felt experience is quite different from the Golden Dawn style stuff I had initially learned. As you note, its very easy to get stuck in one's head and to develop dissociation from the physical senses. I found it lead to a much more grounded and simultaneously expansive experience. Going forward in the book and doing things like filling entire rooms with an element creates this interesting experience of total dissolution into the element and becoming indistinct from the room and what it contains.

It reminds me very much of the kasina practice outlined in the Visuddhimagga. In the Visuddhimagga you begin with an external object like a candle flame and gaze at it until it forms a stable after image. That after image eventually becomes expansive and luminous, one becomes fully absorbed in the image until the mind can be molded and stretched outward. With this absorption the mind becomes pliant (mudu) and workable (kammanīya), like clay. They go on to develop this workability into development of magical powers like invisibility and levitation, as mastery being attained over the elements represents total control over one's experience of the world.

I found this same meditation technology in IIH, just much more workable for the modern western practitioner. It's a bit of a different paradigm that moves away from symbol and correspondence that most of Western occultism is filled with towards investigation of the quality of experience itself.

 

[AlfrunGrima]

I found this same meditation technology in IIH, just much more workable for the modern western practitioner. It's a bit of a different paradigm that moves away from symbol and correspondence that most of Western occultism is filled with towards investigation of the quality of experience itself.

Yes it is this, a meditation technology which for me builded a better foundation for my skills. It is not that I practiced exercises as a standalone, it added more skill and mindtraining to what I already was doing. Thank you for answering.

 

[FireBorn]

Hi all, as I promised in the other Franz Bardon topic I played with the idea to start another topic about the Franz Bardon's system 'Initiation into Hermetics. But this time related to how people experience it from the inside out. Just the method as working system and nothing theoretical. About what the methodology added to your magic path, about the results and how you measured them, about which patterns you initially missed while working with another system or having earlier experiences with magic, which possibilities it added to how you work and your awareness.

So, nothing from a theoretical point of view. Nothing about Franz Bardon himself. Nothing thought with another tradition or school as a starting point or posts with another system as a main focus. So that are the fences I push in the ground to define the topic.

I started with IIH after 12 years of doing magic from which 2 years of formal training, so not from a beginners point of view. I discovered that it is possible to work in different components with IIH. After worked through steps I to III, it was for me quite possible to pick just one component, test and try things separate from the rest of the system. This amazed me and it was not what I expected. It gave me aha-moments because with working in components I was able to do an identification where my workflow was flawed for that particular skill. I had repeatable results after that.

The system has exercises I could test separate from mythology, just as exercise on itself. I want that because I had already a good working relationship with local spirits and a very local craft with local symbolism, stories and correspondences. So I just needed a trainingssystem without connections of mythology and it turned out that IIH was right for that.

Another thing is that IIH trains the practitioner in a very holistic way. As a magician you are not only your mind, but your soul AND your body. And that was where my patterns were incomplete. As a person I tend to live in my mind and head and had forgotten the very bodily part of my existence. I had forgotten that the body is a tool also. The methods of element-accumulation in the body came here to help. (Step IV mainly, but the experiences of transmuting myself in an object from step IV openend up my consciousness for a lot of other possibilities)

Thank you for sharing this! This is valuable for those of us who do not walk that path, but might. It gives us a lived experience and insight into the system, which may or may not be something others want for themselves. Not some intellectual masturbatory report to show us how smart you are. Lived experiences trump the intellectual all day long.
Again, thank you!

 

[Angelkesfarl]

"I am waiting for you to explain the first step as you experienced it, to see how the 'clay' is molded in your hands."