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This is a companion to the relevant section to Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics, but as someone focused on elemental balancing but not working IIH, I still found it very helpful - although full disclosure, only just begun putting it into practice. (I have read the relevant section of IIH though, so you might need to).
I'll list some of what I found most useful.
- Firstly, he recommends NOT splitting up your 'soul mirror' (lists of positive and negative traits) into elemental categories. Since every negative trait is caused by a mix of elements (eg I might procrastinate because I'm lazy (earth) AND because I'm afraid of some element of the task (air or water). And that by dividing them into elements, you can end up pigeonholing the negative trait and failing to understand it properly.
- He recommends strategically outlining which traits your going to work on, with one major and two minor ones being addressed at a time. (Like "I lose my temper all the time" takes major transformation, whereas "I don't know how to cook healthy meals for myself" is just a matter of getting some recipes and following them)
He recommends a 6-pronged approach (taken from Bardon but organised by him) all focused on the one trait
- He distinguishes between conscious eating, drinking and breathing, and magic washing, in a way I had missed in IIH:
Conscious eating, drinking and breathing involves working with the akasha of the food, drink or air, and transubstantiating into your desired quality. He emphasises that you are not filling the food with the quality, or charging it with the quality, you are changing its nature so that it becomes the quality. Nothing is added; what is already there is changed. You can do this by fiat - I command it to change and believe firmly that it has - and/or via extending your conscious into the food and changing it from within. Actually he said there's hundreds of methods, but those are the two he explains in full.
- WHEREAS, magic washing is working with the magnetic quality within water, not the akasha. You focus on its magnetism and believe it is drawing the negative quality out of you. He says it must be cold water (but not so cold it's distracting) so it's maximally water element with no fire element.
- He makes a point about visualisation being optional. It's not in the IIH methodology, but people bring it in because they're so used to doing visualisation from other schools of magic that they just assume its required. He says what matters is belief and conviction that (for eg) the magnetic water is drawing impatience out of you. If visualising dark liquid leaving your body and washing down the drain helps you firm up that belief, cool, do it. But it's a supportive aid, it's not the aim of the exercise. If it doesn't help you believe more strongly, don't waste your energy on it.
The author has some humility which a) makes him funny and readable and b) makes him a more trustworthy source on balancing the elements (he seems like he's had some success at it). Eg at the end of one chapter, he says "Concluding Remarks: You don't need to study this chapter closely. I was just trying to get across [summary of chapter's point]. If you understand that, I wouldn't bother re-reading this section." I've never seen an author do that - they're much more likely to say "you must reread my works multiple times to truly understand that". Okay, it's sometimes true, but still, I appreciated the humility and the honesty of this guy.
In general the tone is chatty and casual, but it's well edited and doesn't meander off the point - it's just the tone that's casual, not the content.
The book also has occasional paragraphs written by people with a different perspective to him, describing how that person practices eg conscious eating differently from the author. I liked that.
While the book does have theory, it's in support of the praxis - if you're currently interested in elemental balancing and not allergic to Bardon, I recommend it. If not, I wouldn't recommend it just for an abstract interest in the theory. I liked this enough that as soon as I hit post, I'm going to see what other books he has and if there's one relevant to my practice, I'll buy it.
(As an aside, he references (and links to) essays by William Mistele a fair bit. I've read Mistele's book Four Elements. It's odd. Parts of it are great, two chapters in I'd have recommended it wholeheartedly, but he turns out to be obsessed with mermaids and how some women are secretly mermaids. It's off-putting because it's supposed to be about balancing the four elements and the obsession with mermaids undermines that - it's unbalanced. Also he's quite weird about women, who he seems to kind of think are all water elementals instead of full personalities. I read the linked essays and didn't find a single one of them added to my understanding. But YMMV.)
Two more practices/notes:
- he recommends splitting magic washing between the specific trait you want to eliminate, and for "failure", on the basis that reducing failure as a trait will improve every area of your life and practice
- also suggests using the skills you're good at to improve the ones you're bad at. Eg if you're good at conscious eating, you could imprint your food with the quality "mastery of magic washing".
I'll list some of what I found most useful.
- Firstly, he recommends NOT splitting up your 'soul mirror' (lists of positive and negative traits) into elemental categories. Since every negative trait is caused by a mix of elements (eg I might procrastinate because I'm lazy (earth) AND because I'm afraid of some element of the task (air or water). And that by dividing them into elements, you can end up pigeonholing the negative trait and failing to understand it properly.
- He recommends strategically outlining which traits your going to work on, with one major and two minor ones being addressed at a time. (Like "I lose my temper all the time" takes major transformation, whereas "I don't know how to cook healthy meals for myself" is just a matter of getting some recipes and following them)
He recommends a 6-pronged approach (taken from Bardon but organised by him) all focused on the one trait
- Magic Washing (washing away the negative trait)
- Conscious Eating and Drinking (imbuing food and drink with the opposite, positive trait)
- Autosuggestion (Affirmations) for the positive trait. In particular 40 before falling asleep and 40 immediately on waking.
- Conscious Breathing - inhaling the positive trait and inhaling the negative one (so for eg inhaling serenity and exhaling irritation)
- Volition - consciously making yourself behave as though you had the trait you want - fake it till you make it-style
- NMM - non-magical methods. Going to therapy, reading instructional books, making an effort to socialise or whatever
- He distinguishes between conscious eating, drinking and breathing, and magic washing, in a way I had missed in IIH:
Conscious eating, drinking and breathing involves working with the akasha of the food, drink or air, and transubstantiating into your desired quality. He emphasises that you are not filling the food with the quality, or charging it with the quality, you are changing its nature so that it becomes the quality. Nothing is added; what is already there is changed. You can do this by fiat - I command it to change and believe firmly that it has - and/or via extending your conscious into the food and changing it from within. Actually he said there's hundreds of methods, but those are the two he explains in full.
- WHEREAS, magic washing is working with the magnetic quality within water, not the akasha. You focus on its magnetism and believe it is drawing the negative quality out of you. He says it must be cold water (but not so cold it's distracting) so it's maximally water element with no fire element.
- He makes a point about visualisation being optional. It's not in the IIH methodology, but people bring it in because they're so used to doing visualisation from other schools of magic that they just assume its required. He says what matters is belief and conviction that (for eg) the magnetic water is drawing impatience out of you. If visualising dark liquid leaving your body and washing down the drain helps you firm up that belief, cool, do it. But it's a supportive aid, it's not the aim of the exercise. If it doesn't help you believe more strongly, don't waste your energy on it.
The author has some humility which a) makes him funny and readable and b) makes him a more trustworthy source on balancing the elements (he seems like he's had some success at it). Eg at the end of one chapter, he says "Concluding Remarks: You don't need to study this chapter closely. I was just trying to get across [summary of chapter's point]. If you understand that, I wouldn't bother re-reading this section." I've never seen an author do that - they're much more likely to say "you must reread my works multiple times to truly understand that". Okay, it's sometimes true, but still, I appreciated the humility and the honesty of this guy.
In general the tone is chatty and casual, but it's well edited and doesn't meander off the point - it's just the tone that's casual, not the content.
The book also has occasional paragraphs written by people with a different perspective to him, describing how that person practices eg conscious eating differently from the author. I liked that.
While the book does have theory, it's in support of the praxis - if you're currently interested in elemental balancing and not allergic to Bardon, I recommend it. If not, I wouldn't recommend it just for an abstract interest in the theory. I liked this enough that as soon as I hit post, I'm going to see what other books he has and if there's one relevant to my practice, I'll buy it.
(As an aside, he references (and links to) essays by William Mistele a fair bit. I've read Mistele's book Four Elements. It's odd. Parts of it are great, two chapters in I'd have recommended it wholeheartedly, but he turns out to be obsessed with mermaids and how some women are secretly mermaids. It's off-putting because it's supposed to be about balancing the four elements and the obsession with mermaids undermines that - it's unbalanced. Also he's quite weird about women, who he seems to kind of think are all water elementals instead of full personalities. I read the linked essays and didn't find a single one of them added to my understanding. But YMMV.)
Post automatically merged:
Two more practices/notes:
- he recommends splitting magic washing between the specific trait you want to eliminate, and for "failure", on the basis that reducing failure as a trait will improve every area of your life and practice
- also suggests using the skills you're good at to improve the ones you're bad at. Eg if you're good at conscious eating, you could imprint your food with the quality "mastery of magic washing".
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