Thanks Laura,
Your book recommendations are extremely appreciated and I will most certainly look into those.
But what you read as ”the first paragraph of Problems in the Study of Magic, Pt. 1” is not by Bardon who died half a century ago but by William Mistele who’s web-site you looked at.
You said: “I think that anyone really interested in "magic" ought to first learn the history of the work from which the practices that we today call magic emerged: Hermeticism.”
I agree. That is why I was wondering if anybody was actually familiar with Bardon’s specific book: "Initiation Into Hermetics" and it’s exercises.
As I posted under the thread on “Self-Observation, Inner Talking & Work Instrument”, I seek understanding towards the validity of his exercise which have to do a lot with self analysis:
“Even though his (Bardon’s) writing superficially glanced at, seem to advocate magic (trying to change things through higher dimensions by ritual behavior in the 3rd dimension) but looking at them in detail one notices that his required exercises are all about self-observation, which can lead to inner change, which can lead to change of the higher dimensional-self, which then can lead to change again in the 3rd density reality around us. That is why I am so interested in other peoples take on good old Franz”
I do get your point about INTENT though. I guess Intent is the bottom line in any case and thanks for focusing me into that direction.
Regarding INTENT: Bardon in his introduction to the original German 4th edition of “Der Weg zum wahren Adepten” ("Initiation Into Hermetics") says:
„Wer in dem vorliegenden Werk etwa nur eine Sammlung von Rezepten zu finden glaubt, an Hand welcher er leicht und mühelos zu Ehren und Ruhm, Reichtum und Macht gelangen kann oder die Vernichtung seiner Feinde suchen wollte, dem kann von vornherein gesagt werden, dass er dieses Buch enttauescht beiseite legen wird.“
„The one who thinks to find in the presented book a collection of recipes that one can use to achieve easy and effortless fame, fortune and power or who is looking for the destruction of his enemies, be told that he/she will put the book down disappointed.“ (My translation)
It seemed to me that by putting this book out as a ‘self help guide’ in 1958 his Intent might have actually been STO. Regarding your comment about
“….Paracelsus. I don't think much of him at all. He was a puffer, as Fulcanelli would have said. The evidence is clear in his attitude toward women.”
I’d like to point out that Bardon dedicated his above-mentioned book to his friend, co-worker and student - a woman.
As background information: Some of Bardon’s students where put into concentration camps under the Nazis and tortured. Hitler offered Bardon very high positions in the Reich if he would collaborate but Bardon declined which also lead to horrible torture on him including surgery without anesthesia. Later in 1958 he was again arrested in Czechoslovakia and it was also the year he died, nobody knows how. At that time he was able to cure second degree Cancer (with his self-made medicine produced with the help of alchemy) that created envy among the classical medical community that couldn’t match his results with radiation treatments.
He seems to be little known.