Introduction to my personal commentary
I want to write my overview of Initiation into Hermetics, as the exercises within it are quite central to a direct, mystical practice. The book itself, originally written in German, is structured in a way, and in a language (at least in the translation; I don’t speak German) that is quite hard to understand. I’ve heard it suggested that it is inaccessible on purpose and contains various ‘blinds’ to confuse the uninitiated, and it was also suggested that Bardon was concerned it would become popular with the Nazi movement at the time (which was associated with left-hand occult practices (allegedly)).
The first part of the book is about Hermetic philosophy, and talks about the nature of the elements and the different planes, mainly physical, astral and mental. This leads into the second part, which is a series of exercises for physical, astral and mental development. It’s logical, but the reading is hard going, to be frank.
The exercises train concentration and the ‘spiritual senses’ (my choice of language). So on the surface, you are training ‘imaginary’ senses, i.e. imagining you can see something (visualisation), imagining you can smell something (clairaudience?) and so on. The initial training is to do this with total concentration on individual senses, then combinations of senses, and this is leading to using all the spiritual senses together, which essentially puts you into a different world in a different body (mental or astral). So to start with it’s simply imagination and training the consciousness to use it, but it actually leads to waking up in a different realm.
Then it goes on, to use concentration to influence, what I would call ‘astral light’. It could be argued (by me, this isn’t in the book) that nothing exists except imagination, both the things we see in our mind and the things we perceive with our senses. If this has some kind of underlying substance, then it could be astral light (or holy ghost or whatever).
So when we are in this physical body then we are totally viewing everything in this realm with the physical senses and are seeing a very dense form of the light that is hard to influence with will (you can’t just choose to create something like in a dream).
Then we can close our eyes and recreate what is around us mentally, imagine hearing things, something touching us etc. and so we are existing in a mental counterpart of the world. To start with, that is ‘just imagination’, but as concentration and the strength of the spiritual senses improves, you will actually begin to ‘wake up’ there – because IT’S ALL IMAGINATION.
What I am talking about is that when you are looking into the world, the physical world, like now I am sitting typing by a river and when I look up I can see some trees. They are ‘real’ and ‘out there’ to me. Now, whatever is outside my skull is being reported by the senses, the light hits the trees and comes to my retinas and a signal passes to the brain and the trees are RECREATED IN IMAGINATION – in astral-light material. To be honest, I have no real idea what is ‘out there’ beyond my senses, outside my head. I have no idea if I am seeing the same as you see… or are ‘you’ even there? Perhaps someone could take a load of LSD or magic mushrooms and see all these other things that no one else can see and are ‘hallucinating’, … but in that situation, it’s not possible to say that what they see is unreal and what we (having not taken LSD or mushrooms) see is the truth. It might be the lights they are seeing flashing in the sky and shimmering flying elephants are really there but we are blind to them, who knows!
So I can use spiritual senses to recreate the world, which is what the mind is doing when I perceive it, but I can also choose to do that with imagination. I can see the trees. I can imagine them. I can see and imagine them at the same time. So there’s a perceived world (which is recreated in imagination) and a mental world (which is created in imagination). See what I did there?
Two worlds. Two words. Worlds. One letter difference, L.
RECREATE
CREATE
We have full volition over the mental world, we can choose to see what we want to see. I can look out at the trees and see them in my mind, but I can make the ones in the mental world bright red, while the ones I’m seeing with my physical eyes are green. Now the red ones are ‘just imagination’ and the green ones are ‘real’ although both are created 100% in my mind, and while I’m sitting here typing this, I look up at the green trees and it feels more real, it feels perhaps 98% real, here in this world, while the red trees are 2% real, they are simply ‘imaginary’… (although both are really, uh, let’s not go there right now).
I can stop writing and concentrate, look at both trees at the same time, in and out, red and green, and the outside world ‘dims’ a little, it’s perhaps 5% ‘in here’ and 95% ‘out there’.
Later, I can go home, lie down and close my eyes, and ‘imagine’ (recreate) the scene, use the spiritual senses, perhaps touch the tree, feel the breeze. It goes 50/50, 60/40, 70/30 as I get more relaxed and I begin to fully wake up in imagination, as a realm. THE MIND IS A PLACE.
The world is a place, we inhabit, when our physical senses are open and reporting our ‘experience’ for recreation in imagination, and it is real and where we are, we are here (mostly) in the physical realm, on planet earth. We are also in the mental world, but only a little bit and it isn’t so real.
I can sit here and close my eyes and imagine the physical world around me, it is there but as a mental creation. I can change it. I can imagine around me another place, a building before me and lake behind me and the longer I do this, the more the physical world that I was in fades away and the mental world takes prominence, until at some point I open my eyes and am shocked that there are green trees before me and not a building.
This is (one of) the fruits of practice. Firstly, by using the spiritual senses they grow stronger, and then you are also strengthening concentration, so you can sustain … them, and start to wake up in another world. It’s a bit hard to explain. Perhaps think about trying to start a car with a combustion engine, but it’s old and so the key is turned and the engine makes that sound for a while (I think it’s the starter motor?). Well If it’s an old car it might be making that noise for quite a while, but then eventually, the engine ‘kicks in’ and it starts turning on it’s own.
So I can sit here now and look at the green trees. Imagine the red ones. Close my eyes. Keep seeing the red ones. The green ones with my eyes open were simply there, whereas the red ones in my mind take a little volition, a will for them to be created, and then it takes a little will to keep on seeing them and not start thinking about something else.
This is where concentration comes in. While my consciousness is mainly in the physical body, then it takes a little concentration to see and then maintain them, initially. As I sit and maintain the red trees with my eyes closed, they become more and more real (as my consciousness withdraws from the physical body and enters my mental body) and eventually consciousness is existing wholly in the mental body and I am in another world, awake there, and the image of the red trees is no longer an image and is now requiring no effort to keep existing as… it is existing. In the same way as when I was in the physical world and the green trees were there, and it didn’t matter if I was concentrating or willing them to exist or not, they are simply something that was existing as a real thing.