Living Franz Bardon

One thing the Buddhist teacher Thubten Chodron tells her students is that their enemies are some of their greatest allies on their spiritual path. Cultivating patience is an essential part of the process for becoming a better Buddhist. To cultivate patience, you have to practice being patient, and you can only practice being patient when there is an opportunity to do so. Your friends don't provide you with opportunities to practice being patient, because they are always kind and respectful towards you. It is only your "enemies" who give you the opportunity to practice being patient. To clarify, I use the word "enemies" to refer to people who annoy, disrespect, or bully you. Anytime someone annoys you, disrespects you, or bullies you, you should recognize that this is an opportunity to practice being patient. That doesn't mean you can't be assertive or stand up for yourself. It just means you should do so without losing your composure or exhibiting anger....

The following is a list of William Mistele's writings on Saturn. 1. Finding Saturn in Yourself 2. Saturn Spirit Evocation 3. The Planetary Spheres This essay has a section discussing each planetary sphere. If you are going on a Saturn date , you only need to print out the section discussing the Sphere of Saturn. 4. The Presence of God, Part II This essay discusses several sephiroth. If you are going on a Saturn date, you only need to print out the section discussing Binah. 5. The Temple of Saturn 6. How to Speak Saturn Please do not print out the entire PDF. If you are going on a Saturn date, Chapters 11, 29, and 30 are the only ones you should print out. 7. A Saturn Meditation and the Idea of a Referee 8. Ten Rules for Spiritual Seekers If you are going on a Saturn date, copy and paste the Binah/Saturn section into a Word document and print just that section out.  9. Ten Rules for Spiritual Beginners This is a book-length manuscript based upon...

Ever wanted to go on a Saturn date? If so, you're in luck because it's quite easy. Just follow the steps below. 1. Print out all of William Mistele's writings about Saturn. A list of them can be found here . 2. Go to a beautiful and comfortable place you've either never been to before or that you go to very rarely. I find that going to a new place that's not associated with my daily routine helps me clear my head. Take a notebook, a pencil, and the writings about Saturn you printed out with you. 3. Read the writings about Saturn that you printed out. 4. In your notebook, write down any thoughts, insights, or musings that come to mind while you are reading the writings. Also, write down any quotes from the writings that stick out to you. 5. Reflect on the themes and teachings contained in the writings you just read. Then, in your notebook, write down any additional thoughts, insights, or musings that come to mind as you reflect on those themes a...

In some schools of Japanese martial arts, students are taught to be like rice stalks. When a rice stalk does not have any rice on it, it stands up high and straight, pointing up at the sky. The more rice a stalk has on it, the more it bends over, looking as if it were bowing. Similarly, the more knowledge students acquire, the more humble they should be. Usually, when people acquire more knowledge, they become more arrogant. They think being more knowledgeable makes them better than others. By observing a rice stalk, students can learn to do the opposite. I think Bardonists can also learn from this metaphor. As you advance through the steps of IIH, your knowledge of magic will grow. However, as you grow more and more knowledgeable, you should try to simultaneously become more and more humble. In this way, you will avoid becoming arrogant.

When Ajahn Lee was young, he killed a dog in a fit of rage because the dog stole an egg he was cooking.  After feeling remorse for what he had done, Ajahn Lee wondered how he could make up for his violent act. He decided to become a Buddhist monk. Now he is considered one of the greatest meditation masters in the Thai Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism. I mention this story because I find Ajahn Lee's motivation for pursuing the Buddhist path very relatable. While I've never killed an animal out of anger, I've done many things to others that were quite mean. I think the earliest memory I have of doing something mean was of an incident that happened in preschool. I remember several friends and I were building a snowman on the playground and another kid came up to us and asked if he could build the snowman with us. I told him no. I didn't have a good reason for not letting him join our group. I guess I just felt like being mean, and I'm sure he felt left out an...

Anger is a dangerous emotion. It can drive you to say hurtful things to others, physically harm others, or even commit murder. It is certainly not an emotion befitting a magician, yet repressing it will just make things worse in the long run. Fortunately, instead of repressing anger, there is also the option of eliminating it by destroying its roots. Many Bardonists are taught that impatience is the root of anger. Therefore, they spend a lot of time and effort destroying this root by cultivating patience. More often than not, the Bardonists who do this are in fact successful in freeing themselves from anger.  Sometimes, however, cultivating patience isn't enough to free yourself from anger. This is because anger can have more than one root. In fact, I was actually taught that anger has three roots – impatience, cruelty, and arrogance/pride. For this reason, I was told that in order to completely free myself from anger, I should cultivate the opposites of all three of these ...

As you can probably guess from this post's title, the purpose of this post is to recommend a book to you. That book is Brené Brown's Daring Greatly , which can be purchased through Amazon here . The book discusses Brené's research on the subject of shame. So, why do I recommend this book? Well, there are two main reasons. 1. It will help you stop shaming others by making you aware of the various ways we often shame others, even without realizing it. 2. It will teach you how to handle shame whenever this emotion arises within you. I don't think I need to elaborate on the first reason too much. Obviously, shaming other people is an unwise thing to do. It's not compassionate. It's cruel, and doing cruel things will generate negative karma for you. Needless to say, negative karma is something most people try to avoid, and for good reason. As for the second reason, this is what I want to discuss in more detail. As a Bardonist, you need to learn how to ha...

The epigraph of Phillip Carr-Gomm's foreword to John Michael Greer's The Druidry Handbook is really one of the more inspiring pieces of text I have come across during my esoteric studies. The quote constituting that epigraph, which was originally written by Francois Bourillon, is as follows. When you die, only three things will remain of you, since you will abandon all material things on the threshold of the Otherworld: what you have taught to others, what you have created with your hands, and how much love you have spread. So learn more and more in order to teach wise, long-lasting values. Work more and more to leave to the world things of great beauty. And Love, love, love people around you for the light of Love heals everything. Bourillon is trying to get people to love more by asking them to think about what legacy they want to leave behind. Your legacy isn't determined by chance. Your legacy is based upon the sort of life you live. If you live a compassionate life...

In the first part of this series, I shared a technique for being more compassionate taken from Olivia Fox Cabane's book The Charisma Myth . Olivia's book actually contains several techniques for being more compassionate. In this blog post, I'd like to share another one. Let's say you're speaking with a person and you know for a fact that it is the person's last day on Earth. In other words, the person is going to die later that day. In that case, wouldn't you go out of your way to be extremely kind and respectful to the person, even if the person were a mean asshole? I know I would. That's the idea behind the technique from Olivia's book that I want to share in this post. Accidents happen. I could get into a fatal car accident today. You could trip while walking down the stairs, crack your head open, and die. William Mistele could die of food poisoning today. Barack Obama could accidentally choke on his food while eating dinner later today and su...

In this post, I'd like to share a Buddhist technique for being compassionate. For the most part, we all care very much about our mothers. I know my mother has done so much for me, and that I can never repay her. The best I can do is treat her with kindness and respect whenever I interact with her. The thing is, every one of us has had multiple incarnations. In my previous life, you could have been my mother. In your previous life, Taylor Swift could have been your mother. You really don't know. If you're in a public space right now, look around and realize that any of the people in your vicinity could have been your mother in one of your past lives. Doesn't that make you want to treat everyone with compassion? This is a well-known Buddhist technique. It also works for Bardonists because like Buddhists, Bardonists also believe in reincarnation. In fact, Bardon mentions the subject of past lives at several points in his three books. Mothers sacrifice a lot for their c...

Let me ask you a few questions. When was the last time you read the epilogue of IIH? Are you able to summarize in your own words the advice Bardon gives to students in the epilogue of IIH? If you had to, could you recall from memory the last two sentences of the second paragraph of the epilogue of IIH? Regarding that last question, don't worry if you can't in fact recall from memory the last two sentences of the second paragraph of the epilogue. Here they are below. All men seeking this path to, and union with, God should always remember the words of Jesus Christ, the great master of the mystics who said "Love thy neighbor as thyself." This sentence ought to be a sacred command to any seeker of illumination on this spiritual path.  There you have it, folks. In those two sentences, Bardon explicitly highlights the immense importance of compassion when it comes to walking the magical path. In all of my writings, I have always asserted that without compassion, a st...

Hello! Most of you know me by my other pen name (Virgil), which I use when writing books for Falcon Books Publishing or articles for their website. This is my new blog. I've called this blog "Living Franz Bardon" because I believe Franz Bardon's teachings are meant to be lived and not merely read about. As a result, all posts on this blog will be written with the intent of helping you live those teachings. Reading is a good start, but it will only get you so far. When you live the teachings, they become a part of who you are and not just intellectual knowledge cluttering your mind. Thanks for stopping by. I hope at least some of the things I write will be of value to you as you make your way to adepthood. If there are any specific Bardon-related topics you'd like me to write about, let me know and I'll see what I can do.  Best, Neln