Three Lessons Learned During a Three Year Journey

If you’re one of a small handful of Bardonists who corresponds with me frequently enough that you have to read the same webcomics I read in order to understand the references to them I am constantly making in my replies to your emails, then you’re probably aware that the last chapter of Evelyne and the Occult came out today. As someone who really liked this webcomic and will certainly miss it, I wanted to write an article to honor the occasion. Magic is a major theme in Evelyne and the Occult, and as someone who’s interested in magic, I have a lot of thoughts about the magic featured in this webcomic. That said, this article isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of all my thoughts about the magic practiced by the members of Moon Blade and Sun’s Edge (the two rival sects of witches in the webcomic). Rather, I just wanted to discuss three important lessons Bardonists can take from this webcomic. Some of you may have been reading this webcomic for a while now; if this is the case, then you may have already extracted these lessons from the webcomic on your own. But some of you who aren’t as familiar with my past writings may be hearing about this webcomic for the first time via this very article you are now reading. If this is the case, please be warned that this article contains major spoilers.  

Lesson #1: Go Slowly So You Get Things Right the First Time.

According to William Mistele, the best way to approach magical training is to “go slowly so you get things right the first time.” This is a lesson we can also extract from Evelyne and the Occult. In the tradition of magic practiced by Sara, Lucia, and the main characters, every practitioner of magic has an animal spirit known as a “nahual.” The practioner’s nahual helps them in various ways, but the practitioner needs to learn how to connect with their nahual. If this process is rushed, then things can go very wrong. For example, the practitioner may transform into a part human and part animal creature. At one point in the webcomic, Leo’s grandmother tells a story about a girl her brother saw crying on the side of the road. When he got closer and asked if she was ok, she turned around and he saw that she had the head of a horse. It was implied that she was a practitioner of magic who rushed the process of connecting with her nahual, and as a result turned into some kind of part human and part horse hybrid. Connecting to some kind of spirit animal helper is not an exercise found in IIH, so I doubt you will find many Bardonists who have the head of a horse, crow, stag, fish, or whatever. But nevertheless, the basic principle remains that we should not rush our training or we may cause permanent injury to ourselves.

Lesson #2: Vengefulness and Ill-Will Can Lead You Down a Dark Path.

Lucia and Sara used to be friends. They could have both walked the same path together. Sara wanted Lucia to avoid walking the path of dark magic. Lucia wanted Sara to join her in walking the path of dark magic. Neither succeeded in convincing the other, so in the end Sara walked the path of light magic and Lucia walked the path of dark magic. Of course Sara ended up become a good role model – a great healer who did a lot of good in the world and was very much someone to look up to. Lucia ended up turning into a monster. When we look at what became of Lucia, we probably don’t want to end up like her. But how do we ensure we won’t? It’s easy to think to ourselves “I’d hate to end up like Lucia” or “There’s no way I’d end up like Lucia,” but then we may very well end up like Lucia anyway.

Lucia’s vengefulness and ill-will caused her to walk the path of dark magic. If we don’t want to end up like Lucia, it’s not enough to just have a desire not to end up like her. We also have to have an effective practice for eliminating vengefulness and ill-will from ourselves. Even if vengefulness and ill-will don’t cause us to walk the path of dark magic and go so far down that path we end up like Lucia, they will at the very least prevent us from making progress along the path of light magic. Many times, people realize that vengefulness, ill-will, and other related negative traits are a problem for them and so they want to be free of these traits, but after many years they still are not free of these traits because they don’t have effective practices for becoming free of these traits.

If I had to draw attention to one practice for becoming free of vengefulness and ill-will, it would have to be Vajrasattva practice. This is one of the ngondro exercises which anyone familiar with Tibetan Buddhism would know about. In this exercise, one begins by visualizing the deity Vajrasattva above one’s head. One then imagines a stream of white nectar flowing out of Vajrasattva’s head and into oneself. This white nectar absorbs one’s negative traits and then flows into the hell realms where it is consumed by the deity Yama. This practice can be used to remove any negative trait from oneself, but it is traditionally considered to be particularly effective at removing ill-will. I have found this to be the case through personal experience. Vajrasattva practice, like most of the ngondro practices, requires a kind of initiation in order to practice though. For those who don’t have this initiation, metta bhavana and praying for purity of heart are other very effective practices one can do instead.

Lesson #3: The Light Within Us Can Easily Overcome the Darkness, But It May be Challenging to Find That Light and Bring It Out.

In the final showdown of the webcomic, Evelyne and her friends are facing off against Uj, a spirit of darkness. In the end, Uj is defeated very easily by the light within Evelyn, yet this battle was still an extremely intense one that resulted in many severe injuries, and that they almost lost. Why was this is the case?

The answer is that even though the light within Evelyne could easily defeat Uj, she could not easily access that light and bring it out. During that battle, Lucia fought with Uj, trying to hold him off in order to buy time for Evelyne so that she could access the light within her and bring it out. When darkness comes knocking on your door, will there be someone to hold it off while you desperately try to figure out how to access the light within you in so that it can overcome that darkness? Probably not. This is why starting right now, you have to be able to find the light within you. Don’t wait for darkness to come knocking on your door, and definitely don’t assume it will never happen, because there’s a good chance it will.

Many spiritual traditions teach that there is light within you, and most of them have practical exercises designed to help you access that light and bring it out. One example is Dzogchen, which teaches that our true nature has three qualities – emptiness, luminous clarity, and compassion. From a Dzogchen point of view, accessing the light within us means getting in touch with the luminous clarity of our true nature. In Dzogchen, there are many practices for accessing our true nature. Some of those practices are specifically designed to access the emptiness or compassion of our true nature. Others are designed to access the luminous clarity of our true nature. As a result of reading Evelyne and the Occult, I have been practicing those exercises more often.

In the Hindu tradition, everyone’s true self is referred to as the Atman. The Katha Upanishad states that the Atman is a light, and that this light is a pure light that shines forever and is reflected by all things. From a Hindu perspective, accessing the light within oneself and bringing it out means realizing the Atman and expressing its divine nature. Hinduism contains many approaches for doing this. The jnana yoga practiced advocated by Ramana Maharshi and the Kriya Yoga advocated by Paramahansa Yogananda are two approaches that a fair number of Bardonists have some exposure to.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus says that he is the light (John 8:12). The fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary is the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. Each of us is a temple of God, so this mystery teaches us that Jesus, the light, can be found within us. But how do Christians enter within themselves to find this light? This is done through the practice of contemplative prayer. Saint Teresa of Avila’s book The Interior Castle is perhaps the most well-known manual for entering into oneself via contemplative prayer and finding the light at the center of one’s being.

Since there are so many practices which are intended to allow spiritual practitioners to access the light within themselves, I could stretch out this section indefinitely. I don’t want to do that though, so I’ll just make two final comments. The first comment is that not every exercise which purportedly helps to access the light within yourself will actually do that. In the past, I spent many years practicing exercises which were supposed to help me access the light within myself, but which were actually just a waste of time. The second comment is that each of these approaches – Dzogchen, Hindu yoga, and Christian mysticism – requires a great deal of self-discipline, persistence, and proper guidance. It can be challenging to engage in these practices persistently and properly enough to finally access the light within you, but hey, how badly do you want to be able to defeat Uj when he shows up at your door?

Final Comments

So these are the lessons from Evelyne and the Occult I wanted to discuss in this article. They aren’t the only lessons that can be taken from the webcomic, but they’re the ones I think will be most helpful for Bardonists on the beginning steps of IIH. Evelyne and the Occult has certainly left its mark on my spiritual life. The magic featured in the webcomic is shamanic in nature, so this webcomic inspired me to take a Core Shamanism workshop just to see what it was about. Light is an important theme in the story, so it inspired me to explore teachings about light from many spiritual traditions. At one point in the story, Sara remarks that Evelyne has an amazing connection with her body, and this inspired me to revisit William Mistele’s body-awareness exercises.  I started reading this webcomic back when it first came out in 2021, so for me a three year journey has come to an end. But other journeys are still continuing (TOG will probably continue for a while), and other journeys are yet to begin. Happy reading!