Franz Bardon is regarded by many as the greatest and most important Hermetic adept of the 20th century. A tireless worker for the light, Franz Bardon survived Hitler’s concentration camps but died a victim of Communist persecution in 1958.

Franz Bardon left behind him four legendary books which have become acknowledged classics of occult literature. Initiation into Hermetics is the first and most important of Franz Bardon’s works and is rightly regarded as the cornerstone of his entire opus. In contrast to other books on the subject of magic, Franz Bardon focuses his attention on the practical training of mind, body, and spirit necessary for all true magical attainment. Using the four elements of fire, water, air and earth as a foundation, Bardon teaches the student how to master these universal forces in the three exercises providing detailed training in the entire Arcanum of Hermetic magic, from basic techniques in thought control and imagination to advanced teachings on astral travel, the use of talismans and magic mirrors, and much more. No other writer has ever developed such a clear, concise, and practical program of magical development. The first of the seventy-two tarot cards revealed.

Franz Bardon (1909-1958), was born in the current Czech Republic into a family which
studied Esoteric Christianity, and became one of the most remarkable Hermetic magicians of the 20th century.

In the 1930s Franz Bardon revealed the Holy Mysteries to the world at large. The Mysteries were revealed at that point in time because of the moral and spiritual decline of mankind, which, after entering the spirit world after their physical death, complained that they had no access to the true path of spiritual development.

In 1945 after refusing to become a Nazi collaborator, he was imprisoned for three and half months before the prison was bombed and he was liberated by Soviet soldiers.

After the war, Franz Bardon lived with his wife working as a naturopath and graphologist. He often traveled to Prague to teach, but his work was interrupted forever in 1958 when Bardon was arrested during one of Czechoslovakia’s notorious Communist purges, and died under “unusual circumstances” in a prison hospital the same year.