The Holy Mysteries: Three Volumes by Franz Bardon

INITIATION INTO HERMETICS
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.

THE PRACTICE OF MAGICAL EVOCATION
The Practice of Magical Evocation is the second volume in Franz Bardon’s series on Hermetic Science, and provides first-hand information about angels, demons, sorcery, necromancy, and pacts, etc.

The Practice of Magical Evocation has been newly translated from the original German version. Magical Evocation contains detailed information about all aspects of magical evocation (Hermetic Magic). Veiled for centuries, readers can gather information on all aspects of ritual magic, as well as a step-by-step description as to how a true magician evokes positive beings, i.e. angel-spirits from the beyond and from the planetary spheres of our solar system. And the counterpart, how a sorcerer and necromancer invokes negative beings, i.e. arch-demons. The reader will also learn about the significance of the magic circle, the magic triangle, the magic censer, the magic mirror, the magic lamp, the magic wand, the magic robe, and other magical aids as well as the proper instruction of ritual magic. Pacts between sorcerers and demons are explained, as well as the preparation and loading of amulets and talismans and the true significance of the Book of Formulas.

Franz Bardon further provides hundreds of seals of positive spiritual beings, angel-spirits, intelligences, genii, principals and the spirit-beings of the elements. Franz Bardon had personal contact with each being and was instructed by them as to their specific attributes. These beings have been teachers of mind, body, and spirit to mankind since time immemorial. They teach the mature magician subject matters from A to Z, i.e. arithmetic, alchemy, astrophysics, astrology, astronomy, the arts, biology, zoology, and so on. In other words every subject of earthly science and universal laws. They also help every profession and trade, whether or not they are magicians. Since Hermetic Magic and the True Kabbalah are the highest sciences in the universe, the reader requires the proper theoretical education and practical training before he can contact these spiritual beings. He must follow the theoretical and practical instructions in Initiation into Hermetics and be successful before he embarks on the practice of magical evocation.

KEY TO THE TRUE KABBALAH
In The Key to the True Kabbalah, Franz Bardon demonstrates that the mysticism of letters and numbers- the true Kabbalah- is a universal teaching of great antiquity and depth. Throughout the ages, adepts of every time and place have achieved the highest levels of magical attainment of mind, body and spirit through the understanding of sound, color, number and vibration as embodied in the Kabbalah. This book, the third in Franz Bardon’s remarkable texts of Hermetic magic, is nothing less than a practical guide to such attainment. Using the common German alphabet, Bardon guides the reader through ever greater levels of Kabbalistic achievement. No other available text reveals as great a depth of Kabbalistic wisdom or provides the reader with as much practical training.

Though intended primarily as a working text for those who have completed Franz Bardon’s first and second volumes, Initiation Into Hermetics and The Practice of Magical Evocation, the present work stands on its own, and even those without the requisite background in practical Hermetics will be fascinated by Franz Bardon’s intellectual journey through the mysticism of Tantric India, Tibet, the Hebrew Kabbalah, and the ancient sources of the Western magical tradition.

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.