A man sits in a quiet room in postwar Czechoslovakia, a green exercise book open before him. He has no teacher, no lineage, no correspondence course. Only the book he wrote himself. Franz Bardon’s “Initiation into Hermetics” is a step-by-step hermetic training system organized into ten numbered degrees, each building on the last, designed to transform the student through simultaneous work on body, soul, and spirit. First published in German in 1956 under the title Der Weg zum wahren Adepten (The Way to the True Adept), it remains the most systematic self-initiation program in Western occultism.
The book demands something rare in modern occult publishing: patience. Not belief. Not spiritual gifts. Not a teacher. The student who opens it expecting a weekend course in magic will close it by page ten. The student who stays discovers why Bardon’s system has been taught in secret for seventy years, passed hand to hand between people who refused to treat magic like a hobby.
Who Was Franz Bardon and Why Does His System Matter?
Franz Bardon was born in 1909 in Troppau, Austrian Silesia (now Opava, Czech Republic). By trade he was a factory worker, later a naturopath. By calling he was a hermetic master who wrote three books: Initiation into Hermetics (1956), The Practice of Magical Evocation (1956), and his Kabbalah volume (1957). The titles suggest an academic trilogy. They are not academic.
Bardon wrote from experience. He claimed to have completed the training himself under a teacher named only as “The Brother of the Orient,” an Adept whose identity he never revealed. The books contain no bibliography, no footnotes, no appeals to authority. They present themselves as technical manuals. Open them, and that is exactly what they are.
The historical context matters. Bardon was writing in communist Czechoslovakia, where occult organizations had been suppressed and possession of esoteric literature could mean imprisonment. He was arrested twice by the StB (the Czechoslovak state security police), the second time in 1958. He died in prison in 1958, officially from a lung infection. The circumstances of his death remain unclear, and sources disagree on whether he was tortured. What is certain: he wrote the system knowing he might not live to see it published.
That context explains why the training is so rigorous. Bardon was not building a system for dilettantes. He was preserving a complete hermetic path in writing, knowing he might be the last person to teach it openly for decades.
What Does the Training Actually Require?
The system is called “initiation into hermetic esotericism” with good reason. Bardon organizes the work into three concentric rings: the material body, the astral body (soul), and the mental body (spirit). Each of the ten degrees addresses all three simultaneously.
The first degree alone requires daily practice of:
- Physical exercises (breathing, diet, sensory awareness)
- Astral exercises (mental concentration, thought control, imagination training)
- Mental exercises (self-observation, moral self-correction, detachment from desire)
A student who completes the first degree has not “learned magic.” They have learned to sit still for thirty minutes without their mind wandering. They have learned to observe their own thoughts as if watching someone else. They have learned to control their breathing, their pulse, their diet. This is not preparation for the work. This is the work.
The later degrees add progressively more demanding techniques: mantra vibration, fluid condensation, soul travel, magical healing. But the foundation never changes. Every degree circles back to the same three pillars. The student who skips the first degree because it looks too simple will fail at the fourth.
How to Start: The First Six Months
Most people who buy Initiation into Hermetics never finish the first degree. The attrition rate is not a flaw in the system. It is the system’s first filter.
What the First Six Months of Training Look Like
Here is what the first six months actually look like:
Week one: Read the book cover to cover. Not to understand everything. To see the shape of the whole. Bardon says this explicitly: the student must know the destination before taking the first step.
Week two through month two: Begin the physical exercises. These include cold water washing, controlled breathing (the four-phase breath: inhale, hold, exhale, hold in a 4:4:4:4 count), and graduated sensory training. You learn to taste a single raisin for ten minutes. You learn to hear the silence between sounds. You learn to feel your own pulse without touching your wrist.
Month three through month six: Add the mental exercises. Self-observation without judgment. A daily moral inventory. The cultivation of what Bardon calls “equilibrium”: the state where no external event can disturb your inner calm. This is harder than any magical technique.
The student who survives six months will have changed. Not because of magic. Because of discipline.
The Ten Degrees of Bardon’s System, Explained
The degrees are numbered zero through nine (Bardon calls the preliminary work the “zeroth” degree). Each degree has three sections: material, astral, mental. Each section has its own exercises, its own time requirements, its own tests.
Degrees 0–2 build the foundation: control of body, control of thoughts, control of emotions. The student learns to withdraw consciousness from the senses at will. They learn to visualize a black cube for ten seconds without the image dissolving. They learn to forgive an enemy (this is an actual exercise: you must genuinely wish them well until the resentment dissolves).
Degrees 3–5 introduce active magical work: the vibration of divine names, the creation of thought-forms, the charging of talismans. The student learns to project their consciousness into elemental realms. They learn to heal with directed energy. They learn the Kabbalistic cross, the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, and other ceremonial techniques.
Degrees 6–9 move into Adept-level practices: communication with the Akashic Record (the spiritual memory of all events), mastery of the four elements, soul travel, and eventually the dissolution of the ego into the divine. Bardon says few students reach degree seven. He does not say it to discourage. He says it as a statement of fact.
The error is almost universal: students try to do too much at once.
The book is dense. Each degree contains multiple exercises. Beginners often assume they should be doing all of them simultaneously, pushing through as fast as possible. This is exactly wrong. Bardon warns repeatedly that the student should master one exercise before moving to the next. Mastery means: you can do it perfectly, without effort, under any conditions.
The student who rushes will hit a wall at degree three or four. The exercises become impossible because the foundation is not there. They cannot vibrate a divine name because they never learned to hold concentration for sixty seconds. They cannot create a stable thought-form because they never learned to visualize a simple cube without interruption.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
The solution is brutal and simple: go back to degree one. Start over. This time do not skip anything.
The Golden Dawn system is the closest cousin. Both use the Kabbalistic tree of life, both require ceremonial discipline, both teach elemental magic. But the Golden Dawn is a lodge system: you need a teacher, a temple, a group. Bardon’s system is solitary. You need no one but yourself.
Aleister Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice shares the same hermetic roots but operates differently. Crowley’s system is flexible, individualistic, almost anarchic. Bardon’s is rigid, sequential, almost mechanical. The student who thrives on Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt” may choke on Bardon’s “You will do the breathing exercises for exactly fifteen minutes at dawn.”
The Middle Pillar ritual (from Israel Regardie’s work) is a single technique that Bardon’s system incorporates but expands into a complete curriculum. The Middle Pillar is a tool. Initiation into Hermetics is a workshop full of tools, each with its own instruction manual.
Tibetan Buddhist ngöndro (preliminary practices) shares Bardon’s emphasis on foundation work. In both systems, the student must complete thousands of repetitions of basic practices before being allowed to approach advanced teachings. Both systems assume that most people will not finish. Both systems are correct.
FAQ
Is “Initiation into Hermetics” dangerous for beginners?
No, but it is demanding. The exercises themselves are safe if followed exactly. The danger is psychological: students who push too fast can destabilize their mental equilibrium. Follow the degrees in order and stop if you feel unbalanced.
Do I need a teacher to use this book?
Bardon wrote the book specifically for solitary practice. Many students have completed the early degrees without a teacher. For the later degrees (5+), a teacher becomes advisable but not strictly necessary. Online communities exist where students compare notes without claiming authority.
How long does each degree take?
Bardon suggests one year per degree for the early levels, longer for the later ones. Few students complete the full system in under a decade. Most never finish, and that is not failure: even the first year of training produces measurable results in self-control, concentration, and emotional stability.
Initiation into Hermetics is not a book you read. It is a book you do. The student who opens it should know what they are agreeing to: a decade of daily practice, no shortcuts, no guarantees. The reward is not magical power. The reward is becoming the kind of person who could use magical power without being destroyed by it. If that sounds worth the work, the first degree is waiting.
For more on the hermetic tradition, see our guide to demonology and goetia. If you want to understand the Kabbalistic framework Bardon uses, read the glossary entry on the Tree of Life. And for the techniques that build on this foundation, see the advanced guide to magical evocation.