What do you think of someone who has been stuck with IIH step2 for 20 years?

[Xere]

There is someone who read Initiation into Hermetics 20 years ago.

At first, he wanted to be a rich and superior to anyone like others.
However he did not do it properly and was lazy, falling into the delusion that he was practicing, and was consumed by the arrogance that he possessed hidden magical knowledge superior to others.

Sometimes he passed step1 luckily but always failed to achieve elemental equilibrium and returned to step1
This is because he firmly believed that there was no way he could change himself with such a simple autosuggestion and impregnation, as the life he had lived had been a continuous series of frustration and suffering.
Autosuggestion and impregnation he practiced with such belief had no effect and only reinforced his negative experiences.

And so, time flew meaninglessly.
Someday as he matures, he realized that he just wanted to be a free and better person
He wished he has the belief that he can change himself and wanted to make it happen.
However, no results have been achieved so far.

Has he only been wasting his time so far?
Was it a mistake to fall into magick?
Will he end his life repeating same mistakes just as he does now?

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

20 years? Maybe some people just aren't meant for magic.

 

[Accipeveldare]

Late bloomer, he will get there. Or maybe he should try a new system?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Late bloomer, he will get there. Or maybe he should try a new system?

Yes! He should try Chaos Magic!

 

[FireBorn]

Is his life better or worse than when he started as a result? That is the answer. Everything else is just a neat narrative.

 

[jzatopa]

You're doing it wrong, it takes a few weeks, a few months and a year at worst. The person didn't select the right physical practice. If they want to shift this they will have to do Kundalini yoga and Qi Gong alternating each day. Then do the exercise from Bardon. Give it a year of daily practice and you will fly by. Step 3 will then be easier as well.

 

[Beyond Everything]

I would think that person is acutely lacking in the intuition and discernment necessary to real esoteric advancement.

Bardon was very overweight, in awful health, a heavy smoker, and (twice) unable to foresee he should have emigrated. Why you would want to model yourself after such dismal results is beyond me. Bardonites have had to construct fairy tales to try to explain away such inconvenient facts, attributing them to him 'taking on' someone else's karma or so-called divine providence deciding to be a dick and blocking his magical ameliorative efforts.

If they want to shift this they will have to do Kundalini yoga and Qi Gong alternating each day.

lol 'it works well if you practice a completely other system'. Bardon never said one had to undertake such.

 

[nargile57]

Karma can be a bitch sometimes, especially if we do not understand what is going on.

 

[ModernMagus]

What do I think of the person you described? That person lacks personal accountability and maturity. After twenty years of it, I would say others are facilitating this person's ability to avoid growing up and be responsible for their actions as well, but ultimately their fault for this long. If this person is continually suffering and being frustrated in their endeavors for two decades, it is entirely their doing, or lack thereof. This person needs to take one step at a time and own their thoughts and actions each and every day.

 

[HermesX3]

OP, please forget about Hermetic for a while.I suggest you do Wim Hoff breathing and meditation. Then get José Silva's Mind Control Method.
Or even better, do the meditation with breathing in and out slowly count down from 100 as a start then keep going until you start visualizing stuff. Then go to a future event you want to see or change. Look slightly to the right and up. It's quite powerful.
It's easier if you don't have sex, a heavy meal and you are not a smoker and you're not drinking or hung over on the day you try it.

 

[solxyz]

I just want to know why you're asking for strangers to have opinions on you? That is far more concerning to me than your apparent neurotic perfectionism combined with remarkable persistence.

 

[dzb10035]

@Xere I see a lot of people getting confused with the elemental equilibrium part of step II. Many people who only read Bardon's work without doing further research and re-reading end up assuming that a perfect balance must be achieved or that "perfection" must be attained, whatever that means. But it is far more important to realistically define what the intention of step 2 elemental equilibrium looks like. It does not mean perfection or absolute balance, and a careful examination of the wording in step 2 will corroborate that.

Instead, the goal of this balancing act is to gain control over your most damaging traits. In step 1, you created the soul mirrors and classified the intensity of your traits according to their corresponding elements. It is the most intense traits of your black soul mirror that need to be worked on in this step. Usually these traits also tend to be your most damaging and self-sabotaging traits. To give you an example, if you are a gambling addict and constantly running low on money due to your addiction, you would introspect and list the traits behind gambling addiction in your black soul mirror. Some of the worst parts of this addiction might be things like: a constant need for thrills, excessive greed, and extreme recklessness. These 3 traits would most likely be the most intense and you would need to use the methods of steps 1 + 2 (magic of water, auto-suggestion, akashic impregnations, willpower) to bring these traits under control, reduce them, and ultimately increase the presence of the opposite traits in your soul.

You only need to work on the most damaging traits and once you have those under control, you can move forward to step 3. The entirety of IIH is about achieving ever higher levels of elemental equilibrium. You will see in various steps that Bardon continues to emphasise the balancing of the elements, but only in step 2 / 3 does he mention the need for a rudimentary balance of the elemental forces. So yes, step 2 could take some time, maybe even 1-2 years in the worst cases, in order to achieve, but not 20 years. Eventually, you would need to move on and assume that what you have is enough for the next step. If you don't, it will become clear to you in the elemental breathing exercises.


@Beyond Everything also raises some valid points too, but there is also a lot of bias in their take. It is true that Bardon was unhealthy and overweight, which means that in the end he was only human. And it is also true that IIH, and Bardon's other books make great fantastical claims which might be untrue, but that does not invalidate the value of the work itself. IIH should be taken separately from the man himself, because he wasn't necessarily a reincarnated master or an ascended magus, as his mythos claims. But he did write one of the most comprehensive magical training curriculums that we have. It has informed my practice in many ways and given me access into the world of grimoires / older magick in a way not previously possible. It is worth doing, if even as a supplement to your own practice. There are many detractors who always end up throwing up the same claims again-and-again. If you wish to listen to them, then you are free to, but it is also important to evaluate their claims in balanced and wider context of the work.

 

[akenu]

There is someone who read Initiation into Hermetics 20 years ago.

At first, he wanted to be a rich and superior to anyone like others.
However he did not do it properly and was lazy, falling into the delusion that he was practicing, and was consumed by the arrogance that he possessed hidden magical knowledge superior to others.

Sometimes he passed step1 luckily but always failed to achieve elemental equilibrium and returned to step1
This is because he firmly believed that there was no way he could change himself with such a simple autosuggestion and impregnation, as the life he had lived had been a continuous series of frustration and suffering.
Autosuggestion and impregnation he practiced with such belief had no effect and only reinforced his negative experiences.

And so, time flew meaninglessly.
Someday as he matures, he realized that he just wanted to be a free and better person
He wished he has the belief that he can change himself and wanted to make it happen.
However, no results have been achieved so far.

Has he only been wasting his time so far?
Was it a mistake to fall into magick?
Will he end his life repeating same mistakes just as he does now?

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

May I be as bold to suggest to try this instead?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[HoldAll]

May I be as bold to suggest to try this instead?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

This one?

Book – PDF - Magick Curriculum by Frater Akenu

https://mega.nz/file/Jqg1xBIL#7BUL2-6epnPnW--nj8l_2fCA5ec_vZVFOstlyHsCVbI

wizardforums.com

 

[Beyond Everything]

@Beyond Everything also raises some valid points too, but there is also a lot of bias in their take.

Bias is a 'a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment'. I don't see anything unreasoned about evaluating Bardon's claims vs his results. The bias appears to be in the other direction.

It is true that Bardon was unhealthy and overweight, which means that in the end he was only human.

It means more than that. It means when he says X Bardonian practice leads to 'perfect health' (which is what he writes in black and white) then he is either delusional or lying. It means his understanding of auto-suggestion was quite inadequate as well.

And it is also true that IIH, and Bardon's other books make great fantastical claims which might be untrue, but that does not invalidate the value of the work itself.

This is a bizarre statement. Many of the results Bardon says one can achieve are not achieved by anyone. That invalidates every sentence in his books which makes plain assertions about those results. And there are quite a lot of those sentences.

There are many detractors who always end up throwing up the same claims again-and-again.

Why do you use the word 'claims'? Bardon's results are plain for anyone to see, in contrast to what he says can be done in his books. These are cold hard facts. There's a difference. Bringing it up 'again and again' just indicates Bardon fans are insistent in the face of reality.

There's a larger point here- occultists almost universally suffer from fuzzy thinking, lack of emotional clarity, and occlusion which leads them down false paths. Initiation is an extraordinarily individual matter, but people keep wanting to believe some book is going to guide them to the heights. It doesn't work like that.

 

[akenu]

Bias is a 'a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment'. I don't see anything unreasoned about evaluating Bardon's claims vs his results. The bias appears to be in the other direction.


It means more than that. It means when he says X Bardonian practice leads to 'perfect health' (which is what he writes in black and white) then he is either delusional or lying. It means his understanding of auto-suggestion was quite inadequate as well.


This is a bizarre statement. Many of the results Bardon says one can achieve are not achieved by anyone. That invalidates every sentence in his books which makes plain assertions about those results. And there are quite a lot of those sentences.


Why do you use the word 'claims'? Bardon's results are plain for anyone to see, in contrast to what he says can be done in his books. These are cold hard facts. There's a difference. Bringing it up 'again and again' just indicates Bardon fans are insistent in the face of reality.

There's a larger point here- occultists almost universally suffer from fuzzy thinking, lack of emotional clarity, and occlusion which leads them down false paths. Initiation is an extraordinarily individual matter, but people keep wanting to believe some book is going to guide them to the heights. It doesn't work like that.

Frater UD would love your take. He actually hates Bardon with a passion

 

[dzb10035]

Bias is a 'a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment'. I don't see anything unreasoned about evaluating Bardon's claims vs his results. The bias appears to be in the other direction.


It means more than that. It means when he says X Bardonian practice leads to 'perfect health' (which is what he writes in black and white) then he is either delusional or lying. It means his understanding of auto-suggestion was quite inadequate as well.


This is a bizarre statement. Many of the results Bardon says one can achieve are not achieved by anyone. That invalidates every sentence in his books which makes plain assertions about those results. And there are quite a lot of those sentences.


Why do you use the word 'claims'? Bardon's results are plain for anyone to see, in contrast to what he says can be done in his books. These are cold hard facts. There's a difference. Bringing it up 'again and again' just indicates Bardon fans are insistent in the face of reality.

There's a larger point here- occultists almost universally suffer from fuzzy thinking, lack of emotional clarity, and occlusion which leads them down false paths. Initiation is an extraordinarily individual matter, but people keep wanting to believe some book is going to guide them to the heights. It doesn't work like that.

I'll be honest, I do have a strong biased towards Bardon's system of practice, but not the person or the occultist persona. I have experienced some fair results with the early steps of the system and I do live by the experiential aspect of it. However, having looked at your post history, I think you also have bias against him. How objectively effective his system is would likely be in between our viewpoints.

And I do agree with you that he makes a ton of incredible claims which are probably more fantasy than reality, especially when looking into the later chapters of IIH and his other works. I think your particular gripe with the "perfect health" thing comes from KTQ? But feel free to correct me if I am wrong. I personally also think his auto-suggestion approach is pretty flawed and his character transformation techniques do not account for more complex traumas and do not offer nuanced emotional / psychological healing.

However, I do not feel that there is anything bizarre about my statements regarding separating the work from the man. What matters in the work is the exercises and the personal results people get out of them. That's the system and it effectively touches on many of the fundamental aspects of occult practice that would be needed for good magical work. We can both have problems with his wild claims, but it does not seem reasonable to assert that every sentence in his book is invalidated by his claims. Some of the things he says end up being true while other things end up false. It is up to the student to try and make sense out of what works / doesn't work for them.

And on the part about "claims", it's because I read the same gripes and complaints again and again coming from people. Many of these claims, especially on areas like step 2's elemental equilibrium requirements, end up being misunderstandings on what is being discussed in the book or what is intended. I see a lot of people talking about "results" all the time, but if we must be "cold" and "logical" about things then we need to remember that a student's result or path in the occult is their own path and their own subjective experience. There have been a number of people who found Bardon to not be their cup of tea and left the path in favour of something else. There are also those who have gained greater results from their magic by using the steps, even if it just ends up being the character transformation techniques in step 2. I'm one of those people. So the only thing an honest and reasonable "Bardonite" can claim is that it will give amazing results for some, mixed results for others, and no results for others yet. Of course, like I said, none of those results, are realistically going to be the crazy shit he claims in hyperbole; even I can recognise that. But this is the "cold hard fact" of the situation and this is the only reality that we can be insistent on.

And on your point @Beyond Everything, you are absolutely correct on initiation being a highly individual path. But it is also a subjective path for the individual seeker. I feel that it is difficult to find a true path, but we need to remember that a false path for one person is a true path for another. If a person finds it in a book like IIH, then that is their own true path. I understand that you tried some stuff on your end from Bardon's books and you were not impressed by it. Furthermore, you seem to have developed your practice that worked for you and so that is your path. For others, a book will indeed provide the framework for them to find their own initiation. Emotional clarity on the matter will only come when a person tries something to see if it works for them. What makes IIH good in this aspect is that it also encourages a seeker to make these experimentations to satisfy themselves of it.