![]() It has been alleged that Bardon was a member of the Fraternity of Saturn in Germany prior to its being disbanded by the Nazis in the mid-1930s. He also became an accomplished practitioner of real magic. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked as a stage magician under the name Frabato. As a youth, Franz sought some illumination and finally felt an advanced soul entering his body and providing him with his first initiatory experiences. He was born and grew up in Czechoslovakia, the eldest of 13 children. He was, however, a reclusive individual and much of his life remains obscure. Overall, one tries hard to find endearing the authors' sincere attempt to portray Franz Bardon in the way they remember him, as man and magus.Franz Bardon was one of the most important figures in the occult revival of the twentieth century and the author of three influential books: Initiation into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation, and The Key to the True Qabalah. Several clearly written passages on fundamental hermetic concepts such as developing internal powers to transform negative into positive energy, evoking, condensing and radiating energies, treating obstacles as life lessons, discriminating between micro lessons and macro destiny. Although written in a fairly parsimonious manner, this section is somewhat successful in relating the hermetic doctrines underlying the Bardonian magical praxis. ![]() If the book has any redeeming qualities from a philosophic perspective, than it is found in the third section "Dr. We are left to ponder - who were his teachers, who did he correspond with, what initiate organizations did he belong to, intellectual influences, important books - who is the noumen behind the phenomen of who Franz Bardon was/is. Completely lacking is insight into the elevated and rarefied world of the man and the magus. "Memories" is broken into three sections the first two as mentioned consist of fairly banal reminiscences of life with Franz Bardon from a purely bio-descriptive vista. and covers more or less the same ground as the first section with recollections of domestic occurrences and personal anecdotes encountered over the last decade of the Magus' life. The second section is written by one of Bardon's students, Dr. encounters with elementals, acts of clairvoyance and naturopathic healings. ![]() Hermetic matters and magical phenomenon are dealt with tersely without insight or elaboration. The patient reader is rewarded for his labours with page after page of platitudes on Bardon's domestic life, including his home decorations, eating and sleeping habits,cars he's owned, trips to the country, etc. M.K, are neither skilled writers nor profound initiates in which case the result is a rather disappointing mishmash of personal recollections of the most mundane kind. ![]() However, in this case the authors Lumir Bardon and Dr. If the authors are skilled writers a la Colin Wilson or Louis Pauwells or initiates with a profound knowledge of doctrine Robert Amadou, than the results can be highly informative. In short, we end up understanding more about the subject than about the object. "Memories of Franz Bardon" disappoints for this very reason, not for painting the man with an human-all-too-human brush, rather for portraying the Mage from the sole perspective of the authors' limited optics. In general, memoirs of contemporary sages, mystics and initiates, Gurdjieff, Fulcanelli, Guenon and Schwaller Lubicz to name a few, are rather lame affairs that fall short of capturing the magic behind the man. ![]()
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