Call it what you will....it does me more harm to share my experiences too close their happening. It is entirely possible, in fact even likely, that it's just the way my mind operates. You and I are very different in our approach to our work and our personalities will dictate much of how we proceed.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter as long as you get where you are going. And, if you can help others along the path, even better. I've rarely come across someone who didn't look at me like I was a tad "off" when explaining some of this stuff to them and I guess it bothers me more than it should.

The couple of people I have taught things to have been very successful over time and that has brought me a great deal of happiness. But, most people don't want to put in the effort. As soon as they find out it's work, they're gone.

Well, I have a confession to make. I've been reading ahead in Bardon's book. I always do this with all lesson books. If you recall I read through all of Penczak's books before going back to study them more thoroughly. I see nothing at all wrong with that. In fact, this is an old 'study habit' I picked up back in my college days. Always try to stay a chapter or two ahead of the teacher!

However, reading Penczak's book ahead was not problematic. He never seemed to claim anything too specific. He would speak in terms of synchronicities, and in terms of physically healing the body using psychic methods, which I have absolutely no problem believing because even doctors recognize and have scientifically shown through statistics that a patient's mental and psychic mood and outlook does indeed affect their ability to heal and recover from medical problems. So the idea of 'mind over matter' in this sense makes sense. There's a lot to be said for the power of the psyche in many situations.

However, after reading ahead in Bardon's book, I see that by about lesson four he has the student walking on water.

Ok, maybe not quite. The point he attempts to make is that by that point in the lessons you have learned all you need to know to walk on water should you chose to do so. And levitate in air, walk on burning coals, and walk through walls. All because of your mastery of the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. And he’s not speaking about the astral plane either, he’s talking about doing this in the physical world. He cites examples of Eastern Mystics who do these things routinely. And I’m sure we’ve all heard about the mystics who walk through walls, walk on burning coals without being burned, and levitate in the air, etc.

But still, it’s a lot to swallow for a book that has you doing these thing by lesson four.

Although in Bardon’s defense I suppose I should point out the fact that his lessons aren’t simple. For example, Lesson One is actually about 10 lessons in one. The same thing is true of Lessons Two and Lessons Three. So by the time you get to Lessons Four you’re really more like at lesson 40.

Also his lessons are NOT easy. If you complete them to the degree of efficiency that he suggests it could easily take you a year just to work through lessons ONE and potentially four years of daily dedication and practice to actually make it to lessons FOUR. He really is strict beyond imagination. He expects you to be able to sit completely motionless without allowing a single solitary thought to enter your mind for at least a solid hour and to do this on a daily basis without the slightest hesitation or problem. I confess I’m not at that point of mental or physical discipline. And that’s just the starting point. And we’re not talking about just casually sitting quietly for an hour. We’re talking about sitting perfectly motionless to the point were you’ve totally abandoned the very thought of your physical body and you are in a state of consciousness that is completely devoid of any thought whatsoever.

I tried doing that years ago when I practice Yoga meditation, and I can assure you that such discipline is not easy to achieve. Especially if you’re being honest about.

In Bardon’s book I personally feel that if I ever make it to the end of Lesson(s) Three, I would consider myself to have truly achieved something grand. Maybe I can save Lesson(s) Four for the next life.

Of course, Bardon goes on to something like 10 levels of lessons in this book. Although I don’t think that he necessarily requires that you be able to walk on water by lesson Four. He just suggests that you should have all the knowledge required to be able to do that by then. So maybe I can “swim” through Lesson Four and see what’s going on after that?

These are all ‘preliminary’ lessons. By the time he has you communing with spirits on the Astral plane you’re already a God. No wonder you can talk to spirits by that time. And this entire book is only the first of four books!

I’m almost at the point where I just want to toss everything in the trash can and just confess that it’s far easier to be a helpless pitiful mortal, and it just isn’t worth the effort it takes to become a God.

Although I must confess, I’m already benefiting greatly even from my extremely neophyte ‘wannabe’ stage. Just the simple exercises, rituals and “spellwork” (if you want to call it that) that I have been doing up to this point have indeed had a positive effect on my heath, mental clarity, eyesight, and psychic abilities in terms of shamanic journeying and dream work. So maybe I just bit off more than I can chew with Bardon’s book. I mean I’ll continue working with his exercises, but I can’t see myself reaching the kinds of standards that he’s proposing. To do that, a person would basically need to become a dedicated monk. You’re not going to reach the kinds of levels he’s talking about by just doing this “on the side” of an everyday lifestyle.

I just want to summon up a few spirits to play with. I’m not really interested in becoming a God.

There’s just a few little meek things that I would like to accomplish and I could use some spiritual help. But I really don’t want to be banging on the gates of heaven screaming, “I made it to the top, let me in!”

That’s just not my goal.

Well, I’ll keep working with Penczak’s exercises, and looking into what Kraig has to say in Modern Magic. But this Hermetics stuff of Bardon’s is just at a level beyond what I’m prepared to devote myself to at this time. I’ll continue to read his book and see if I can do all of the lessons at some level, although he keeps saying not to move forward until you can complete the previous lessons ‘satisfactorily’, and I don’t think I can complete them ‘satisfactorily’ by his standards of what he considers to be satisfactory. I just may not have what it takes to do what he asks.

I'm really not interested in learning to walk on water. I live in a forest anyway. The levitation trick would be kind of cool though.

That's similar to my view of it as well. As I said right before your last post....this stuff takes effort. And, depending on what you want to do, it can take a lifetime of effort. Luckily, I too have no desire to walk on hot coals or water or levitate. Though I know it can be done, it's just not something I care to work towards.

Magick....or whatever you want to call it has made my life so much better in so many ways. I have learned many secrets and my life is changing dramatically better over the last 5 years since I began practicing. Most of my work is practical, cause I'm a practical gal, I guess.

Now, I do know that there are easier ways of summoning spirits if you want to commune with them. I haven't studied this subject so I couldn't tell you exactly how to do it, but I am on a couple of yahoo groups that talk about this and people do it all the time. Usually using sigils and circles from King Solomon's writings. I can send you the link for the groups if you like.

Yes, reading about what other people are doing would be interesting.

This book by Bardon is supposed to be one of the top books in the field. That's part of what drew me to it. It also promised to explain 'entity creation'. I just wasn't prepared for the amount of preparatory work involved.

Although in truth, I might be too hard on myself. Bardon does talk about the need to stop bad habits like, smoking, excessive drinking, obsessions with sex, over-eating, spending too much time watching TV, listening to the radio, or even spending too much time with "friends" were all you're really doing is sitting around shooting the same old bull over and over again. Or worse yet, gossping about other people.

Well, gee, I don't do any of those things. I haven't had a TV in years. I quit smoking 20 years ago, and I never had a drinking problem. I don't drink alcohol anymore except on extremely rare occassions and even then it's just in a very mild social atmosphere.

Sex is laughable. Although I would like to find a partner for tantric sex. That's a kind of 'meditation' in its own right.

So my mind might be more quiet than I realize. I don't exactly 'lose' my train of thought (or concentration) on what I'm doing. And when thoughts do come into my mind they are more along the lines of "I wonder if this would satisfy Bardon's standards".

And then I think to myself, "Darn! That was a distraction wasn't it?"

The lesson isn't "complete" until you can make it through the whole hour without having a single thought distract you, or think about your physical body in any way. You're supposed to remain completely detached from your physical body and reside in the Astral Plane only.

In all honesty. I haven't really given this a good solid effort. I just gave up as a matter of principle. I guess I should set aside an hour a day for this exercise and just see how far I can get with it. After all, even Bardon doesn't expect the initiate to just sit down and do this the first time. In fact, he states that it will take a lot of practice and patience to achieve this goal.

So maybe I'm just fessing up to myself that I'm not willing to invest the patience in doing this right now. Maybe this is better to save for a winter project.

I'm a sinner!

I ate out at resturants every day for the past three days and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I don't even feel guilty about it.

Ok, well maybe a little.

Although one of those days a friend took me out to dinner and even paid. I think that was the dinner I felt the most guilty about.

I've been going through one of Bardon's exercises or "programs" where he has you writing down all of your 'sins'. Of course, a 'sin' in this sense is simply anything that you feel may be holding you back on your path to becoming a magi. I'm not sure if eating out at a resturant counts as a 'sin' but is sure feels like it should. The food is quite delicious and I confess to being in a state of orgasmic ecstasy with every bite. However, I should also note that I did bless the food just as Bardon suggested and charged it with a specific task before consuming it, and then even whilst I was in orgasmic ecstasy savorying each bite, I was actually THINKING about directing the food on its mission right down to the very last swallow.

I was also practicing the art of just focusing on the meal entirely without allowing any other thoughts to distract me. This is also part of Bardon's program to torture you. And I did pretty good in that regard all execpt for the last day. Today I had an extremely sensual waitress and every time she came to wait on me all I could think of is how great it would be to have her as a tantric sex partner. But I didn't dwell on that thought. I swear. This only happened in her immediate presence. Once she went back into the kitchen I went right back to focusing on blessing and charging the food and savorying every bite. Overall I did pretty good I think.

But this has me thinking now. Maybe instead of learning how to summon up a bunch of dead head spirits maybe I should be practicing the art of summoning up a live mortal tantric sex partner?

Hmmm?

I think it's time to reevaluate my program here.

Good luck finding a mortal woman who won't confuse sex and love. I think I'm going to sin a little myself tonight and get take out somewhere....I'm thinking Chinese....

Thank you for the well-wishes, but I really don't recall saying anything about excluding the possiblity of love. That'd be just alright with me.

I've been thinking that what this world really needs is a book on Tantra Cuddling and Kissing for the Kiddies.

I wonder how that would be received?

Forget the kiddies. Write it for us grown ups. Its a lost art.

Well, you're right about that.

As an adult I tend to lump cuddling and kissing into the category of "sex". This is because I don't view the word "sex" to necessarily be restricted intercourse. I have a totally different visual of the word than most people do. I guess that's important for me to keep in mind when speaking about such things with other people.

So maybe I'll have to start being more explicit and speak to the issues of Tantra cuddling and kissing. That's a new phrase anyway and would serve as a great conversation starter.

I've been reading Kraig's book on "Modern Magick". In truth, I'm not impressed. It looked like it was going to be really good, but now that I'm getting into it, to be perfectly honest it's rather BORING.

It's funny because all of these authors "define" the term "Magick" at the outset of their books. All of them appear to be using very similar definitions. Mainly one that was made famous by Aleister Crowley. Although all of the authors modify this definition slightly to embrace their own personal perspectives.

In any case, Kraig offers this definition for "Magick" early on, in the very first chapter of his book. But then as the book progresses he begins to talk about "doing magick" in terms of performing rituals. Yet this has absolutely nothing at all to do with his original 'definition' of magick.

So in a sense he seems to have lost focus himself, or has at the very least gotten off on a tangent. He seems to be extremely obcessed with performing specific rituals every day if possible. And doing them in very precise ways, especially when it comes to the "correct" pronounciation of the names of God. He even refers to these rituals as "doing magick", or "practicing magick". But that's not at all what his original definition states.

He has far too many pages (literally rambling on and on) about the correct Hebrew pronouciations of the names of Gods. And ironically in many cases, what he's calling a "name of God" actually translates into a meaningful sentence which has nothing to do with being the name of a god.

Fortunately there are interesting parts in his book. I learned some interesting technigues and ideas concerned the Tarot, as well as the Qabalah and about performing some of the rituals of "High Magick".

That's another term right there that has it's own definitions.

In any case, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Unless they are interested in the correct pronounciation of Hewbrew words and names. I use a completely different archetype anyway, so I'm not interested in that. I even modify the rituals in ways that suit me, so I'm not interested in adhering to his strick formalism. But I do get ideas from how he does things.

One thing about all of these books is that these authors are truly inspiring me to write my own. Everyone does things differently and I personally feel that this is a good thing. I still like Penczak's books the best. He seems to be the most abstract and offers the most freedom even encouraging the reader to do their own thing based on what 'calls' to them.

I'm a really HUGE proponent of that. If I do write a book it's going to start out by stating that this book is for FOOD FOR THOUGHT and general ideas. The reader should take whatever calls to them and feel totally free to add, subtract, or change anything at all.

Intuition is paramount. That's as close as you can get to God. Human documentation is just for sharing ideas of what works for other people for whatever it's worth. It should NEVER be sold or bought as "dogma".

Ok, that was a ramble. Me bad.

It sounds like a book I would have no use for. I have many rituals but since they change a little every time I don't even know if they qualify as real rituals. I have never even done a spell twice the exact same way.

I am starting over with penczack's books. Its very interesting to go back through them with what I know now. I noticed that he khas the same philosophy I do about keeping spells a secret. To know, to dare, to will and to be silent. But I think that only means when you are working a specific spell. That is probably not as relevant to you as it is to me since you don't really do spells like I do.


As for sex......I think cuddling and kissing are more intimate than intercourse and require a greater level of trust and deeper connection. But that may just be a result of my own experiences.

That's my ramble.

You're a short rambler.

I too enjoy going over Penczak's books with new insights and information. I even enjoyed going back over the first books of the series after having read the latter books of the series.

Yes, this "High Magick" is not about 'spell work' per say. It's about performing 'ceremonies'.

I wouldn't have bought it myself if I knew what it was ultimately going to be like.

I am finding Franz Bardon's book to be useful though. But again, not in terms of performing magick, just in terms of better organizing a paradigm. I'm basically on a quest right now to 'build' a meaningful archetype. In a sense you could say that I'm performing the thesis that Penczak charges the student with at the end of his High Magick book.

I didn't really think of it in those terms, but in hindsight I guess that's precisely what I'm doing.

An excellent goal, indeed.