1. You make your mind completely empty of thoughts so it is reflective
like a mirror, receptive like the ocean, empty like a void, open like the
sky, intense like air the moment before lightning strikes, serene like
moonlight, fragile and responsive to suggestion like a dream, and solid
and enduring like a mountain.
2. Next, with this empty mind, you focus your attention on something--a
problem, your life path, an elemental being, a spirit, or a project you
wish to accomplish. You add to this a little technique. Techniques are
endless in variety. You can visualize a picture, a sigil, an image or
symbol of God/Goddess; you can meditate on a prayer or a chant; you can
use incense, music, or a tone; you can do a pathworking, mental
wandering, construct a magical circle or perform a ritual, gaze upon a
crystal ball, speak a word of power, etc. etc. Technique, methods, and
procedures are employed to receive and amplify impressions.
3. And finally, through direct experience and careful study and
analysis, you interpret your impressions. You translate them into words
and call it telepathy, into visual images and call it clairvoyance, into
sensations and feelings and call it clairsentience, into all three while
connecting to a spirit and call it an evocation, into new information and
call it knowledge, into a spiritual realization and call it wisdom, into
light and freedom and call it enlightenment, etc. Impressions received
from outside yourself can also over time become internalized so you
embody their qualities and energy.
4. This same procedure can also be expressed in a more active manner
typical of magick. All methods and techniques for changing oneself or the
world boil down into a simple formula: you concentrate on what is desired
as if it is real right now in this moment. You add an appropriate kind of
energy to your picture, feeling, thought, etc. so it has some power
independent of your mind and thoughts and can move with enthusiasm toward
the objective on any or all planes. And you also take into consideration
and comprehend from within every force, situation, resistance, and
obstacle which blocks your vision from becoming reality. This last
element insures that your course of action is forged from wisdom and
results in harmony--that you can proceed without inference or resistance
from the energies or environments your desire encounters on the four
planes.
5. For example, in chapter three of Bardon's Initiation into
Hermetics, you practice imagining the elements of fire, water, air, or
earth around yourself as if you are immersed within a boundless sphere of
a single element. Take the earth element. What is it to imagine you have
within and around yourself a vast expanse of the earth element? This is
the same as learning to think, feel, and perceive as a gnome.
6. Your mind attunes to that one element learning to amplify,
condense, and transform it. After this training, it is not so difficult
then to form connections and interact in a creative manner with gnomes.
If you spent time concentrating on minerals, precious stones, trees,
mountains, and so forth you would be undergoing the training of a gnome
magician. And so it is with fire, water, and air.
7. You can also use colors instead of the elements. If you imagine
yourself within a boundless expanse of emerald green light, then you are
learning to think, feel, and perceive as a spirit of Libra or Taurus in
the earthzone or a spirit from the sphere of Venus. The colors, then, can
be used for probing the qualities, powers, and consciousness of the beings
within the spheres regardless of whether you make connections to them or
not..
8. In the end, when you can concentrate effectively, your thought is
like electricity and magnetism. Everything else is attracted to and
becomes aligned with it. The four planes cooperate with it. It is like
akasha--obstacles dissolve in its presence. It is like a mating of Saturn
and Uranus--something completely new and without precedent is introduced
into the world and yet it feels so natural it seems like it is what was
meant to be all along.
9. When I consider the entire spectrum of methods in Bardon's three
books with over five hundred different spirits and 26 cosmic letters, this
summary is what I come back to in order to understand what I am doing.
Self-transformation, self-mastery, and integration--aligning oneself with
the forces, the laws, and the harmony of the universe--are at the heart of
the process from beginning to end.
