Franz Bardon

František Bardon, around 1930

Franz Bardon , also František Bardon , (* 1. December 1909 in Katherein in Opava , Austria-Hungary ; † 10. July 1958 in Brno , Czechoslovakia ) was an occultist , in particular through its publications on the theme of the hermetic magic and Kabbalah famous nationally .

Life

Little is known about the childhood of the only son of the Christian mystic Viktor Bardon. The attainment of the views passed on in his books is believed to have started in the early 1920s. During this time, Bardon had close contacts with Friedrich Wilhelm Quintscher , a member of the Adonist Society .

Since the mid- 1920s , Franz Bardon appeared in the German public under the name "Frabato" ( an acronym formed from Franz-Bardon-Troppau-Opava ) in order, as he himself writes, to provide a wide audience with samples of his ascribed magical abilities to let. When the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Bardon was exposed to constant hostility and persecution from the National Socialists . In June 1941 he was arrested and taken to the Wroclaw and Opava concentration camps. After his release in October 1941, Bardon worked as a naturopath in Munich until the end of the war , then in his hometown of Opava. In 1958 he was arrested by the Czechoslovak security authorities, the exact circumstances being unknown. Shortly afterwards, Franz Bardon died in police custody.

Bardon's metaphysical system

The central position of his literary work is taken by the volumes The Way to the True Adepten , The Practice of Magical Evocation and The Key to the True Kabbalah , published in the 1950s , accompanied by the presumably largely autobiographical material in the form of the novel Frabato . Bardon's metaphysics is outlined in its theoretical fundamentals in The Path to the True Adept and is gradually refined in the two following volumes.

Bardon assigns the terms “ God ”, “ Akasha ”, “ Adonai ” or “ etheric principle ” to the hidden source of all things , presumably to indicate the equality of Eastern and Western systems. According to Bardon, the totality of all revealed, that is, brought about by creation, forces and processes can be reduced to the interplay of a total of two universal principles. These basic elements are fire and water, but these are treated as principles and do not represent the physical phenomena of fire or water. The basic properties of fire are heat and expansion, and for water the basic properties are cold and contraction. Bardon describes contraction and expansion in two more terms: electrical fluid (expansion) and magnetic fluid (contraction). Here he mentions that the principles cannot be equated with physical phenomena, but admits that there should be some analogy between them. These two principles or elements can each work in two “directions”: on the one hand, active or constructive but, on the other hand, also passive or destructive - they are essentially bipolar. Taken together, both form a double two-pole or four-pole, which Bardon calls the "four-pole magnet". In addition to the fundamental principles associated with fire and water , two other elements derived from them, but not really existing according to Bardon, are used in Bardon's works. The interaction that creates the equilibrium between fire and water is also elevated to a principle and the element air is assigned to it. In order to be able to make statements about the unity of the elements fire , water and air , a fourth principle is established, which results from the interaction of all three other principles: the solidification or immobility, symbolized by the element earth . Bardon explains that the earth is based on the electromagnetic fluid.

Bardon further explains that the manifestation of the divine, the Akashas, ​​took place and is taking place through the four-pole magnet in three qualitatively different degrees. These three worlds or levels include the mental-etheric (highest among these), the astral-subtle and the physical-gross-material (deepest). Further and more precise statements by Bardon are based strongly on the contents of the Hermetic philosophy, the Kabbalah and Eastern wisdom.

The focus of Bardon's books, however, is on magical practice and, according to the author, represents a self-contained initiation system.

The documents for another book, The Golden Book of Wisdom , were confiscated by the police when he was arrested and are missing.

Works

• The way to the true adept. A course in 10 levels. Theory and practice . Bauer, Freiburg im Breisgau 1956. (Rüggeberg, Wuppertal 2001, ISBN 3-921338-30-1 )
• The practice of magical evocation. Instructions for invoking beings around us . Bauer, Freiburg im Breisgau 1956. (Rüggeberg, Wuppertal 2003, ISBN 3-921338-31-X )
• The key to the true quabbalah. The quabbalist as the perfect ruler in the micro- and macrocosm . Bauer, Freiburg im Breisgau 1957. (Rüggeberg, Wuppertal 1998, ISBN 3-921338-27-1 )
• Frabato. An occult novel . Bauer, Freiburg im Breisgau 1958; Rüggeberg, Wuppertal 1997, ISBN 3-921338-26-3 .
• Questions to Master Arion ( published posthumously by Dieter Rüggeberg ). Rüggeberg, Wuppertal 1997, ISBN 3-921338-24-7 .

literature

• Lumir Bardon, MK: Memories of Franz Bardon . Rüggeberg, Wuppertal 1992. (3rd, extended edition. 2008, ISBN 978-3-921338-39-1 )
• Emil Stejnar : Franz Bardon. Facts and anecdotes about an initiate . Ibera, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85052-252-6 .
• Milan Nakonečny: Novodoby Česky Hermetism. Vodnař, Prague 1995, ISBN 80-85255-85-5 . (contains chapters about Bardon and others about his Czech environment)

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Bardon in the catalog of the German National Library