Magical Exercises – they are not a game
by Emil Stejnar
(translated by Richard Tschudi)
In the year 1958 I had the following experience. It happened in Vetlanda, a small city in Sweden. I just welcomed a visitor from Vienna, a good friend of mine to whom I felt a strong connection, because of the many years we did researches together. There were plenty of news to share and in the evening we did an experiment with a magical wand which I constructed according to special instructions. Then we went to bed and had long discussions before we fell asleep.
The foot-ends of our beds were facing each other and they fitted exactly between the walls and there was no gap at all between the beds.
Suddenly I had a feeling that I was turning and swirling madly in a whirlpool of red and black flames. I was full of fear like never before and I believed to be lifted up into the air. Then from somewhere I heard my name called and I woke up. I found my self sitting at the farthest end of the bed and only very slowly gained full consciousness. In the other bed my friend was as well sitting on his bed and he was still calling my name.
As I now noticed, my bed was now slopped on the wall. The head of the bed was stuck on the wall with its feet 40 centimeters above the ground and in the morning we noticed scratches on the wall-paper indicating that the bed must have been lifted at one time up to1 meter from the ground. The room was in a state of great disorder. Books and music records were scattered on the floor. The table was standing on some of the books.
After we calmed down my friend reported the following: He was woken up by a cold draft of air and wanted to get up to close the window, however the window was already closed. Then he noticed that I was sitting in the middle of the bed and was staring with my eyes filled with fear ahead of me. Around my head was a strange green light which seemed to emanate from my eyes. Then the head of the bed started to lift up. My friend said that I was screaming terribly and that I moved to the end of the bed. He called my name a few times, turned on the light and then I came to me (woke up).
At that time I assumed that the cause of that spook was the experiment with the magical wand. It was a nine-time coiled spiral made of a wire of fine-gold and fine-silver and a magnetic iron top. The whole was stuck on a staff of elder wood and was meant to be especially appropriate for invocations.
Today I know that the magic wand was very innocent. The real cause was the one-sided magical exercises which I practiced for a few months prior to the incident. Like any beginner I focused on those exercises which appealed to me particularly and neglected others. I overdid asceticism and I tried to strengthen my will-power by all kinds of methods.
In this manner I created a reservoir of power which had to discharge itself eventually because I did not assign a task to that power-reservoir. Any power which is transformed by will-power exercises has to be consciously associated with a quality, a name or a meaning if you want to have control over this power. Otherwise this power or energy will automatically connect with a part of the so called unconscious and then works independently, mostly against us, or it can also be misused by entities.
This is an important law in practical magic. From this can be deduced: Every quality, idea or goal towards which we are striving will soon join up with a force so that it can manifest itself. This force will be extracted from us unless we do not consciously create his force by will-power exercises or do not have control over the idea.
Most beginners are disregarding this fact or are not aware of it yet. However, magical exercises are not a game. It wouldn’t occur to anybody to play around with the bare fingers with a high voltage power-line. But when it comes to magic, many believe they can visualize and meditate on what ever they like although very dangerous powers can be contacted.
This is also the reason why many students give up practicing after a few months or they are forced to do so by tragic fate. The divine providence, in this manner prevents damages that sooner or later can occur to spirit and soul.
The right way therefore is to practice and strive with spirit, soul and body equally, and create an elemental equilibrium on each level. The best instructions are given in the book: “Initiation into Hermetics” by Franz Bardon. Whoever works on his or her occult perfection has to observe the law of the interaction between force (power) and might (quality). He or she should these might’s (qualities) and forces (quantities), which are automatically created and are released by the magical exercises and then ban and capture them consciously with a gesture (mudra), a ritual, or a seal. Or he or she should bind these might’s and forces (quantities and qualities) with a clearly outlined quality or attribute. He or she then creates magical aids without any special effort, which will serve him or her well on the path. The usual side effects which every practitioner experiences during his or her apprenticeship will eventually wear off.
(This part of this article first appeared in the German esoteric magazine “Anubis – Zeitschrift fuer praktische Magie und Psychonautik) # 10, December 1988.
The last paragraph that follows was added by Emil Stejnar when he republished this article in his book: “Die vier Elemente – Der geheime Schluessel zur geistigen Macht. (Ibera Publisher-Vienna, 2008)
Today, I don’t need anything else to add to my conclusions of the time when I wrote this article. However in the mean time I discovered where the phantom, which had tried to pull me out of my body, came from. When my friend and I did the preparation for the experiment (with the magic wand), we went to the “gallows-hill”. It was a place of execution in the 18th century. The land on which house where we lived in was build was also on a place of execution, where in 1543 sixty people were beheaded after a peasant uprising. This information I found out much later. It is understandable that the elementaries which we absorbed at the “gallows-hill” and then brought to our house, where they animated the schemes of mortal agony of the place and as a result the phantom could manifest with the help of my unused energies which I created with my magical exercises.
Bardon also refers in step XI of his third book of instructions: “The Key to the true Kabbalah” to the important difference between a might and a and a power (quality and quantity). I urgently recommend that every Hermetic Practitioner studies that chapter in depth and takes it to heart.
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