The Elemental Equilibrium

By Virgil

Establishing an elemental equilibrium – an inner state in which the elements constituting one's soul and spirit have been balanced and purified – has long been considered an essential prerequisite for advanced magical work. The master alchemists of the Middle Ages hinted at the importance of this state in their cryptic texts and emblems. The French magician Eliphas Levi considered this state to be the secret to controlling the astral light. Professor Gregory Ottonovich Mёbes taught that this state is the key to acquiring divine authority. Throughout history, numerous occultists have become emotionally unbalanced and mentally deranged because they failed to establish this state within themselves before coming into contact with potent spiritual forces. Due to its importance, several of the more well-known magical orders in history have given their students rituals, meditations, and exercises to aid them in establishing an elemental equilibrium. Unfortunately, many of those practices were of dubious efficacy, and as a result, this state has continued to remain elusive for even the most sincere and dedicated students of magic.

Those who dream of engaging the powers underlying magic or travelling through the inner planes may now do so safely. In this book, Virgil provides a thorough and easily understandable guide to establishing an elemental equilibrium. Upon doing this, any aspiring magician will have acquired the inner balance, strength, and purity needed to practice his art productively and effectively.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Falcon Books Publishing
• Release date: Nov 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9798223139638

Virgil

Virgil is a writer and Christian magician who has worked extensively with Franz Bardon's system of magic and enjoys sharing his insights through various outlets. He is currently the author of four books – 'The Spirit of Magic'. 'The Elemental Equilibrium,' 'The Covert Side of Initiation,' and 'The Gift to be Simple.' He runs his own blog 'Living Franz Bardon'. Although he enjoys sharing his insights, he enjoys encouraging others to share theirs even more. For this reason, during the summer of 2019, Virgil organized the first Franz Bardon community fundraiser, which resulted in the publication of the collaborative book 'Equipoise: Insights into Foundational Astral Training'. This book is a compilation of essays and poems about magical equilibrium written by over two dozen students and initiates of Franz Bardon's system, and all profits from its sales go to the Best Friends Animal Society. Virgil believes that who a magician really is depends on his or her level of compassion, kindness, and forgiveness. According to Virgil, magical skills, psychic abilities, and occult knowledge can never substitute for these three traits, but aspiring magicians, in their rush to explore the Greater Mysteries, often lose sight of this basic spiritual fact. Many of Virgil's writings are intended to remind readers that one cannot be a good magician without first being a good person, and that at the end of the day any form of power, including magical power, is of no value unless one has the wisdom needed to use it for the purposes of love. Although he is able to write about the technical aspects of magic, Virgil rarely does so, opting instead to produce writings that help aspiring magicians keep sight of the things that truly matter.

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Chapter 1: An Overview of Self-Transformation

The Elemental Equilibrium

If you want a specific result, you have to examine if your practices produce those results.

~William Mistele

In the past, many magical schools and teachers advised their students to establish an elemental equilibrium. The Golden Dawn, for example, urged its students to establish thyself firmly in the Equilibrium of Forces, in the center of the cross of the elements. The fact is, however, it is no good to tell others to establish an elemental equilibrium if you do not also tell them how to do this. In other words, you must give them instructions for doing so. To give ineffective instructions is no better than to give no instructions at all, and as I pointed out in my first book, the vast majority of occult exercises that are designed to help people establish an elemental equilibrium are actually entirely ineffective.

An elemental equilibrium is a state in which the four elements constituting an individual’s subtle bodies have been balanced and purified. Elemental imbalances and impurities manifest as negative personality traits. Therefore, the current state of an individual’s elemental equilibrium can be assessed by observing the strength and number of his negative personality traits. The process of establishing an elemental equilibrium involves eliminating one’s negative traits, strengthening one’s positive traits, and developing new positive traits. Bardon provides several extremely effective techniques for doing this in IIH, including magical washing, autosuggestion, conscious eating, conscious breathing, and assumption. Each time you use these techniques to eliminate a negative trait, you eliminate the elemental imbalance or impurity that was at the root of that negative trait. By eliminating your negative traits one by one in this way, you will eventually remove all imbalances and impurities in your subtle bodies, establishing an elemental equilibrium within yourself.

Crowley’s Postulate of Magic

In the third part of Liber ABA, Crowley presents the following postulate of magic.

Any required change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of force in the proper manner, through the proper medium to the proper object.[1]

You are trying to effect a change within yourself. What is the nature of this change? You are trying to establish an elemental equilibrium, or balance the elements as many occult books put it.[2]  As previously noted, some schools and systems of magic instruct you to effect this change within yourself but do not tell you the proper kind and degree of force, the proper manner, or the proper medium through which you can successfully effect this change. For this reason, their students are not successful.

Let’s consider the factors that lead to success in a student’s endeavor to change himself into someone with an elemental equilibrium.

Table 1: Factors of Successful Self-Transformation

The proper kind of force for self-transformation is your own desire to change. The wrong kind of force is someone else’s desire for you to change. If someone else really wants you to change but you don’t want to change, you won’t change. You yourself must desire to change, and it is the force of your desire to change that drives you to begin the journey of self-transformation.

The proper degree of force is serious. If the degree of force is unserious or half-assed, you won’t succeed. If the degree of force is obsessive, you might injure yourself. It’s never a good idea to apply an obsessive amount of effort toward achieving a goal—even one as noble as self-transformation. Be serious about self-transformation without being obsessed about it. For example, consider the technique of conscious eating. Don’t try to practice conscious eating while simultaneously reading a book or watching television. If you do that, you aren’t serious. However, there is no need to sit around and do nothing but eat impregnated food all day. That is obsessive behavior, not serious behavior.

The proper manner in which to apply the force is a persistent manner. Practice conscious eating at every meal every day—not just whenever you feel like it or only once in a while. Don’t skip doing the practice unless it is unavoidable.

The proper medium in the process of self-transformation consists of effective and safe self-transformation techniques. It is through these techniques that the force of your desire to change acts. The use of ineffective techniques will result in failure. The use of unsafe self-transformation techniques will also result in failure, and possibly disaster as well. There is an occult technique of self-transformation that is promoted by some authors in the Western Mystery Tradition. It consists of visualizing a personified form of one of your negative traits, pointing a wand at it, and then visualizing a blast of light emanating from the wand and destroying the negative trait. I do not consider this technique safe. As Rawn Clark writes in A Bardon Companion, It does no good to treat any part of self as an enemy. I have provided a detailed criticism of this technique in some of my past writings. In short, I consider it more of a self-destruction technique than a self-transformation technique. The six techniques of the six-pronged attack, however, are all safe, as well as effective.

And lastly, the object that is being transformed is yourself, so this is the object you apply the force through the medium to. There is not much to be said here.

This combination of factors results in the desired change—the elimination of negative traits and development of positive traits, leading to the establishment and strengthening of your elemental equilibrium.

Many occult books provide exercises for developing an elemental equilibrium. People who desire to change themselves often practice these exercises seriously and persistently. However, despite the presence of the proper kind of force, the proper degree of force, the proper manner of using the force, and the proper object, they do not succeed and remain as immature as they were before. This remains the case even after years and decades of regular practice. How is this possible?

In addition to the aforementioned postulate of magic, Crowley also gives the following two theorems of magic.

Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.[3]

Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.[4]

If aspiring magicians trying to establish an elemental equilibrium are applying the proper kind and degree of force in the proper manner to the proper object but are still unsuccessful in their endeavors, then clearly they are not using the proper medium. The medium is the specific set of techniques being practiced in order to establish an elemental equilibrium. If the techniques you are using to transform yourself are not effective, it does not matter how hard you practice them, how seriously you practice them, or how persistently you practice them; you will still be unsuccessful.

If you have the proper medium, you are set to go. The proper kind of force, the proper degree of force, and the proper manner of using the force (of your desire to transform yourself) follow naturally. They are components of what I call one’s approach. Once you learn the instructions for a technique, you need to experiment a little to find the right approach to the technique in order to make it as effective as possible. This shouldn’t take too long.

Finding the right medium through which they can transform themselves is the first obstacle many students of magic need to overcome. As a student of the Bardon system, this is not the case for you because Bardon has already provided several extremely effective self-transformation techniques in IIH. When these techniques are used with the proper kind and degree of force in the proper manner and applied to the proper object, they will result in the establishment of an elemental equilibrium. In other words, if you approach the task of using these techniques properly, you will establish an elemental equilibrium. However, the exact proper approach is slightly different for each individual. Table 1 is only a very generic summary. The purpose of this book, therefore, is not to teach you what the proper approach to each technique is. It is to give you some ideas that will help you find your own proper approach to each technique.

The Three Parts of Self-Transformation

The three parts of self-transformation are as follows.

Eliminate your negative traits

Strengthen your positive traits

Develop new positive traits

This is usually considered the best order, and for good reason. Self-transformation is a process of recreating yourself. Let’s say you have a cake but it is not a very good cake. You want to make it better (AKA recreate the cake into a better cake), so you start by reducing the cake to separate ingredients. Each ingredient represents a personality trait. Upon examining the ingredients (AKA introspecting), you find sugar, baking soda, flour, eggs, butter, milk, rabbit feces, squirrel vomit, and donkey saliva. The first thing you do is you throw out those last three ingredients. It does not matter what the rest of the ingredients are; if a cake contains rabbit feces, squirrel vomit, and donkey saliva, it will not taste good regardless of what else you put in it. Therefore, when you recreate yourself, the first thing you do is eliminate your negative personality traits.

While reading The Universal Master Key, which was written by some direct students of Bardon, one thing I noticed was that the authors repeatedly insist that a positive trait is not of much benefit if it is weak, and that to truly benefit from a positive trait, it must be strong. I think it is fair to assume that Bardon himself must have repeatedly stated this or else his students would not continually emphasize this point. Therefore, this should be contemplated. It is clear that the idea has a lot of merit. You might have some good traits, but you won’t derive much benefit from them if they are weak. For this reason, the second part of self-transformation is to strengthen your positive traits. It is usually easier to strengthen a positive trait you already have than it is to develop a new positive trait from scratch. In addition, your strengthened positive traits can be valuable assets that will aid you when you begin the third part of the process and work to develop new positive traits.

As for the third part, this is partially tied to the first part. For example, in order to eliminate impatience, you must develop a new positive trait—patience. However, there are also going to be positive traits you would like to have but did not develop in the process of eliminating your negative traits. These, you should turn your attention to after you have completed the first and second parts. When recreating the cake, first remove the gross ingredients, then make sure the remaining ingredients are high quality and replace them if they aren’t, and then add in new ingredients like frosting.

The Six-Pronged Attack

Self-transformation is not an instant process. I’m sure at one point or another, we’ve all wished it were possible to wave a wand and cast a spell on ourselves in order to become virtuous or talented. Something like that might work in the world of Harry Potter, but not in our world. True and permanent self-transformation takes repeated and constant effort over a period of time. In Step 2, Bardon writes of a three-pronged attack for the purpose of self-transformation. It consists of the following three components.

Autosuggestion

Transmutation

Use of volition

He also says that one can use the techniques of conscious eating, conscious breathing, and magical washing to supplement these. In my first book, The Spirit of Magic, I grouped all of these together into a set I called the six-pronged attack.

Autosuggestion

Use of volition

Conscious eating

Conscious breathing

Magical washing

Transmutation

In the first edition of this book, I removed transmutation from the set. I did this because transmutation is different from the other prongs. Autosuggestion, use of volition, conscious eating, conscious breathing, and magical washing are specific techniques you can use to transform yourself. Transmutation is not a technique of self-transformation, but an approach to self-transformation. The idea is to eliminate a negative trait by developing the opposite positive trait. For example, if you want to eliminate impatience from your personality, you can do this by developing patience. Or, if you want to eliminate stupidity from yourself, you can do this by developing intelligence. This is an effective approach to eliminating your negative traits; however, in order to use this approach, you have to use a specific technique like autosuggestion or conscious eating in order to develop the opposite positive trait. Think of it this way. Autosuggestion, use of volition, conscious eating, conscious breathing, and magical washing are weapons. Transmutation is not a weapon, but a fighting style. It’s a way of using weapons rather than a weapon itself.

After removing transmutation from the set of prongs, I added another prong, which is intended as a catch-all for any non-magical methods that could be used to eliminate the negative trait you wish to be rid of or develop the positive trait you wish to have. This new prong that I’ve added is discussed in the eleventh chapter of this book.

This is the six-pronged attack that I taught in the first edition of this book, and the six-pronged attack I teach in this current second edition. The only trivial difference is that I have given the name assumption to the prong involving the use of volition. In this prong, you overcome a negative trait by forcing yourself to act as if you had the opposite positive trait, and you continue to do this until it becomes a habit. For example, if you are impatient, you can use volition to force yourself to act patiently until acting patiently becomes a habit, at which point you will have effectively eliminated impatience from yourself and developed patience. Obviously, this method of eliminating a negative trait from your personality does involve volition, but technically speaking, so does every conscious act to some degree. Therefore, technically speaking, all of the other techniques in the six-pronged attack also involve using volition, but in different ways. To make it more clear what the volition prong actually is, I have decided to call it assumption. This name comes from a line in the play Hamlet when Hamlet tells his mother assume a virtue if you have it not. He is basically asking his mother to use the volition prong to develop a virtue if she doesn’t have it.

The order of the prongs I have used in this book shouldn’t be seen as standard. I address magical washing first because I considered it the best place to introduce the inner adept idea, which I will reference repeatedly throughout this book. I then introduce autosuggestion so I can point out that it can be used to increase your proficiency in using the other prongs. This allows me to remind you of that fact in the following chapters about conscious eating and conscious breathing. I then put conscious eating and conscious breathing together because they are similar in their mechanics. Both involve impregnating a substance and consuming it in order to assimilate the trait it has been transmuted into. I discuss non-magical methods last because this is a new addition to the six-pronged attack, and I wanted to address the traditional prongs readers were already familiar with first. That was the logic and reasoning behind the order I used as I organized the chapters of this book. Again, it’s not standard. If you go onto a Bardon forum or chat group and start throwing around the phrase Prong 3, no one is going to have any idea what you are talking about. Refer to it by its actual name—conscious eating.

The self-transformation techniques in the six-pronged attack are remarkably effective. Their effectiveness only grows with practice. Over time, they will allow the student to accomplish the creation of man by himself. They will aid the student in acquiring the perfect emancipation of his will and gaining full power over the Universal Magical Agent.

The Lovers

The message of the sixth card in the Major Arcana is that the more wise decisions we make, the more joyful and blessed our lives will be.[5] In his book The Tarot: A Contemporary Course of the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism, Mouni Sadhu notes that the person in the card standing between the paths of virtue and vice is young. According to him, this indicates the importance of making wise decisions when young because the earlier you make a wise decision, the more benefit you will reap from it.

Deciding to change yourself for the better is a wise decision. Therefore, make this decision as early as possible and get to work! The earlier you do so, the more you will benefit from the positive traits you develop within yourself.

Reactive Emotionalism

In his book The Lost Art of Listening, Michael Nichols states that learning to truly listen to others will help improve all relationships. This includes familial relationships. Since the family is the basic unit of society, clearly society overall would be better off if everyone were better at listening.

According to Nichols, one of the things that prevents people from truly listening is something he calls reactive emotionalism. It’s a complex concept, but the gist of it is that when we react emotionally, even slightly, to what others are saying, we do things to express our emotional reaction, and this distracts us and prevents us from focusing on and understanding what the person speaking to us is trying to say. The things we do might be physical, but could be mental as well.

Establishing an elemental equilibrium will increase your inner stability, and as a result, you will not exhibit reactive emotionalism. I mention all this to show just one of the myriad ways establishing an elemental equilibrium will improve your relationships. Since relationships are a big part of life, your life in general will also improve.

Attitude

Many people think that self-transformation is a gruesome, strenuous, and exhausting process that involves a lot of suffering. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I don’t understand that attitude at all. It is completely illogical.

I suspect that the reason people think this is that they believe assumption, a technique that relies on sheer willpower alone, is the only tool they have to transform themselves. Yes, if sheer willpower was the only tool we had to change ourselves, self-transformation would indeed be tiring and frustrating. However, when the other five prongs are also used, it becomes a steady, smooth, and enjoyable process.

A well-known saying by Bob Anthony goes When it becomes more difficult to suffer than change, you will change. There are some important messages to take away from this statement. One is that changing yourself is a way to avoid suffering. Do you see the irony in not wanting to change yourself because you want to avoid suffering? If you want to avoid suffering, changing yourself is exactly what you need to do. Much of the suffering you experience in life is ultimately caused by your negative traits and the influence they have on the choices you make.

We see the most glaring illustrations of these basic truths in literature where tragic heroes suffer because of the tragic flaws they possess. With King Lear, it was his pride. With Oedipus, it was his arrogance and ignorance. With Hamlet, it was his indecisiveness. Had any of those characters eliminated their tragic flaws from their personalities with the six-pronged attack, they would have avoided a lot of suffering.

Training for Busy People

Bardon writes in IIH that the busiest person in the world could still work through his system. The system’s efficient approach to self-transformation is one reason for this.[6]  The techniques of the six-pronged attack are used while eating, breathing, washing your hands, showering, and doing any non-intellectual activity. As a result, you can devote a large portion of your day to self-transformation. These activities are all already integrated into your life. As can be seen, you don’t have to work to integrate powerful techniques of self-transformation into your life. You take activities already integrated into your life and turn them into powerful techniques of self-transformation. Clever, huh?

The thing is, Bardon didn’t choose to include these techniques in his system because they are based on activities already integrated into your life. He chose to include them because they were the most effective and powerful techniques he knew of. The fact that they also happen to be based on activities already integrated into your life is a great bonus, especially for us busy folks!

Magic vs. Occultism

In a group chat between various occultists I used to belong to, a well-known occult writer stated that it was ok for magicians to be angry and irascible. He wrote that many religions dogmatically insist that anger is bad, but the magician should not be a slave to such dogmas. Therefore, since the dogmas of many religions (e.g. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) say that being angry and irascible is bad, the magician should believe that being angry and irascible is ok. Otherwise, he is a slave to religious dogmas. 

There are many problems with this line of reasoning. It is true that a magician should not be a slave to religious dogmas; however, this doesn’t mean the magician should just automatically believe the opposite of what religious dogmas say is true. To automatically believe religious dogmas and to automatically believe the opposite of religious dogmas both result in enslavement to religious dogmas. In both instances, you are allowing religious dogmas to determine what you believe.

When it comes to the question of whether or not it is ok for a magician to be angry and irascible, the magician needs to do his own thinking, come to his own understanding of anger/irascibility and the consequences of possessing this emotion/trait, and then come to his own conclusion regarding how acceptable it is for a magician to be angry and irascible. 

Irascibility is a sign that one does not have an elemental equilibrium. Therefore, claiming that it is fine for