Magic Mental Training (I)
1. Thought Control: discipline of thoughts, & subordination of thoughts ~
Take a seat in a comfortable chair or lie down on a settee. Relax the whole body, close your
eyes and observe the train of your thoughts for five minutes, trying to retain it. At first, you
will find that there are rushing up to you thoughts concerning everyday affairs, professional
worries, and the like. Take the behavior of a silent observer toward these trains of thoughts,
freely and independently. According to the mentality and the mental situation you happen to
be in at the moment, this exercise will be more or less easy for you. The main point is not to
forget yourself, not to lose the train of thoughts, but to pursue it attentively. Beware of falling
asleep while doing this exercise. If you begin to feel tired, stop instantly and postpone the
exercise to another time, when you intend not to give in to tiredness. The Indians sprinkle
cold water on their faces or rub down the face and upper part of their bodies to remain brisk
and not waste precious time. Some deep breathing before you begin will also prevent
tiredness and sleepiness. As time goes on, each disciple will find out such little tricks by
himself. This exercise of controlling thoughts has to be undertaken in the morning and at
night. It is to be extended each day by one minute to allow the train of thoughts to be pursued
and controlled without the slightest digression for a time of 10 mi nutes at least after a week’s
training.
This space of time is destined to the average man. If it should not suffice, everyone can
extend it according to his own apperception. In any event, is advisable to proceed very
consciously, because it is of no use to hurry, development being quite individual in men. On
no account go further before the preceding exercise is perfectly under control.
The attentive disciple will realize how, at the beginning, thoughts rush on to him, how
rapidly they pass before him so that he will have difficulty to recollect the lot of manifold
thoughts. But from one exercise to the next, he will state that thoughts come up less chaotic,
moderating little by little, until at last only a few thoughts emerge in his consciousness,
arriving, as it were, from a far distance.
The keenest attention ought to be given to this work of thought control, as it is very
important for magic development, a fact that everyone will realize later on.
Providing that the mentioned exercise has been thoroughly worked through and everyone has
a complete command of it in practice, let us pass over to the mental training
Up to now we have learned to control our thoughts. The next exercise will consist in not
giving way in our mind to thoughts obtruding themselves on our mind, unwanted and
obstinate. For instance, we must be able not to occupy ourselves any longer with the tasks and
worries of our profession when we come home from work and return the family circle and
privacy. All thoughts not belonging to our privacy must be set aside, and we ought to manage
to become quite a different personality instantly. And just the other way round: in our job, all
thoughts have to be concentrated in it exclusively, and we must not allow them to digress or
wander home, to private affairs, or elsewhere. This has to be practiced time and again until it
has developed into a habit. Above all, one ought to accustom oneself to achieve whatever one
does with full consciousness, whether in professional work or in private, regardless whether
the point is a big one or a trifle. This exercise should be kept for a lifetime, because it is
sharpening the mind and strengthening the consciousness and the memory.
Having obtained a certain skill in this exercise, you may turn to the following one. The
purpose will now be to hold onto a single thought or idea for a longer while, and to suppress
any other thoughts associating and obtruding with force on the mind. Choose for this purpose
any train of thoughts or ideation or a suitable presentation according to your personal taste.
Hold onto his presentation with all your strength. Vigorously refuse all the other thoughts that
have nothing to do with the thoughts being exercised. At first you probably will succeed only
for a few seconds, later on for minutes. You must manage to concentrate on one single
thought and follow it for 10 minutes at least.
If you succeed in doing to, you will be fit for a new exercise. Let us then learn how to produce
an absolute vacancy of mind. Lie down comfortably on a bed or sofa or sit in an armchair and
relax your whole body. Close your eyes. Energetically dismiss any thought coming upon you.
Nothing at all is allowed to happen in your mind; an absolute vacancy of mind must reign.
Now hold on to this stage of vacancy without digressing or forgetting. At first, you will
manage to do so for only a few seconds, but by practicing it more often, you will surely
succeed better at it. The purpose of the exercise will be attained if you succeed in remaining
in this state for a full 10 minutes without losing your self-control or even falling asleep.
Carefully enter your success, failure, duration of your exercises and eventual disturbances into
a magic notebook (See details under the heading “Magic Soul Training”). Such a diary will
be useful to check your progress. The greater the scrupulousness you use in doing so, the more
easily you will undergo all the other exercises. Prepare a working schedule for the coming day
or week, and most of all, indulge in self-criticism.

Magic Psychic Training (I)
1. Introspection or Self-Knowledge ~
In our own mansion, meaning our body and our soul, we must find our way about at every
moment. Therefore our first task will be to know ourselves. Each initiation system, no matter
which kind it may be, will put this condition in the first place. Without self-knowledge there
will be no real development on a higher level.
In the first days of psychic training, let us deal with the practical part of introspection or
self-knowledge. Arrange for a magic diary and enter all the bad sides of your soul into it. This
diary is for your own use only, and must not be shown to anybody else. It represents the
so-called control book for you. In the self-control of your failures, habits, passions, instincts
and other ugly character traits, you have to observe a hard and severe attitude towards
yourself. Be merciless towards yourself and do not embellish any of your failures and
deficiencies. Think about yourself in quiet meditation, put yourself back into different
situations of your past and remember how you behaved then and what mistakes or failures
occurred in the various situations. Make notes of all your weaknesses, down to the finest
nuances and variations. The more you are discovering, all the better for you. Nothing must
remain hidden, nothing unrevealed, however insignificant or great your faults or frailties may
be. Some especially endowed disciples have been able to discover hundreds of failures in the
finest shades. Disciples like these possessed a good meditation and a deep penetration into
their own souls. Wash your soul perfectly clean; sweep all the dust out of it.
This self-analysis is one of the most important magic preliminaries. Many of the occult
systems have neglected it, and that is why they did not achieve good results. This psychic
preliminary work is indispensable to obtain the magic equilibrium, and without it, there is no
regular progress of the development to be thought of. Therefore you ought to devote some
minutes’ time to self-criticism in the morning and at night. If you have got the chance of
some free moments during the day, avail yourself of them and do some intensive thinking,
whether there are still some hidden faults anywhere, and if you discover them, record them on
the spot so as not to forget a single one. Whenever you happen to find out any deficiency, do
not delay to note it immediately.
If within a week you do not succeed in discovering all your faults, spend another week on
these inquiries until you have definitely established your list of offences Having achieved this
problem within one or two weeks, you have reached the point to begin with a further exercise.
Now by intensive thinking, try to assign each fault to one of the four elements. Appoint a
rubric in your diary to each element and enter your faults into it. You will not feel sure of
which elements some of the faults are to be assigned. Record them under the heading of
“indifferent”. In the progressing development you will be able to determine the element
corresponding to your deficiency.
For instance, you will ascribe jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness, irascibility, and anger to the
fiery element; frivolity, self-presumption, boating, squandering, and gossiping to the element
of air; indifference, laziness, frigidity, compliance, negligence, shyness, insolence, and
instability to the watery element; laziness, lack of conscience, melancholy, irregularity,
anomaly and dullness to the element of earth.
In the following week you will meditate on each single rubric, dividing it into three groups.
In the first group you will enter the biggest failures, especially those that influence you
strongest or happen at the slightest opportunity. The second group will embrace faults
occurring less frequently and in slighter degree. In the last group you are recording those
faults that happen only now and again. Go on doing so with the indifferent faults, too. Work
conscientiously at all times; it is worth while!
Repeat the whole procedure with your good psychical qualities, entering them into the
respective categories of the elements. Do not forget the three columns here as well. For
example, you will assign activity, enthusiasm firmness, courage, and daring to the fiery
element, diligence, joy, dexterity, kindness, lust, and optimism to the air element, modesty,
abstemiousness, fervency, compassion, tranquility, tenderness, and forgiveness to the watery
element, and respect, endurance, conscientiousness, thoroughness, sobriety, punctuality, and
responsibility to the earth element.
By doing so, you will get two so-called psycho-mirrors, a black one with the evil qualities,
and a whit one with the good and noble character traits. These two magic mirrors are correct
occult mirrors, and none but the owner has any right to look into them at all. Let me repeat
once more that the owner must endeavor to elaborate his magic mirrors precisely and
conscientiously. If, in the course of the development, he should remember any good or bad
quality, he can still record it under the respective heading. These two magic mirrors will
allow the magician to recognize rather exactly which of the elements is prevailing in his
black or white mirror. This recognition is absolutely necessary to attain the magic equipoise,
and the further development depends on it.

Each of these four elements, which determine man’s temper, in the active form, owns the
good properties, and in its passive form, the contrary or bad qualities. It would be too prolix
to inform here about the effects of the elements, and it is better for the incipient adept to find
out himself further effects by his own meditation. This manner also has a very special reason,
on the path to initiation. Here I shall a few examples only:
The choleric(fire) temper, in its active polarity, has the following good qualities: activity,
enthusiasm, eagerness, resolution, courage, productivity, etc. In the negative form these
qualities are: gluttony, jealousy, passion, irritability, intemperance, bent to destruction, etc.
The sanguine(air) temper in its active form shows: capacity of penetrating, diligence, joy,
adroitness, kindness, clearness, lack of grief, cheerfulness, optimism, eagerness,
independence, familiarity, etc. In the negative form: continual feeling of being affronted,
contempt, propensity to gossiping, lack of endurance, slyness, garrulousness, dishonesty,
fickleness, etc.
The melancholic(water) temper in its active form: respectability, modesty, compassion, devotion,
seriousness, docility, fervor, cordiality, comprehension, meditation, calmness, quick to give
one’s confidence, forgiveness, tenderness, and so on. In the negative form: indifference,
depression, apathy, shyness, laziness, etc.
The phlegmatic(earth) temper in its active form: respectability, reputation, endurance,
consideration, resolution, firmness, seriousness, scrupulousness, thoroughness, concentration,
sobriety, punctuality, reservedness, objectivity, infallibility, responsibility, reliability,
circumspection, resistance, self-assurance, and so on. In the negative form: insipidity,
unscrupulousness, misanthropy, dullness, tardiness, laziness, unreliability, laconism, and so
on.
The qualities of the temperaments, according to the preponderant quality, form the basis of
the human character.