Bruh's initiation

[Bruh]

This Journal

I’ve decided to work through initiation into hermetics. While I’m usually a fan of staying silent on the things I’m currently doing, I decided for this I might need some public accountability. I move from practice to practice a little too easily, so I’m hoping a little public embarrassment will keep me on track this. If anyone is willing to check in occasionally and shame me if I’m not practicing I’d be willing to return the favor.

This won’t be a daily journal. I’ll post once a month on the third Sunday. I’ll update on the progress I’ve made and what my practice currently looks like. I’ll also post how many days of practice I’ve missed.

My History With IIH

IIH was one of the first books I got after I realized all this occult stuff was real. I’ve owned it for years, read it multiple times and have started practicing it on and off. I’ve had A Bardon Companion for a comparable amount of time (RIP Rawn Clark). I have the Merkur translation which I hear is the worst one.

I’ve wished I started when I first got it, imagine how far I’d be now. But there is a part of me that is glad I’m starting now that I have experience. I feel much better equipped to understand what Bardon is saying and why it is important. I also know that many of the exercises in IIH have migrated into other works, so if I have trouble with an exercise I know where to look for more modern instructions. Where no better instructions exist I can use my preexisting knowledge to create my own solution.

My Current Practice

Step One
As of writing this I’ve completed all my morning practices of the first day.

Morning:

• Wash face, chest, and arms with cold water

• At window or outside get a deep breath of morning air. Go through a couple basic stretches. One more deep breath and a breath hold to stretch the diaphragm.

• Drink a mug of plain hot water

• A little exercise, no more than 15 minutes.
  A note about this routine according to A Bardon Companion the routine used in IIH is just example. This one I made is partly based on IIH but also things I learned from the works of John Micheal Greere. I don’t do the body brushing because I already integrate exfoliation and pore opening into my regular hygiene (because of a previous attempt to work through IIH).

• Thought control 5 minutes
  Each time I get through this without getting distracted I’ll increase by one minute. If this would lead me to increasing it past ten minutes then I’ll start the thought discipline practice.

• Conscious breathing for health 7 breaths
  I set a ten minute timer and increase the breaths by one each day. When the practice takes longer than 10 minutes I’ll stop counting breaths and just use the timer. At the end of every week I’ll see if I’m satisfied with the intention, if no I’ll continue with health, if yes I’ll move on to calm.

• Add items to my black mirror for 10 minutes
  I’ll continue for one week if at the end I have 100 or more traits listed I’ll move to the next step. If I have less than 100 I’ll continue another week.

Throughout the day:
These things I’ll do as they occur, instead of a set routine.

• Conscious eating and drinking for health
• Magic of water to remove illness, weakness, and overall bad health
• Adding traits to the black mirror as they occur to me

Night:

• Add traits to black mirror for ten minutes
• Conscious breathing for health, 7 breaths
• Thought control for 5 minutes

[Bruh]

Time for the update

Since my last post I missed 0.5 days. I made it through thought control and thought discipline and started on vacancy of mind. I finished my black mirror and am working on organizing the white mirror into elements. I’ve successfully manifested with the three spells learned so far, but I want to master them a little better.

My Current Practice

Morning:

• Wash face, arms, and chest with cold water

• Get three breaths of morning air. On the third breath do a hold after the inhale until you feel the need to breath

• Drink a mug of plain hot water

• Stretch

• 10 minutes mindfulness of thoughts

• 10 minutes focus on a single thought

• 5 minutes vacancy of mind
  Everytime I can do this without distraction I increase by one minute, if this would lead pass ten minutes then I would have succeeded at step one mental exercises. Vacancy of mind is pretty daunting to me, like in most meditation traditions absence of thoughts is advanced and most definitely not step one.

• Breath in wish for ten minutes

• Organize white mirror into elements
  For this I spend at least 60 seconds focusing on one trait and then picking an element. I do 8 traits per session since I want to complete this process in a about a week and do it twice a day. The number of traits I need to organize divided by 14 rounded up. I had some trouble finishing the white mirror which is why I’m a little behind schedule.

• Transmute water
  I have been finding it helpful to practice for the conscious eating and drinking. Throughout the day the practice only takes a couple of seconds so I want once per day to have a more intensive practice. This practice literally only takes about a minute. I focus on the water being my wish for 30 seconds, then drink the water, then for 30 seconds imagine the water transforming me.

Daily:
Done as it comes up

• Conscious eating and drinking
• Conscious washing
• Maintaining self awareness and mindfulness

Night:

• Organize white mirror into elements
• Breath in wish for 10 minutes
• 10 minutes, mindfulness of thoughts
• 10 minutes, focus on one thought
• 5 minutes, vacancy of thought

[Bruh]

Today’s update is mostly one of frustration. The vacancy of mind exercise is giving me real trouble. For all the meditation exercises I have not counted minor distractions, when my thoughts goe off for a second and then I bring it back. For the sake of counting distractions I counted major distractions, when I forget my meditation and go off on some other thought train. So for vacancy of mind as long as I stay focused on the vacancy, even if a thought pops in for a moment, I still count it as success. However; even by these rules I still can’t get past five minutes of the vacancy.

There are several schools of thought in regards to progressing through IIH. One is that basically the need for perfection is a blind and many of the future exercises support previous ones, so in order to achieve perfection in early exercises you need the future ones. This is why I didn’t count minor distractions, meditation is a lifelong practice and eventually I’d achieve perfection with the help of the other exercises.

Another school of thought is that you need the right amount of spiritual maturity for IIH to be useful, some people haven’t even made it to the beginning yet. And even if they have they might spend years or lifetimes on step one depending on that maturity. This view definitely pans out in the text.

So I don’t know what to do. For now I’m doing meditation from a book called Mastering Meditation by Forrest Knutson. I’m seeing good progress so far and perhaps I’ll be able to reach vacancy of mind and restart IIH.

It is frustrating getting stuck on step one, especially since I know I am capable of doing a lot of the future exercises. This happened before with OAA, I started that when I saw a couple of people on here start it and then promptly got stuck on step one. Funnily enough working through Mastering Meditation has been building the capacities I need to complete lesson one of OAA. So I guess it is a race of which first step will be completed first and thus which system I’ll work through.

We’ll see where my head is at in a month. I might decide to just move forward with IIH regardless. Or maybe I’ll build my spirit skills enough that I can just learn directly from them.

[Yanasiro]

Take a step back, drink (if you are in age to drink) some stuff. Enjoy some stuff of your own.
Just a step back, because too much is less than enough. You cannot train all the time with full force. Your body need to rest. As the same for the mind. The muscle also the memory. Just take a step back for quite a bit a come back later. Just roaming. You’ll see.

[Bruh]

@Yanasiro

You cannot train all the time with full force. Your body need to rest. As the same for the mind.

This is true. With IIH you’re doing 10+ spells every day to adopt a new trait. I’m usually a fan of repetition of spells but that is a bit much even for me. At some point I had my hand over a glass of water and I just couldn’t remember what I was enchanting for. I’d been working on the same thing for days so there was no reason to forget, but something within me was exhausted. So I took a break from that for a while.

[Bruh]

Alright I’m back. I took a month off to focus more on relaxing and healing. Now I’m not going to continue IIH right away, and maybe I won’t at all. What I’m choosing to do instead is work through a book called The Way of the Golden Section by John Michael Greer. This book is about three months of work give or take. It trains you in many tools to help you study occult subjects, so once you’re done you can use the techniques to study whatever you want. Which means I could go back to IIH.

Anyway I started that this morning. So this journal is about that now.

The practice right now is very basic

Morning: An exercise of stretching and deep breaths

Evening: Read something with occult or spiritual teachings before going to sleep, just so you have something of that nature on your mind as you enter sleep.

Body practice: The book suggests starting a body practice, gives some recommendations but doesn’t mandate anything specific leaving the choice to you. I’m not doing anything fancy I just decided I wanted to be able to touch my toes with straight legs, so it is a lot of stretching.

[Bruh]

Update time. I decided to work through nice and slowly just to make sure I don’t get overwhelmed and give up. I am adding one practice from the book a week. I think this’ll make it take a bit longer to complete but better that than never completing it at all.

Since my last update I have not missed a single day.

The current practice:

The morning exercise

I previously described this as a stretching and breathing exercise. I reread the exercise and realized stretching didn’t play as big of a role as I thought. What I was doing was stretching and then doing a round of the breathing and repeating the stretch and so on. When I reread it I realized it was just a breathing exercise and it asks you to stretch out once at the beginning (mainly because you have just woken up).

Anyway, for the first week of doing it is just deep breathing, after the first week you add an affirmation and visualization. This exercise it meant to attune you to ‘the one life’ which is this books word for universal energy.

Divination Review

Every morning I’ve been doing a reading and this is when I compare my reading to how things actually turned out. I then reinterpret the reading with the power of hindsight.

Daily Divination

A three card reading with the sacred geometry oracle about the day ahead. The daily reading and the morning exercise are the only exercises that need to be done in the morning, everything else can be adjusted for your schedule.

Solar Plexus Exercise

This practice is another breathing exercise (but with a different breathing pattern) combined with visualization and relaxation. The purpose is to engage the solar plexus and awaken the ‘subjective mind’.

Financial Transformation Magick

Doesn’t have anything to do with the Way of the Golden Section but I figured this would be a good spot to put it. I just awakened the deeper parts of myself and now I call in an angel to transform it.

Sphere of Protection

This is one of main rituals of this system. I’d say it is analogous to the LBRP but also (eventually) includes similar elements to the middle pillar. It is very complex but it starts out simple. You learn it in eight parts, practicing one part for a week before adding the next. I started the first part this morning.

Affirmations

The book asks you to start a practice of affirmations to change yourself. Basically fixing your negative traits like IIH does, but a little less structured. It gives guidance but has you integrate affirmations into your life in a way that works for you.

The way I decided to do it is to use Emotional Freedom Technique aka tapping. I had some interesting effect with this during my month off for healing and now I’m curious about what it’s long term effects could be.

So I made two affirmations. A negative one representing the negative trait I want to change, and a positive one representing the replacement behavior. I do two rounds of tapping on the negative affirmation on both sides (just for the sake of symmetry) and then two rounds on the positive one. I do that for week and then take a week off because I’ve found most of the dramatic change in myself I’ve noticed is when I stop trying for a bit. I decided to work on one trait every quarter, so each solstice and equinox I choose something else to change.

Evening Occult Reading

Unchanged from last month

[Bruh]

Update. Had a crazy week last week. Had a family emergency (everything is fine now), lost access to my phone for five days, plus the holidays. Since my last update I missed 4 days and this update was delayed.

My current practice:

The morning exercise

Divination review

Daily divination

I am really struggling to get good readings with the Sacred Geometry Oracle deck. Once I have a breakthrough with it I’ll do another free reading thread with it.

Body practice

The first time I wrote about this book in this journal I said I was already doing a body practice, but since I decided to add one practice a week I stopped doing it for awhile until it was time to add it back in. I decided to do the five Tibetan rites as my body practice. After I finish the rites I try to touch my toes for 30 seconds, rest for 30 seconds, and try some more for 60 seconds. I have already been able to reach my toes, it only took a week and a half. However; it hurts like hell and it takes at least 30 seconds before I can reach. So I’ll continue until I can do it cold and without pain.

The solar plexus exercise

Affirmations and journaling

So first an explanation of journaling. In the context of the Golden Section journaling is an exercise to communicate with your subjective mind through writing. You’re given a lot of leeway on how to implement it into your life and I chose to combine it with the affirmations.

For the affirmations I am still doing the eft tapping, although I decided to do a week of straight affirmations without the tapping. Then all that is combined with the journaling. So here is how I schedule it.

Week one: Eft tapping and journaling.

I do the tapping the same way I described in the last update on the first day. Then each day I move a little deeper. On day two I tap on the negative affirmation but then through the journaling exercise ask “Why do I [behavior I am trying to change]” based I the answer I get I’ll make a second negative affirmation and tap on it. Day three I tap on the two negative affirmations I made and use journaling to find the ‘why’ behind the second affirmation to create a third. I do this all week so on day seven I am 7 levels deep in my psyche. I finish up each session by tapping on my positive affirmation.

Week two: Affirmations.

The way I do affirmations comes in two parts. One is specific exercise I take time out of my day for, the second I do throughout the day.

First, for ten minutes I’ll lay still and repeat the affirmation in my head. After the first repetition I take a couple of seconds to feel into the meaning behind the words and then continue the repetitions until time runs out. The secret is to use as little effort as you can while repeating, any less effort and you’d just be letting your thoughts wander. Eventually the mind starts repeating the affirmation automatically and you can release all effort, just pay attention.

Second, throughout the day I recite the affirmation in my head or aloud whatever feels right. I don’t constantly repeat, I only repeat it once each time I remember it and then don’t repeat it again until has completely left my awareness. So my subjective mind reminds me of the phrase, I repeat it back, and let it fade. I base this technique on the way Damon Brand has you charge a servitor.

Btw, this is only the positive affirmation, the negative ones are purely for the eft tapping.

Week three: Break.

As I mentioned before the most dramatic change in myself I’ve observed happens when I stop trying. So this week is to allow myself to find a new homeostasis.

After this I return to week one. I don’t think I’ll share the things I’m trying to change, following the Bardon rule of not sharing your soul mirrors. However, the first one was the reason I started this journal and that is how I constantly switch from occult system to occult system without finishing any. So if I finish this book then we can consider this method a success. Since the winter solstice has passed I am now working on a different behavior.

Financial transformation magick

The sphere of protection

I’ve added the callings of air, fire, water, earth, and spirit below. Just two more parts to add.

Geometry

This isn’t a permanent exercise. Part of the work is meditate on and do an exercise for each card in the Sacred Geometry Oracle deck. This is where I do that exercise. 3 cards in so 30 to go.

Meditation

The type of meditation taught is called discursive meditation. Elsewhere I’ve also heard it called logos meditation. This is the meditation where if someone says “I’ll meditate on this” this is probably what they mean. You focus on a theme and let your thoughts wander a bit on long as they stay on the theme. This produces insights and gnosis into the theme. The themes you start with are the cards in the Sacred Geometry Oracle deck but you can eventually use almost anything. This is a way to extract the deeper meaning in occult and spiritual texts.

The book has you learn the meditation in stages. The first week you practice the posture without moving, the second week is for relaxation, the third is for breathing, thereafter you start the meditation proper. I’ve finished these beginning phases and now have meditated the first three cards.

Evening occult reading

The only change here is now I read about the card I am going to meditate on the next day, instead of just any random thing.

Final thoughts

There is nothing left to add in weekly intervals. There are two exercises left but they don’t start until you finish with some of the things you are already working on. And neither of the exercises are daily. Scrying will be introduced when I finish meditation on the 33 cards, and since the lodge opening includes the sphere of protection I’ll need to master the complete version first. The work will probably be done in February.

Lastly, and I’ll probably make a thread about this (If I can’t figure it out on Google) but the altar for the golden section includes a bowl of salt. My bowl of salt keeps filling with water. So I am going to try figure out why and if there is a way to prevent that from happening. If you’re reading this and just so happen to know the answer, let me know.

[Lauren]

Is it very humid where you live? I’m not sure how much water you are talking about, but salt naturally pulls moisture from the air.

It’s humid here, so we put grains of uncooked rice in our salt shakers to keep the salt flowing. If it’s way more water than that, my best suggestion would be a heating source nearby (assuming it is cold where you are) or an air conditioner if it’s still hot there. Either can decrease the humidity in the air.

[Bruh]

@Lauren

Is it very humid where you live? I’m not sure how much water you are talking about

I live right next to a creek so the humidity gets pretty high. The amount of water is such that there a small layer over the salt, and the salt isn’t clumping it is straight up mush.

When you add rice, how much do you add? I think figuring out the humidity is probably my best bet, but I’ll experiment with the rice as well.

[Lauren]

I put 3 or 4 grains of rice in a salt shaker.

The amount of water you have is probably more than dry rice can handle, but worth a try. You could also experiment with different salts. When I think of very wet salt, I think of rock salt, so maybe different salts behave differently in humid environments also.

[Bruh]

Update time. This month I missed two days.

Current practice:

Morning exercise

Divination review

Daily divination

This practice is the bane of my existence. I am truly struggling, so I’ve been doing research looking for a solution.

Body practice

Still doing the five rites and touching toes. I can touch my toes completely cold but it still feels terrible, and that’s where I plateaued. I am taking a week off to see if that helps.

Solar plexus exercise

Affirmations and journaling

Financial transformation magick

Sphere of protection

I’ve added every part of the ritual so now I do the complete ritual daily.

Geometry exercise

21 out of 33 cards done

Meditation

So far I think discursive meditation is my favorite way to meditate, but that might just be novelty. Not only are you getting insights during the practice, but just randomly during the days following you suddenly have insights that change the way you look at everything.

Evening occult reading

[Bruh]

This month I missed 6 days.

My current practice:

The morning exercise

Body practice

Still doing the five rites and touching my toes. It is still painful to touch my toes. Gaining the ability to do it at any time happened so much faster than I imagined, but the second part of getting used to it is taking much longer than I imagined.

Solar plexus exercise

Lodge opening (if applicable)

This is basically a ritual to create sacred space/a ritual opener. It is not a daily practice but it is recommended you use semi regularly. I just use it as I need it and record that last date I used it in my checklist. If I don’t end up using for the a whole week it turns yellow in my checklist (I keep my practice checklist in a spreadsheet, so I can make it do whatever I want). At yellow I start thinking of things to do in my open lodge and plan at least one thing for that week. If I don’t use it for two weeks it turns red and I open it that day.

For the sake of my time and sanity, on any day I open the lodge I don’t do the sphere of protection (separately at least).

Sphere of protection

I started getting the all too familiar urge to switch occult systems again. My brain planning out years worth of work in other systems. Anyway I found doing the SOP actually helped quiet that urge, and so I moved it to be earlier in the day.

A second thing is the room I do this in isn’t aligned to the compass points that well. For the longest time I faced the exact cardinal directions and it felt awkward. Then I remembered Damon Brand’s advice for the circle of power. He said just pick the walls that best align with the points, and then face the walls directly. I tried that and it worked so much better.

Meditation/Scrying

For the discursive meditation I finished the required meditations for the 33 emblems. That also means I finished the geometry exercises. Now it is time for a new practice.

The next practice to learn is scrying. He doesn’t use the word scrying the same way we tend to do on this forum, in this context scrying is akin to active imagination, shamanic journeying, or pathworking. You use it to gain insight on a symbol through an imaginative journey. You then take what you saw and learned and use them as subjects for discursive meditation. To complete the work of this book you have 3 required scryings.

I completed the first one, but from that generated seven days of discursive meditation that I am currently working through.

Affirmations and journaling

Financial transformation magick

Evening occult reading

At night I’ve just been rereading my journal entry for the scrying. I’ll keep that up until I finish meditating on it.

I’m getting very close to finishing the whole book.

[Bruh]

Not quite the next update, but I finished the way of the golden section and completed the initiation ritual. Even though my memory failed me in this ritual and I had to check the book repeatedly for instructions it was still very profound and moving. I feel great because of the inner work of the ritual but also because of the feeling of accomplishment. I am now an initiate of the Golden Section Fellowship.

So now I have to rename this journal, because I have indeed finished something.

I think I mentioned before earlier in this journal but once you are initiated you take the tools of occult study you learned and apply to whatever topic you want. That is the decision I need to make next, where do I go from here? I thought a lot about this during this process, especially when I was feeling the temptation to switch systems, each time that happened I would remind myself that whatever it was I wanted to do I could make it the topic of study next.

The first possiblity, and it was the plan when I first switched was go back to IIH. I would treat the thought discipline exercise as discursive meditation instead of single pointed meditation. I would then meditate my way through the theory section and the meditate on the techniques while practicing them.

Another possibility was Kingdom of Flames. I would scry through each symbol of the circle, then the full circle at once. Repeat the same procedure for the triangle and lamen. Then scry through every gate and sigil. When I finished the book that way, I could back through and do the evocations as the book describes. The evocations would replace scrying and I would go until I got consistent and practical results from the book. Lastly, I’d make one more pass through the book doing the retainer ritual. A similar thing could be done for the book of Azazel.

A cool one would be to go through Lucifer and the Hidden Demons. The scrying exercise is taught through the use of portal images, but I think a pathworking would work just as well. The goal would be the scry every demon. Some request like “Reveal to me the nature of your work, in as much as I am ready to receive.” or something like that. I think the worst part of LHD is the way powers are listed, I find it very hard to apply them to my life in a way I would want. That problem disappears if I go and meet with each demon personally.

Ultimately, I made the boring choice. There was sequel book, The Way of the Four Elements. Once you are initiated this is the work of the Fellowship. As with all things with the Golden Section Fellowship this is entirely at your discretion, an initiate may never work through that book. As the title implies it is about the four elements and also the seasons. You focus on one element a season, starting with whatever season is next, and over the course of a year you complete all four. I cut it a bit close because next season starts in one week with the spring equinox and so I’ll be starting with the element of air.

So that is the subject of this journal now.

[Bruh]

And now the actual update. Since the last update I missed 5 days. I completed the three assigned scryings and did the ritual of initiation.

My current practice:

The Morning exercise

This one hasn’t changed in a while, but after the initiation one additional thing is added. Now along with the breathing, visualization, and affirmations you also do Bardon style pore breathing. It talks about how you imagine breathing through the pores until one day you’ll actually feel it. Which is how it goes but I’ve already been through this process in other systems, so I can feel it already.

The sphere of protection

I ended up moving this even earlier in the day for the same reason, it quiets the temptation to quit.

It also has some changes after the initiation. You now use the elemental callings for practical magic. An example when you invoke air you set an intention for ‘helpful attitudes and true insights’ and when you banish by air you banish ‘all negative habits of mind’. Similar things are done for the 3 other basic elements. It does mention that after you use these for a while you can replace them with your own intentions.

For the callings of spirit below, spirit within, and spirit above you add in some energy work. It is suppose to have similar benefits to Kundalini but be safer (so I’d imagine it takes longer).

The five rites

The solar plexus exercise

Lodge opening (if applicable)

Meditation/Scrying

Since it is so close to when I’ll start the work of spring, I decided to take this week off. During this time I am memorizing the spring equinox ceremony.

Financial transformation magick

Divination

Now that the work is over I decided to cut out daily divination. I now do a general reading every two weeks with the I ching. If I a reading is due this is when I do it, otherwise is I just review the current one.

Inner work

I’ve decided to move this to the evenings. The eft tapping wasn’t as helpful as I hoped. That’s why I am just calling this part inner work, I’ll experiment with different things and see what works.

Evening occult reading

Right now I am just reading the spring equinox ceremony.

[Bruh]

That little voice that wants me to quit is back. But it is being very persuasive. It questions if this is really aligns with my values as a mage. I’ve prided myself on being good with practical magic but now I’ve committed to a year of work of… while occultism, is not magick. I dedicated myself to finishing The Way of The Golden Section because I wanted to finish something, to prove I could. Now that I have acquired those skills and proved myself to myself, maybe it is time to go back to more practical matters. Is my life really in a state where I can ease off the practical work?

In addition, the thing I’ve always wanted to do was to communicate with spirits and learn directly from them. That is the way I’ve always wanted to explore the occult mysteries. When I first got on this forum that is what I working for, and now I can communicate and I’m just going to do something else? It doesn’t seem that I am living my values.

Or is this all just me trying to rationalize a bad decision? How can I know if this feeling is genuinely guiding me to what’s best for me? or if it’s my quitter part talking?

Maybe viewing it as a negative trait is the mistake. Maybe this the natural cycle of how I commit to things. Maybe I need to cycle through a couple things before deciding on one thing, and this process will repeat each time I finish something so agonizing over it every time is waste of energy.

I probably should do some divination, but I need to wait until I am more settled. I’m not sure I can give an objective reading right now. Maybe I’ll try my luck in the request thread.

Anyway the tentative plan if I switch is to pretend I am a beginner again and start back at the basics and work up. This is mainly because looking at the state of my life, it seems I’ve returned to basics, maybe I forgot something fundamental. Like going back to sigils like I use to do. I think working through the book Advanced Magick for Beginners would be the move. I’ve done the beginning of the book before and that’s usually what I recommend people do. This time I’ll do the whole thing. At some point it does ask you to pick a initiatory system, I think I’ll do Evoking Eternity, the advance work in there I think would qualify although that decision is a long way off.

[Bruh]

I believe the purpose of this journal has come to an end, and I’ll be starting a new one.

[DarkestKnight]

I enjoyed reading this. Would you like me to close it?

[Bruh]

Yes

And other words because yes is too short a message.