Yes, in fact, as far as the cipher goes - here are a few points I wanted to bring up to help clear this issue further.
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Bardon was ordered by the angel Urgaya to write each of his books except for Frabato The Magician. That his orders were to divulge the secrets of ascent so that ANY man might use them and be their own guru. This simple means that either A) There are no ciphers in his works, however they were used in letters to his students before he was issued this commandment. Or, B) that there are some ciphers but when the student follows his prescribed pathworking (aka mastering everything in The Initiation Into Hermetics before working with anything found in The Practice of Magical Evocation) meaning, after the student has mastered everything in the first book, the ciphers will become obvious and the key given to decipher them.
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Many of the names in The Practice of Magical Evocation have pronunciation marks above or underneath some of the letters within the name. (ie: Ä, Ê, æ, Ç, etc.) If, the name was a cipher, these letters would have either a match in the cipher table (which they don’t) OR there would be an explanation in the presentation of the cipher itself as to how to adjust for these marks.
Tania brought up the fact that only some of the entities were ciphered and others were written correctly. Again - a mystery as to why (if this is indeed the case) this obfuscation was effectuated by Franz Bardon, unless, as I mentioned before, there was some underlying instruction spiritually inserted into the path working that would make itself evident when the student becomes ready. Whether an entity assigned to deliver the instruction, instruction spiritually encoded into his works, or perhaps a level of clairvoyance would have been attained wherein the cipher would become obvious and the student would seek out information concerning the perceived oddity in the names of the spirits.
My tendency is to believe that the names are written correctly as is and that the cipher was a tool used by Bardon to obfuscate his messages to his students before he was given the task by Urgaya to reveal all the secrets such that any man might reach ascent in this life time. That’s some pretty intense instruction, and I haven’t read anything of his yet that would indicate any of the information was encoded or symbolic at any level. It is written in plain and concise, easy to understand language.
One more thing I noticed. Bardon names Urgaya in Frabato The Magician. Urgaya does not appear in PME, neither do any of the translations of his name using the Bardon cipher. Just for good measure, I deciphered Urgaya both forwards and backward in accordance with the cipher.
U R G A Y A
I T W E J E —forward
O B N E E —backward
However, in the interest of resolving this issue. I propose a textual translation of each spirit in PME (apparently this was already done, however the link at the bottom of the cipher page leads to a non-existent page).
As is mentioned on the cipher page:
"When Mr. Stejnar worked with the moon and sun sphere, he realized, that the spirits of the moon sphere are the same as told in old grimoirs (e.g. Agrippa), that the genii of the sun sphere correspond to the names of fixed stars, and that the spirits of the zone girdling the earth are identical with the spirits described by “Abramelin the Mage”. "
Meaning that a quick textual search for the names of the sun sphere should yield results. Which it didn’t. I ran several of the translated names directly through the three books of Abremelin with no results. I tried some of the “extended translations” with very little success.
In addition to this, according the the Bardon cipher page:
PME Decipher extended translation
AMSER ELNAT probably EL NATH
EMAYISA ALEJONE ALCYONE
WYBITZIS PJROKON PROCYON
WYBALAP PJRESEF PRAESAEPE
EBYTZYRIL ARJKJTOS ARCTURUS
BELEMCHE RASALHA SEEMS LIKELY TO BE RASALHAGUE
Granted, I cherry picked some of the more obfuscated names. However, if Bardon was using his cipher - why would he not make a direct cipher? For example, if he was encoding the name alcyone with his cipher, it would be “Eshjuga” a FAR cry from EMAYISA.
Why would Bardon make it even more difficult to decipher by obfuscating the outcome?
A cipher? So far in my limited research into this case, this cipher sounds unlikely. And if there is a cipher - these deciphered names listed above and on the cipher web page are far cries and do not traslate directly to entities names. This seems odd to me as well. One last thing - Rawn purports to have studies and mastered Bardon’s material - yet his very deciphering is questionable - even by his own hand he has question marks after some of the translations. Someone who has mastered Bardons works would KNOW without a doubt whether these were proper deciphers of the names.
Another thing about Rawn (I may be wrong, but this is what I gather) I asked the local publishing company (Merkur) if they knew of any local magicians who have mastered Bardons materials, possibly someone I could apprentice under. Their response was that if there was, they wouldn’t know it because anyone who has mastered IIH would be such a master as to not speak their success to anyone. If Rawn is a true seeker and follower of the Bardon method, it is unlikely (at least in my opinion) that he would have made it known in the manner that he has. Don’t forget - in our world, there are very few legitimate magicians who’s names are well known. There is a reason for this. There are far more frauds then there are legitimate practitioners. Rawn (after listening to his mp3 meditations and reading much of his online work) strikes me as someone who purports to know much more than he really does. I don’t get the feeling that he is an all out fraud, but I do get the feeling that he is definitely no master of Bardon’s system and he’s definitely making out like he knows a massive deal more than he really does.
That’s just my impression after reading and listening to everything I could get my hands on via the web.
I very well may be wrong - I’m just giving my opinion in this matter.
As always, I am very open to rebuttal, comments, addenda, etc.
Mucho love-o
Namaste
===== EDIT =====
Also, one must remember that Bardon wrote his works in his native tongue, German. Are these names the same as in German? Or were they translated phonetically? When taking the cipher into account, there are a good many questions to be raised about Rawns claim IF there was a phonetic translation. I may have some time tonight to investigate this. If I do, I will definitely post
hehe