Thoughts on Franz Bardon's System

[thelerner]

It's been a while but I really liked Franz Bardon's system of Hermetic magic. I didn't have the discipline to get far, but I liked how the methodology went beyond magic and into understanding reality and bettering oneself.

 

The two practitioners I read from William Mistelle and especially Rawn Clark seemed like centered, down to earth, very intelligent people, who could see beyond the veil of the tic toc world, but still function well in it.

 

What are your experiences with it?

[eye_of_the_storm]

I read IIH + Frabato I found it interesting though I was not very sure of his accounts regarding the Brotherhood of Light?

 

Something regarding that put me off using his methods.

 

That is my experience with Franz Bardons System

Edited November 25, 2012 by White Wolf Running On Air

[Reed]

I thought his IIH was very good although I wouldn't pretend to fully understand the whole of it and I also thought Rawn's website was very useful.

 

I tried stage one of his IIH for a few weeks before I gave up on it. With things like imprinting food, drink and air, it worked quite well for me and I succeeded in feeling quite peaceful when I was imprinting 'peace of mind'. It had a similar result to doing something like breathing meditation etc for a while. With pushing negative energy into cold water, that didn't work so well for me and pushing that kind of stuff into the ground works much better I've found personally. I never really sat down and did the personality thing but I've seen that kind of thing crop up in Wicca books and occult web sites before and I would imagine it is quite useful.

 

I bumped a thread on another forum on the same topic and people seem to generally like his stuff and found it useful.

 

I would say one thing that put me off him a little bit was that he couldn't give up smoking (I can't remember how he died and if it was related -- it might not have been). While I don't expect teachers to be perfect, and I think the message is more important than the medium, I still found that a bit disappointing given the context.

[Enishi]

IIH is the main Hermetic system I'm familiar with, and has been a long time obsession.

 

One thing I notice however is that some of the exercises can, depending on your individual quirks and makeup, be done much more easily if you approach them in a manner slightly different than Bardon explicitly described. Case in point, it's easier for me to do the sense concentrations in Step II if I make them fun, i.e. visualizing scenes from my writing or other stories, as opposed to something boring like visualizing an orange. Also, I still cannot forcibly hold my mind empty for very long, I have to 'ease into it' as I learned in Stillness-Movement.

 

William Mistele writes about some of these personal alterations that can make the system better work for you, his approach is less orthodox than Rawn Clark's. Another thing he mentions is that starting with Akashic meditations earlier can be more expendient, and that, furthermore, many of the earlier meditations in the book ARE working with the Akasha, just in a more limited sense.

[tumoessence]

Every author, Rawn, Mistele and even looking through the eyes of B Allen Wallace and how he approached Samatha (he first made the practice a struggle) which in a way parallels the IIH step one mental exercises, finds that the key to step one is to relax and let go while maintaining awareness. Not to strain and over effort it.

 

One of the problems is the translation of the book German to English. The German usage of the word "Kontollieren" is more like observe like at a checkpoint at a border crossing. Watching the traffic go by you don't have to stop every car. I would stay the emptiness of mind is an akashic exercise. If this is deepened enough then step two simple visualizations become fun because of the energetic and "bodiless" feeling accompanying the practice. This is so because as an exercise in the spirit it is done in and begins to activate awareness in the mental body which is spaceless and timeless.

 

What i like about the path is that it has step appropriate exercises for each body soul and spirit. Many paths put us in a state of dependency to their tradition not by just giving us basics and withholding the advanced material. But give us advanced material that is not so useful to us without the first basic steps. then we are left with the feeling of something missing and hanging on the coat tails of the master waiting for crumbs of wisdom. Bardon wished all of his students independence and freedom from organizations and overbearing masters.

 

Tibetanan Ice in one of the Buddhist threads quoted B Allen Wallace as saying that all of the esoteric practices of Vajrayana and Dzogchen don't have lasting value without mastery of Shamatha. The step one mental exercises in Bardon's training are his Shamatha. And, they are the only mental level practice (emptiness of mind)which he insists that his student practice through all of the steps. This should give us an indication of the importance he placed on it.

 

Another great aid to practice is the use of auto suggestion as to the mastery of the steps.

http://www.amazon.co...53867113&sr=1-3 This book give great suggestions on how to shape your own use of auto suggestion.

[tumoessence]

This is also useful for Bardon students. A new take and deepening of an old and familiar basic practice. This is useful because is helps to dissolve the barrier in consciousness between me the observer and the vital energy. It helps settle the mind for first steps and gives an anchor for further work in vital energy.

Sifu Mark is another in the line of teachers in the line Bardon students and his videos are very useful especially if you're into tai chi, wing tsun.

[Protector]

This guy compares Bardon stuff to Mo Pai and talk about Bardon a lot

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/11faustia11/videos?flow=grid&view=0

[thelerner]

Another great aid to practice is the use of auto suggestion as to the mastery of the steps.

http://www.amazon.co...53867113&sr=1-3 This book give great suggestions on how to shape your own use of auto suggestion.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I hadn't heard heard of it before, though I've heard the author's name on some FB sites. I wish there were reviews or sample pages posted.

[JustARandomPanda]

oh my...

 

I own the first 3 of Franz Bardon's books. I guess I should also get Frabato (or whatever it's called). I've never read any of them simply because my pile of books I want to read is absolutely enormous.

 

I must confess however this thread is seriously tempting me into cracking open the first book tomorrow and checking out why FB is so highly esteemed.

[Sloppy Zhang]

IIH is the main Hermetic system I'm familiar with, and has been a long time obsession.

 

Same! Sorry if this post kind of rambles, but there are a lot of intersecting points I'd like to make with regards to IIH...

 

I spent a lot of time trying to really get into IIH- make it work for me. I really liked that it was a full fledged western system that gave you the tools from the ground up. Not just copying visualizations, but giving you the tools to create your own things.

 

So I've come to understand a lot of it thanks to another system of practices I've been with for a while- B.K. Frantzis' Taoist water method tradition.

 

So I'd start off by highlighting these two quotes from earlier in this thread:

 

One thing I notice however is that some of the exercises can, depending on your individual quirks and makeup, be done much more easily if you approach them in a manner slightly different than Bardon explicitly described.

 

One of the problems is the translation of the book German to English. The German usage of the word "Kontollieren" is more like observe like at a checkpoint at a border crossing. Watching the traffic go by you don't have to stop every car.

 

I've definitely found that the translation in the most popular and readily available English translation, as well as groups like the one over at vsociety.net that are practicing IIH tend to approach it in a very "yogic" fashion. Somewhat rigid, highly controlled, and laser focused. To borrow some of Frantzis' terminology, a very "fire" method (he outlines his distinctions between fire and water methods in his book, "Relaxing Into Your Being").

 

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that, if you are starting off from a place of rigidity and tight focus, well, getting yourself more tightly wound aint going to do much good, now is it? Part of my problem was that I was already pretty tightly wound. And I approached IIH with a certain fervor that, well, wound me up a lot more, in not very good ways.

 

William Mistele writes about some of these personal alterations that can make the system better work for you, his approach is less orthodox than Rawn Clark's.

 

Mistele's stuff is great, and part of the differences in his approach stem from the fact that he's coming at it from a very "water" elemental fashion. "Traditional" Bardon "lineages", if you will, typically have people starting out with the fire element first, and then cycle through the other elements (for instance, the order of elements that you accumulate during the elemental accumulation exercises, and even the senses you work with during the visualization exercises, senses being tied with the elements). But it's important to realize that in the Bardon system/cosmology, elemental beings representing every element have lessons to teach in the magician's path. And while at the end of the day, the magician will master every element and learn skills from each of those representatives, if you are from a culture that is predominantly "fire", predominantly tightly wound, wouldn't it make more sense to take your lessons from the element that will most immediately benefit you? And so Mistele draws from water.

 

What i like about the path is that it has step appropriate exercises for each body soul and spirit. Many paths put us in a state of dependency to their tradition not by just giving us basics and withholding the advanced material. But give us advanced material that is not so useful to us without the first basic steps. then we are left with the feeling of something missing and hanging on the coat tails of the master waiting for crumbs of wisdom. Bardon wished all of his students independence and freedom from organizations and overbearing masters.

 

This too is interesting and something I've taken note of, especially with regards to Frantzis' material and the Taoist trajectory of learning that he presents.

 

In the Hermetic system outlined by Bardon, physical, energetic, and "spirit" levels are worked on all at once progressing through each steps. Frantzis presents a series of 8 energy bodies in his books, which can roughly be broken up into those three categories- physical, energetic, and spiritual. Interesting in Taoism, the physical practices are taught first- alignments, physical chi, etc. and refined to form a base that then the energetic practices are built on top of- the energies of the mind, the emotions, psychic energies, etc. And then finally, the spiritual energies are dealt with- energies of karma, your personal essence, and then the body of the Tao.

 

It's also worth noting that Bardon's stuff is very "high level". Mistele writes an article in which he shares this view, saying that Bardon's steps are really the basic, broad swaths. Sure, someone could just practice from the book and might gain some attainments in 10, 20, 30, or so on years. But within each step there is quite a bit of "implied" knowledge.

 

One can see this when comparing the steps to qigong. For instance, in parts 2 and 3 of the physical lessons in Bardon, he has you work on "pore breathing". Breathing vital essence into and out of the body, and even projecting it into the area or other objects. What is this skill but, wait for it... qi projection! Even in qigong this is a high level skill. But what about things like storing energy in the dantien, the meridians/nadis? In my opinion, and Mistele seemed to have this opinion as well, they were still there! A magician could certainly go and study with a qigong teacher or a pranayama teacher to get more in depth about these topics, with the implication being that they were all part of steps 2 and 3 of development.

 

Now certainly other teachers in things like qigong or yoga might have other attainments beyond the equivalent steps in Bardon, but when you compare their system (like the comparison between Frantzis and Bardon) there is still some kind of parallel- physical, mental, and spiritual progression, in some varying stages with any "complete" system out there. Also something I've found when looking at other systems is that while most of them have techniques to touch on different levels, they might not all be presented in the same order (like how Frantzis' progression is a bit different than Bardon's) but they're all there.

 

Now speaking of these parallels, I was reading excerpts from the book about Wang Liping, "Opening the Dragon's Gate" on google books, and some of the progression outlined there in the Dragon Gate sect sounded strikingly like the progressions and practices found in IIH. Now obviously some steps were different, names were different, and the elements worked with were adjusted for Chinese culture and things like that. Bu the fundamentals were the same- a balanced development of mind, body, and spirit, working with feeling and accumulating the energies of the self and the surrounding environmental/universal ones, cultivating stillness and focus to work with said energies, and a variety of practices to deal with that.

 

Now recently a book was published that contained some practices from the Dragon Gate sect (the Ling Bao Tong Zhi Neng Nei Gong Shu). It would be VERY interesting to compare the practices in there with Bardon's, compare them to the accounts in Opening the Dragon's Gate. I wonder what one might discover

 

I would say one thing that put me off him a little bit was that he couldn't give up smoking (I can't remember how he died and if it was related -- it might not have been). While I don't expect teachers to be perfect, and I think the message is more important than the medium, I still found that a bit disappointing given the context.

 

This article here was written to provide a general overview of Bardon's life and a bit about his background. Particularly interesting are the circumstances regarding his incarnation into this world. If you believe the sort of rules that are referenced, well, it's one potential explanation for these sorts of things: http://forums.vsocie...ic,15084.0.html

 

 

Now regarding the above and all that, obviously there is some implication about self study and inferring some techniques and whatnot, without being directly taught. I'm sure someone will say, if not just think, "well why not just go find the master and learn that way?"

 

Well Chinese culture was influenced very much by Confucianism, and there is something that was told to me many times by my Chinese professors in school who were fond of testing us on things that weren't taught in class or in the book, and that is they are to provide one corner, and it is up to us to discover the other three.

 

A bit cheeky, but I believe that with the proliferation of texts and hints and references many masters are dropping out LOTS of corners. With the right insight, dedication, determination, and a bit of luck, I think one can discover a LOT of things on their own with regards to the structure and development of a practice. With that, one can make the practice their own and not get stuck following a rigid path (rigidly following a path laid out by a master was SO last century).

Edited November 26, 2012 by Sloppy Zhang

[Aetherous]

I once heard (and saw a website) about personal instruction from higher level Bardon people, once you reach a certain level from doing it on your own. I think maybe after level 10, you were encouraged to get in contact with this other school.

 

If anyone has the website I'm referring to, please share it.

[Sloppy Zhang]

I once heard (and saw a website) about personal instruction from higher level Bardon people, once you reach a certain level from doing it on your own. I think maybe after level 10, you were encouraged to get in contact with this other school.

 

If anyone has the website I'm referring to, please share it.

 

This the place you mean?

 

http://thedivinescience.org/

 

A couple of the higher level people from vsociety.net run it. I haven't taken their classes, but some of their public articles (under Prophecy and Veos, including a commentary on IIH) are fairly solid.

[Aetherous]

Nope. Yea their articles are good...seemed to me like a pretty sweet school to be a part of.

 

It could have been vsociety, but the website I saw (a few years back) was different than vsociety.net My apologies that I don't remember much more than the fact that it existed.

[tumoessence]

I think the book Turtle Shell recommends, Cultivating Heartfulness is a great complement to IIH.

Otherwise some of info about Bardon quoted in vsociety comes from here.

http://archivhermeti...at/emil-stejnar, which I helped translate. Check on the English translations on the left of that page.

I think the outer and inner dissolving of BK Frantzis would really help with IIH as well. Thanks for mentioning it Sloppy Zhang.

Edited November 26, 2012 by tumoessence

[Reed]

Reed, if you read some other masters' books, you'll realize that some masters take up habits such as smoking and drinking so that it can increase their willpower. Hence they get addicted to it then they stop cold turkey to train their will. Bardon did actually stop smoking for a year.

 

That's interesting. IIRC, it reminds me a little bit of 'LHP' Tantrics who deliberately pursue taboo behaviour like eating meat and spending time in graveyards and brothels, so they exhaust things like their 'unhelpful' desire/temptations and break programming etc

 

 

This article here was written to provide a general overview of Bardon's life and a bit about his background. Particularly interesting are the circumstances regarding his incarnation into this world. If you believe the sort of rules that are referenced, well, it's one potential explanation for these sorts of things: http://forums.vsocie...ic,15084.0.html

 

A couple of the higher level people from vsociety.net run it. I haven't taken their classes, but some of their public articles (under Prophecy and Veos, including a commentary on IIH) are fairly solid.

 

Funnily enough, I came across this last night when I did a search on Bardon and smoking. I only looked at Prophecy's response to criticisms on Bardon's weight, caffeine and nicotine which I also thought was an interesting perspective. I wasn't familiar with the author and it's good to know that they are reliable source. I will sit down and read the rest of it later on

 

---------

 

Last night, I also found this link to a Yahoo discussion site on Bardon from the thread I had bumped on the other forum which may be of interest to people. It's been a couple of years since I last looked at that thread and Bardon, and the Yahoo group still looks quite active although I don't know what it's like personally; I think I found the link via Rawn's website, possibly.

 

http://groups.yahoo....ranzBardonMagi/

[Reed]

So I've come to understand a lot of it thanks to another system of practices I've been with for a while- B.K. Frantzis' Taoist water method tradition.

 

I've definitely found that the translation in the most popular and readily available English translation, as well as groups like the one over at vsociety.net that are practicing IIH tend to approach it in a very "yogic" fashion. Somewhat rigid, highly controlled, and laser focused. To borrow some of Frantzis' terminology, a very "fire" method (he outlines his distinctions between fire and water methods in his book, "Relaxing Into Your Being").

 

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that, if you are starting off from a place of rigidity and tight focus, well, getting yourself more tightly wound aint going to do much good, now is it? Part of my problem was that I was already pretty tightly wound. And I approached IIH with a certain fervor that, well, wound me up a lot more, in not very good ways.

 

This is very interesting. I actually tried to do Bardon's first step two or three times before I gave up on it. What I found with the imprinting of 'peace of mind' on to food, air and drink, was that it would work well for the first two or three weeks and then afterwards it would start to 'irritate' me or 'aggravate' me. At the time, I put it down to my poor health and that I was just pushing myself too much with the first stage in general (with things like pushing negative energy into cold water as well) but reading your post made me question that in part, although I could be mistaken. I've been slowly working through Frantzis' first book on the water method for the last two or three months and I haven't encountered the same problem even though my health isn't particularly better.

 

Mistele's stuff is great, and part of the differences in his approach stem from the fact that he's coming at it from a very "water" elemental fashion. "Traditional" Bardon "lineages", if you will, typically have people starting out with the fire element first, and then cycle through the other elements (for instance, the order of elements that you accumulate during the elemental accumulation exercises, and even the senses you work with during the visualization exercises, senses being tied with the elements). But it's important to realize that in the Bardon system/cosmology, elemental beings representing every element have lessons to teach in the magician's path. And while at the end of the day, the magician will master every element and learn skills from each of those representatives, if you are from a culture that is predominantly "fire", predominantly tightly wound, wouldn't it make more sense to take your lessons from the element that will most immediately benefit you? And so Mistele draws from water.

 

In the Hermetic system outlined by Bardon, physical, energetic, and "spirit" levels are worked on all at once progressing through each steps. Frantzis presents a series of 8 energy bodies in his books, which can roughly be broken up into those three categories- physical, energetic, and spiritual. Interesting in Taoism, the physical practices are taught first- alignments, physical chi, etc. and refined to form a base that then the energetic practices are built on top of- the energies of the mind, the emotions, psychic energies, etc. And then finally, the spiritual energies are dealt with- energies of karma, your personal essence, and then the body of the Tao.

 

It's also worth noting that Bardon's stuff is very "high level". Mistele writes an article in which he shares this view, saying that Bardon's steps are really the basic, broad swaths. Sure, someone could just practice from the book and might gain some attainments in 10, 20, 30, or so on years. But within each step there is quite a bit of "implied" knowledge.

 

Have you got some links to Mistele's articles like that one or to his general water approach, please? I finished reading Prophecy's article and thought it was very interesting.

 

One can see this when comparing the steps to qigong. For instance, in parts 2 and 3 of the physical lessons in Bardon, he has you work on "pore breathing". Breathing vital essence into and out of the body, and even projecting it into the area or other objects. What is this skill but, wait for it... qi projection! Even in qigong this is a high level skill. But what about things like storing energy in the dantien, the meridians/nadis? In my opinion, and Mistele seemed to have this opinion as well, they were still there! A magician could certainly go and study with a qigong teacher or a pranayama teacher to get more in depth about these topics, with the implication being that they were all part of steps 2 and 3 of development.

 

Now certainly other teachers in things like qigong or yoga might have other attainments beyond the equivalent steps in Bardon, but when you compare their system (like the comparison between Frantzis and Bardon) there is still some kind of parallel- physical, mental, and spiritual progression, in some varying stages with any "complete" system out there. Also something I've found when looking at other systems is that while most of them have techniques to touch on different levels, they might not all be presented in the same order (like how Frantzis' progression is a bit different than Bardon's) but they're all there.

 

I don't have Frantzis' second book in the series and its been ages since I read Bardon's IIH. What would you (or anyone else) say were the differences, if any, in terms of achievement/results between someone completing/mastering IIH and both of Frantzis' water method books?

Edited November 26, 2012 by Reed

[Mokona]

When someone says: "spiritual cultivation" are they talking about an intellectual understanding or opening and strengthening energy centers? maybe developing awareness of chi and spirits? I have no idea here.. Help me out.. thx.

[Apech]

When someone says: "spiritual cultivation" are they talking about an intellectual understanding or opening and strengthening energy centers? maybe developing awareness of chi and spirits? I have no idea here.. Help me out.. thx.

 

As I see it you have to develop in three ways. Energy work, virtue/impeccability in your life and deep understanding. Intellectual work is necessary ... you do have to study so that you properly understand the concepts you are working with, you need to be able to access and work with power and you have to live your life according to principles which make you a balanced and whole person (capable of sustaining energy and so on). So its all round growth ... if you ignore one of these areas you will becaome unbalanced and sooner or later have to catch up or experience pitfalls.

[Aunt Clair]

I find that IIH in conjunction with Rawn Clark's companion text provides the best foundation for developing oneself as a Magickian. There is a forum dedicated to his works here;

http://fbf.hermetics.com/index.php/

And here is a board on my own forum , too;

http://forums.riverofenlightenment.com/index.php?action=collapse;c=14;sa=collapse;sesc=aae19e5da9fde23d97671a7d46f20fad#14

[Cat Pillar]

I remember you from Robert Bruce's forums, Aunt Clair. Didn't know you had an account here, too. Nice to see you.

 

(I was Ouroboros there.)

[Aunt Clair]

Hey Cat Pillar how are you going? Have you tried IIH?

[Sloppy Zhang]

Have you got some links to Mistele's articles like that one or to his general water approach, please? I finished reading Prophecy's article and thought it was very interesting.

 

Hey, sorry, if I left you hanging there for a bit.

 

http://williammistele.com/

 

I don't have Frantzis' second book in the series and its been ages since I read Bardon's IIH. What would you (or anyone else) say were the differences, if any, in terms of achievement/results between someone completing/mastering IIH and both of Frantzis' water method books?

 

Well the thing about Frantzis' water tradition is it's not quite... "like that".

 

For instance, in one of his books he mentions that while the Water tradition learns to feel and notice the energies surrounding transformation and manifestation, it doesn't "play with them" in the sense that Fire traditions do. So there are many steps in the IIH that surrounding projecting energies, using energies to impregnate a space or object with a certain intent, manifest certain outcomes (within certain acceptable boundaries) and things like that, which just don't come up in Frantzis' tradition (at least the segment that appears in the books).

 

And to that end, the books are the basics. Like the basics of the basics. He outlines in the books where things like real internal alchemy comes up... and that doesn't happen until you've used outer/inner dissolving to work your way through most of the first energy bodies!

 

He goes a lot more into this outline in his Taoist Sexual Meditation Book. Really, it's a long process.

 

I think in the grand scheme of things, the process of personal development is roughly the same (balancing your energy, clearing your mind, etc) between Bardon and Frantzis (of course with cultural differences adjusted, like the different five elements, different emphasis on what achievements are emphasized, etc) But the IIH has a much wider scope, and Frantzis' books tend to focus on just the foundation stuff, but in a bit more detail (see my previous post in which I mentioned how qigong could be tucked into just the first couple of steps for Bardon, but see how much depth qigong teachers can go into).

[Reed]

Hey, sorry, if I left you hanging there for a bit.

 

No problem. December is always a hectic month, anyway

 

Many thanks for all the input, it was very helpful. I'm still having a read and thinking about it.

[Syl]

Hello everyone

 

For those interested in Bardons son,Lumir and Bardons in-house disciple Milan Kumar,

you can read ther accounts on Bardon.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/115945032/Memories-of-Franz-Bardon-by-Dr-Lumir-Bardon-and-Dr-M-K

 

On novel Frabato,I heard that some people who knew Bardon personally,when he saw the

manuscript of that book,he said it should never be published.

 

Concerning Bardons overweight and smoking,his disciple says he had under-active thyroid glands,

resulting in weight-gain,low heart rate,fatigue,depression etc.He says Bardon was smoking

to override these (smoking increases body metabolism).He quit several times for a year to

strengthen his willpower.Now when somebody says Bardon couldnt have been a master because

he was smoking and overweight,those didnt look into his reasons.There is no set rule as to

what developed adepts have to look/behave like.We all get our own limitations and have to

deal with them in our unique ways.

 

Bardons system is kind of unequalled,not because his exercises are unique;he doesnt even claim

to that.You can find his exercises scattered across taoist,buddhist,hindu practices.

No,his system is unique in asking for perserverance and superhuman dedication to Divine

Providence;

empowering the individual by giving him every tool to become spiritually developed;

no religion,or traditional ties,no set rituals; his approach is of universal cosmic nature.

Some may see his system as cold,there are no rituals ,no community of a lodge.

How you deal with issues of belonging somewhere and finding inspiration is up to you as a

free individual.How you compliment his system with other practices,meditations is up to you.

Now some people need a tradition,masters to lead them and tell them what to

do;for such , Bardon may not be the real deal.

If you seek means of spiritual empowerment while remaining essentially free of traditions and

dogmas of spiritual systems,thinking for yourself, then Bardon is for you.

 

[Syl]

Addition: in my humble opinion,William Mistele's approach on Bardon system is the most close to true inner legacy of Bardon;

other authors i know of,like Rawn Clark are deeply immensed in other traditions like western/hebrew Kabbalah or other

western traditions.Bardons source of Quabbalah was Sepher Yetzirah (oldest text on hebrew mysticism) and/or some

spirit gave him the system and its not concerned about tree of life,pathworking or similar modern concepts but about

using the letters as energy building blocks of the process of creation and is universal in nature,independent of traditional dogmas associated with hebrew kabbalah.