Only a fragment of The Golden Book of Wisdom survives, but the fundamentals of Bardon's system are still available.

If you don't know the story of Franz Bardon, that's ok, because you probably won't believe it anyway. Born in Czechoslavakia before WWII, Bardon became a famous stage magician somewhat in the same tradition as Harry Houdini, yet different. Bardon's interests and skills turned towards psychic and yogic phenomena rather than pure stage magic.

That brought him to the attention of the Nazi Party when Germany became the Third Reich, and specifically to the attention of the Order of the Black Sun, which we now remember as the S.S. (Schwartz Sonne). That particular group followed up the occult interests of the Fuhrer, and since Bardon refused to cooperate and would not reveal his personal methods and knowledge, Bardon wound up in a concentration camp.

After his release and the war's end, Bardon was convinced that Hitler had survived and spent much time fruitlessly searching for him. Aside from that project, Bardon spent much of his time writing books about the very things he refused to teach the Nazi's, using the cards of the Tarot Deck as a framework for his discussion of ancient mysticism, yoga and Egyptian magical systems. His last book was never finished, since he was arrested before he could complete it and the tapes upon which his manuscript was recorded were destroyed.

Now on Scribd you'll have a chance to read the part of Bardon's last and potentially most important work that does survive, and wonder why it was banned and what else Bardon might have said. If you really do want those answers there's a way to find out, but it will be the work of a lifetime.

I came across Bardon's books while looking for some structure to explain and develop what I experienced after my vision quest in 1991, through a chain of very unusual circumstances and encounters with strange people involved with intelligence work and bizarre time machine projects. Though Bardon's books aren't the only system I've studied they do teach many of the same basic methods and I go back to them frequently to remind myself of the simple techniques which work well. If you're looking for the real thing you should not just read Initiation into Hermetics; you should do it.