Know Thyself! 

Well, like in Franz Bardon his book Initiation into Hermetics, he also spoke pretty quick about knowing yourself. To start off in this blog, i will first start of why it is important to know thyself as much as possible, this is also something that you keep on training till the end of time. This is also something that in the later phases will be important to also keep repeating the first steps, so that you not only understand it all in bigger depth, but also an greater truth.

Lets begin the great journey

So to start off: Why should you know yourself? Easy answer: Making connections, reflection and improvement, conscious of actions, symbolism that is natural to you, focussing on the moment itself, emotion empowerment. These things are very important for the basic understand of not only how magic work, but to learn and understand all things in life. Its basic to your development in every single way!

Long answer:

Conscious of actions: how do you respond? What is your body doing at that moment? How quick are you walking? Do you feel better on another pace? etc etc etc, you can keep on going with this, but every step (huehue, pun intended) in this is actually a step of to think about more then what you are normally blindly are doing and this helps you with your focus, but also understanding your body and thoughts better, it also helps you to take a step back and think about what the hell you are actually doing.

Reflection and improvement: Well with this, you are actually thinking about what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong (for the philosophers under us, i know there is no right there is no wrong, its all about culture, religion etc etc), the method i like to use (wich will be talking about more in the practices that i am going to give) is actually looking at yourself in the mental mirror. Reflect on your actions and if you think or know that you should improve in situations, then do this.
Nobody is perfect and there are always things to improve (so if you think you are already perfect, then you are surely wrong, i am sorry to say) there are points though wich you should not improve, but this is something for yourself to decide, just three things always stay confident in yourself and also be very hard and relentless towards yourself and be kind and generous to your fellows (quote Franz Bardon).

Making connections will be dealt with in another chapter, its quite advanced at the moment and you are not yet ready for it, i can say though patience and perseverance are virtues in magic.

Symbolism that is natural to you: With this its meant that everyone does certain movements, that let people know them.
So if i ask to one of my best friends, what do i do if i do this or what are my movements? They all answer the same thing, its a way of identifying you, but in magic this is something that also has to do with your own personal thing, your own personal way.
You may be thinking it cannot be this big right? But it certainly is, later on we will also speak about the personal Kabbalah, wich also has to do with this in a very strong sense. Not only in your personal kabbalah, but also in your future own made rituals, this will be something very important.

Emotion Empowerment: It means letting you choose to feel your emotions stronger, this is a double edged sword though.
But first let me explain what i mean with this, (ofc i will think off people with emotional issues or past trauma's that they need to face, i am sorry to say, but you can run away from past trauma's, but that is not the route to go, face your trauma's and go beyond or else even when doing magic, you are only pretending and you are not an actual magician, there are many psychologists or any other groups that can help you out, what we are doing here is to make a better person out of you and a protector of the life in the universe!)

Apologies for that side note, i can be quite emotional, i chose the emotion for this though and i empowered it, so that the words can come across hard, but just and honest.
But yeah how do you choose to feel an certain emotion or emotions you cannot know or feel, well this is another quality that every person has, but is not active in all of us...
Trying to place yourself in that person's boots (or trying to imagine how it would feel for that person at that moment, or think about how you would feel if that happened to you).
This is already a very tough thing to do, but there are many many books out there talking about this, so i will not go to deep in this kind of matter.
I can say though that once you start to know and be able to feel (for some people it just need practice to be able to feel certain emotions) all the emotions, you can start to become conscious of your emotions of when and what you are feeling.

Next step is being able to feel an emotion, but not respond to it in a way of what your mind and heart thinks you need to do. Watch out with this! Its also a double edged sword, if you need to run then run if you need to save someone, save someone!
But being able to split it like this makes you able to make the emotion stronger or what you feel stronger by will or even numb it down a bit, this is not meant to make you in full control of your emotions, wich is something bad. But it just helps you out in things like rituals to give it a edge or makes you able to just go beyond that level of dedication needed to achieve something.
It also makes you able to use negative emotions and turn them into something positive, but more about this in the practical part of the chapter.

Focussing on the moment: Why is this something that you will also learn or want to learn? Well for the best results of a ritual and something you want to go for is doing a ritual with a goal but not just for the result, also for enjoying life to the max is a great reason of focussing on the moment (like an awesome fresh danceparty!), dropping worries and having that moment of pure enjoyment of life itself!

Well there are more reasons of why to know yourself, but this is just the theoretical part behind it.
Next section will be the exercises for everyone!