Christian Hermetics: The Queen of Peace and the Rosary – Virgil
Christian Hermetics: The Queen of Peace and the Rosary
by Virgil
Needless to say, there is currently no official patron saint of Bardonists in either the Catholic or the Orthodox tradition, but have you ever wondered who it would be if there were one? It’s a fun thing to think about, and after giving some thought to the matter, there is one saint who stands out to me as making the most sense. To understand my reasoning, we have to take a look at the story of why the Bardon system was given to humanity.
WWI started in July of 1914 and ended in November of 1918. During this four-year period, roughly 20 million people died. As the story goes, after these people left their physical bodies and entered the astral plane, they cried out to Divine Providence, despairing that they had not had the chance to spiritually evolve much during their previous incarnation, since they had died young and never found good spiritual guidance. In response to their cries, Divine Providence commissioned an advanced initiate to reveal a system of genuine initiation and magical training to the world. This system would provide sincere spiritual seekers with good spiritual guidance. It would also give them the skills and abilities needed to end warfare and establish world peace. In order to reveal this system to the world, the advanced initiate entered the body of a boy named Franz Bardon, agreeing to take upon himself the boy’s karma in exchange for being about to use his body to carry out the task assigned to him.
This story makes it clear that we Bardonists are called to be peacemakers. Now, many Bardonists are called to be things in addition to peacemakers. For example, William Mistele is also called to be a writer, a good Bardonist friend of mine is also called to be a healer, and I am in contact with many Bardonists who are called to help restore the environment by working with the spirits of the four elements. However, regardless of what other tasks Divine Providence may also have called us to perform, every true Bardonist is called to be a peacemaker, because this divine mission is intimately tied with the origins and raison d’être of our path.
Given that this is the case, what better patron saint is there for Bardonists than the Queen of Peace, the Blessed Virgin Mary herself? One of the best ways to appeal to Mary for help with your magical training is to pray the Rosary.i In addition to the Rosary in its simplest and plainest form, there are more complex Rosary-based spiritual techniques that Bardonists can use to accelerate their advancement along the magical path, and some of these techniques are powerful indeed. One of them is the famed 54-day novena.
The 54-Day Novena
In 1884, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a girl living in the city of Naples named Fortuna Agrelli. Fortuna was incurably ill, and her family members, in desperation, appealed to Mary for help. When Mary appeared, she taught Fortuna the 54-day novena, and after using this novena, the young girl was cured. Since then, many people have used the 54-day novena to request Mary’s assistance, and there are numerous stories about the miracles she has performed in response to these requests.
While a standard novena lasts for nine days, the 54-day novena, as its name suggests, lasts for 54 days. During the first 27 days, the Rosary is prayed every day as a way of petitioning Mary to fulfill a request. During the last 27 days, the Rosary is prayed every day as a way of thanking Mary for fulfilling the request. The Joyful Mysteries are prayed on the first day, the Sorrowful Mysteries are prayed on the second day, the Glorious Mysteries are prayed on the third day, and this cycle is repeated throughout the entire novena period. Bardonists can use the 54-day novena to ask Mary to help them with the problems they face in their magical training. I have done this several times. For example, when I was working through Step 2, I was having a lot of difficulties eliminating irascibility from my personality. After over a year of trying, I still had not succeeded. As a result, I used the 54-day novena to ask Mary to help me eliminate this negative trait. Shortly afterwards, I underwent an experience that taught me just how silly and pointless it is to get angry given the big picture view of life and the world. The insights I gained from this experience helped me craft a new and more patient personality for myself.
Ever since I first began interacting with the Bardon community around 2014, which is when I created my first blog, I’ve corresponded with many students of the Bardon system who have reached out to me for advice after coming across my blogs or my books. Sometimes, the students are very frustrated because they have been stuck on the beginning steps of IIH for a long time. If these students are familiar with the Rosary, I usually recommend that they give the 54-day novena a try. Since this novena does require time, energy, and discipline, most of the students I recommend it to ignore my recommendation, but the ones who follow my recommendation are always glad they did. The following are some examples of instances where students have followed my recommendation to use the 54-day novena and benefited from the results.
- One student was struggling to become proficient at the mental exercises of Step 1. Even after several months, he still wasn’t much better at them than he was when he first began practicing. He prayed a 54-day novena in order to ask Mary to help him become proficient at these exercises. Shortly after using the novena to ask Mary for help, a friend emailed him an article about meditation. The article overall wasn’t that impressive, but it did quote a passage from a dharma talk given by the great Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah. This passage contained a vital insight that helped him finally begin making real progress, and he was able to move on to Step 2 in a timely manner.
- Another student wasn’t advancing quickly because he rarely had time to practice, so he used the 54-day novena to ask Mary to help him make more time in his life. Shortly afterwards, this student encountered an old acquaintance who offered him a job. This job paid the same as his current job and had shorter hours. He took the job and had more time to practice the exercises of IIH.
- Another student wasn’t dealing with any specific problem in his magical training, but used the 54-day novena to ask Mary for her help with his magical training in general. Shortly after finishing the series of petitions to Mary that forms the first part of the novena, a number of things happened. During a conversation with a friend of his who was a psychology major, he learned about the shadow and, after carrying out some shadow work, became aware of several negative traits hidden in his personality that he previously didn’t know about. Those negative traits could have been a serious problem if he’d tried to move on to Step 3 before eliminating them. He was also invited to attend a seminar at his university about mindful eating, which he did. The information from this seminar helped him improve the quality of his conscious eating practice. In addition, he learned about a Japanese concept called ikigai in one of his classes. This concept allowed him to evaluate his motives for undergoing magical training, and this in turn strengthened his commitment to work through IIH. All of this happened within the span of a week.
Before moving on, I want to share one more story about a student of IIH I know of who used the 54-day novena to ask for Mary’s assistance with his training. This student had injured himself practicing a “third eye exercise” he read about in a New Age book, even when I had repeatedly warned him to stick to the exercises within IIH. As a result of practicing this exercise, he messed up his ajna chakra. This had several effects, one of which was that he couldn’t concentrate or visualize. Whenever he tried to concentrate or visualize, he felt an immense pressure in the center of his forehead that became more painful the harder he tried to concentrate or visualize. Needless to say, someone who cannot concentrate cannot work through IIH. I had no idea how to help him since healing is not my speciality. He appealed to the Virgin Mary for help using the 54-day novena and was disappointed when Mary did not heal him right away. However, two years later, he woke up one morning and found that the injury to his ajna chakra had been healed, and that he could concentrate and visualize again. That same day, an acquaintance spontaneously gave him a bouquet of lilies as a gift. Lilies symbolize purity and are closely associated with Mary. I believe this was a sign that Mary did heal him of the injury he inflicted upon his ajna chakra through the New Age third eye exercise he was practicing. As for why she waited two years to do this, it’s a well-known fact that many of the problems we face in life serve some teaching purpose. If you appeal to Mary to help you solve a problem in your magical training, then she will help you solve it, but if the problem has an important lesson to teach you, then I can see why she’d wait for you to learn that lesson before helping you solve it.
Hermetics-themed Rosaries
Ever since I was a child, one of my hobbies has been designing and making rosaries. The first time I made a rosary, I strung together plastic beads that were left over from a school project. After getting my first job as a teenager, I was able to buy better materials such as gemstone beads, high-quality beading wire, and actual metal crucifixes instead of crude wooden crosses I whittled myself. Recently, I have designed and made several Hermetics-themed rosaries, including the electric and magnetic fluid rosary shown below:

The red beads in this rosary represent the electric fluid. The blue beads represent the magnetic fluid. The violet beads represent akasha. The clear beads represent the vital force. Since the vital force is worked with before the electric and magnetic fluids, I found it fitting to have the Antiphon Beads symbolize the vital force.
For those who wish to make use of Rosary-based spiritual techniques like the 54-day novena to accelerate their progress along the magical path, I am giving away these rosaries for free. Since I am experimenting with different designs, each rosary will probably be a little different, but they will all be functional, which is what’s really important. I have always been in the habit of praying a full Rosary using each rosary I make and give away, and I will do the same for each Hermetics-themed rosary I give away to those who request one. Unfortunately, due to the high shipping costs associated with sending packages out of the country, I am currently only able to send rosaries to those living in the United States.
The Christian Hermetics Mailing List
For those who wish to learn more about the various ways that the Rosary can help you accelerate your progress along the magical path, I will be sending out a series of biweekly emails for a year containing information about the Rosary and Hermetics. This series of emails will start early next year and will end around the same time the following year. A number of topics will be addressed in this series, including how the fifteen traditional mysteries of the Rosary relate to Bardon’s system of initiation, why praying the Rosary will help you work through IIH faster, how to pray the Rosary as an aspiring magician, what initiates have taught about the prayers contained in the Rosary, and how the Rosary can make it safer for you to develop your astral senses. We will also be discussing why Bardon was a great Christian (Matt. 7:21), as well as why true magic and true Christianity are one and the same (Matt. 5:48).
If you would like to receive these emails, then sign up for Falcon Books Publishing’s new Christian Hermetics mailing list using this form. If you are living in the United States and would like one of the aforementioned Hermetics-themed rosaries that I’ve made, then make sure to provide your home address in addition to your email address. Those who are not living in the United States or who already own a rosary do not need to provide their home address, but should provide their email address in order to be added to the mailing list.
The Rosary was one of the most important tools I had during my years working through IIH. I found this tool immensely useful when dealing with the various karmic issues that every aspiring magician must face as part of his training. It was one of the best sources of consolation for me during some of the most difficult periods of my life, and meditating on the three sets of mysteries helped me understand why exactly I was called to the magical path. Until now, I have rarely written anything about the Rosary, as I did not consider it expedient to do so. Members of the Bardon community, in general, tend to be more interested in drawing elements from Eastern disciplines like kundalini yoga, qigong, Dzogchen, etc. for the purpose of supplementing their magical studies. However, for the past few weeks, I have felt an inner prompting telling me that the time is finally right to share what I know. I invite you to join me on this year-long exploration of the Most Holy Rosary and the esoteric and mystical keys hidden within it.
i When the word “Rosary” is capitalized, it refers to the series of prayers. When the word “rosary” is not capitalized, it refers to the set of beads used as a counting aid when saying the prayers.
To find out more about Virgil please view his author page and view our product page to purchase his titles.
The Gift To Be Simple by Virgil The Elemental Equilibrium by Virgil The Covert Side to Initiation by Virgil Equipoise by the Franz Bardon Community The Spirit of Magic by Virgil