‘The Forgotten Ones’ are of Man’s origins and assisted us from the ocean to the cave. However, for a certain span of our unrecorded history, our survival force was controlled and employed by entities from “beyond” our Universe… Alien beyond human imagining, they cannot truthfully be construed as evil. Their main purpose is to devour, and since their structure is incomparable with “our” Universe’s physics, they can but eat by means of the life-forms native to our Universe. ~Nema
Note from the Publisher
This title is a unique exploration into the magical development of mind, body and spirit through each stage. Inspired by Franz Bardon’s teachings and other training he has brought together a comprehensive guide approach to exploring the positive and negative aspects of our personality.
The author references the various stages of development as used in Initiation Into Hermetics to demonstrate how to integrate each magical achievement to further empower the magician to a deeper understanding of himself.
Andre takes us on a journey of discovery and exploration of the root causes which are the cause of all suffering- he refers to them as ‘The Forgotten Ones’. Each step shows us the magical tools that can we develop in our magical training and to further utilise them to overcome and transcend these forces within us.
Unlike Franz Bardon’s approach to the soul mirrors, it does not offer just lists of traits in relation to the elements but delves more into the root causes of these traits, thus finding ways to integrate and transcend these instincts within us using the magical tools that we have learned in our magical development relating to the stage we are at.
Primal Notes from the ‘Forgotten Ones’ -Nema
Let us start with something more likely familiar to the dear hermetic reader, The Corpus Hermeticum3 by Hermes Trismegistus, we are introduced to the twelve irrational tormentors of the body. They spring from the lack of reason in the collective.
They are:
- Ignorance
- Grief
- Intemperance
- Concupiscence
- Injustice
- Avarice
- Deceit
- Envy
- Treachery
- Anger
- Recklessness
- Malice
These are considered to be root tormentors, meaning that from them derive other tormentors, although Hermes states that there are many others. What they have in common is that they make use of the senses in order to create suffering and imprisonment, and they are what Bardon calls vices, faults and weaknesses. That is his concept of the Black Mirror which is the mirror of such tormentors. The decipher will understand, by hints given by Hermes, that each of these tormentors corresponds to a sign in the zodiac. Against such tormentors, the hermeticist has ten powers of God that cleanse the body and soul. This corresponds to the White Mirror in Initiation Into Hermetics.
- Concupiscence
- Injustice
- Avarice
- Deceit
- Envy
- Treachery
- Anger
- Recklessness 9. Malice
The 10 powers are:
- Gnosis
- Joy
- Self-Control
- Perseverance
- Justice
- Unselfishness
- Truth
- Goodness
- Life
- Light
The effects are:
– Joy dissipates grief
– Self-control dissipates intemperance
– Perseverance and patience dissipates concupiscence
– Justice dissipates injustice
– Unselfishness dissipates avarice
– Truth dissipates deceit
– Life dissipates anger and recklessness
– Light dissipates envy and treachery
– Goodness dissipates malice, in addition, let us explain a little further on root traits and their passive and negative matrices. Hermes states that Truth, Life and Light are the triune, since they are one. The Corpus Hermeticucm seems to suggest that this triune by itself being God in structure, is capable of chasing away the tormentors of darkness. From these three virtues, spring forward the other eight virtues, when all ten virtues5 are complete in the soul of the hermeticist, he is born spiritually into the divine. Here, Light is the active power and Life is the passive power which is to say, that Life happens on its own and self-regulates, but the Light is self-created and self-generated.
Now, in the Corpus Hermeticum, we also see that some tormentors are together and depend on each other, such as envy and treachery, anger and recklessness. Treachery consecrates its practitioner as an initiate in the mysteries of envy and once anger has made the practitioner reckless, guilt will incorporate anger in his conscience. Recklessness and treachery are passive traits. They are meant to regulate envy and anger, which are active traits. The most common strategy to combat an active trait is by willpower and transmutation. But take one away and the other will soon become a frail and simple shade.
Let us go to Book I , for the way things are described there connects deeply with Nema’s vision, but we will get to it in due time. One can find these words in the Corpus Hermeticum:
The form you had becomes unseen, and you surrender to the divine power your habitual character, now inactive. The bodily senses return to their own sources. Then they become parts again and rise for action, while the seat of emotions and desire go to mechanical nature.
Corpus Hermeticum, Book I
It goes on to explain how one climbs through the planetary spheres leaving behind different vices. These spheres are layers of our inner being, like layers of an onion. In the foundations we leave impermanence, to get to splendour we sacrifice our machinations, to get to victory we sacrifice the illusion of longing, to get to beauty we sacrifice arrogance, to get to rigour we sacrifice presumption, to get to mercy we sacrifice hoarding and to understand we sacrifice falsehood. The Corpus Hermeticum doesn’t mention such virtues, only the corresponding planets, but here I have given another example of a White Mirror and of a Black Mirror, and of how they can interact.
Initiation continues, but the individual identity and collective identity do not. There are three more levels of rarity to attain, but they lie beyond the realm of duality, beyond your faith in your new reality…In a type of reverse gestation, your levels 9 through 47 deconstruct themselves into spiritual dust. Your 10th level8 continues its business in the world, functioning on its memory of perfection.
Maat Magick– Nama
In Maat Magick, Nema states:
The aim of Nema’s master book, Maat Magick, is similar to the aim of the Corpus Hermeticum. In the mystical component of her path to adepthood she uses virtues of the levels or planetary spheres in her attempt to control and reabsorb the unbalanced survival urges that have taken autonomy in the ego-consciousness. She calls these urges by the name of “The Forgotten Ones”. At the dawning of life on our planet there was hunger, from hunger the urge to survive developed the mask of sex, then of fight-or-flight, clanning, speech, curiosity, altruism and, finally, of God- hunger.
The last one, God-hunger, can be defined as the human impulse towards transcendence. Hunger is basic to the individual. Sex is basic to the species. Fight or flight is the basic instinct of fear and risk-taking. To make a living and to stay alive we find it necessary to band with others, and that’s clanning, of which they say, “Blood is thicker than water”. Up until now, we have been talking of reactive instincts, although clanning stands in-between reaction and action. Active instincts are altruism, communication and curiosity. Communication is the social glue of stored knowledge capable of expanding clanning and of surviving from generation to generation. Curiosity is the driver of our mystery of transformation, and it is curiosity which discovers the benefits of altruism. Altruism can either make you a hero or a victim of all kinds, but it is this ‘Forgotten One’ that can expand the self.
To explain the Forgotten One of God-hunger, I shall expound upon this so that the reader can understand how these base instincts are irrational and unconscious forces capable of building consciousness.
– Eating: we begin to acknowledge that the outer world is also us.
– Through Sexual desire: we learn that there is a special affinity with the ones closest to us being us.
– Fight or flight: makes us fear the unknown, for the unknown isn’t, and it brings about the thirst for knowledge.
– Clanning: makes us relate with intelligence as an entity and quantity, for us to abide socially we need a learning attitude. Communication allows us to realise that we are not only what we absorb but also that which we transmit, and has us praying to the unknown; curiosity makes us realise that the path to the unknown can be found by the truth.
– Altruism: has us identifying finally with the cosmic consciousness of the intelligence of truth – the highest good.
– God-hunger: arises as a fever from the realisation that we are an expression of what we now seek. These are eight dualistic urges, but the eighth is a gateway between dualism and non-dualism. Nema is not using the twelve main tormentors, as the Corpus Hermeticum does, but seven survival instincts divided by the chakras and the planets as layers of existence. This is not that black and white. But what are they, exactly? In 1983 Sor . ́. Nema published the article called, “Foundation”. This was, if I’m correct, the first time she mentions ‘The Forgotten Ones’. ”Another feature of the Astral planes is the access to the Forgotten Ones. These entities are, basically, the gods of our genetic structure. They are the successful survival-factors that have been covered, in the individual and racial Unconscious, with the veneer of conscious Mind and civilization”.
Later, she continues.
The Forgotten Ones are of Man’s origins and assisted us from the ocean to the cave. However, for a certain span of our unrecorded history, our survival-force was controlled and employed by entities from “beyond” our Universe… Alien beyond human imagining, they cannot truthfully be construed as evil. Their main purpose is to devour, and since their structure is incomparable with “our” Universe’s physics, they can but eat by means of the life-forms native to our Universe.
In this form of magical mythology, she teaches us that the so-called ‘Forgotten Ones’ are both our allies and our enemies, just like the black mirror is our true guide. These primal instincts or ‘Forgotten Ones’ give us skills, virtues and powers by way of sublimation, but they are ready to destroy a malformed complexification back to dust.
In her article, Nema proceeds to give some suggestions on how to deal with the Forgotten Ones, suggestions that may as well be valuable to our readers.
The Magician should be extremely cautious to maintain his consciousness at the balance between the suspension of Rational Mind and the detached surveillance of his actions by his Observer.
While the Forgotten Ones are in this way invited to express themselves freely, leaving less and less of the magician’s sense of self, she then applies her technique of the black flame, similar to the vacancy of mind and the akashic trance of Bardon combined, nothing remaining. Then, she explains:
In subsequent daily experience, he will become aware that a new balance has been struck. He has a new sense of unity with the under-currents of the life-flow and will find this of great use in nonverbal communication with others. Through his Art he will establish links with the Unconscious of others; he will assist them to meet the Forgotten Ones incontrolled circumstances that will do no harm. He is also ready to begin work on a world-scale. The Forgotten Ones have access to Man on the astral planes, mainly in the dream-state. Those sections of humanity who exist in starvation conditions, in poverty that has practically negated civilised consciousness, are the hunger-gates of the Forgotten Ones. These starvelings have thin, if indeed any, barriers between the waking (reason) and dreaming (primal drive) states. Their physical strength may be too depleted for the bearing of arms, but theirs is the massed power of the Forgotten Ones. The demon-conflicts of the fortunate nations (the “chosen” of the bright gods) are petty when compared with the dark powers gathering within the hunger of the starving.
In the hope that such notions have further clarified our concept of the soul mirrors and the use of the ‘Forgotten Ones,’ we shall move forward.
We have discussed two mirrors made in the image of mankind’s instincts. On the alternative black mirror we will, therefore, place some of these instincts, and on the white mirror, the powers and virtues that sublimate them or that arise out of their sublimation. When the magician has read Bardon’s take on the soul mirror, he may follow with us at the start of this long journey, being sure that he will be able to understand the words and their intrinsic logic.
Black Mirror Root Instincts
| Element | Active Root | Passive Root |
| Fire | Fight or Flight | God-hunger |
| Air | Speech | Curiosity |
| Water | Clanning | Altruism |
| Earth | Sex | Hunger |
– The fire element represents fight-or-flight as an active root and God-hunger as a passive root.
– The air element represents speech as the active root and curiosity as the passive root.
– The water element represents clanning as the active root and altruism as the passive root.
– The earth element represents sex as the active root and hunger as the passive root. White Mirror Root Powers and Virtues
| Element | Active Root | Passive Root |
| Fire | Command and Speed | Transcendence |
| Air | Communication | Discernment |
| Water | Bonding and Love | Compassion |
| Earth | Allure & Fascination | Stability & Learning |
– The fire element represents command and speed as the active roots and transcendence as the passive root.
– The air element represents communication as the active root and discernment as to the passive root.
– The water element represents bonding and love as the active roots and compassion as the passive root.
– The earth element represents allure and fascination as the active roots and stability and learning as the passive roots. The instincts in the black mirror communicate among themselves, and the powers and virtues in the white mirror do the same. Additionally, white and black mirrors interact not only individually but globally to cause balance through cause and effect in the world at large. The faults include inadequate responses to the outlined instincts and the virtues adequate responses to the powers derived from those instincts. We will later change the scale and our root references, for we intend to make this work as a system of practical magick and initiation into adepthood. But for now, we will leave the reader with an example, so that while he is purifying and balancing the elements on himself he is also working with the root and global instincts. The attributes with which we fill our tables are but a starting point: remember that Franz Bardon speaks of at least 100 faults and 100 qualities, and has the magician complete the writing of the soul mirror in the course of two weeks
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