Ritual · “Repetition Rewires”
The Magic of Water
To use everyday washing as a deliberate cleansing ritual: while washing, vividly intend that your faults, troubles, and weaknesses flow out of you into the water (then discard it), and/or that water charged with a desired quality carries that quality into you.
Bardon’s magic of water: Make daily washing a ritual. As you wash (ideally under running water), vividly intend your faults, troubles, and weaknesses flowing out of you into the water — then throw that water away at once. To work the other way, first charge water with one desired quality and wash with the conviction it passes into you (use soap-and-discard for the cleansing water, a separate impregnated basin for the wish). Optional: a seven-times face dip for skin, or a careful magnetic eyebath with boiled-then-cooled water. Pair with your soul-mirror self-work.
What it is
This is the fourth physical exercise of Step I of Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics. It turns the most ordinary act — washing your hands or body — into a deliberate cleansing ritual.
In Bardon’s theory, water (and any cold liquid) is an “accumulator” that attracts and holds influences; he uses that to run the practice two ways:
(1) wash the bad out — while washing, vividly intend that your failures, troubles, illness, and weaknesses pass out of you into the water, which you then immediately throw away; and (2) wash a good in — magnetise/impregnate water with a desired quality and wash with the conviction that the quality passes into you.
He adds optional variants (a beauty/rejuvenation version, and a “magnetic eyebath”). Stripped of the metaphysics, it is structured cleansing-ritual psychology attached to a habit you already perform daily.
The Method
Bardon’s instructions (Step I, “The Magic of Water”): A. Washing the bad out (the core exercise).
- Every time you wash your hands, intend it. Think intensely that you are wiping off “not only the dirt off your body, but also the uncleanliness from your soul” — failure, trouble, dissatisfaction, illness and the like.
- Wash under running water if you can. Wash “under the tap so that the dirty water can run off immediately,” and at that moment think your weaknesses are flowing off with the water.
- If using a basin, discard the water at once so no one else contacts it. You can also dip your hands in cold water for a little while and concentrate on the “magneto-astral attractive force” drawing all weaknesses out of body and soul — “be firmly convinced that all failures are passing into the water.” Throw this water away immediately too.
- Strongest form: in summer, do it while bathing in a river with the whole body (except the head) submerged. B. Washing the good in (the reverse exercise).
- Magnetise/impregnate the water with a desired quality first, then wash with the firm conviction that “through washing the power will pass into your body and the desire will be realized.” C. Combining both (for those with time).
- Strip off evil in one water, then wash in another. First wash off the “evil” — Bardon says use soap for this cleansing water (tap or a separate basin) — then wash again in a second basin of water that you have impregnated with your desire. D. Optional variants Bardon gives.
- Beauty/rejuvenation version: concentrate that the water makes the face and skin look younger, more elastic, more attractive; dip the whole face in for some seconds, repeating seven times (a little borax may be added).
- Magnetic eyebath: in the morning, using water boiled the previous day in a half-filled basin, dip the face and open the eyes in the water, rolling them, seven times; a slight stinging fades with habit. Bardon recommends magnetising/impregnating this water with the wish too (e.g. for clearer sight; advanced pupils use it toward clairvoyance training). (Companion morning routine, from the same Step: Bardon also has you, right after rising, brush the body with a soft brush until the skin reddens to open the pores, then wash with cold water and rub warm with a rough towel — a daily lifetime habit.) (Sourcing note: the running-water/discard-immediately rule, the “uncleanliness from your soul,” the soap-for-the-cleansing-water detail, the two-basin combination, the seven-times face dip and eyebath, and the river-bathing form are all Bardon’s, faithfully paraphrased with short quoted phrases from Step I of IIH.)*
Source & Lineage
The exercise closes the Magic Physical Training of Step I of Initiation into Hermetics (Der Weg zum wahren Adepten, 1956). Bardon treats water as a literal accumulator whose capacity rises as it cools (he even specifies it is most receptive near 4 °C / 39 °F and goes neutral to magnetism around body temperature) and ties the impregnation to the akasha principle and the “electromagnetic fluid” of the elements — connecting it to the older literature of animal magnetism / “od” (Mesmer, Reichenbach).
The practical ritual, however, sits squarely in the universal lineage of ablution and ritual cleansing — baptism, Hindu river-bathing, wudu, mikveh — reframed as deliberate psychological cleansing. → (Franz Bardon node).
The Traditions' versions
Ritual ablution (baptism, wudu, mikveh, river-bathing) — washing as purification of more than the body; the universal ancestor.
- “Wash away” cleansing rituals (modern psychology) — handwashing to shed guilt, doubt, or a bad streak; the evidence-based parallel.
- Mesmerism / animal magnetism (“od,” magnetised water) — charging water with intention/vital force; Bardon’s direct theoretical kin.
- Holy-water / charged-object practices — water impregnated with a blessing or wish, then applied.
- Bardon’s conscious breathing & eating — the same Step-I logic of impregnating a medium (air, food, water) with one vivid wish.,
Common refinements
Going through the motions. The effect comes from the vivid intention during washing, not the washing alone — actually feel the weakness leaving with the water.
- Keeping the used water. Bardon insists the “charged” water be thrown out immediately; symbolically (and hygienically) don’t let it linger.
- Mixing the two directions in one water. Don’t try to wash evil out and a wish in using the same water — use soap-and-discard for cleansing, a separate impregnated basin for the wish.
- Vague wishes. For the “wash the good in” version, hold one specific, present-tense quality, as in his breathing practice.
- Eyebath carelessness. If you do the eyebath, use clean, previously-boiled-and-cooled water and stop at real irritation (see safety).
- Expecting it to do the work alone. It pairs with the soul-mirror self-knowledge work; “washing off” a fault is a support, not a substitute for actually changing it.