The Work /
The Steps of Initiation
A path of daily Hermetic practice: ten steps of training for spirit, soul and body, walked at your own pace with a guide and a small circle. It begins in the Kingdom, below the horizon, in the life you already have.
At your own pace
Each step takes as long as it takes, often months and sometimes years. You move on when a step is steady in your daily life, not on a schedule.
With a guide
A guide meets with you, reads the practice you choose to share, and confirms when a step is complete. A second guide joins for the Portal and every stage after it.
In a small circle
A few students walking the same steps meet to practise and talk. What is in another person's mirror stays with them.
Part of membership
The Steps are part of free congregation membership. You can ask to begin while your membership application is in progress.
The grades
Each grade is a stage of practice the guide can see and confirm. None is a claim of powers, and every one can be paused.
The threshold
Coming to the door: membership, screening, and the first daily practice.
Aspirant
Before the Tree
Reading, and a daily diary
Membership, the shared screening, and one to three months of daily practice kept in a diary.
Corpus Hermeticum I, 18 to 21. Know yourself: you come from Life and Light.
Neophyte
0=0, At the gate of the Tree
Begins Step I
Admitted by rite, and practising Step I with a guide.
Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 1. Becoming a stranger to the world's noise, and ready to listen.
The Outer Order
Steps I to IV, one sephirah and one element at a time, from the Kingdom upward.
Zelator
1=10, Malkuth, Earth
Step I completed
Observing thought, holding one thought, and resting in stillness for the stated times; both mirrors of the soul written, with kindness.
Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 7. The twelve torments of matter, named honestly.
Aethyr for reflection: TEX, the 30th, the four elements.
Theoricus
2=9, Yesod, Air
Step II
Affirmation on single traits, concentration through each sense, and the character's elements brought into balance, shown in the diary.
Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 8 to 10. The ten powers called in, each against its torment.
Aethyr for reflection: BAG, the 28th, discipline.
Practicus
3=8, Hod, Water
Step III
Two and three senses at once; breathing the elements, always breathed out as fully as in; study of the Qabalah.
Corpus Hermeticum X, 5 to 6. Holy silence, in which the mind can see.
Aethyr for reflection: DES, the 26th, Mercury.
Philosophus
4=7, Netzach, Fire
Step IV
Moving the awareness, gathering the elements and releasing them again, and a practice of devotion and service.
Corpus Hermeticum XI, 20. Make yourself like God, by taking in all things in thought.
Aethyr for reflection: NIA, the 24th, love.
The Portal
A pause at the Veil to let the Outer Order settle before anything new.
The Portal
The Veil, Spirit
Consolidation before Step V
Six to nine months of review with a second guide. No new techniques.
Corpus Hermeticum IV, 4. Baptism in the Cup of Mind, for those who choose it.
The Inner Order
Steps V to X. The Inner Order is confirmed by two guides, never one.
Adeptus Minor
5=6, Tiphareth
Step V
The beginning of contact with the guardian genius, the Holy Guardian Angel of the tradition, taken up and set down with care.
Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 3 and 13. Born again in Mind.
Aethyr for reflection: ZID, the 8th, the Angel.
Adeptus Major
6=5, Geburah
Steps VI and VII
Work with the Akasha and with the inner senses, with a safety review at each step.
Corpus Hermeticum I, 25. Giving back to each sphere what belongs to it.
Aethyr for reflection: ASP, the 21st, Geburah.
Adeptus Exemptus
7=4, Chesed
Steps VIII to X
The mental and astral work, the ascent through the planetary spheres, communion with the God within, and teaching others.
Corpus Hermeticum I, 26. Having received, become a guide to the worthy.
Aethyr for reflection: LOE, the 12th, the choice before the Abyss.
Above the Abyss
Named and contemplated, never conferred. The Temple does not claim these attainments for anyone.
Babe of the Abyss
The Abyss
No step
Not conferred. Named as a crisis that may come, to be met with a guide beside you.
Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 22. Silence.
Aethyr for reflection: ZAX, the 10th, the Abyss, read only and never worked.
Magister Templi
8=3, Binah
No step
Not conferred by the Temple.
Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (Nag Hammadi VI, 6). The Eighth.
Aethyr for reflection: UTA, the 14th, the City of the Pyramids.
Magus
9=2, Chokmah
No step
Not conferred.
Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth (Nag Hammadi VI, 6). The Ninth.
Aethyr for reflection: ZOM, the 3rd, the Word.
Ipsissimus
10=1, Kether
No step
Not conferred.
Corpus Hermeticum I, 26. Made one with God.
Aethyr for reflection: LIL, the 1st, the first.
The first three steps
In the Temple's own words. The full instructions are given to you by your guide as you reach each step.
- 1
- Spirit
- Watching the mind without being carried by it, holding a single chosen thought, and resting in stillness of mind, for short and stated times. A private diary records every practice.
- Soul
- Honest and kind self-knowledge: two mirrors of the soul, one of strengths and one of failings, kept side by side and sorted by the four elements.
- Body
- A simple daily rhythm of morning practice, movement, conscious breathing, conscious eating, and water as a practice of cleansing.
- 2
- Spirit
- Affirmation on one trait at a time, spoken in the present tense, and concentration trained through each of the senses in turn.
- Soul
- Balancing the character: meeting each failing with its opposite strength and growing that strength, rather than fighting the fault.
- Body
- Breathing through the whole body, conscious posture, and calm command of the body in daily life.
- 3
- Spirit
- Concentration with two and three senses at once, and on places, animals and people.
- Soul
- Breathing the four elements, the warmth of fire, the lightness of air, the coolness of water, the weight of earth, always breathed out again as fully as they were breathed in.
- Body
- Gathering vital energy through the breath, and always releasing it again before returning to daily life.
The soul mirrors follow one rule: know yourself, accept yourself. Every trait is written down honestly and without condemnation, and each failing is met with the strength that balances it. Every physical practice has an equivalent for those who cannot take cold water, long sitting or a given sense, and the equivalent counts in full.
Practice and the sacrament
The Steps are a sober, daily discipline, kept separate from the Temple's sacrament. Intensive practices pause for about a week before each ceremony and two to four weeks after. No stage is ever given for anything experienced in ceremony. Bardon himself rejected drugs as a way to vision; the Temple's answer is that the practice trains the steady, waking self that carries what ceremony opens into daily life.
This is religious practice, not medical or psychological care. It makes no promise about health, and it does not replace a doctor or a therapist.
Care on the path
Stop and tell your guide if you sleep under five hours for three nights, feel panic, feel unreal for more than a day, see or hear what others do not, or have thoughts of harming yourself. Breath work is never done in or near water. You may pause at any time without losing your place.
A guide confirms practice, never spiritual status. Guides do not diagnose or advise on medicine, have no romantic or financial ties with students, and never confer the Inner Order alone. You may change guide without giving a reason, and concerns can go to people outside your guide's line.
Your diary and your mirrors stay with you. The Temple keeps only your application, your screening, an emergency contact and a record of the stages you complete. Circle members never share what is in another person's mirror.
- The Temple: Write to contact@templeofhermes.org or message us on WhatsApp. For anything about your ceremony, your cohort or your integration. We will reply.
- Fireside Project: Call or text 62-FIRESIDE (623-473-7433). Free, confidential peer support for people during and after psychedelic experiences. Independent of the Temple.
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988. If you are in crisis or having thoughts of harming yourself, any hour of the day. In an emergency, call 911.
Where the path comes from
The grade names come from the German Gold- und Rosenkreuz of the 1760s, through the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888. The Abyss and the names above it come from Aleister Crowley's A∴A∴.
The daily method follows Franz Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics (1956), published in English by Merkur Publishing. The Temple teaches it in its own words. Bardon called his ten steps the complete teaching of the first card of the Tarot, the Magician, and the Temple's ladder honours that: his course ends at Adeptus Exemptus, below the Abyss.
The meaning of each stage is drawn from the Corpus Hermeticum, in G.R.S. Mead's translation, where Hermes teaches Tat in stages, by silence, and by rebirth in Mind. The Aethyrs are the thirty heavens John Dee and Edward Kelley received in 1584, read through Crowley's The Vision and the Voice. Here they are themes for reflection, never a timetable.
For the soul work the Temple also draws on the Law of One, a channeled teaching recorded by L/L Research between 1981 and 1984: "One, know yourself. Two, accept yourself. Three, become the Creator" (Ra 74.11). It is counsel, not history.
Pairing these traditions grade by grade is the Temple's own synthesis.
Ask to begin
Tell us about your practice and what draws you. We reply within 3 days. You begin as an Aspirant, with the same screening as ceremony, and a guide is matched with you.
Not yet a member? Apply for membership as well; it is free.
Ask to begin the Steps
Private, read only by the Temple. You can also write to contact@templeofhermes.org.