The Soul Mirror

The magic of knowing thyself

Six fragmentary pillars remain of the superstructure of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, survivors of Emperor Theodosius I’s order of destruction in AD 390. The inscription they once bore is long gone, of course.

ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself.

The temple grounds were first excavated in 1892. An almost unfathomable stretch of time spans those two dates. Though less vast, a considerable few decades separate the moments when I first heard this axiom in my childhood and when I discovered the way I could honor it.

Photo by Matthew Pearce on Unsplash

Socrates, in a tale recounted by Xenophon (Memorabilia, 4.2), explains to his student Euthydemus that the concept is not as easy to grasp as one might think - perhaps explaining my own delay. Euthydemus admits, having visited Delphi, that he paid no heed to the temple’s inscription, imagining that he already knew himself quite well. In classic fashion, the master pointedly questions this conception until the pupil is not sure that he can know anything at all, let alone himself.

Euthydemus recommits himself to study under his master, though others in their embarrassment had fled from the challenge. He sees that Socrates is not preaching nihilism. Xenophon concludes:

It may be inferred that Socrates was in no hurry for those who were with him to discover capacities for speech and action or as inventive geniuses, without at any rate a well-laid foundation of self-control. For those who possessed such abilities without these same saving virtues would, he believed, only become worse men with greater power for mischief. His first object was to instill into those who were with him a wise spirit in their relation to the gods.

Philosophers, psychologists and priests have since spilled much ink on systems of self-knowledge or introspection, many of them quite serviceable - from the evening reviews of the Stoics and Jesuits to the modern typologies of the Big Five, the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs. The practice that has most resonated with me, however, is the one espoused by Franz Bardon in Initiation into Hermetics - the Soul Mirror.

To abbreviate Bardon’s description of the process, in four steps:

1. “Think about yourself in quiet meditation, put yourself back into different situations of your past and remember how you behaved then and what mistakes or failures occurred in the various situations. Make notes of all your weaknesses, down to the finest nuances and variations.”

2. “Now by intensive thinking, try to assign each fault to one of the four elements.” (That is, the four classical elements: fire, air, water and earth.)

3. “Meditate on each characteristic, dividing it into three groups. In the first group you will enter the biggest failures, especially those that influence you strongest or happen at the slightest opportunity. The second group will embrace faults occurring less frequently and in slighter degree. In the last group you are recording those faults that happen only now and again.”

4. “Repeat the whole procedure with your good psychical qualities, entering them into the respective categories of the elements. Do not forget the three groups here as well.”

Bardon has the student complete this process sequentially in 4-6 weeks. My own process of constructing my soul mirror has been sporadic over the past year, but was recently reinvigorated by a couple of excellent pieces on this work by Hyde and André Consciência.

Talking about the best method of introspection is a bit similar to declaring the best sport.¹ With that said, Bardon’s practice has two particular gifts to offer.

First, it is a mystical experience. It starts off as simply an unpleasant list of one’s faults, and can remain that for some time. But if persevered with, it becomes a living window into our own soul, crafted by our own hands. A picture that we can compare with our circumstances and intuit a factor beyond our own fragmentary character and will which bestows the blessings of our life. A study that evens the playing field on perhaps less-than-charitable evaluations of our neighbors.²

Second, it enlivens another potentially eye-glazing aphorism - Carl Jung’s “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Through the soul mirror, we uncover the root need that every fault of ours is trying to meet. The legend of the hydra foretells the results of attacking our shortcomings without an understanding of this.

The construction of the mirror is not the end of the game. There are myriad schools of thought and techniques for transforming one’s soul mirror. But even simply beholding it, we begin to see the glory of the inscription at Delphi.

1. The beautiful game, of course.

2. ^“How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” St. Matthew 7:4-5