Some people claim that Bardon copied most of his teachings from Quintscher, other say that Quintscher was Bardon's teacher.

Frater U.D.

And then, of course, one must not forget Franz Bardon! He is not unknown in the English speaking world but my impression is that though many people have heard of him, only few have taken the trouble to actually read his books which have been available in English for over a decade now. If they find his style execrable and extremely turgid in translation already, it may hardly comfort them to know that it is no better in German either. Nevertheless, Bardon, a one time German illusionist of Czech extraction, is still Germany's probably most commonly read magician. His dogmatic, simplicistic approach which describes magic (in no certain terms, at that) as a technology of "astral electro-magnetism" involving the manipulation of the polar powers of electricity and magnetism, is really not quite as modern as the layman tends to believe. In fact, it was Bardon's teacher, Ra-Ohmir Quintscher, who back in the twenties invented not only battery magic and his notorious Tepa (sometimes erroneously termed Tepaphone), an electrical device for long range magical manipulation involving the target persons' photographs, but produced practically everything else as well on which Bardon's later fame was molded.

Bardon, however, did not deign to give Quintscher his due credit, as is so common, unfortunately, with magical authors of secondary intellectual import. Instead, his secretary Otti Votavova presented the situation topsy turvy by claiming, in her novel on Bardon's life, Frabato (a classical example of devotees' kitsch), that in fact it was Quintscher who had been Bardon's acolyte and not vice versa. She even purported that Quintscher spent the last years of his life in concentration camp (some of them in Bardon's company), an insinuation bitterly denied by Quintscher's now deceased son, with whom I had a conversation on this matter a few years ago. In fact, according to his son, Quintscher never even visited a concentration camp. Rather, he died in the very last hours of the war on May 8th, 1945 in Silesia, where he was also buried. But to be fair to Bardon, let it be known that I have it on the word of reliable witnesses that Bardon, when he saw the *Frabato* manuscript, was quite aghast and gave strict injunctions never to publish it - unfortunately to little avail.