RY i} The A RURALSFrabato The MagicianAbout the Author Franz Bardon was born on December 1, 1909, in Katherein, near Opava in the present-day Czech Republic. He died on July 10, 1958, in Brno, also in the Czech Republic. He attended public school in Opava, and after that apprenticed as a mechanic. His stage name was “Frabato,” which is an abbreviation of Franz-Bardon- Troppau-Opava.' The special nature of this work required serious con- sideration before I published it under the name of Franz Bardon; the importance of the subject matter finally decided the issue. To pay tribute to truth, I should not like to conceal from the reader the fact that, in actuality, Franz Bardon supplied only the framework of facts for this book. Being pressed for time, he left its entire completion and embellish- ment to his secretary, Otti Votavova. Unfortunately, Bardon’s posthumous manuscript was not ready for print, and therefore I had to revise it. I would like to pass on some of the information which, according to Otti Votavova, she received directly from Franz Bardon. According to her, Adolf Hitler was a member of a 99 Lodge. Besides this, Hitler and some of his confidants were members of the Thule Order, which was simply the external instrument of a group of powerful Tibetan black magicians which used the members of the Thule Order for their own purposes. Hitler also employed a number of doubles on various occasions as camouflage. ' Troppau is the German name for the Czech city of Opava; because of the particulars of the region’s history, many locations in the present-day Czech Republic have both Czech and German names,