Hi all,
Having been a member of the Fraternitas Hermetica headed by Romero Laurenco Cunha out of Porto Portugal (current website:
www.fraternitashermetica.net)... I have the following things to say:
I was a member for over 1 year, and interacted with Romero and many of his more 'advanced' students. The following text is more of a non-organized rambling, but never the less contains a lot of facts from the viewpoint of somebody who was there and saw how the organization worked from the inside.
There is nobody higher on the hierarchy than Romero in the Fraternity, except for Romero's imaginary astral masters whom no member has ever contacted physically, astrally, or in any other way.
Romero is a highly self-educated person in just about anything esoteric and to some extent theological, but mostly relating to western esoteric topics with focus on magic. He is mostly a normal person like you and me, he eats, he sleeps, he cooks, he has a wife and a kid (recently), he watches movies, he has friends, an extended family (whom I also met), a house, a car, he likes to play pool, and goes to the beach, eats veggies, fish and most Portuguese dishes that do not have red meat, oh yeah and likes to drink Red Bull (I am not kidding).
When I met Romero a few years back, he came across as a highly articulate, intelligent and well spoken person, in Portuguese. In English, he still sounds quite intelligent, but his English has obvious gramatical flaws. He also came across as humoros, and very well intentioned, with beautiful words that would inspire anyone looking for a spiritual path or a spiritual teacher.
I honestly believe that his initial intentions for the Fraternitas Hermetica were noble and good, but unfortunately things started going sour after about a year or two, mostly due to his own immaturity as a human being.
Psychological analysis:
By this (immaturity as a human being) I mean, he has an Ego the size of a mountain, it's so big that he works sub-conciously to protect it all the time. When a person has an Ego as bigas his, exagerating all his accomplishments to the extreme, and even inventing experiences that he never had (aka: LYING), and lying to protect anything he's ever said or 'done', are without question a big part of his personality. The problem is, he is an artist at lying. He will convince just about anyone about anything related to spirituality... for a while, and of course it's always much easier to convince those who approach him as a teacher willing to take in anything he has to say. He is able to do this by taking facts or truths from some aspect of spirituality, then stretching them to make his stories sound plausible, often going so far that the person who is not so well educated easily gets fooled and believes him.
Now we (humans) all have character flaws of one type or another, we've all told lies, we've all exagerated truths, many of us have probably stolen something at one point or another, in essence what I am getting at is who am I (or who are you) to judge Romero?
What I am stating in this post is not really for the sake of judgement, "God" will deal with him in his own time. It is for the sake of WARNING those that have interests in Hermetics or Magic that he is not only a false teacher, but potentially a relateively dangerous one (depending how deep you go into the FH).
Now let me quantify "dangerous". Do not imagine for a second that Romero is even 1/10th of anything he claims (for instance right now on his webpage he claims he is at Step 10 of Initiation into Hermetics)... I mean....PUHLEASE! The guy has enough basic character flaws to be working on Step One for the next 5-10 years straight.
So does he have siddhi powers? Have I witnessed any of them? Romero is very secretive about his supposed powers, even to his closest students and best friends. I would say his powers are 95% in his head, and by that I don't mean mental powers like telepathy, I mean, imagined powers. On numerous occassions he tried to show a multitude of his students his powers, but each time, they did not manifest.... he then came up with these amazing stories as to why he wasn't able to demonstrate his power. On other ocasions, he would twist the interpretation of what everyone witnessed such that it looked like it was a power he demonstrated. For example, he might do somehting like wave his hands around in the air and chant some mantras or latin words, and then tell his students to look at the sky and claim "hey see, I made that cloud move", but in a more verbose, exciting and far more convincing manner. If I told you guys some of the stories, you'd think he should be the next Harry Potter-like author. His imagination is really awesome, and his ability to convince (with words) even the fairly intelligent, is also note worthy!
Trying to analyse Romero's character is quite complicated, because after some time you end up coming up with seemingly contradicting aspects in the analysis. From an initial and surface level perspective, he seems highly benevolent, he IS (not seems) highly inspiring when it comes to spirituality, but as time progresses, you start seeing that there is more to the cover of his book, and that under that beautiful persian carpet, there is indeed a lot of hidden dirt.
For instance, the guy practices meditation everyday (ok so I didn't see him do it every day, but I will give him this much - he sure worked hard to get his students to meditate every day, sometimes several times a day, and he lead by example). He also teaches (or taught) Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics, though he left out very critical parts, and twisted the meaning of those that didn't fit into his ideologies, or lies/exagerations/stories that he had already told. Romero's take on Bardon, is that he teaches his students primarily about gaining siddhi powers. From his point of view that is *** A-1 *** important, everything else is secondary. What's happened is that a lot of the students that approach him (I would say most in my time), are really well intentioned people, really searching for spirituality, a path, and a good teacher, they want to improve, to be closer to God, etc... and so most of his students are actually very good people, willing to work hard and put in the time they have and the time they don't have (I'll get into that later). But going back to ther powers, from his perspective the students he sees are already so good (as human beings) that he does not focus any time on getting them to do the Bardon Step 1 soul mirrors - Basically, the work of serious introspection is barely looked at... which goes a long way to explain why Romero still has such obvious character flaws.
I mean, one thing is to have character flaws, like all humans do, another is to put oneself in the place of a spiritual teacher with a handful of extreme character flaws - THIS is the biggest problem of the Fraternity.
The teacher is not suitable to be a teacher. Heck, he is barely suitable to be a student of a real teacher.
You see, it might be ok for a Math teacher to lie in his or her personal life, to exagerate truths... but what is the effect of this on his Math students? Probably not a whole lot; however, as a spiritual teacher, you really have to be extremely humble (not EGOistic), extremely balanced and grounded in physical life (unlike Romero who also has a severe anger problem - it doesn't get physical, but he can get verbally abusive and puts anyone down who disagrees with him, and he shouts and yells when he's upset).
Basicaly, he lacks the basics of being a spiritual teacher - it's as simple as that. And because he lacks the basic harmony and balance even in the physical plane, which are the beginning requirements of any spiritual path, it is without question that his Self-boasted powers & levels of spiritual maturity are quite simply a falacy; but never the less a requirement to feed his Ego and have students (people) that look up to him.
Ok, so I got way off topic here... but let's carry on...
-He also is an uncertified Pranic Healer who understands Pranic Healing better than just about any Pranic Healing Teacher out these minus the few international certified "Pranic Healing Masters". The question is, is he an effective Pranic Healer? To my knowledge none of his students have ever followed any of his patients long enough in any scientific study to determine his effectiveness. There are rumours that a few of his patients have died, not necessarily because of his mistreatment, but obviously if they died later on, he did not have the ability to treat them. Again, possibly, on a good day, he can do some effective treatments, as I do believe he has above average ability to concentrate... but unfortunately, in this field there are no measuring tools to see how much energy, of what quality, strength, focus, benevolence, etc is being transfered between him and his patients, so it's wiser not to comment on this further other than to say that on numerous occasions his students have approached him to heal small things, and in some occasions he told them to go to a doctor, and in other occasions after multiple pranic healing treatments, he still could not cure the problem - those are the facts I can state.
But it there's a lot more. Initially the origanization was bent on being non-profit, there were rules to follow, sure students paid some small monthly dues to keep up a meeting place, but after some time, the fees got bigger, on some of the group outings money went missing, some people had to pay far more than others and never got their money back, etc. Without going into a lot of details, money started to become an issue to, so much so that it affected the lives of several of his closest students in a number of ways. A lot of money went missing in total, not necessarily in one lump sum but here and there, and not always in small amounts (ie. from several hundred euros, to a few thousand).
Anyway, the whole point of this posting is just to say that:
1) Romero is without question not suitable to be a spiritual teacher, so don't follow him.
2) He is not an evil person, most of his intial intentions and ideas were good... but you know what they say "good intentions, paved the roadway to hell".
3) He is not a black magician in the sense that he really does not have any significant powers, and even if he did, he is more of a good intentioned person than a bad one, although I wouldn't put the concept of "revenge" past his character possibilities.
4) Fraternitas Hermetica is a false school, primarily because the teacher is a not suitable, despite his really incredible knowledge (even putting his exagerated stories aside).
5) His students are not bad people, and its not a black magic school, but due to his character flaws and instability and his initial students willingness to humbly follow a teacher who *sounds* like a good teacher, a lot of people could be coheresed into just about anything over time.
6) Do not confuse Romero with Nita and Robert Bruce or anybody else that has been part of the Fraternity. Everyone is his own unique person with their virtues and character flaws, but I can say that everyone I met there including Romero himself were well intentioned people.
My friends, the higher aspects of spiritual work is something that should only be ventured into, AFTER you have already found balance in your character and daily living on the physical plane for an EXTENDED period of time. If you are still struggling with school, phone bills or other financial problems, unjust work bosses, personal relationships, health problems, family problems and if your house is literally dirty... then find peace and balance in those areas FIRST, don't go trying to join up some spiritual school, because starting where you are today is the highest priority spiritual work you can possibly be doing, even if it doesn't look like spiritual work. Taking the advise of a person who is not a real teacher (even though he appears to be one at first), will only further screw up your life and waste away your precious time.
Lastly, I also just want to say, even if you do one day come across somebody who can prove they have some kind of siddhi powers, remember that having powers doesn't mean a person is Enlightened or even close to it. Bardon's book clearly shows that with some serious effort, a dedicated person can acquire some incredible powers, but the highest and ONLY goal, is only attained after MANY MANY Steps, the first of which is a balanced character here on the physical plane, before any siddhis of any kind are acquired - Never forget that!
Best wishes,
heynonymous
PS. This was a one-of post, I won't be replying to any replies. I just wanted people out there to have some facts about Fraternitas Hermetica and its leader, rather than having somebody join them just out of curiosity and then getting into personal problems later on.
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