In each of the novels that Dion
Fortune wrote to illustrate principles described in her textbook The
Mystical Qabalah – namely The Winged Bull (1935), The Goat-foot God (1936), The Sea
Priestess (1938) and its sequel Moon Magic (1956), she described a
magical working. The circumstances varied but in each case the format was a
three-handed one, consisting of hero and heroine overseen by a senior third
party.
In The
Winged Bull Colonel Brangwyn, who is credited with being a senior adept, is
trying to save his niece Ursula from the clutches of Frank Fouldes, who was formerly
her fiancé before he fell in with Hugo Astley, an unsavoury figure with a
penchant for even more unsavoury rituals. The Colonel seeks to have Ursula form
a more wholesome liaison with somebody new, namely Ted Murchisan, an old army
comrade down on his luck, and in the process teaching him a species of
improvised ritual magic known as the Rite of the Winged Bull, as opposed to the
ghastly Astley’s Rite of the Bull which owed something to the legend of
Pasiphae. If you don’t know what that is – don’t ask! After a number of alarms and excursions all is
successful and ends with the marriage of Ursula and Ted.
In The
Goat-foot God, the leading figure is old Jelkes, who makes no claims to
being an adept but knows his way around, having been a Jesuit novitiate in his
youth before becoming an antiquarian bookseller with a sideline in occult
books. One of his customers is Hugh Paston, a wealthy socialite who is toying
with the idea of diverting himself with a bit of black magic. Jelkes saves him from this insalubrious course
by introducing him to ancient pagan beliefs. This leads to Hugh sorting out
some of his hang-ups with the help of the artistic and esoterically sympathetic
Mona Freeman with whom he performs a spontaneous Rite of Pan in a bosky grove
on an ancient site – having preserved their respectability by getting married earlier
in the day.
In The
Sea Priestess, the feisty adept Vivienne Le Fay Morgan entices Wilfred
Maxwell, a provincial estate agent, into helping her locate and decorate a sea
temple for her magical work, where she performs with him a Rite of Isis. Here
the third and senior party is an inner plane being, a Merlin like figure who is
referred to as the Priest of the Moon. In this case, although Vivienne plays
fast and loose with the emotions of her occult apprentice there is no question
of her becoming involved in any physical relationship with him – let alone
marriage. Apart from allegedly being 120 years old, she is totally dedicated to
the life of a lone adept. Although before she leaves the scene she instructs a
local girl, Molly Coke, in the functions of a moon priestess which Molly, again
overseen by the Priest of the Moon, puts into practice after she and Wilfred
have wed.
Dion
Fortune never completed Moon Magic, which features the same sea priestess,
now resident in London
So does all
magical work of this nature end between the sheets we might ask, along with the
prospect of wedding bells and orange blossom and holy matrimony? We might be led to think so, if we did not
take into account the genre in which Dion Fortune was writing. That is to say,
popular romantic fiction for the patrons of 1930’s circulating libraries – a
major institution in their day.
This novel approach
(no pun intended!) to teaching occultism to the wider world was a somewhat
risky experiment and, as Dion Fortune came to admit, did not come off quite as she had hoped. She speculated
on reasons why in a couple of articles in the Inner Light Magazine (The
Novels of Dion Fortune and The Winged Bull – a Study in Esoteric
Psychology), both of which are included in a forthcoming book from Skylight
Press, Dion Fortune’s Rites of Isis and of Pan, which gives the rites in full, with cross
references to the appropriate novels.
Whatever
the outcome to characters in the books, a real life occult group should not be
regarded as a dating agency or marriage bureau, let alone hive of debauchery. For
as the sea priestess was at pains to point out, her magical aims
transcended the physical and personal levels. Through the psychic tension of
their magical working she and Wilfred Maxwell were committed to bringing through
the godlike dynamics of a deep polar relationship, not just to themselves but
to all men and women via the group soul, the collective unconscious, the astral
light, or whatever one likes to call it. Thus in magical work, if sex creeps
into the door of the lodge then magic tends to fly out of the window. For the sexual
canoodling serves only to short circuit the force, which runs to earth via the
physical channels – at best a lightning conductor for those unable to handle
the psychic pressure, but with considerable risk of domestic collateral damage.
However, in
real life Dion Fortune’s Rites of Isis and Pan were enacted in very different
circumstances from the novels, for they took place not in private but in
public, before an invited audience. In
1936, a “new epoch” had been announced in the growth and organisation of the
Fraternity, one consequence of which was leasing an old converted church in Belgravia called “The Belfry”. And here, as well as in
lecture demonstrations with lantern slides and chanting at her Bayswater
headquarters, Dion Fortune and two or three of her senior colleagues were able
to present the Rites. In this respect she was by no means a trailblazer, for a
Rite of Isis had been performed in Paris Weston-super-Mare .
She seems
to have been quite successful in her endeavours. Bernard Bromage, a London University
The use of
the word ‘pantomime’ may perhaps seem a little odd in the circumstances but the
good academic is obviously using it more in the classical sense, rather than
the modern, which was originally a form of performance by a single mute dancer
playing all the parts with the help of masks backed up by a chorus of singers
and instruments, where the dancer literally played (mimed) all the parts (panta).
This is not quite the way Dion Fortune played it but a fair approximation if
one does not want to use the dread word “magic”.
But what of
the depiction of rites in her novels? Although, to conform to the conventions
of popular fiction, the circumstances surrounding the set up of the magical workings
could be quite unrealistic, there is considerable value in her description of
what it can be like to experience different levels of consciousness when
participating in a ritual. And this is where the value of Dion Fortune’s novels
lies. She is describing from personal experience – far beyond the capacities of
any popular writer whose knowledge is only theoretical or at second or third
hand – and she also showed a gradually mounting confidence in presenting the
details of the invocations of a magical working.
Thus it is
quite unreasonable to think that in The Winged Bull a beginner like Ted
Murchison was capable of spontaneously improvising the role of Priest of the
Sun to Ursula’s Priestess of the Earth, even to the evocative violin playing of
Colonel Brangwyn as High Priest. Indeed the action seems more in the nature of
an exotic tea dance than a ritual working. But even if there was a formal
Ritual of the Winged Bull (and there is no evidence that Dion Fortune ever
wrote one) she would certainly not have published the script in the very
secretive esoteric culture of 1935. After all, she felt she had taken something
of a risk by publishing her innocuous textbook The Mystical Qabalah!
Nonetheless the The Winged Bull gives a very accurate account of the typical
feelings of a magical tyro about to be introduced to ritual working, and also
of the possible heights of experience which can at times be reached.
In The
Goat-foot God there is a similar unlikelihood of Hugh Paston and Mona
Freeman being able to perform a Rite of Pan by making it up as they go along,
however atmospheric the time and place. And although there certainly was a
written Rite of Pan composed by Dion Fortune at the time of writing the novel,
she did not feel it appropriate to include any of it – apart from a fragment
disguised as a song sung by Mona as she goes about laying the breakfast table.
Bowl of oak
and earthen jar,
Honey of
the honey-bee;
Milk of
kine and Grecian wine,
Golden corn
from neighbouring lea –
These our
offerings, Pan, to thee,
Goat-foot
god of Arcady .
And so on for three verses. The performance
of the rite itself comes only after the last paragraph of the novel and is left
entirely to the reader’s imagination.
However,
in The Sea Priestess Dion Fortune threw caution to the winds and almost
the whole of the Rite of Isis is to be found scattered throughout its pages,
which could perhaps be one reason why Williams & Norgate declined to handle
it. She was obliged to publish it herself, a year later, in 1938. It is
generally accounted to be her best novel although of course the plot is a
highly unlikely one, and the sea priestess herself a somewhat unlikely adept in
real life. Nonetheless, the accounts of
what successful magical working feels like from the inside are both accurate
and revealing, as is also the case with Moon Magic.
And although the emphasis of the working of
the Rites rests upon the priest and priestess, the scripts are more in the
nature of a four handed working, with High Priest and Lector taking up the other
positions – in the accustomed well balanced four handed traditional system. In
a lodge the positions would logically be taken up by priest and priestess in
south and north respectively, and High Priest and Lector in east and west, with
any supernumerary members in a circle round about. The Belfry performances took
place on a stage with an audience looking on.
Whatever
the mode of working however, even reading the rituals today can be a powerful
experience, bringing through a considerable surge of inspiration and energy and
even healing. And this is probably their best use for the most part, without
need for all the ritual trimmings. In other words, just as Dion Fortune hoped
that reading one of the novels would stir the subconscious mind of her readers,
particularly if they identified unconsciously with one of the characters, so an
imaginative reading the rituals today in a meditative state, identifying with
one of the officers, can be an invaluable exercise for those who do not have
the facilities for actual well run group working.
And this is
all now quite possible through the publication, with permission of the Society
of the Inner Light, of “Dion Fortune’s
Rites of Isis and of Pan” (Skylight Press), with links provided to the
relevant novels, together with a series of appendices of contemporary articles
by Dion Fortune from The Occult Review
and the Inner Light Magazine between
1931 and 1938.
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