In Glastonbury back in
30th July 1923 two friends, Violet Mary Firth and Charles Thomas
Loveday, were about to embark on a psychic experiment that sent reverberations
going in the esoteric world even down to our day. It was the first session of
what came to be known as The Cosmic Doctrine. The 33 year old Violet
Firth had for some time been intent on teaching herself the art of trance
mediumship the basics of which she seemed to have picked up as a close
associate of Dr Theodore Moriarty whom she had met eight years before and who
had mightily impressed her. She became a
member of a co-masonic group that he founded in 1919, attended residential
classes given by him, in which he was, by her own account (in her
semi-autobiographical Psychic Self
Defence) adept at this kind of work.
Not that this was the only string to Violet Firth’s bow
for, apart from being the daughter of Christian Science parents, she had also
become a member of the Theosophical Society, and of a branch of the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. All of which, for various reasons, she later moved on
from, to form her own esoteric group,
the Community (later Fraternity and then Society) of the Inner Light.
She
also had journalistic ambitions and during 1922 wrote some esoteric stories for
the Royal Magazine, later published in book form as The Secrets of Dr.
Taverner, the first of which, Blood Lust, was closely based on an
incident she had observed that involved Moriarty, and that had so impressed her
that she gave up her studentship as a psychological counsellor with the
Medico-Psychological Clinic to become, in
1916, a member of the Women’s Land Army.
This was a patriotic gesture in time of war but the main reason was her
conviction that psycho-therapy could not make much progress if it did not take
cognisance of the esoteric field. Her Dr Taverner stories were aimed at
bringing to public awareness the possibilities of psychological problems having
their root in preternatural causes – or “little known powers of the human mind”
as she liked to call them. She wrote these stories under the pen name of Dion
Fortune, by which he has since become more generally known.
The
first indication we have of Dion Fortune (as we shall now call her)
experimenting in trance techniques was in January 1921 with the assistance of
her Golden Dawn mentor and family friend Maiya Curtis-Webb (later Tranchell-Hayes).
This was obviously apprentice work, but by September 1921 she had become
sufficiently competent to undertake some work for the Glastonbury psychical researcher Frederick
Bligh Bond, the result being what became known as the Glastonbury Script to her
later followers.
Within
six months, through a chance meeting at Chalice Well, she made the acquaintance of Charles Thomas
Loveday, an esoterically inclined Christian mystic some fifteen years her
senior, with whom she formed a close esoteric (and completely platonic)
association that was to last the rest of their days. He encouraged her trance
work, a key point of which, in August 1922, was a more sustained follow up to
the Glastonbury
script via an inner plane contact with a group known as the Company of Avalon.
However,
this did not last, as they were passed on from the mystically based Company of
Avalon, with its mission of a national spiritual influx into the church,
towards a more Hermetically oriented hierarchy. This began on 28th
September 1922 from which there developed a systematic series of teachings
about the seven planes of the universe which, in personal terms, were more
attuned to Dion Fortune’s long standing psychological/sexual concerns than
Thomas Loveday’s mystical/ecclesiastical ones.
This
very soon developed into a contact with some specific inner plane communicators
with whom Dion Fortune was closely concerned for the rest of her life. The
first, known as David Carstairs, became evident in October 1922, a somewhat
cheeky informal contact, apparently killed in action in the 1st
World War, who acted as a kind of introductor to other more “heavyweight”
contacts. The first of these came through on 15th November,
apparently the once famous lawyer and Lord Chancellor Thomas Erskine, (1750-1823),
and closely followed on November 30th by one referred to as the
Greek master, later identified with the ancient philosopher Socrates.
Something
of the atmosphere of the time is well caught in a transcript of the time, in
the words of Carstairs:
Well,
how are you getting on with the new teacher? He is finished for tonight. He
does not find it easy to do yet. He has been over a long time. He was a Greek.
Yes, the one mentioned before. He is working from a pretty high plane, and the
result is that the vibrations get a bit faint. Not like me; just next door. He
may be a bit scrappy. It will want sorting out. He is fond of aphorisms.
Lord
Erskine was unusually good. He was used to public speaking. This man is more
used to dealing with pupils by question and answer, as they did in Greece. He
would get on the step of some public building, and young men would come and ask
how many eggs made five, and he would tell them. He was later than Pythagoras.
He got put to death, was a bit too much for them.
Most
of the teaching received at this time was written up and subsequently published
as The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage, in many ways a
transitional book that has not stood up too well to the passage of time. It
combined elementary esoteric theory, with a strong emphasis on the theory of
planes as featured in Theosophical Society literature, combined with social and
sexual problems that had concerned Violet Firth in her time at the
Medico-Psychological clinic.
So
things continued with weekly meetings along these lines until on 28th
March 1923 they were warned by a different communicator ( simply referred to as
“an Agent of the Lords of Karma”) that: This
Easter will prove a turning point in more ways than one. You will see a new
life opening up before you, and new work. Your first duty will be to equip
yourself for the new work that will open up ahead of you. You must be equipped
upon the outer and the inner planes, both working together…Conditions are being
put in order for the work to go forward. Ties are being adjusted, and the
financial position is being made secure. All things are being harmoniously
worked out. There is much work ahead, a great work to be done for which
conditions are being made. You will always work in obscurity, but your
influence will be felt further than you yet dream. Means are being provided to
this end… You will follow the study
marked out for you. You will be in the hands of certain teachers. Trust them,
but trust no one with confidences.
On
the mundane side of things this came to pass the following year in the
acquisition of physical premises in which to work in both Glastonbury and
London and the foundation of the prototype of the Society of the Inner Light.
On the inner side of things it was kicked off
by the arrival of the Greek on 30th July 1923 to begin a
series of teachings that became known as The Cosmic Doctrine.
The
first six sessions, which lasted over the course of a calendar month (30th
July to 30th
August 1923), sought nothing less than to describe the genesis of
the Universe at a spiritual level.
Whoever the inner plane communicators were, and it
appears there was a group of them, they seem philosophically to be
Neoplatonists. That is to say their teaching – although they never said so in
so many words – follows closely that of the 3rd century philosopher Plotinus (c.205-270 A.D.)
who was in turn a follower of Plato (429-347 B.C.), a student of the historical
Socrates. (469-399 B.C.)
It would seem that Dion Fortune and Thomas Loveday were
quite unacquainted with the terms of Neoplatonic philosophy – (the One, the
Demiurge, the World Soul) – so the terms used in The Cosmic Doctrine
were whatever happened to be within the medium’s subconscious mind. These were
mostly based upon early 20th century popular Theosophical teaching
tinged with some of the ideas of Theodore Moriarty. It was, therefore, a formidable challenge for
the communicators to get their message across without the benefit of a
classical philosophical vocabulary. Hence many of the terms in The Cosmic
Doctrine had to be made up or borrowed from other systems of ideas.
Neoplatonism
is essentially a religious philosophy. According to Neoplatonic teachings the
prime Source of all Being is called the ONE or the INFINITE.
In Cosmic Doctrine terms it is the source of All. In Judeo-Christian terms
it
could be equated with God Transcendent, the Creator, the Elohim, the Dove of
the Holy Spirit moving upon the face of the Primal Waters. In Qabalistic
philosophy it corresponds to the Ain Soph Aur – the Limitless Light of the
Three Veils of Negative Existence. In The Cosmic Doctrine it is the creator
of the spiritual Cosmos, from
which springs all the rest in which we live and move and have our being.
The
process of creation is somewhat ingeniously described in terms of a
mathematical diagram, starting from a one dimensional point that moves to form
a line, that curves to create a two dimensional figure, a circle, which then
begins to turn upon itself in a third dimension to form a sphere. From thence
the sphere develops an internal organisation or pattern of forces in terms of 7
internal spheres (known as Planes) and 12 ovoid radial figures (known as Rays).
These in turn produce within their converging forces tangential movements or
eddies each of which has the potential to become a spiritual being in its own
right. These in The Cosmic Doctrine are (somewhat confusingly) called Atoms
although they have nothing whatever to do with the atoms we learn about at
school in chemistry classes. They are the root of all forms of spiritual being
– including ourselves!
There
are however different degrees of complexity in these Cosmic Atoms. If we just
follow the development of one of the more complex ones, by reason of its
greater spiritual “weight” (we begin here to move from purely mathematical
analogy to one akin to physical mechanics) it becomes a Travelling Atom which
undertakes a complete tour of all aspects of the One, through all the Rays and
Planes to end up attracted to the very centre of things, called in The
Cosmic Doctrine the Central Stillness – which more poetically might
be called the Bosom of God.
Then,
after assimilating the experience of Godhead it is shot forth down the Cosmic
Planes to the periphery of the Cosmos with the ability to project a lesser
system of its own.
As
such it is known as a Great Entity or Great Organism or, as it is
ultimately in its full physical expression, a Star, a Solar Logos capable
of producing a Solar system. In classical Neoplatonism this would have
been known as the DEMIURGE or the NOUS, capable in
its turn of projecting the WORLD SOUL which forms the essence of
the corporeal world we know – wherein we find ourselves in physical bodies on a
solid planet with the Solar Logos manifesting physically as a flaming nuclear
furnace and immediate source of light and life to our planet.
Where The Cosmic Doctrine makes an advance on
classical Neoplatonism is that it regards all the stars we see in the sky in
the same terms, each a Demiurge for its own particular system. However, the
main thrust of its teaching is confined to our own Earth, our own Sun and the
seven planes (from physical to spiritual) of which they are comprised.
The Cosmic Doctrine was reckoned by Dion Fortune, by her inner contacts
and by her Fraternity to be one of the most important works of mediation that
she ever did. After its initial reception in 1923 it became a confidential
study text for senior members of the Fraternity. Despite further pressure from the
inner planes in 1930 to do something about getting it published, owing to its
abstruse content this was easier said than done, and it was not until 1949 that
it eventually publicly appeared via Aquarian Press, edited by the Warden of the
time, Arthur Chichester. In 1966 this was succeeded by a slightly revised and
enlarged edition, containing additional material received principally by
Margaret Lumley Brown, who had largely taken over Dion Fortune`s mediumistic
function in the Fraternity after 1946. Despite an interim reprint by Helios
Books when Aquarian Press lost interest in the title, it eventually went out of
print, until, in 1995 the Society published a completely new edition.
This
was particularly interesting because it reverted to the original unedited text
of 1923, together with explanatory diagrams drawn up by Dion Fortune`s
colleague C.T.Loveday when the work had first been produced. This edition was
taken over and republished by the American publisher Samuel Weiser in 2000,
although unfortunately without correcting some of the idiosyncratic use of
apostrophes that had been sprinkled in by the largely amateur editing of the
SIL edition. However these remain a
minor, if irritating, blemish.
What follows is the result of much personal study of the
text over the past sixty years, taking account of variations in the editions,
for some of Arthur Chichester`s revisions were the result of a remarkable grasp
of the principles involved, and it would be a loss completely to discard them.
He had a particularly precise mind that enabled him to refine some of the
original terminology more accurately, such as substituting Planetary Being for
Planetary Spirit and Ray Exemplar for Star Logos. He also omitted, for reasons
that remain obscure, sections on the Laws of Impactation and Polarity that
however were restored in the later editions.
More understandably, he regretted allowing the continued
use of the term Negative Evil, as it could be greatly misunderstood. The
problem was, and still is, to find an alternative term at this level that means
opposition to Good without pejorative connotations. He rather inclined to the
term Negative Good.
There is indeed much in the terminology of The Cosmic
Doctrine that can mislead, particularly in the use of the word atoms, when
something very different from the current scientific use of the term is
intended. Again other terms were borrowed from various esoteric sources, via
Moriarty, but used with an entirely different meaning from the original.
However,
such problems were to be expected given the initial task of bringing through
ground breaking metaphysical teaching of this nature. We at least have the
advantage of being able to reflect upon the work at leisure, filling in the
gaps and pondering the difficulties, and there is sufficient value within the
work for it to form the basis for making an intuitive connection to the source
from whence these teachings issued. Or indeed respectfully to take up the role
of a “devil’s advocate”!
The term “Devil’s Advocate” referred originally to a
canon lawyer in the Roman Catholic church whose duty was to argue against the
canonisation or beatification of a person nominated to be a saint. In common
parlance it is someone who takes a position against an argument in order to
test its quality and identify weaknesses in its structure, either to improve,
to correct or even to disprove parts of it if necessary.
In the case of the Cosmic Doctrine,
because of its abstruseness and the less than ideal circumstances of its
reception, it seems to be a necessary discipline, particularly as there has
been a tendency to regard it almost as infallible holy writ. Dion Fortune can
hardly be blamed for such an attitude as she plainly states at the beginning of
her introduction to the work:
I
hope my readers will believe that these pages are the result of honest
experimentation and acquit me of charlatanry or attempted deception. I vouch
for neither the completeness or accuracy of the communications here recorded;
in my opinion, no extra weight should be attached to any ideas or teachings
because an unusual origin is claimed for them; any value which they possess as
a contribution to speculative thought or scientific knowledge must depend on
their intrinsic worth, not on their sphere of origin. The manner of their
obtaining is a psychological question and has no bearing on the problem of
their truth.
With this in mind, we should, as a
matter of duty, seek to test any statements that are made within the teachings
and face up to them and any possible errors, misconceptions or misuse of terms
that we may find. Some of these relate
to questionable terminology. Some to errors of scientific fact. Yet others to
internal contradictions within the script. Hence the rubric that the contents
are intended to train the mind as much as to inform it. This includes intelligent critical analysis.
It is not a matter of crying that “the Emperor has no clothes!” but taking
account of the fact that he might, here and there, not be quite properly
dressed!