by Dion Fortune
I sat on in the warm dusk, watching him pace his room, perfectly certain in my own mind that the restlessly pacing man and the one I had nearly run over were one and the same person, and wondering what experience of life it was that had graved those lines on his face and turned him into a restless tiger. For a woman with my experience of men it was not difficult to guess—that man had a sex problem, and a bad one. The untended clothes; the two rooms on the top floor of an obvious lodging-house, where he was probably a permanency; the rigid line of the close-held mouth, all told the same story. I suddenly saw him as a man living apart from his wife from no fault of his and making no compromise with his conscience. That poverty was not his problem was obvious from the fact that his clothes were good, though carelessly worn; he had, moreover, an air of being sure of himself that does not go with failure. That the situation was due to no fault of his I deduced from the rigid mouth and steady eyes—there was a man with a terrific sense of duty. Perhaps he had overdone the duty—women are strange things and do not always esteem a man for his virtues—yet I judged that a man with hands like that would not be impervious to feeling—on the contrary, he would be highly sensitive. Add that, then, to the vitality indicated by his quick, alert movements and the driving force obviously caged up in that rugged, stocky physique, and one had the explanation of the lined face and angry, unhappy eyes.
And this brought me back to my own problem, not a personal one, for I have no personal ones, but the problem presented to me by my work—I had, through my own life experience, to find the solution for just such tangles as were represented by that man. Straight, I felt sure of that, but frustrated by the circumstances of his life from all natural and decent human outlet, and frustrated because he was straight. What could one say to such a man? Tell him to run crooked? It probably wouldn't solve his problem if he did, and he was quite likely so placed that he daren't. It was a tragic problem, and one towards the solution of which, a religion that preaches the gospel of love offers no useful suggestions, unless we count counsels of perfection as useful suggestions.
Yet what suggestions had I, who am a pagan, to offer, that would be any more useful? For the man had to live in a Christian country and face the consequences of the wrath of the meek if he were caught transgressing, and Mr. Gladstone said, I believe it was in ‘84, that there is nothing more dreadful than being chased by a mad sheep; and he ought to know, for he was the great apostle of middle-class evangelical righteousness.
Between the Scylla of chastity and the Charybdis of promiscuity our much-suffering modem Ulysseses have to steer their way. A noted authority on the subject once gave a lecture on the limits of promiscuity. Personally I should have thought there were no limits when you once start that game. Equally, apparently, there are no limits to chastity, when once you start that game, either. For myself, I have always been of the opinion that the real secret of life lies in knowing when to stop, whether you are inclining to the right hand or to the left.
Yet supposing I were to come forward as priestess of nature and point out that it was possible to have too much of a good thing, what sort of a hearing would I get? Would I not simply defeat my own ends? How wise had been Those who sent me when They said: “Do not preach the Law but exemplify it.”
A cold breeze had sprung up with the dusk, and there seemed little point in sitting any longer on the bollard. I had got to face my new abode some time, and the sooner it was done, the sooner it would be over. There seemed little point in watching the man across the water any longer, either; he was still at his tiger pacing and seemed to have settled down to make a night of it. It was fortunate for me that the full moon had by now come clear of the housetops, for the wharf was unlit, and its rotting timbers were no place for my thin slippers.
I walked slowly down the length of the little street. Warm as the evening was, every window was decorously curtained. Behind one of them somebody was laboriously practising a hymn-tune on a harmonium. I wondered what kinds of lives were led there amid the aspidistras, and whether they harboured human beings who chafed against the restrictions of their circumstances and longed for a life that was denied them. There is always a generation's difference between a country's intelligentsia and its average, and another generation between the great centres of population and the provinces; and yet another between the provinces and the remote parts; so there is always close on a century of social conditions being lived out in the land at one and the same time; so it might well be that the general run of the folk behind those close-shut windows were smugly content, thanking God they were not as other men whose doings were chronicled in the Sunday papers; but it was probable, on the law of averages, that out of the twenty-odd houses even in that short street there was one whose curtains shrouded a little private hell.
As I turned to close the heavy door behind me, I looked down the length of the street and out across the water, and it seemed to me that even through the thickening river-mist I could still see the light in an upper window being passed and repassed by a restless shadow. Then I shot the heavy bolts and turned away and entered the great hall.
I paused with a flange of the double doors in either hand and looked within. Through the high, uncurtained eastern window the full moon was shining. The stained glass of the upper window glowed dimly with a shadowy glittering like the light in a black opal; through the clear glass of the line of windows that now filled the lower arches the moonlight came clearly and threw the sharp shadows of their leaded panes on to the piled cushions of the wide window-seats. A pale Persian rug lay on the dark polished floor, and in its centre stood a Moorish inlaid table on which was a broad and shallow glass bowl wherein water-lilies were floating. The moonlight fell full on this, and a spot of bright light focussed in the curve of the glass. The lilies lay colourless on the silver surface of the water, but underneath there were strange gleams of golden fire. I stood watching this softly-glimmering bowl across the wide hall, and being raised by the altar steps, it was on a level with my eyes. And as I watched, it seemed to me that mist was rising from the surface of the water and floating upwards like smoke in still air, and that within the mist there was a Light. Then I knew that all was well, for the power had come down; Isis was indwelling the temple I had prepared for Her, and in the language of the initiates, I was on my contacts.
CHAPTER SIX
It is a strange thing this question of contacts. I have told how my dwelling was as empty as outer space, and my soul as desolate as if I were astray between the stars. I went out, and all unthinking, went towards water, and returning, all unthinking, gazed at water, and lo! I was onto my contacts and power was pouring in, for these things always come through living channels and never by themselves. It was the change in me that made Isis come in, and not any change in Isis; yet Isis reached me through the water.
I left the windows uncurtained to the moon, but went over and stirred the smouldering fire into flame, for I was cold from the river mists, and there is little doubt that one has to supply the basis for all manifestations that come to one, and it depletes. I was cold and tired, and very glad that coffee in a copper pan stood among the embers. I drank it, and lighting a cigarette, lay back among the cushions of a deep chair, resting and watching the fire.
Now the moon and water are after the nature of women, but fire is after the nature of man, and as I gazed into the fire I thought of the man across the water. Then I pulled myself together. This will not do, I thought; I shall pick that man up telepathically if I go on like this. So resolutely dismissing him from my mind with a banishing gesture, I turned my thoughts onto my work and settled down to meditation.
I had got my place of working, and had got it contacted, and now my problem was to find the people who should work with me. I who had hitherto always had to rely on myself had now got to rely on other people, and this galled me. I was so accustomed to knowing that I had only to make the right conditions in myself and everything would follow, that it gave me a most unnerving sense of insecurity t
o realise that I was dependent upon other people's discernment, dedication, courage, or the lack of these, and in operative occultism nerve is everything. The factor of free will came in with the introduction of other actors in the drama, and the fact that I had made my own soul ready was not enough.
The thing I have always feared most in occult work is loss of nerve in the people I am working with. Treachery is quickly dealt with; inexperience does not matter if there is dedication; but loss of nerve is a thing that no one can cope with, and one that is not always easy to foresee. Those who promise most, often perform least when it comes to the point; one is used to that. The “brittle intellectuals who snap beneath a strain” are the ordinary stock-in-trade of “advanced” circles; one is used to them. But what is one to do with a person who appears to be free from inhibitions and then suddenly wings back to his childhood's faith? Back he goes to his mother's knee, and the age of reason is over for that incarnation. “Give me a child till he is seven,” said Ignatius of Loyola, “and anyone who likes can have him afterwards.” That grim saint seemed proud of the fact, but in my opinion it is nothing to boast about any more than that you have pulled the wings off a fly. For, after all, if a middle-aged person takes a child of seven and forces his own views on him, what chance has that child got of adapting to the changing conditions of life as the years go by? He starts life a generation behind the times, and by the time he is mature he is two generations behind the times. It is a grim business, this righteousness, and if we were not so used to it we would soon see the sort of Moloch we had got. I would carve over the door of every church and chapel in the land the words of Cromwell, himself a deeply religious man: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, conceive it possible you may be mistaken”, but I do not believe there is a church or a chapel in all the length and breadth of the land that would let me do so.
Probably the man walking the floor across the water was wrestling with inhibitions rammed into him before he was seven. For, after all, if his own wife wouldn't live with him, why shouldn't he live with somebody else's wife whose husband wouldn't live with her, and have a new deal all round and make everybody happy and comfortable? It would all be so simple if it were uncomplicated by the property value we attach to sex and the magical value we attach to virginity, both of which are irrational taboos judged by any standard except the sentimental ones. People break them, and as long as they do not get found out, nothing happens, any more than it happens when the savage, driven by hunger, eats a fish in which is the soul of his ancestor. Yet his tribe, if they learn of it, will drive him out into the wilderness to die; or his own conscience may hound him to his doom. We can see the mote in the eye of our Polynesian brother, but the beam in our own is the pillar of the temple.
There was nothing for me to do but watch and wait. I could not go and find the people I wanted; I had to wait for them to find me. This I knew they would do because I was sounding the call of Isis, vibrating it on the Inner Planes as a wireless operator sounds his key-call. Those who were on my wave-length would soon be picking it up, and then curious combinations of circumstances would do the rest. They would come from the ends of the earth like homing pigeons, picking up the call subconsciously and not knowing what it was that drew them. Then I should be faced by the problem of explaining myself to their conscious minds, for the conscious mind is often widely at variance with the subconscious mind. This was not going to be easy, for that which I had set out to do was so alien from ordinary concepts as to appear incomprehensible or even insane at first sight, and people fear what they do not understand. I have been greatly feared in my time, and it is only one remove from being hated. Some explanation, therefore, I must give if what follows is to be comprehensible.
I have made no secret of the fact that I am a pagan and worship Isis, which is but another name for Nature; in saying this, I do not deny the One God, the source of all being, for Nature is God made manifest; but I think there is a time for spiritual things and a time for natural ones, and we make a mistake when we overdo the spiritual. People observe this precept in practice, though they are afraid to say so; but I am not afraid to say so.
I place my trust in Nature and regard it as holy, and I represent it to myself under the glyph of Great Isis whose symbol is the moon. The cult of Great Isis I believe I have served down through the ages, and my task today is to stand for Nature against those who blaspheme Her and so wrong themselves.
But the herd-mind is ignorant and ruthless and powerful, and we who would return to Great Nature, the All-Mother, are driven down into the catacombs for our worship; and it seemed to me that, at the time of which I speak, my special task was to show the hidden way down into the catacombs—the way of the inward-looking eye, the psychic way through onto the inner planes where the worship could be conducted in safety and the worshippers escape the wrath of the mob. This we call the Door Without a Key, which is also the Door of Dreams; Freud found it, and he used it for the coming forth by day; but we who are initiates use it for going forth by night. I regret that I must speak in riddles concerning these things, but not otherwise can they be spoken of, and this book is full of riddles, anyway, so one more or less will not make much difference.
But to return to practical matters—I wished to work magic, and for this I had to have help, for the magical organisation is a pyramidal structure—at the apex the godhead on the inner planes, and on the physical earth, two to bring through the power—Shakta and Shakti, as the Hindus call them, and Shakti, be it remembered, equates with Isis. They understand these things in the East, but in the West the knowledge had been lost with the break-up of the Mysteries; but I knew these things, for I remembered the Mysteries.
I, who represented the Goddess, had to meet one who would be Her priest; then the work could begin and all else would follow. This was the first step, and the most difficult, for I could do nothing in the matter save make ready the place and wait. Isis would choose Her own priest.
So the days went by. Summer had passed into autumn, and autumn was sliding into a delayed winter, for it was marvellously mild for the time of year. I had come to love my new home but its furnishing was now finished and I no longer had occasion to rake the byways for lovely old oddments, so time began to hang heavily on my hands. I had not yet been able to bring myself to proceed with the preparation of my secret temple, where the really important part of my work would be done. The inspiration would not come; so knowing that it is useless to force these things, I set it aside and waited. The thrones, the cubical altar, the couch for trance and the great mirror for the mirror-working I already possessed, and I had some of the magical instruments, too, but nothing was consecrated.
I was doing a great deal of study, but the solitary working was wearisome and I was becoming unpolarised. No magician can work long alone. My chief amusement was watching the floods, for the river, when in flood, was a magnificent elemental being. I missed the open spaces and solitude to which I was accustomed and which were so necessary to me, and I disliked having people always about me and never being able to get away from them. I began to take my walks at night, and in fogs and bad weather, for then I often had the Embankment almost to myself. I would cross by Lambeth bridge, and walk to Blackfriars and back. Policemen used to shake their heads over me when I loomed up in my black mackintosh cape, and warn me of the awful fate in store for me if I persisted in perambulating at such unfashionable hours and in such inauspicious circumstances, but I have no nerves in such matters. I possess no valuables in the burglar's sense of the word, and walk faster than most, so I offer no temptation to the prowling bag-snatcher and very little to the prowling satyr, who is usually a person with a poor wind. Prowling satyrs, in my opinion, are vastly overrated as a source of danger to sensible women. No man risks a snub if he is sober, and if he is not, he can run neither far, fast nor straight.
However, before the light summer evenings arrived, I was to have an experience that looked as if it were going to make me review my opinions in these
matters, for I began to be aware, in that intuitive subconscious way in which one is aware of such things, that I was being followed from time to time. There is a sensitive spot on the nape of the neck, as every psychic knows, and if any one stares hard at it, one feels it. I had been vaguely uneasy on several occasions, but had not paid much attention, going on the principle that a cat may look at a king, and that as long as the individual concerned did not make himself an active nuisance, he had as good a right to the City of London as I had. I knew better than to look over my shoulder, but contented myself with giving my pursuer a run for his money, and if he arrived home as hot as I did, it must have done him a lot of good.
Nevertheless, the repetition of the incident had more effect on me than I was willing to admit. Moreover, the prolonged inactivity and solitude were telling on me. I could not understand why my work should be held up thus when everything was ready on the physical plane; my selfconfidence began to be shaken, and in magic self-confidence is everything. I caught myself wondering whether I was self-deluded, and though I destroyed the thought as soon as it arose, it was not a good sign that it should have arisen. I found I was becoming over-sensitised by the abnormal conditions of my life, and the individual who had annoyed me by following me on the Embankment had got woven into the fabric of my dreams. I was dreaming more frequently, too, than was my wont, and though my dreams were of scenery, and perfectly innocuous, I was not pleased to find that the feeling of being followed persisted in them, even though I had no fear of my uninvited companion, whether in the flesh or in the imagination. Nevertheless I felt that something must be done in the matter. It did not do to let one's mind get out of hand like this, especially in such work as I was doing, so I determined to make a start on the task that I had hitherto postponed, and get my secret temple into working order.
