Moon Magic

by Dion Fortune

  As I have said before, it was necessary for me to have a place for magical working that should be kept for that purpose and nothing else, and into which no one not concerned in that working should set foot. There was a good-sized cellar under the building in which the heating apparatus had been installed; it was much larger than was needed for this purpose, so I decided to get it partitioned off and use the inner part for my magical temple.

  I sent for the builder to come and look at it and give me an estimate, and Mr. Meatyard, stoking the boiler, leant on his shovel and listened to what was going on, for he regarded himself as absolutely one of the family, as in fact he was, for that little man knew a lot more in his intuitive way than any one would have given him credit for. After the builder had put up his note-book and departed, my gentleman char approached me in a mysterious manner, as if he were inviting me to participate in a crime, and whispered huskily:

  “As it ever occurred to you, mum, that there's a lot o’ waste space in this place?”

  “No,” I said, “it had not struck me.”

  “It's square outside, ain't it? Well, it ain't square inside.” And then I remembered that the hall itself was considerably higher than the chancel, as high again, to be precise; consequently there must be, over the chancel, a room of approximately the same size. This was indeed a gift from the gods if we could locate the entrance to it, but I was not minded to go burrowing about the building at random, like the explorers of the Great Pyramid, for my abode had not been built by the Pharaohs, and I doubted if it would stand such treatment. However Mr. Meatyard had his views on that point also, and directed me to the cupboard in the corner of my bedroom, which had once been the women's dressing room, and we found, as he had long suspected, that it had a false back.

  Mr. Meatyard fetched the chopper with which he split the kindling and smashed the flimsy matchboarding to splinters and revealed a dusty stair going up into darkness. We went up it, and came, as expected, into a room over the chancel, a perfectly inhabitable place, with a fireplace and cobwebbed window, scantily (though no doubt adequately) furnished with an old double bed and a quantity of bottles.

  “I allus reckoned,” said Mr. Meatyard, “that nobody could ‘ave bin as good as ‘e looked.”

  But this was not all. In the corner was another cupboard. Mr. Meatyard tapped its back.

  “Same as before,” he said. “Shall we ‘av it out?”

  Out it came, and again there was a stair winding up into darkness.

  “Didn't trust nobody, ‘e didn't,” said my retainer, and led the way up. We found ourselves in what was obviously the space beneath the lantern, but whereas it should have contained no more than the pitch of the roof, there were ten-foot walls before the pitch started. It was windowless, and floor, walls, beams and everything were all painted jet black.

  “Well, I dunno wot ‘e thought ‘e was playin’ at,” said Mr Meatyard, surveying this spot in perplexity. I knew, however—he was playing at the same thing I was playing at.

  We descended from this not particularly well-omened retreat, and I for one was glad to get back to the normal light of day. There was something about the prophets antics that had left a bad smell behind. The difference between his paganism and my paganism was the difference between Priapus and Pan.

  I had Mr. Meatyard sweep the place out, and burn the bed, and then I did an exorcism and a thorough one. The room over the chancel would do to hold magical equipment, which is bulky, and would also serve as a robing-room, and the octagonal apartment under the lantern would be the temple. I had a good deal of gear already, brought over from my flat and stored in the gallery, and Mr. Meatyard and I got it up those narrow stairs between us, for I did not desire the intrusion of any strangers in this matter.

  “Cor, mum, yer’ strong!” he murmured, mopping his streaming brow after we had lifted the big mirror into position.

  So we got everything into position. The black walls needed nothing but varnishing to give them a lustre. Upon the black floor I put a heavy black carpet to deaden sound in the room below. From the central boss hung the bronze lamp of a mosque, bearing the Perpetual Light, and under it stood the cubical altar that represents the universe. At the angle opposite the door I placed the great mirror for the mirror-working, and between it and the altar was my long, narrow black couch like a bier for the trance work and meditation, flanked on either side by the Pillars of Equilibrium, the black and the silver pillars. Round the seven sides were the symbols of the seven planets; the eighth side, where was the door, represents the Element of Earth and is without a symbol, for we leave earth behind when we enter into the cosmic temple. That was all, save for the two thrones on low platforms that faced each other across the breadth of the room with the altar between them, and which are used for working in polarity. On the altar were the Elemental Weapons governing Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and in front of the mirror hung the symbol of the Goddess—a lunar crescent with the horns upwards. It was all very simple—no magical names or numbers, and save for the planetary symbols, no colours save black and silver—just the essentials of ceremonial magic minus all the trappings that are needed to impress the imagination of those who do not know what magical working really is. Then I sent for a friend to come and help me with the consecration.

  She came, and was greatly intrigued and frankly envious, openly lamenting that the exigencies of family life prevented her from discovering derelict churches and derelict cabmen and dedicating her life to the pursuit of occultism.

  I am always greatly amused at the manner in which outsiders expect the mysterious adept of the occult Orders to live their lives. They seem to think the bow is always bent. If it is, they may take it from me that it is a fake—a theatrical property, such as little Cupid's twang in a pantomime. A good bow has a forty pound pull, even in archery, and the tension on the whole being that launches the magical arrow is very much more than the psychic equivalent of forty pounds. Is any one going to pose with that bow bent for all his days and nights? It cannot be done. Something would snap. So I go in for cooking as a fine art and make my own clothes, for it has always been a tradition for the initiates to be craftsmen, a tradition that lives on even amid the Lost Secrets of modern Masonry.

  It is a great temptation to use the facile short cuts of technical terms, but if I said that my friend and I started work on the building of the astral temple, it would convey nothing. Let me therefore explain what we did and why we did it. I cannot answer for what other occultists do, especially in fiction; nor do I always know why they do it, and I sometimes doubt if they do either; I can only answer for myself and those of my own Tradition.

  First of all, the place of magical working is a place set apart and concealed, for no one must know where it is because it is vulnerable to thought. Secondly, it has to be equipped with the symbols used in the working and nothing else, because it is a place where the mind has to concentrate. Thirdly, it has to have the astral temple built over it, and that is the really important part; and this is how we do it—we sit down and imagine it—nothing more—but—it is the imagination of a trained mind!

  So we sat down, my friend and I, in that dark octagonal room up in the pitch of the roof, and we pictured the temple of Isis as we had known it near the Valley of the Kings in the great days of the cult. We pictured it in its broad outline, and then we pictured it in all its detail, describing what we saw till we made each other see it more and more clearly. We pictured the approach through the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes; the great pylon gate in the temenos wall; the court with its lotus pool; shadowed colonnades, and the great hall with its pillars. All these we pictured just as they have been in every temple of the Goddess from time immemorial. And as we did this, alternately watching and describing—the fantasied scenes began to take on the semblance of objective reality and we found ourselves in them—no longer looking at them with the mind's eye, but walking about in them. After that there was no more effort of concentration for the astral vision took cha
rge. We had gone up the avenue of sphinxes, and under the great pylon, and across the court of the lotus pool in our imagination, but we passed through the bronze doors into the great hall in actuality.

  Overhead hung the lamp of perpetual light that is in every temple of the Mysteries. Underfoot was the circle of the Zodiac inset in the marble. At the far ends of the long hall the high seats of the priests gleamed faintly, opposite us the heavy folds of a curtain concealed the holy of holies; beside it, hidden in the recess of the arch, was a sloping passageway that led underground from this temple to another—a temple in the distant hills, cut out like a tomb from the living rock, and down this passage the water for the lotus pool ran in a conduit, for there was a spring in that underground temple. It was a temple of a more ancient faith than ours, being pre-dynastic. It must, I think, have belonged to the black Hamitic people who preceded the red Egyptian stock, for its Goddess was of black basalt and Her features were negroid. Before Her great knees was a table altar, and there was a channel in it to take the blood, which showed that it had been used for sacrifice, and as it was of the size of a man, we knew what sacrifices it had been used for. This temple had fallen into desuetude in my day, and though there was a tradition of its existence, its entrance was lost beneath the sand and no way in remained save the underground passage known only to the senior priesthood, who knew, too, that it was back in these dark and crude beginnings that the roots of our cult drew their sustenance. It was in this temple that the higher priests were made, but still fewer knew that.

  The great floor of the hall stood empty, but we of the temple knew that it was not empty, for here the astral form of the mummified Isis lay as in a sarcophagus. We took our places on the thrones, my friend and I, she down at the far end on the left, and I on the high dais to the right, as befitted my status, and sitting there in the darkness, we watched, in a vision within a vision, the mummified form of Great Isis become visible.

  Then, that part of the work finished, I said to my friend: “Shall we go to the Black Temple?”

  She nodded her acquiescence, and I came down from the dais and joined her before the low entrance to the underground passage. But even as I put out my hand to raise the curtain, we realised simultaneously that we were not alone.

  I said to my friend:

  “Do you see anything?”

  “Yes,” she said. “One of the priests is here.”

  “Can you see who it is?” said I, for she was a better psychic than I was.

  “I think it is the sacrificial priest,” she said.

  Now the sacrificial priest would have been entitled to come with us to the Black Temple, for that was where his work lay; but he was a grim and sinister figure, and we did not particularly want him. The sacrificial priests were always priests who had committed some serious crime and who were given the chance of expiating it thus. They were shunned by the other priests, though by virtue of their office they stood high in the hierarchy; so though we did not want the company of the sacrificial priest, we could not refuse him, for he had as good a right to go to the Black Temple as we had, who were high priestesses.

  But as soon as we began to descend the stairs we knew there was something wrong.

  “That isn't the sacrificial priest,” said my friend. “It is someone's astral projection. You haven't got this place properly sealed.”

  Now I pride myself on my sealings. What I exorcise is exorcised, and stays exorcised, and I was a little inclined to be annoyed at this, for I could have sworn the seals were on. Privately I thought that she had been guilty of mind-wandering, and had thought of someone, and so called him up. She apparently thought the same of me, for she said:

  “Did you get any break in your concentration?”

  “I did not,” I said curtly, for this was impudence, I being very much her senior.

  “Well, he has to do with you not me,” she said. “Have you given anyone leave to come into the temple?”

  “No one,” I replied.

  “Do you think it is someone you intend to work with? For if you had been thinking about inviting him, even if you had not actually done it, if he is a good psychic, he might have sensed it and been able to come in. As a matter of fact,” she went on, “I got the impression that there was someone already here when we came into the Hall of the Sphinxes. I thought I saw someone kneeling and worshipping in front of the Holy of Holies.”

  “That is unlikely,” I answered; for although the populace would kneel like that, a priest wouldn't, and no one but a priest could do the astral projection. My friend admitted the improbability, and we left the mystery unsolved and went down to the supper Mr. Meatyard had left for us in the great hall.

  That night I dreamed, and dreamed with extraordinary vividness, that I was walking over rolling grey hills with the sea away below cliffs on my right. I was alone at first, and was enjoying my dream, when it suddenly occurred to me that I might dream of my unknown pursuer, and even as the thought passed through my mind—a dream within a dream—I thought I heard footsteps behind me, and for the first time I knew fear. I quickened my pace, and soon found myself flying over the ground in a nightmarish effort to escape, but I could hear my pursuer coming up behind, drawing nearer and nearer. I completely lost my head, but even in my panic I knew that my pursuer was not evil, and yet I fled in fear and would not let myself be overtaken. For a moment it seemed to me that the dream was beginning to turn into vision and I was about to learn something very important, when my pursuer put forth a sudden effort and caught up with me, and I felt his hand take hold of a fold of my cloak.

  I woke, bathed in perspiration, with the sound of my own scream in my ears.

  To rid myself of the horrible atmosphere left behind by this incubus I got out of bed and went into the great hall where the remains of our supper still lay on the table, drank what was left of the milk and ate a sandwich, for there is nothing like food to close the psychic centres. The nightmarish feeling wore off. It was a warm night, and I went and sat in the window, watching the moon.

  I was very perplexed. All was not well with my work, I knew that. First the long delay, which showed I was off my contacts, and then the repeated penetrating of my sphere of sensation by an intruder. That it was no subconscious fantasy was shown by the fact that my friend had also perceived the presence of an intruder. I made up my mind that I would go away for a holiday, and go away at once.

  But next day, when I tried to put my resolution into practice, there was a most curious subconscious blocking and resistance within myself, so I abandoned it. There was more in the situation than I realised, I saw that; but there was nothing I could do save wait for it to clarify.

  I had been over a year now in my place of working, and had somehow settled down to accept my vigil as a matter of course. The police too had accepted my nocturnal habits as a matter of course, and for some time past, though I still dreamt of him at intervals, I had seen nothing of my pursuer. Then, one night of fog, I knew he was behind me again. I hastened, but could not throw him off, for there was no traffic to delay him at the crossings. Once, in fact, I felt him almost at my elbows as I paused on an island for a gap in the traffic; this was more than he had ever dared to do before, and if I had seen one of my policemen friends I should have stopped and spoken to him. My pursuer, however, evidently thought also that he had gone too far, and dropped behind, though I was certain he was still there, and when I came to cross Lambeth Bridge, I knew he was there, for I could distinctly hear his footsteps behind me. It was not too pleasant, being followed like that across the foot-bridge in thick fog, for both banks were invisible, and there was nothing to be seen save the swirling leaden water on either hand and the great chains disappearing into darkness overhead. My pursuer's footsteps rang close behind me, drawing steadily closer, and there was not another sound in all the fog-blanketed darkness.

  It is very easy to open the higher consciousness in a fog for one is cut off from the world and alone with the elemental powers, and it seemed
to me as I went through the darkness with the water beside me, that I was really going down the long underground passage that led to the temple of the Black Isis, and that behind me followed the sacrificial priest. Yet I did not think that he would force me down onto the grim altar he served, but rather that he desired me.

  This, of course, may have been that I knew what manner of urge it is that sets men to following women through the streets, even if they mean them no harm; and it seemed to me, in the strange exalted condition which was coming upon me as I fled through the darkness ahead of those pursuing footsteps, that I knew what was in the mind of the man who was following me, and that he would do me no injury, nor were the imaginings of his heart crudely evil. Perhaps I was to him a creature of dream, and he hardly realised there was a woman of flesh and blood under the cloak, to be alarmed by his pursuit.

  However, I arrived unmurdered on the Surrey side, and made all speed for home. My way now led through populous streets, and I could not tell whether my pursuer were still on my heels or not, but thought not. I had my latch-key all ready to get the door open quickly, and slipped through into the warm, scented darkness of my home with a sigh of relief. But even as I did so, I felt the door thrust open behind me, and knew that my pursuer had crossed the threshold and was there inside with me, alone in the darkness. I was really badly alarmed then, for I knew that unless I kept my head I was in for an unpleasant, possibly a dangerous, experience. However, I had myself well in hand, and threw my visitor into a complete panic by turning my electric torch full on his face. Imagine my amazement, not to say disgust, when I found that he was none other than the man I had nearly run over that day in Grosvenor Road and who had played so great a part in my imaginings ever since!

  I realised immediately, however, that I had been right in my belief that he was not dangerous. I have never seen a man so utterly taken aback and ashamed of himself. I bid him go, and he went like a flash.