Moon Magic

by Dion Fortune

  Malcolm's reaction helped to restore to me my sense of reality; the gears engaged and the magic began. I was not fully the priestess yet, however. I was still driving myself on willpower. I intended to work Malcolm up to the pitch of emotional intensity when he would touch those reserves of energy that give the maniac his strength and the artist his frenzy of creation. Then there would come off from him the magnetism that is used in magic and without which magic is not. It was not difficult to do, for I could take him along the line of his natural cleavage—his feeling for me and his memories of his past lives; but to hold him steady on the crest of the wave as it rose to breaking, and cross the bar between the planes on a great emotional crisis was entirely a matter of nerve and concentration, and if either failed, that was the end of Malcolm; it would not kill him, but if the fuse blows at that tension, the man is a burnt-out cinder thereafter. Then the work done, I had to bring him back to normal, stepping down the power and stepping it down; linking up the dissociated ends of consciousness so that there should be no gaps; easing him back into his body so quietly, so steadily, that no sign of the tension should show, and restoring him finally to perfect normality, ready to take up his day's work—hic labor, hoc opus est, and the more skillfully one does it, the less people realise what has been done.

  I laid my hands on the altar and bid Malcolm copy me in all I did. The broad, perfectly proportioned hands with their slightly spatulate fingers, beautiful in their strength and sensitiveness, appeared in the circle of light. My hands are curious, they are not a pair; one is a man's hand, and one is a woman's, and on them I had the magnetised rings that give power. On the black velvet of the altar cloth, within the small circle of light thrown by the sacred lamp, lay the two pairs of hands—the virile, corded, muscular hands of Malcolm, and my smooth white woman's hands with their pinkstained nails. They were laid there in dedication and sacrifice; there is a peculiar sense of helplessness when the hands are laid on the altar; one is so completely at the mercy of the powers one invokes, so completely negative, opening one's soul to them; then, as the power comes in, one shares in it and becomes powerful once more. I felt the power beginning to rise, and called up my reserves from the earth centre and brought them to their focus in the third eye, the concealed astral eye, that is in the centre of the forehead, and felt the twisting sensation as it began to stir. I pinned Malcolm with my eyes as a snake pins a bird, for one has to be ruthless in magic, and then raised my hands and threw the power at him; threw it in hard, threw it in crushingly, because I had to break down his inhibitions and reach the deeper levels. I saw him quiver as he felt the force, but his eyes met mine unwaveringly and his hands came up opposite mine, palm parallel to palm, a foot apart. He could not bend back his wrists as I did, but the hands were absolutely steady and the arms behind them like bars of steel. Malcolm was a man of power, steady as a rock; single-pointed; unreservedly dedicated; I could not have asked for a better man to work with.

  I had to magnetise Malcolm and make him see me as the priestess, so I began the age-old chant that declared my power:

  I am she who ere the earth was formed

  Was Rhea, Binah, Ge.

  I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea

  Out of whose deeps life wells eternally.

  Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth -

  Giver of life and bringer-in of death;

  Hera in heaven, on earth Persephone;

  Diana of the ways and Hecate -

  All these am I and they are seen in me,

  The hour of the high full moon draws near;

  I hear the invoking words, hear and appear -

  Shaddai el Chai and Rhea, Binah, Ge -

  I come unto the priest who calleth me -

  As I chanted and vibrated the words I moved my arms in the signs that correspond, and Malcolm, unable to follow these, dropped his hands to his sides and stood still. I made the signs of space and sea and inner earth; of hailing Aphrodite and chaste Diana of the moon, and finally the bat-wings of Hecate—for unless one can handle the dark aspect of a force, one cannot handle the bright—and in the end I gave Malcolm the full salute of a priest, and I think he knew it.

  We faced each other, priest and priestess. Malcolm had to stand up to the forces as best he could; I might not temper them to him any longer. Then began the voice that is not my voice, the most tremendous form of mediumship there is—the cosmic mediumship that brings through the gods:

  “I am the veiled Isis of the shadows of the sanctuary. I am she that moveth as a shadow behind the tides of death and birth. I am she that cometh forth by night and no man seeth my face. I am older than time and forgotten of the gods. No man may look upon my face and live, for in the hour he parteth my veil, he dieth.”

  Malcolm looked into the eyes of Isis.

  “I am quite willing to die,” he said.

  “Kneel down.”

  “There are two deaths by which men die, the greater and the lesser. The death of the body and the death of initiation, and of these two, the death of the body is the lesser. The man who looks upon the face of Isis dies, for the Goddess takes him. They that die thus go by the path of the well-head that is beside the white cypress.”

  Unbidden, Malcolm folded his arms on the altar and laid his head on them.

  “He that would die to the birth, let him look upon the face of the Goddess in this mystery. Be ye far from us, O ye profane, for one goes by the path that leads to the well-head that is beside the white cypress.”

  Malcolm seemed asleep, and the intoning voice went on:

  O Isis veiled and Rhea, Binah, Ge,

  Lead us to the well of memory;

  The well-head where the pale white cypress grows,

  By secret twilight paths that no man knows.

  The shadowy path dividing into three -

  Diana of the ways and Hecate

  Selene of the moon, Persephone.

  The high full moon in the mid-heavens shines clear;

  O hear the invoking words, hear and appear!

  Shaddai el Chai and Rhea, Binah, Ge -

  The room had disappeared and I was standing in a vast underground cave with dark water at my feet. Before me, Malcolm knelt with bowed head and raised arms, but the altar no longer being there, the raised arms seemed to express supplication. I myself was no longer robed in the dull black of velvet that fits all the negative forces, but in soft, shimmering filmy indigo, blue and purple; upon my head was the horned moon, and about my hips the starry girdle of the constellations, and I knew that I was Isis in her underworld aspect whom the Greeks called Persephone, for all the goddesses are one goddess, personified under different modes.

  There was nothing of the human left about me. I was vast as the universe; my head among the stars; my feet on the curve of the earth as it swung under me in its orbit. Around me, in translucent space, stood the stars, rank upon rank, and I was of their company. Beneath me, very far beneath me, all Nature lay spread like a green-patterned carpet. Alone on the globe that soared through space I stood, with the kneeling man before me, and there were none others in all creation save he and I—I, the ALL-WOMAN, and he, he Archetypal MAN, and the whole of the manifested universe was summed up in the relationship between us.

  I was in my calm, negative, underworld aspect as Queen of the Dead, ruler of the Kingdoms of Sleep. In death men come to me across the dark river, and I am the keeper of their souls until the dawn. But there is also a death-in-life, and this likewise leadeth on to re-birth, for there is a turning-within of the soul whereby men come to Persephone.

  I am also the Great Deep, whence life arose, to which all shall return at the end of an æon. Herein do we bathe in sleep, sinking back into the primordial deep, returning to things forgotten before time was, and the soul is renewed, touching the Great Mother. Whoso cannot return to the Primordial hath no roots in life—they are the living dead who are orphaned of the Great Mother.

  I was that Great One in her most benign aspect, tranquil, broodin
g, as a woman broods over her unborn child. I was the Giver of Sleep, blessing the weary man before me with my great gift. He had come back to me to be a child again, as an over-wrought man always does, as he needs must do if he is to renew his strength to battle with life; for unless a woman can brood him as I brooded Malcolm that night, his nerves will wear bare of insulation as a frayed wire. It is only when for love's sake she can make him as the unborn that he renews his strength, for to him she is the soul of earth wherein are his deepest roots. The more dynamic the man, the more dependent is he upon his earth-contacts in his woman. These are not the contacts of passion; they are older, more primal than that; they go back to the days when humanity was as yet unborn from the earth-soul. I was his anima, his underworld contact, his link with most ancient earth and things primordial wherein are the roots of strength; through me he could touch them as he was powerless to do alone, for man is of the sun and stars and fire; but woman is of dark space and dark earth and dark, primordial water.

  As that man who was all men knelt before me, I gazed upon him, and my own nature rose within me like a tide with the divine compassion of the All-Woman, and I stretched my arms with their wing-like draperies over him and blessed him, and the shimmering folds of blue and purple closed round him like a cloak and I drew him down to my kingdom.

  Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and sink deep,

  Into eternal and primordial sleep.

  Sink down, forget, be still and draw apart

  Into the inner earth's most secret heart.

  Drink of the waters of Persephone,

  The secret well beside the sacred tree.

  As I sang I wove about him with my draperies, and all became dark and still and warm as the womb of Time, and he became as the unborn in their prenatal sleep. So was he rested. And as his rest deepened, he was vitalised.

  Then at that deepest level, I fed his soul. Deliberately, knowing full well there must be repercussions in life and that I must pay, but knowing also that he would not have the strength to do that which I required of him if I did otherwise, I made the magnetic link between us by which power should flow—the power of woman; not the bright radiance of Aphrodite, but the dark, brooding warmth of the womb of Great Isis who is Nature. She is the giver of the strength of which in her Aphrodite aspect she is the caller-forth.

  Malcolm would be dependent on me from henceforth, but then, if the truth were known, he was dependent on me already, for he had known me in my Persephone aspect in his sleep when he had dreamt that he lay with his head on a woman's shoulder.

  And so, accepting the inevitable, I sang to him -

  I am that secret queen, Persephone,

  All tides are mine, and answer unto me,

  Tides of the airs, tides of the inner earth,

  The secret silent tides of death and birth -

  Tides of men's souls, and dreams, and destiny -

  Isis veiled and Rhea, Binah, Ge.

  Then in my vision I drew him to me as he knelt so that his head rested against my breast, and gave him peace.

  The power began to ebb. The outlines of the room came up waveringly through the moon-mist as if through deep, dark water and I began to feel my human personality again. Malcolm still knelt before me at the altar and seemed to be asleep. I could see his greying red hair in the dim circle of light; I could see one broad hand lying flaccid on the black velvet; the other I could not see, for his cheek rested on it as he slept. I have never seen any being so utterly relaxed, and yet he knelt upright at the altar, held there by his own unconscious will. I had to bring that man back, and he had a long way to come.

  Slowly, gently, for he must not come back too fast, I reversed the strokings with which I had soothed him to sleep—strokings that never touched him, and were all the more powerful on that account.

  He raised his head and looked at me dazedly. Unsteadily he got to his feet, holding on by the altar.

  “Where am I?” he said.

  “You are back here with me,” said I, “in my home, where you are happy.”

  “Yes, I am always happy there,” he replied mechanically, for his mind was not yet fully back with him.

  “Now I am going to cut the power and bring all back to normal. Hold out your hands—hold them thus.”

  I stretched forth mine, bent back at the wrists, and brought my flat palms against his, and as I did so the power broke. It snapped back like a piece of elastic, and we were back to normal, Malcolm and I, staring at each other.

  “My God!” said Malcolm, and passed his hand over his forehead and shook the sweat off it in a shower of drops.

  “How do you feel?” said I.

  “Feel? I feel as if I'd had ten turkish baths one after the other. I'm one mass of sweat! What have you done to me? Let's sit down on something.”

  He reeled unsteadily to the couch and dropped down on it.

  His hand went up to his collar.

  “I'm going to take this off. I don't care what I look like.”

  Off came the sodden rag and was thrown on the floor. Even the ends of his tie were dark with moisture.

  “My Lord!” said Malcolm, “Phew!”

  He mopped his face and neck till the handkerchief joined his collar on the floor.

  “I'm going to borrow a bath-towel off you when we get downstairs,” he said.

  “Now you see why we work in robes, and strip beneath the robe?” I said.

  “My Lord, I should think I do! No suit would stand this sort of treatment very often. May I take my coat off?”

  I handed him a small cloth I kept up there for cleaning the ritual instruments, and entirely unselfconscious and oblivious of me, for he was not yet fully back in his body, he sat there on the black altar of sacrifice mopping his broad chest, looking exactly as if he had been taking part in a fight.

  I opened a cupboard in the wall, took out a bottle, and poured its contents into a long glass.

  “Drink that.” I said.

  “What is it?” said he, eyeing it suspiciously, for he was a strict teetotaller.

  “Apple-juice” said I, “unfermented.” “Alcohol is best left alone on occasions like this.”

  “It's best left alone on most occasions, in my opinion,” said Malcolm. “At any rate, it's best left alone by me.”

  The apple-juice, however, went down in one continuous stream.

  “Replacements,” said Malcolm. “My Lord, I needed that!”

  The intake of fluid rapidly restored him to normal, and he began to be aware of the appearance he was presenting.

  “My dear lady” he began, and catching sight of his bare chest, hastily buttoned his shirt. He recovered his collar from the floor, considered it, shook his head sadly, and thrust it into his trouser pocket.

  “Can't tidy up. Can't apologise. Can't do anything. What actually happened? I went to sleep, didn't I?”

  “You went sound asleep. Did you dream?”

  “I think I must have. There seem to be vague shadows of dreams floating about still. I only hope I behaved with a reasonable amount of discretion.”

  “You never moved.”

  That's a comfort. I suppose you know what you're about. God help you if you don't. I'm no light-weight.”

  “If you sufficiently revived, shall we go downstairs?”

  “Oh yes, I'm reviving nicely.” He rose. “Lord, I'm unsteady on my feet! I don't seem to know where they are. By gum, now I know how the hysterical paralytics feel!” He dropped back on the couch and tested his own knee-jerks. “That's all right,” he said with a sigh of relief.

  He rose cautiously and made his way to the door.

  “I'm going first down these stairs, if you don't mind. I'm not going to risk falling on top of you.”

  The enforced activity, however, rapidly re-coordinated him, and by the time he reached the bottom of the flight he was back to normal.

  “My Lord, you do that to me often, and you'll have a corpse to bury!” he said.

  “Not in the least,�
� said I. “It will do you all the good in the world. Would you like to have a wash?”

  “I'd like to have a bath,” said he.

  I dispatched him to the bathroom, armed with my largest bath-towel, and in due course he reappeared, pink as a cherub, clad in his own trousers as to his lower half, but having borrowed my bath-robe for his upper half.

  “Next time I come to see you I shall bring a spare shirt,” he said.

  I knew he would be hungry, and had prepared a good meal, but I had not bargained for the wolf I found myself entertaining. Malcolm, behind his grim exterior, was simply a big schoolboy. What his learned colleagues made of him, I could not imagine, nor how even his brains had taken him to the position he held in a profession where social savoir faire counts for so much. It speaks volumes for the tremendous driving-force of the man that he had been able to overcome the innumerable obstacles of his own creating. But the more I saw of Malcolm, the more I liked him. There was that sterling sincerity about him, that utter good will and selflessness. I expect the firstclass men in his profession appreciated him, but how the not-quite-firstclass must have hated him!

  At the conclusion of the meal he pushed back his chair from the table.

  “I must be going. If I settle down in that big chair of yours, I shall go to sleep and be here for the night.”

  “It wouldn't matter if you did, so far as I am concerned.”

  “It wouldn't matter so far as I am concerned, either, feeling about you like I do at the moment. You've tamed me, Miss Le Fay.”

  “How are you feeling now?”