Daath and Moon Magic
He knew that, deep in him, was a level that had never been separated from the earth soul, … and he knew that he too, at the spinal level, belonged to Nature, and that through the channel of that hollow rod Nature would use him. 43
Moon Magic is the culminating book and takes up the themes of the other three in a deeper way. Here secrets are revealed and we learn about the mystery of the priesthood: what it is to be an adept and the path that leads to this place. There is much more in this book than is immediately apparent, so repeated and close reading will bear fruit. Here Dion Fortune reprises the themes of the other three books. We see Rupert introduced to the mysteries out of a loveless marriage; we see him learn the art of working with inner images and participating in a ritual of renewal. The difference in this book is that the mysteries are revealed, and we are taken forward into the depths. This book is said to have been finished mediumistically after Fortune’s death, and in a way this is the book that is concerned with the mysteries of death. The story congregates around the spheres thus:
• Malkuth is Rupert Malcolm having gone as far as he can in his unhappy marriage with his disabled wife and frustrated life, and Lilith Le Fay seeking to manifest the greater mysteries.
• Yesod is the embankment and the river that is both the Thames and the Nile.
• Tiphareth is Lilith’s house—the converted church.
• Daath is the upper room of the church in which the mysteries are celebrated.
The key process considered in this book is the consecration of a man and woman as priest and priestess and their coming together in an act of union and blessing. This is the sacred marriage of The Goat-Foot God on a much higher arc, the fulfilment of the images of The Sea Priestess, and the healing of The Winged Bull. Step by step we are shown the whole process, and as each of the figures in it represent aspects of ourselves, so we must carefully consider even the small details.
The sephirah Daath represents the fusion of opposites, the fall into the Abyss—the experience of being lost in the labyrinth of discursive reasoning and simultaneously the transforming movement into the non-dual. The whole of the work is reprised, explained, and taken into powerful new depths. Daath in some ways holds the mystery of the embodied creative imagination, and as we follow the story of the novel we are shown how to work with it, how to develop it, and finally the mystery of death, union, and resurrection.
The book is set in London but perhaps not the London we know. This is the archetypical London of Arthur Machen and Charles Williams: 44 the polis (city-state) as the Byzantines would have known it—that is, as the emblem and container of the greater universe. We begin in the centre of the city on the Embankment just down river from Cleopatra’s Needle, and unusually this book has two point-of-view characters: Dr. Rupert Malcolm, a consultant physician, expert in the nervous system, and Lilith Le Fay, a magical adept seeking to work with the greater mysteries. In The Sea Priestess she works with Wilfred in order to embody her magical self, and in Moon Magic we meet this self in expression and pursuing her work in the world.
She is significantly renamed from The Sea Priestess as Lilith, Adam’s dark and shadowy first wife. Therefore in the background of the book are the intertwined myths of Eden and Isis, through the operating adept bearing the name Lilith and working the mysteries of the Black Isis. As we explore the story, we will see how both mysteries come to completion in the final working of Lilith and Rupert in the upper room. In the mysteries of both traditions the issues of fragmentation and loss of perfection are addressed, and in both mysteries the dark divine feminine is the salvic force. There are resonances of the Song of Songs 45 in this book, as well as the unfolding of the temple forms and practices of the Black Isis.
Rupert Malcolm and his invalid wife are in effect a modern Adam and Eve living in the world of separation and fragmentation, unable to make a true marriage with each other: enter Lilith, Adam’s first wife and servant of Isis.
At the beginning, however, both Rupert Malcolm and Lilith are struggling with the difficulties of Malkuth. In Rupert’s case, added to an unhappy marriage and sexual frustration is having gone as far in his profession as he can and not knowing the way forward—a classic mid-life crisis, in effect. In Lilith’s case, she is trying to find a place and partner to work the greater mysteries so that she can bring back the energy of the Black Isis into the world.
There are three major sections to this book:
• A Study in Telepathy: told from Rupert’s perspective and within which we learn the ways of dreaming in inner and outer life. Here the journey from the outer world through the underworld path to Yesod and onwards through the alchemical path to the temple in Tiphareth is described.
• The Moon Mistress: told from the point of view of Lilith, and here we are trained in the mysteries. The process Rupert has been going through is described here from the other perspective. We witness the stages of the incarnation of the priestess: finding and creating the temple, entering the dreams of the priest, and drawing him to her.
• The Door Without a Key: told from both points of view, through which we enter into the mysteries of Isis and return with Lilith to the primordial garden.
These phrases can be used for contemplation to help remind us of the deep structure of the book.
A Study in Telepathy
We are encouraged to feel with Rupert his profound sense of frustration and being blocked. We find him at a graduation ceremony with his peers, stripping off his robes, leaving students and faculty, and walking across London to his rooms in Pimlico beside the Embankment. If we are not careful we can miss the threshold that is crossed here, as he abandons his academic gown and breaks his normal routine. For the first time he sets off for the Embankment and begins to engage in “a study in telepathy.”
When Rupert removes his robes and walks out, heading towards the river, he is walking away from his everyday life into the depths. He starts to make the underworld journey and moves from the exterior world of Malkuth to the fluid and reflective depths of Yesod via the Thames Embankment and the cloaked woman who walks ahead of him in the mists. By shedding his robes and with no wallet, he is going naked into this place: he is thrown on the resources of his body and must walk home.
We learn that his only solace in his duty-driven life is a recurring dream that comes upon him in sleeping and waking life, of misty landscapes and seascapes and the figure of a cloaked woman with a wide-brimmed hat. Dion Fortune reprises here some of the early parts of The Sea Priestess as Rupert communes with the river and lets it carry his consciousness out to sea. The experience of walking at dusk and actually finding the cloaked dream woman walking in front of him catalyses him outwardly and inwardly; she becomes his spirit guide at the very moment that his wife, through her doctor, asks him to stop visiting her.
Rupert is thrown on his inner resources and spends his time revisiting the dreams and waking experience so that the dark woman of the mists becomes more and more real to him. He learns that he cannot command her appearance but must prepare the place by vividly visualising the Embankment and its plane trees, the mist, and the river. Each night before sleep he sets off in imagination walking along the Thames Embankment—a resonance of Lilith taking her nightly path to the temple before sleep. After some time, there is a key moment when he leaves the hospital to see Venus, the evening star, rising. He follows it out, hoping to see the cloaked woman, and although he does not, he notices the church across the river. After this, he follows the woman in the dusk, losing her on two more occasions, until the third time when he follows her back into the darkness of the church, is challenged by her, and leaves.
This is a moment when inner and outer realities come together. Rupert returns to his room and contemplates the church: in an instant he finds himself within and looking into the room of the mysterious moon mistress. This is followed by a direct vision of her face to face, when she tells him all is well, opening a new stage in which he starts to commune directly with her, culminating in her appearing physically in his office.
This first part of the book shows us a powerful inner process of communion between the outer part of ourselves and the deeper aspects. Here in concentrated form are all the processes of the previous books; we address the sense of fragmentation and loss that is both the death and scattering of the union of Isis and Osiris and the loss of the Garden of Eden.
To begin the process of repair, the pain and frustration of the situation must be felt and allowed to impact; then the part of us that is Adam unhappily fused must put off his clothes and connect with the deep river that runs through the centre of the eternal city: it unites the east bank of the living with the west bank of the dead. The stretch of the River Thames that they walk curves to separate east and west, with Rupert’s lodging on the west side and Lilith’s temple on the east. The process of connection involves going within and, in dream and vision, reaching out for the dark feminine; holding oneself in readiness and persisting, so that eventually we find the way to bridge from the land of the dead to the land of the living, and discover our way to the temple of the dark woman who beckons us onwards. This is the same process that Jung advocates when he uses active imagination to guide him to the lived experience of his soul.
Rupert is living in the temple of Yesod when he is exploring the night side of the mind; the moment of noticing Venus is when he begins the journey along the path from Yesod to Tiphareth. He is eventually led across the bridge by the dark woman to the threshold of the temple, but is turned back. In a sense he waits on the threshold deepening his sense of the dark woman, becoming more and more surrendered to her until she comes to him and brings him across the threshold.
In Rupert’s removal of academic robes and letting go, Dion Fortune is describing symbolically a psycho-spiritual process of moving from the world of shells and fragments to a new and living way. This is the process we must follow, moving our attention into the inner, from our side of the river.
The other side of the coin—the side easier to overlook—is the attention coming towards us from the deeper aspect of ourselves in Tiphareth. This is the presence of the moon mistress, first manifesting through the underworld path between Malkuth and Yesod and then more dynamically in the alchemical path between Yesod and Tiphareth. The images here are interesting Qabalistically: we have the fiery red man sitting in the west in the House of the Moon, while the moon mistress sits in Tiphareth, the House of the Sun, making alchemy together.
The study in telepathy the book describes is the communion between the conscious, unconscious, and superconscious parts of ourselves. The meeting of fire and water, moon and sun, man and woman, in Rupert’s office creates the catharsis of transition. We can understand what is being described here as a death and resurrection, which also resonates with the Song of Songs—the marriage of the man and the woman—the uniting of the subconscious moon with the superconscious sun.
At this point we step into the temple, into the presence of the moon mistress; and as readers we sit in the place of Rupert as she draws back the veil of Isis.
The Moon Mistress
Now the figure of Lilith Le Fay is revealed to us, making the same journey as Rupert but from another direction. We begin in the place of mystery where the form of the inner priestess is revealed to us—an interesting parallel with The Winged Bull that concludes with the revealing of Ursula Brangwyn as the priestess and teacher of the rite. Moon Magic continues that story, showing us the figure of Lilith as the ageless priestess. We are told that she is about 120 years old and was once regarded as the priestess of all evil: in the future she expects to be identified with and worshipped as the Goddess. She tells us that she is of Breton and Atlantean blood, a minor adept in the story of Wilfred Maxwell, but now a full adept and priestess of the Black Isis. The Black Isis is Binah on the Tree of Life. What we are seeing is the appearance of that priestess through the gate of Daath, and as we follow her she becomes increasingly vivid to us. This is the descent through the desert path from Daath to Tiphareth where we find the temple. In the story this is the unpromising, sinister church guarded by Mr. Meatyard, the temple and the guardian manifest. Just as she is about to find the church, her path literally crosses that of Rupert.
We are shown the art of building the temple, first on outer levels as the grim and apocalyptic church is transformed under the direction of the priestess. There is a vivid description of her bathroom, place of cleansing and purification, and of the great hall with its hearth. The priestess takes possession of the temple, and as she begins living there she becomes aware of Rupert across the river, and the path from Tiphareth to Yesod begins to form. There is a very significant moment after a walk in which she considers Rupert and the sense of the frustrated life she senses, and is taken into a deeper contemplation about this blocking of the deep roots of life. When she returns to her hall she finds this:
Through the high, uncurtained eastern window the full moon was shining. … 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 shone full on this and a spot of bright light focused on the curve of the glass. The lilies lay colourless on the silver surface of the water but underneath 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. 46
The moment of connection to Rupert and Yesod is paralleled by the opening up of the deeper aspects of the temple. On the outer levels this is the finding of the hidden room within which deep magic can be performed, and on the inner levels, the building of the inner temple. Both these activities are the embodiment of Daath within Yesod; for it is now that the work becomes centred, as Lilith discovers the presence of Rupert within the temple and puts in motion the energies that draw them into communion. In that process, the deeper aspect of Rupert as the sacrificial priest starts to be seen.
This phase of the work comes together in the physical meeting of Rupert and Lilith. They begin working together with three rituals through which Rupert becomes initiated and ascends the Tree. At the same time the inner energies, seeking to express themselves through Lilith, descend into expression into the collective soul.
In the first ritual, Rupert enters the outer aspect of the inner temple—the Hall of the Sphinxes—and prays to the Goddess in the form of her priestess, recapitulating the path of the underworld to the temple of Yesod. In response, the Goddess, through her servant, receives him and, through him, all lost and lonely men.
In the second ritual, Rupert goes beyond this to the secret temple and surrenders himself to the Dark Isis, who in return blesses him and all men with new life—the journey of the alchemical path to Tiphareth.
In the third ritual, Rupert offers himself to Isis as her priest and servant, bringing too all the frustrations and struggles of his life and the lives of all men. Lilith, for her part, receives him and takes him and all his struggles into a death-like sleep, watching over him all through the night and bringing him into a new life. This is the entrance into Daath through the desert way.
The Door Without a Key
This, the culmination of the book and the story, is essentially the Ritual of Daath. It begins just after the death of Rupert’s wife and is, in a way, his marriage to Lilith. In this book his earthly marriage represents our fusion with things of the surface that do not satisfy us, and the connection with Lilith is the soul connection that aligns us to the source of life. The death of Rupert’s wife follows his offering of himself to Isis and represents that freedom that is found as we commit ourselves to deeper life. The style of the book changes at this point, as we now experience it from both characters’ points of view and there are parts of the ritual where their names are lost and they are simply called the Man and the Woman in evocation of the Song of Songs.
This ritual is different from the previous three, as here Rupert comes into his own as co-equal with Lilith; he becomes the sacrificial priest in function as well as aspiration. In this process all of his personal issues are included—nothing is left out. There is a key moment in which all the levels of his being coalesce—the outcast sacrificial priest of the past and the great adept he will be; and Dion Fortune tells us that the adept is built upon the outcast.
Another key moment is one in which the ritual becomes reality, as personal and archetypal themes come together and elemental power and personal rage are laid on the altar. The man and the woman find themselves in a cave temple and an alchemical act of death and resurrection is performed in which the rage and power of the man is offered to the goddess through the woman and they become one.
This is followed by a complementary ritual in which she becomes passive and he aligns his nature with Great Nature. He sees her fully as Isis and himself as the longing and fire of the deep earth—as in The Goat-Foot God, but on a more cosmic level.
This is the culmination not just of this book but of the whole four-book series: for in Rupert’s frustration are Hugh Paston’s lostness and feelings of betrayal, Wilfred Maxwell’s suffocation, and Ted Murchison’s rage; and within Lilith are Mona, Morgan, and Ursula.
The final scenes of the book are worth much contemplation. We find Rupert aware that the power has cleared the obstructions of his nature; he finds himself looking on the face of Lilith and, seeing her as a new Eve in a new creation, he is ready to sing with the morning stars. He sees Lilith unveiled and feels their souls as two centres of radiation interpenetrating each other.
The book ends with a scene indicating the hidden depths yet to be found as Lilith and Rupert stand hand in hand looking into the mirror: “There was nothing to be seen now in the crystalline darkness of its depths, stretching away into a far space in another dimension; nevertheless it seemed to the man that they opened on another world, and that again and again, by the same magic, they could be opened and re-opened. The world of dreams and the wake-world met on that threshold, and he knew now the secret of passing over.” 47
This is a particularly concentrated book, and we are best equipped to use it profitably if we have worked through the previous books. From The Goat-Foot God we can connect to the living earth and living flesh; from The Sea Priestess we have a facility to work with the deep imagination and create and live within the living image; from The Winged Bull we can work with opposites and follow the teachings of the hidden priestess into the new world.
In this book, then, everything comes together as we work with the masculine and feminine in our nature, addressing the imbalance in ourselves and the wider world and bringing all into the presence of the Black Isis.
43. Fortune, Moon Magic, 223.
44. Influential fantasy novelists of the early twentieth century, whose works deal with the melding of the everyday with a mythic reality.
45. Also called the Song of Solomon from the Old Testament; at one level, a dialogue between lovers.
46. Fortune, Moon Magic, 64.
47. Fortune, Moon Magic, 235.