Magical Space
There were only half a dozen candles in high ecclesiastic candlesticks ranged in a circle round the room, but walls, ceiling, floor and every article of furniture was painted in a shining golden hue, and the light of the candles reflected back again and again till the very air of the room seemed to glow with golden light. 66
Dion Fortune says of occult work, “We mean much more than a course of study. The Path is a way of life and on it the whole being must co-operate if the heights are to be won.” 67 And she demonstrates this in the books, as the work completely takes over the lives of the characters. Swiftly, they find permanent temple spaces suitable for deep magical transformation.
We will probably not be fortunate enough to have a place solely for magical work, but whatever space we use and whatever its mundane function, it must represent for us a place of rapport. As in the stories, it must be harmonious and expansive. And we can interpret that as simply being a clean and tidy area for meditation, in temporarily dedicated time and space.
In terms of the Qabalah, this withdrawn working space represents Tiphareth, the central sephirah of the Tree of Life; its planetary correspondence is the Sun. It is a place of balance, resting at the centre of the Tree and between the two side pillars; the midpoint between the deeper and outer parts of the Tree of Life.
Here, we can work with differing elements, placing them in appropriate relationship: it is a place that allows disparate parts to begin to interact harmoniously.
It would be wrong to assume, though, that a temple space will be a shield from all friction and discomfort. No change comes without reaction, and the vibrant action of psychological process and of magic makes it inevitable. It is only in this way that elements can be resolved within our psyches. Rupert’s losing control in ceremony and chasing Lilith round the altar, and Ted’s wishing to humiliate Ursula during their first ritual, show just how powerful our warring emotions can be.
A feeling of support and engagement is fundamental to our relationship with our space. It is the seat of a healing and teaching presence sometimes called the Holy Guardian Angel. This is not an objective being but represents our deep, more aware nature; it functions as a centre of stillness and secret life. It is not designed ready-made for us or bought from shops: its rituals are not templates found in books—not even those of Dion Fortune. For each of the heroes, as for Fortune’s latter-day students, the meeting, melding, and progressing place is handcrafted.
Ted’s entrance into another world is Brangwyn’s flat: it is the security of a sanctuary, on every level. The house is the manifested dream of Brangwyn, who has elevated the mechanics of life to an art form. We might feel the superlative decor and the golden silken curtains permanently closed against the outside world somewhat overwhelming: the down-to-earth Murchison certainly does. The rarefied atmosphere, whilst enviably luxurious, is symptomatic of the main problem that is Brangwyn’s idiosyncratic relationship with the real world. It is both his strength and weakness.
Murchison finds that the flat’s ambience expands his spirit, but the atmosphere is stuffy. Away from the hustle of everyday life, time hangs heavy and he retreats outside frequently for his constitutionals. Fortunately his self-contained apartment has access to the roof garden, allowing him elemental connection and a wider viewpoint. It is in these more homely surroundings—small rooms, a gas fire framed with childhood books—rather than the grandeur of the downstairs apartment, that he pursues most of his studies.
It is worth considering Brangwyn’s approach to life to see just how far we think it reasonable. We also need to rate all the everyday requirements of our lives. We need to set up simple systems for sustaining us in the world, to free up the time we need to work unhindered. We are more aware of life choices and their global and ecological implications than Dion Fortune’s original students would have been. We make choices as far as we can to set up our everyday lives as we wish. That is relatively simple; but having made our lives simpler, we still need discipline to maintain our focus for magical work. For when we’ve made our altar/meditation space, we will still probably find it difficult to sustain a daily practice.
Dion Fortune tells us to dedicate a place, even if only a shelf or cupboard, and to pay attention to it, to nurture and clean it every day. This advice is so simple, yet many of us will be glancing at dusty candlesticks as we read. We need cleanliness and clarity to assist our tuning in, and our failures show the weaknesses that we need to address. Brangwyn’s example as an adept is before us here. Even in the demoralizing atmosphere of the trenches, he maintained his standards, and we are never in any doubt that, although the staff keep his domestic machinery running, he keeps punctiliously to his own rigorous regime.
From here, Murchison travels to Wales, to the withdrawn sanctuary that has been created for Ursula; and we are invited to contrast its clear simplicity with the slovenly, seedy grandeur of the house of Astley, the black magician. The message is clear: choose less, but of better quality, if you are in the service of the gods. And as domestic help is very much a thing of the past, it is sensible to heed that advice.
Naturally active, Ted needs the contemplation of books and pictures and the practice of inner visualising to balance the warrior energy he is constantly expending. His creative instinct only finds expression at last in his homemaking on the East Coast. He has never had a proper home as an adult, and it is when he selflessly concentrates on fitting out a house for the Brangwyns that he constructs the perfect space for the magically fulfilled life he will share with Ursula after their marriage.
Compare his temperament and needs to Wilfred’s, discussed next, and remember the adept’s dictum, “Know thyself.” We must find our own balance of inner and outer work, of practical and imaginative exercises, if we are to progress in the mysteries.
Wilfred’s “bachelor flat” at the end of the garden seems to have been waiting especially for him. The bolts and locks are no barrier, light floods into the building, and its position by the tidal river supplies the vital elemental contact. This basic building fulfils all his simple needs: a magical apartment habitually overlooked, hidden in full view, where he can give his daydreams the attention they deserve. Even before he meets Vivien, he is temperamentally suited to start his studies direct with the powers of the cosmos. The flat becomes a haven where he can do just that: collect books, think, and be assured of privacy away from his family. Only two men, the doctor and his business partner Scottie, are allowed access, and both are as happy to sit in silence as to talk. The writing acts upon us psychologically. It awakens in our imagination just what it means to feel truly at home, what our deep nature needs to blossom. It is from here that Wilfred will advance to his temple.
The discovery and re-equipment of the old fortress as a sea temple for magical work is a major investment of time and energy. It is no wonder that Wilfred undergoes profound changes masterminding this huge project. Like Hugh and Mona in The Goat-Foot God, Wilfred and Vivien together transform an everyday space into the temple they need for spiritual work, devoted to the moon and to Isis. We note how they do it, and the story shows just how powerfully the method works.
Wilfred’s absorption in supervising the building and his flowering as a mystical artist reflect his strengthening connection to the Otherworld. He needs practical work to ground his contemplation of the cosmos and earths his inner experience in creative expression—another message to us. Creativity is essential for magical work, so we must find our own creative outlet. Wilfred expresses himself in producing architectural plans, later reproduced in an art magazine—in designs for balustrades, carvings, arts and crafts hinges, and the frescoes that act as a magical portal. And Vivien’s wholehearted admiration is an important component to his development in all areas.
Unlike Wilfred, whose priestess already owns the sea fort that will become the temple, Hugo must hunt for his place of deep work. Through Mona’s instruction and their discussions, Dion Fortune teaches us much about the sacred geology and its effects on magical practice. The Old Straight Track 68 was published around eleven years earlier, but Fortune’s cogent exposition of prehistoric tracks as lines of earth energy takes the premise of the earlier book far further. Her instructions for choosing a place on the landscape suitable for esoteric work are simple, logical, and masterly. They also give us a rare instance of the author speaking directly, from her experience of working with Bligh Bond, whose excavation of Glastonbury Abbey was aided by a band of discarnate monks: “You will find that people living at these power-centres simply hate any mention of the Unseen. It rubs their fur the wrong way. … Ask Glastonbury what it thinks of Bligh Bond if you want to see people really savage.” 69
The land beneath our feet is at the start of The Goat-Foot God, and it should be the starting point of our magical work. Like Wilfred at the sea fort, Hugh’s work on the house reflects the inner work that will transform him. The building he and Mona find is a complex of monks’ and abbot’s lodgings and church. Its layout is deliberately vague, focusing on key aspects for their psychological effect.
As with Wilfred’s flat and the sea fortress, the temporary shoring that bars access to Monks Farm is easily dismantled; in an orgy of tearing down and clearing away, the sound structure of the original dwellings is revealed. These buildings mirror our internal worlds, sound and whole but shored up with the unstable fixings of the assumptions of modern life.
All these locations have the potential to be transformed into spaces fit to interface with the more-than-human energies of the cosmos. Our personal imaginal realms, activated in the service of magic, share that same potential. All the practical work of making the temple can be read simultaneously as a satisfying story and as an allegory for the magical path.
Making the temple harmonizes humanmade and natural elements, as a sculpture is worked to reveal the inner essence of the material, just as Brangwyn, ripping out and adapting his slum property, has revealed its possibilities before the start of The Winged Bull. Each building reflects the character of the owner: Brangwyn’s select flat and Ted’s deeply rooted farmhouse; Wilfred’s flat and Vivien’s sea temple with visionary carvings and otherworldly frescoes; the gothic complex anchoring Hugh to his medieval incarnation and the timeless temple/church that Rupert finds, ready for occupation by a goddess.
Each act of discipline in preparing our temple space is getting back to the clean, stable bedrock of our beliefs. Each magical lesson we internalize is building the temple within, and every temple is completely individual.
Rupert Malcolm has no hand in the practical construction of magical space; he is incapable of attending even to his basic comfort. Yet, through Lilith, Moon Magic becomes a magical handbook on constructing magical space. Without disguise or ambiguity, Dion Fortune tells the student all they have to do to make and inhabit a temple. Rupert’s first sanctuary, after his blustery walks by the river, is Lilith’s spacious, timeless main room, and he feels immediately at home there. Here is no stuffiness, no gadgets, fussing servants, or extraneous detail. Lilith has described the making of her house and temple with the skill of a master magician: it is impossible to read the description without actually longing to see it.
Through Lilith Le Fay we learn how to make suitable magical surroundings and the effects we may hope to achieve. This is psychology and magic in perfect synthesis; she is as frank with Rupert as with the reader, making no excuse for psychologically manipulating effects that help achieve her results.
The writing is like watching a stage magic show and simultaneously going behind the scenes to examine the apparatus. But Lilith uses psychological tools to the opposite effect to the stage show: she is not creating illusion, but revealing truth. Through making an interface to contact the higher realms under conscious control, we strip away the artifice of the real world and contact the reality behind the reality. It is the real thing.
Rupert is the soul yearning for such contact and only needs to be introduced to it. By a combination of past and present circumstances, his spirit ranging free in search of it is the entire subject of “A Study in Telepathy.” Lilith describes first of all her “manufacturing” of an appearance fitting for the work. As without, so within; and as she transforms, so she is honing her magical personality, whilst waiting for the arrival of a suitable dwelling to house the work. Its fitments and development are an extension of the manufacturing of the self, and the indwelling of the goddess—described in a brief paragraph of the most evocative magical writing—rewards the labour.
Having our senses and emotions stirred so deeply inspires us to change. It is a process within that can be activated by Rupert’s story.
Vivien Becomes Lilith:
The Development of the Priestess
We can contrast Lilith’s openness in Moon Magic with her more reserved attitude to the world in The Sea Priestess: there, as Vivien, the adept in the final stages of constructing her magical personality, her life is more withdrawn. The difference is clear in her secondary relationships: Moon Magic places her firmly in the world through her relationship with the local police officers, visits from her magical colleague, and visits to the dentist—all homely touches missing in The Sea Priestess. And her relationships with the domestic staff, the Trethowens, with the inestimable Mr. Meatyard of Moon Magic, are very different. The first are sketched in to take care of the practical aspects of life at the sea fort, but Meatyard is very much a co-worker in Lilith’s enterprises, albeit of the practical variety, and to an extent he is a confidante.
It is refreshing to read about the intimate social relationship of a priestess about cosmic business and her favoured factotum, with his winks and innuendo and tarred bowler hat. Meatyard has depth and, like Lizzie and Bill, the domestic help of The Goat-Foot God, he has character. The relationship tells us much of Lilith’s humanity; it gives a modern feel to the book and injects a vernacular style contrasting to the high prose of the magical passages. Down-to-earth, intimate, and picaresque interaction in the everyday world is important to the magical student. One world is not favoured over the other: a balance is maintained between the two.
Having enjoyed Moon Magic for the sake of the story, we then reread the text as a magical workbook. Every hint and suggestion can be acted upon as we construct our own places, within and without. Our inner selves know what we need to grow, what circumstances will allow our spiritual development.
Transformation
It is worth noting now how the heroes of each book are transforming.
The inner connection Ted makes with Ursula through ritual tells him that he must take charge and brook no interference. His changing self-image is reflected in his outward appearance and affects Ursula. He buys clothes of a decent quality—a superficial but vital change that shows Ursula the error of her initial assessment. His self-assurance grows when he plans to double-cross Astley, and his selflessness finally brings Ursula to her senses, so that she can rescue him during the ritual of the bull.
Wilfred’s confidence is fed by critical acclaim, and as an artist, he assumes an equal position with Vivien. This stands him in good stead for the ritual work, where his intuitive faculties make him a worthy partner in the invocation of Isis through the sea and moon connection.
Hugo, whilst learning from Mona, intuitively follows a route of solo meditative work. Through it he integrates his past and present incarnations, gaining the confidence of Ambrosius at the height of his power. With Mona’s support on the inner and outer planes, he is able to grow and take his proper place in relationships and in the world.
When Rupert realises that he is free from emotional responsibility and meets his priestess, he then has to release himself from the shackles of his Presbyterian upbringing. Lilith unlocks the set muscles of his psyche—an excruciating process that leads to freedom. Lilith redecorates his rooms in a pleasing domestic passage, but apart from that, Rupert’s inner changes are reflected in his relationships to the world. He has little in common with his peers, but learns the joy of creating a rapport with his students. The man self-confessedly “sick of the nervous system” gains a new source of stimulation in imparting his knowledge to others. This is the immediate result of the soul finding its yearnings assuaged, and the man coming into his correct place in the world. It is the result of Lilith guiding his spirit to a safe haven, where he can learn to submit, to release, and to allow, in order to be of service.
All of the characters develop methods of touching the strata that makes life worthwhile to them, that allows them to express creatively what is in their innermost nature. And all of this work happens in temple space.
It starts with a sanctuary, a place of spiritual space and peace, and progresses to a place of deep rapport in which to develop the connections of the inner self. This is the nature of the ongoing work until it ends, unfinished, at our death. From developing a kind and impersonal understanding of our personality-selves, we then go on to find the inner temple and to craft it to our requirements.
Moon and Sea, Sun and Earth
Our characters have an incredibly fertile creative relationship with their temple spaces, which constantly develop and change.
Lilith’s is the most stable temple, but the emphasis on moving the temple fittings—the mirror, altar, couch, and so on—demonstrates the flexibility of the type of magical space within which the author herself worked. Withdrawn from the world, it will continue well into the future, to adapt to any ritual demands.
At the other extreme is the partial destruction of the especially adapted sea temple—a temple of Yesod, of the imagination, the moon and the sea, brought into being on the earth place, which disappears back into the imaginal realm after its purpose is served by the great ritual of the book.
The sun and earth temples in The Winged Bull and The Goat-Foot God endure, being rooted in earth; both the house by the sea of Ted’s childhood and Hugh’s farm are ancestral dwellings that have grown from their surroundings and the work of their forebears; and enduring also is the final temple space of the farm that Wilfred crafts with Molly, the Priestess of the Earth. Rupert we leave to the sanctuary of his lodgings, redesigned by Lilith, with his open invitation to visit the withdrawn temple to join Lilith in the ongoing higher work of the aeon.
All magical spaces come into being to fulfil the higher purpose, and ours will develop as we progress. A temple may not be permanent, or we may construct a space so accommodating to change that we will inhabit it for the rest of our magical lives. Our only concern is to craft it for the immediate task, for the continuance of our interpretation of the greater work.
66. Fortune, The Winged Bull, 113.
67. Dion Fortune, Esoteric Orders and Their Work & The Training and Work of an Initiate (London: Thorsons, 1987), 120.
68. Alfred Watkins, The Old Straight Track (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1925). This book was the first to explore and map “ley lines”—prehistoric straight trackways marked by ancient mark stones, mounds, and moats in Britain.
69. Fortune, The Goat-Foot God, 86.