The Mentor and
the Threefold Way
He felt that in the shadowy cloaked figure he had found a kind of spirit-guide through the bewilderments of life. 70
“When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear” is a Theosophical adage that first appeared in the 1880s, and literal belief in it has been the excuse for procrastination for thousands of occult students.
Our characters show that the one valid connection to be made to the mysteries is a direct one. They strike out prompted only by inner guidance, for occultism is an active path, not relying on another to mediate.
The wish for spiritual companionship is strong within us all, but the stories challenge us, showing that even this relationship, which we might tend to idealise, can be problematic. Ultimately, any mentors we find will be flawed, by virtue of their being human; and our prime connection will always be through the bridge of the body and the senses into the internal realms.
We might also find helpers throughout our lives, and there are many real-life stories of such synchronicities, but rarely will these be lifelong mentors. A part of us will always long for this external ratification of the inward process: how satisfying it would be. But putting our energies into looking for such meetings is putting the cart before the horse, and waiting passively until they appear is abnegating our responsibility to our spiritual development.
At the start of our personal adventures we must follow any hints with conviction, remembering that we have the knowledge that we need and a perfect teacher within us. We must slow down, wait with an open attitude, and give our studies our time and attention. As Wilfred explores every avenue, so must we. Develop that inner relationship, through commitment, and the rest will unfold. We become reconciled to the fact that our guides and helpers along the way may always be internal, and this will stand us in good stead if a teacher does come along. With confidence in our own abilities, we can look with Dion Fortune’s well-loved clear common sense and not be glamoured by false gurus. She saw clearly that her own early teacher—whom she admired greatly—was not perfect, and stresses that mentors and even adepts are also flawed human beings and capable of mistakes, limitations, and doubts.
Having said that, each of the main characters does meet his mentor. Dion Fortune’s stories chart the progression of the spirit; we are re-reading with the understanding of a deeper process at work, to learn lessons for our own lives.
The mentor figures of Jelkes, Vivien, Brangwyn, and Lilith illustrate the teaching aspect of Tiphareth, but that relationship is fluid and can be shared. There are crossovers in the mentor role, so that it is initially Brangwyn who teaches but then is superseded by Ursula; Jelkes who leads but relinquishes the role to Mona; Vivien who initiates but Molly who takes over to complete the cycle for Wilfred.
Unlike the characters, we should not be in desperate circumstances when we start the work: we will foster gently our instinct for the fullness of life. Like Wilfred, Hugh, and Rupert, there might be aspects of reincarnation to our lives, which will influence relationships in our present life, but this is not something to focus on. The stories tell us that when the tide of life is right, memories might emerge gradually and naturally. Perhaps the most difficult part of the training is learning not to interfere but to stand back and allow things to flow. This is a spiritual Catch-22 situation; without that trust, we might never make the space for allowing Otherness to be active in our lives, and we must have the experiences to gain the trust.
There is a warning in Moon Magic about allowing the logical mind to interfere. Rupert drives himself into a dead end trying to explain away his experiences: he tries to force his life back to reality with sessions with a “New Thought” therapist, even whilst he knows that he should trust his deeper instinct. When he allows events to take place, all is well: the process, available to us all, is not of controlling circumstances by our outer actions. It is human impatience and lack of trust that sets us striving after what might be false paths. Our daily challenge is to accept the way of the mysteries as just that, and not try to define it by logic or pursue it in the way that causes Rupert Malcolm’s succubus to withdraw. Like Ted, we take our development into the mysteries one stage at a time, and ground each stage in the everyday world, trusting that the inner forces will take care of the journey.
Relationship with the External Mentor
To create the story, the inner processes are externalized, and so we meet the glamorous, intriguing, ancient-in-wisdom mentors who take the protagonists away into a world of magic. A close reading shows just what a complex relationship each hero has with his esoteric tutor, involving the same ups and downs as any other. Most interesting is the occasional revulsion of feeling for the mentor that the pupil has, and the ways—sometimes manipulative—by which the teacher prevails.
Dion Fortune writes of symbiotic relationships. In occult fiction contemporary with her novels, the guru-pupil relationship often puts one on a pedestal and infantilises the other. Dion Fortune’s teachers’ needs are as great as their pupils’. Each teacher is aware of the weight of responsibility on their shoulders, and each needs the pupil’s particular qualities if the magic is to be done. Although one person is further along the occult road and guides the other, there is equality between them; it is in their service to magic, whose axiom is to fulfil the needs of the cosmos, to play an active part in the development of the race. I desire to know, in order to serve.
The Character and Needs of the Mentor
As we look now at the adepts’ particular qualities, we remember that we have all of them within ourselves. Looking at their range of very special talents, we also listen for the voice of our intuition. In this way we assess our strengths by seeing which resonate most strongly within us.
T. Jelkes, Bookseller
Jelkes is the focused mystic, philosopher, and clear thinker. He is educated and a gentleman, a specialist and a scholar. Beneath the slovenly dressing gown, he is wearing the clothes of an educated man. Quality shines through. He is a theorist on magical matters, a collector of philosophical and spiritual material on life, and, like Brangwyn, has elevated the mechanics of life to an art form, although his takes a more homely expression. He has enough for his simple needs, allowing maximum time for his intellectual studies; he is a priest in his heart, and temperamentally is a mystic, not a magician. In The Goat-Foot God, Jelkes seems at first self-sufficient, motivated just by human compassion towards a fellow creature in trouble.
Yet, like Brangwyn, he already has a pupil who is suffering, and one whom Hugh will save. It is not for himself, but for his “niece” Mona, the impoverished artist whom he is powerless to help, that he needs a man of action.
In an echo of Brangwyn’s schooling of Ursula, Jelkes has guided Mona in the studies that have cured her crippling headaches and developed her artistically. As her mentor, his is the responsibility of opening up the spiritual reality behind life, and setting her on a path that can only be concluded by the arrival of a priest. Both Ursula and Mona suffer for want of a magical marriage: the one half-alive and a cipher, the other starving in a garret. Both are completely emotionally isolated.
Although Jelkes is compassionately resolved to see Hugh through his crisis, he views him with suspicion, and Hugh’s interest in sensationalist books doesn’t inspire confidence. He despises the manners and morals of the Mayfair set and assumes that Hugh will be an example of them. And Jelkes distrusts Mona’s honest, raffish morality, which is the opposite of society morals. He is of a different class, tradition, generation, and temperament to Hugh, but they settle quickly into a relationship on a deep level that has been denied Hugh in adult life: Jelkes seems to see into Hugh’s soul. The old man and his surroundings are immediately therapeutic, the first steps on a path of life that has hitherto been missing.
Jelkes is the guide who turns Hugh in a different direction, clearing the fog of his habitual ennui and wiping his obsessions away instantly. Through Jelkes, Hugh arrives at a state of quivering anticipation, through the accumulated knowledge stored in his shop. Jelkes is a compelling figure who allows access to a strata of life that had previously been unsuspected by Hugh, and sets the appropriate parameters for him.
The tussles between Jelkes and Hugh result from the intellectual theorist being dragged into the actuality of practical magical working, an area where Hugh and Mona’s combined gifts make them the leaders. Eventually they reach the position where Jelkes must retire in order not to inhibit the free flowing of the magic. He calls himself an unregenerate old pagan, yet is unable to pass beyond his earlier Jesuit training. As Hugh journeys to his deep self of power and potential, Jelkes quietly disappears back to his bookshop to leave the way clear for the conclusion of the story.
Jelkes represents the activity of Tiphareth operating through the sphere of the mind in the arena of Yesod, the place of imagination and images. He is scholarly and focused but also compassionate, and we see him in the novel helping Hugh to heal and teaching him through the medium of story. We might all be able to recognise that activity in our life when we think of stories that have awakened us or helped us to heal.
Vivien Le Fay Morgan
Vivien emerges as a contacted priestess in The Sea Priestess. Wilfred’s business partner Scottie sees her as an aged adventuress, but in the course of the story she is transformed into a priestess beyond time, of magical stature. Vivien Le Fay Morgan is exotic, veiled, and exciting: we can trust Wilfred’s intuition about their rapport and his judgment that there is “something fine” in her. Like H. Rider Haggard’s She, 71 Vivien can open a curtain to reveal a very strange reality; and like that eponymous heroine, she has a ruthless streak, which will be made even more apparent when we meet her in Moon Magic. She glamours and overwhelms with her will, yet beneath the glamour she is trustworthy and has knowledge to share that cannot be understood by the uninitiated.
Her chanting conjures a magical world, evoking an instinctual response in Wilfred that insists she is truthful, although there would be no way of proving what she says.
Vivien needs someone intuitive, artistic, and possessed of a magnetic quality to come fully into her magical personality. Overtly, the story is Wilfred’s, but Vivien’s early biographical account is also an example of magical development; and Dion Fortune continues this teaching in Moon Magic. Yet despite their early bond, Vivien’s attitude affronts Wilfred’s masculinity, and periodically he revolts at her cold-blooded nature. To her credit, Vivien shows distress at the drowning of the craftsman’s son, for, with her Atlantean legacy of ancient sacrifice, the book touches on ethical ground that is shaky, to say the least. It is not until Moon Magic that Dion Fortune makes crystal clear that the initiating priest/ess must always take the responsibility for the work, and put themselves forward in the place of sacrifice. Vivien’s human side shows in her genuine affection for Wilfred and her ongoing concern for his welfare after her disappearance. It is because of her belief in the reciprocity of magical work that Molly learns to come into her power from Vivien’s letters, and Wilfred is repaid in full for his willingness to sacrifice himself to her.
In contrast to The Goat-Foot God, here Vivien represents the activity of Tiphareth mediated through Netzach, the sphere of feeling, once again into Yesod, the place of deep imagination. The deeper mentor figure who shows the mediating aspect of Tiphareth is the Priest of the Moon, the inner teacher who shows the movement from Tiphareth to Daath and engages Wilfred with the cosmic background of the work.
Alick Brangwyn
Brangwyn has stature. He is mysterious, solitary, and a marvellous handler of men. In the trenches of the First World War, he adhered to a standard of behaviour, integrity, and care for others that the younger soldiers responded to with hero worship. He controls the first part of The Winged Bull and he needs help badly.
In her instructional books, Dion Fortune talks of the wise adept surrounding himself/herself with helpers, to act as a buffer with the outer world, and Brangwyn certainly needs one. Fortune is referring to the adept’s sensitivity and possible lack of understanding of human nature, and on the inner planes, Brangwyn has provoked a situation that he cannot rectify. He has trained up his sister and a former pupil, Fouldes, for the Winged Bull ritual, a rite originally planned for Brangwyn himself and his fiancée who died. Through Fouldes’s defection, a black magician now has access to Ursula, and the fault is laid firmly at Brangwyn’s door—“The Adept who accepts an unsuitable pupil is guilty of cruelty just as much as the rider who sends a horse at a fence it cannot take,” 72 says Dion Fortune. Yet Brangwyn was motivated by both duty and compassion towards Ursula, who was about to enter a convent before she had known any life—a reminder of the youthful Ambrosius, who took the same route in medieval times in The Goat-Foot God.
There are two casualties of Brangwyn’s experimentation: Frank Fouldes, artificially empowered by drugs and magic, and Ursula, the result of a psychic car crash.
Brangwyn and Ted will never have an ongoing magical relationship, for the direct Ted distrusts the magical experiments that have left Ursula a wreck. They work to achieve Ursula’s salvation, and there is a mutual respect and trust between them. Brangwyn trains Ted ethically, with the warning image of the black magician Astley’s methods, where one partner is sucked dry and the other swelled up with poison, before him. Brangwyn is masterly at conjuring the ambience for magical workings, but willingly hands over responsibility on the outer plane to his more practical pupil. It is with relief that he cedes the initiative, gently steering the action to allow time for Ted to work out his fate.
Ted’s final abnegation of self in service to the beloved is the preparation of the home that he does not think he will share. Seeing it, Ursula takes up the reins to advance their mutual magical development and they enact the ritual privately: they have now gone beyond the mentorship of Brangwyn, who we assume will resume his studies in London.
The relationship between Brangwyn and Ursula as mentors shows us two different approaches to mentoring. Brangwyn shows us the activity of Tiphareth acting through the sephirah Hod, the sphere of the mind, while Ursula shows us the activity of Tiphareth reaching through the sephirah Netzach, the sphere of feeling. At a key point of development, Brangwyn is left behind and the deeper aspect of Tiphareth leading to Daath is mediated through Ursula.
Lilith Le Fay Morgan
Lilith’s every aspect is devoted to the work of the greater humanity. She has dedicated herself to cosmic evolution, and any human concerns are totally subservient to it. She is Dion Fortune’s vision of the fully fledged adept of the aeon. She is virgin in the ancient spiritual sense of the word: autonomous, answering not to any other human, but with a responsibility only to the relationship to the Divine. Through her, we learn some of the daily routine of the ancient priestesses in the house of the Virgins, and of the concealed mysteries of the Veiled Isis, who stands behind the Isis of Nature.
She has built her magical personality and developed her practice as Vivien in The Sea Priestess, so that she can communicate with those on the higher planes and become the avatar of the goddess Isis. But she now needs a priest for two reasons: first to fuel the work of the race, and second to be her foil for the particular polarity magic in which she is engaged. Her remit is to introduce a fresh impulse for sane and free relationship between men and women into the folk soul, where it will work like yeast.
The ongoing relationship between Lilith and Rupert is of utter willing capitulation, one to the wishes of the other. In Rupert she is well matched and constantly surprised by his intuitions, drawn from deep memory, and her respect for his many qualities and his potential is apparent in her writing.
Yet even such a rarified being is not exempt from anxiety and insecurity. She doubts her abilities in the long wait for her priest, and misses the opportunity to meet him by deliberately avoiding contact on the Embankment: she suffers from nerves before each major ritual. She is as capable of mistakes as any student.
Lilith shows brilliantly that being a high-grade adept does not exempt anyone from human weakness. No matter how high the calling, we will all always share blindness in the human aspect of relationships. Lilith is frequently drawn, against her sense of caution, to respond empathically to Rupert, in surges of tenderness she finds worrying, although she handles his emotional upheavals with a disinterested kindliness. It is worth reiterating that we readers must understand that these instincts are actually her saving grace. Feeling and expressing loving compassion is an essential component for magic to be effective.
The magical work brings relief and profound peace to Rupert’s frustrated longings, and she appears to him as the Goddess in ritual; they both receive the blessing of Isis on their work, and together they expand to the furthest realms of the cosmos in a magical mating.
Rupert taking his full part as an equal in Lilith’s cosmic work brings it to a conclusion—with implications more far-reaching than in the other books. It is the only story that doesn’t end by earthing the magical current in physical marriage.
There is a way here in which Lilith embodies the activity of the other mentors, representing Tiphareth in its fullest working with mind, emotion, image, and even body. In the background is the deeper teaching figure of the Black Isis, who arises out of the depths of Daath.
Moving Beyond …
And then, at the end of each book the characters move beyond the place of Tiphareth—to the place of deep mystery. Tiphareth brings us into a deeper alignment of opposites. It prepares us for the desert path leading to the encounter with mystery at the sephirah Daath.
At Daath we work with the still small voice of inner-tuition: we are led away from dependence on outer things and towards the resources of our inner spirit. Finally we can sit in the cloud of unknowing, in service to the divine mystery concealed within it. This seems far removed from life and the practice of magic, but is at the heart of both. Paradoxically, it is a process that will ultimately bring us back to being more at home in the world.
Resting in the Place of Daath
Ted finally finds his own territory on the east coast of Yorkshire, where his familial and cultural history is held, where he is remembered. Despairing, he looks up to see the sun lighting the windows and knows that this will be the property for Brangwyn and Ursula. Here he soars beyond his earlier thinking and fully understands what Ursula is telling him. In a space that becomes a timeless connection to the greater life, the magical marriage, the Rite of the Winged Bull, is finally performed.
Hugh finally breaks through his medieval incarnation. He emerges into the bright sunlight of the spiritual heritage of Pan and conducts his own marriage rite, not in Greece but in the sacred yew grove planted many of hundreds of years earlier by Ambrosius for just this occasion.
Wilfred finds acceptance in the outer world in Dickmouth, and in the farm in the marshes, on the land-end of the escarpment that has seen so much magical activity. There, with Molly, he consolidates his magical lessons, and she is taught by the Priest of the Moon to sound the call on the inner planes that transforms them both.
All inherit “ancestral” territory, through past-life or heritage connections. Rupert continues in his refurbished rooms, visiting the hidden temple in an ongoing relationship that will be based purely on magical working.
All become “in the world but not of it,” a basic requirement for the life of the initiate. Their final dwellings reflect this, being in liminal space: Ted’s and Wilfred’s farms are between the elemental contacts of earth and the sea, Hugh’s abbey and grove are centred between the artistic life of London and the wildness of nature, whilst Rupert, living in the heart of London, has lodgings and temple that both overlook the elemental contacts of the tidal Thames. These places allow them a continuing, fulfilled “life in abundance,” which is both the culmination of their work and the ongoing challenge of the rest of their lives.
It is the process of internalising guidance and finding home ground from which to work that concerns us in the third section of this book, as we learn to apply these methods in our own lives.