Working with Malkuth
and The Goat-Foot God
Number of meditations: 8 + Ritual
Possible time frame: 2–3 months
Having established the basic preparatory exercises and made contact with Lilith, we are now ready to start working with the novels and the Tree of Life as per Dion Fortune’s formula. We begin at the bottom, or outermost part, of the Tree, with Malkuth and The Goat-Foot God.
Before Every Meditation
Work with the preliminary exercises and the interwoven light, sensing the body, the interwoven light, and then stepping into the body of light.
Then, after you settle in for the meditation, you will start by repeating the first part of the Lilith meditation:
You form and step into the body of light and connect to the ancient city of London, walking along the banks of the Thames on a misty evening.
Feel the rhythm of walking into the mist, into mystery and silence … A little way ahead of you, become aware of the figure of a woman with a broad-brimmed hat and a black cloak.
Let yourself follow her—your rhythm matching hers as she leads you onwards, across a bridge to the other side of the river …
Meditation 1: Entering Malkuth
As you cross the bridge, that scene fades, and you allow feelings or pictures to arise on the screen of your mind—a strong sense of place and person as you contemplate the scene at the beginning of the book: Hugh Paston sitting in a house and life that is empty to him, feeling betrayed and purposeless.
Colour the scene with the description in the book: harsh light; a small, comfortless electric fire; and jagged and discordant furnishings and furniture. As you empathise with Hugh’s discomfort, you let his situation meet the similar places in your life and experience. Feel safely held, and gently and dispassionately open to the ways in which your life has given you similar wounds or beliefs.
Like Hugh, feel the restlessness, the need for more, and let that need take you deep into the body, showing you the trapped and blocked life force. Take time to establish this feeling. We are using Hugh Paston and his world as a magical image that can help us see that outer things in themselves cannot help us.
Let the image of Hugh fade, and as you turn and walk back across the bridge, find yourself sitting robed and hooded in the body of light and contemplate the resonances in your body and your life. Let the body of light and its experience sink deep into the structure of your body. Open your eyes and be aware of the outer world.
This meditation should be pursued for about a week, and it is good practice to write notes afterwards. It can also be helpful to explore the experience non-rationally afterwards, through drawing, colouring, movement, or music.
Meditation 2: The Path to Jelkes’s Bookshop—
Malkuth to Yesod
After the preliminary exercises and after following Lilith along the Embankment, the next step into the meditation is to imagine yourself as Hugh leaving your house and walking, following the restless trapped energy as you relax into the body.
Feel yourself walking the rich streets of Chelsea and Kensington, walking out of the known places into the mean streets, the places on the edge, in effect entering the underworld. Let yourself wander the night side of London, like Hugh, finding it intriguing and fascinating. Coming unexpectedly upon Jelkes’s bookshop, see the worn sign “T. Jelkes Antiquarian Bookseller” above the door and the secondhand book bin lit by a street lamp. Get interested in the scraps of paper and worn, old books that emerge as you rummage, then find a book with the title The Prisoner in the Opal. Looking into the book you find these lines: “The affair gave me quite a new vision of the world. I saw it as a vast opal inside which I stood. An opal luminously opaque so that I was dimly aware of another world outside mine.” 78 Become aware of that feeling within—the sense of being the prisoner in the opal: sense the greater, richer world outside you but touching you with luminosity. Feel the threshold of the door but do not cross it. Let the images fade, and sit in the body of light, feeling the weight of the pendant over your heart. Contemplate the journey and the new, expanded vision of the world. As before, let the body of light and its experience sink into the physical body and open your senses to the outer world.
Do this for about a week before taking the next step.
Meditation 3: Jelkes’s Bookshop—
The Temple of Yesod
After the usual preliminary exercises and following Lilith over the bridge, you find yourself standing on the threshold of the bookshop door. As you open it, you set off the warning bell, and you pause on the threshold. The shop is in darkness; you feel the piles of books all around you, and as you step forward you sense rather than see an inner room beyond a curtained doorway. You hear a match striking, and through the curtain an old man in a voluminous dressing gown appears, holding a lamp.
Feel yourself in the place of story, standing in front of the collector of stories who can show you the story that will lead you on. In kaleidoscope images flitting across the hanging curtain, the Black Mass, the spoiled priest, the Virgin and Satan, the Corn King and the Spring Queen, and the goat-foot god Pan in a sylvan setting all form in your mind, shifting and changing in turn. Sense these seed images in the story of Hugh Paston and feel their resonance in your own story; allow yourself to consider each one in turn, and when you are ready ask the teacher and guardian of this temple for help to pass beyond the curtain.
Pause and notice his response and then let the images fade and sit in the body of light again, feeling the weight of the pendant, and contemplate crossing the threshold and the nighttime temple—the stories that free and the stories that bind and the encounter with the inner teacher. When you are ready, absorb the body of light and allow the outside world to reestablish itself.
This meditation also should be pursued for about a week.
Meditation 4: The Inner Room
After the usual preliminary exercises and the walk across the bridge, you enter the shop to find that the curtain is open and there is light streaming through it. You step through it and find yourself in a small room lit by golden-green light, with two people standing at the far end on either side of French windows of stained glass.
On the left is the familiar figure of Jelkes, a large, craggy, and unkempt figure in an Inverness cape like a robe. On the right is Mona, small and with shining dark hair, in a long, emerald-green leather coat. Between them in the greens and blues of the stained-glass window you see a road leading to an old monastery and a wood. Stand between them and feel their energies, thoughts, and suggestions; this is your opportunity to dialogue with them. Jelkes is the teacher of symbol and story, the structures of inherited wisdom deep within, and Mona is the green muse, connecting you to the fluidity and energy of the green life. As you listen, you feel those two strains of energy gently mixing within you and finding their own balance. Spend this time getting to know the teachers and making yourself known to them.
Explore this for about a week.
Meditation 5: The Alchemical Path—
Yesod to Tiphareth
After the usual preliminary exercises and crossing the bridge, you stand in the inner room, between Jelkes and Mona, in front of the stained-glass window. You link hands with Jelkes and Mona, aware of their supportive energies, and focus momentarily on your earlier sensations of the energies mingling within your being. At a motion from the two, you step together into the scene in the glass.
Feel your need to move more deeply into the inner world in search of the mystery of the goat-foot god. You sense the focused mind of Jelkes and the green fountain of Mona, letting them intertwine within you, supporting your intent and will. As you walk together, your will builds and sharpens; there is a feeling of passing through a barrier or obstruction. The world shimmers and you find yourself at the entrance to a medieval monastery of grey stone, in the shadow of an old wood.
Notice the carvings upon the door and the entranceway. These will be personal to you, although you may not immediately recognise their shapes or understand their meaning; simply notice them. Like the dynamic of the journey itself, they may fluctuate and change each time you revisit this place.
Let the images fade, and as usual sit in the body of light and contemplate your experience before returning to the outer world.
Meditation 6a: Monks Farm—
The Temple of Tiphareth
Before this meditation, reading chapter 10 of The Goat-Foot God will prime your imagination, though it’s not essential.
After all the usual preliminary exercises, the scene on the bridge fades and you find that you have passed into the courtyard of the ruined monastery. The delicate pillars of the cloisters surround you on four sides, with gaps for access.
Explore the ruins at your own speed. Attached to one side of the cloisters is a long range of low stone buildings. Through a gap on another side, you reach a handsome, two storeyed house. Turn the corner to find a huge barn that has been a chapel.
With Jelkes and Mona, take a circular tour of the outbuildings and the chapel. Let Mona and Jelkes lead you through the chapel, with its painted eastern wall and zodiacal paving. There, in the centre of the symbols of the harmonious universe, contemplate the figure of Ambrosius, the imprisoned abbot, and his monks, letting his story touch yours. Move on to spend time exploring the monastery, the clean, bare living quarters and the great winding staircase that leads to the abbot’s room and the monks’ cells. Contemplate the peace of Ambrosius’s sanctuary room, and walk down the corridor, feeling the resonant memory of the monks, confined in their cells.
Complete this stage by spending a week renewing the chapel. You might spend time repainting the faded colours of the Tree of Life as a meditative exercise, feeling as if you are making a bridge to Arcady, the inner Greek landscape.
You remember Hugh’s first visualisation: the firs and their resinous smell, the sunlight and heat, the wine-dark sea, the flocks of goats, and the buzzing of the insects. The sense of freedom washes through you as you work, making the bridge between the inner and outer worlds. Then stand in the circle of the zodiac before the altar with the statue of Pan upon it, arranged so that the sphere of Malkuth is behind the statue of Pan on the eastern wall, and settle into that experience, allowing it to sink deep within your body.
As always, let the images fade and sit in the body of light and settle your experience before returning to the outer world.
Meditation 6b: Descending into the Cellar
After the usual preliminary exercises, you cross the bridge to find yourself sitting in meditation in the cellar in a small, dark, bare cell. Contemplating Arcady and the medieval church’s wounds, we may consider the loss of the older world in whatever way that has affected our life—consider guilt and shame we have inherited or have learned from others’ worldviews, and look dispassionately and with a wider understanding at any that we have caused ourselves.
These are all aspects of our own life force that live in prison.
As we sit in the midst of these meditations, notice that simply observing the past is causing a mysterious shift, as if a regenerating spring breeze of change is blowing. The door opens and Mona enters as the green priestess; this is the beginning of the polarity working that we will consider from both parties’ points of view.
Sit quietly and allow your attention to fluctuate and shift, one moment being Hugh, the next Mona, bringing the masculine and feminine archetypes, the feeling of the structure of your life, and the essential fluidity that drives things forward into balance within you.
Contemplate the monk and the succubus, the priest and the priestess. When we have reached a state of equilibrium for this session, we follow Mona up the stairs to the ground floor.
Meditation 6c: Ascending the Stairs
In the next stage we go from the ground floor up the great winding staircase, feeling the power of the priest and priestess of Pan within us, building and energising us as we climb.
We go up into the abbot’s room. It is a small, bare room with a great chair in the centre. Take your seat and contemplate the imprisoned monks in their cells. Feel the prisoners within you and, like Hugh, think backwards; follow the river of your life back to its source. Explore the events of your life in reverse order and uncover the foundations of your house of life. Begin by contemplating the events of the day in reverse, and with each meditation let your awareness go back further in time. As you do this, engage with the deep river of your life force, noting how it has been split and dammed through your reaction to events. Bring a compassionate intention into the work and free the prisoners of the past.
Let the images fade, and as usual sit in the body of light and contemplate your experience before returning to the outer world, to journal before returning to everyday life.
Meditation 7: The Desert Way—
Tiphareth to Daath
After the usual preliminary exercises, the river scene fades and you find yourself sitting in the dim chapel with Mona and Jelkes contemplating Pan and the Tree of Life. Feel the freedom of the life force within and the deep will freed by the meditation in the abbot’s chamber.
As you do so, it is as if the walls of the chapel dissolve and you find yourself walking into the pine-scented forest in the soft evening light, letting go of the forms and structures and stories that have restricted you and being totally open to the experience of the moment. A little ahead of you is Mona, leading you onwards; feel the presence of the wild, of the deep green life, and follow her.
Feel the longing for more life as you move ever deeper into the forest, coming at length to an ancient grove of yews sealed with an old oak door. Stand with Mona before the door, taking your time to feel the presence of the forest and your proximity to sacred space. You are on the edge of mystery: pause to absorb your relationship to this timelessness.
Then gradually let the images fade and sit in the body of light and contemplate your experience before returning to the outer world.
Meditation 8: The Mystery of the Grove—
Daath
After the usual preliminary exercises, the bridge leads you back again to the oak door that seals the ancient grove. As you renew your commitment to explore the current of Malkuth, the ancient studded door opens easily.
You enter the grove formed of ancient yews, their red-brown trunks and boughs delineating the shape of a lozenge, or the centre of a vesica piscis, in the heart of the forest. It is protected and set apart, with a waist-high stone pillar at its centre. Enter as both Hugh and Mona, masculine and feminine, priest and priestess. Contemplate the grove, the priest and priestess, and await the coming of the God. A breath of cold air stirs, as if feeling you, bringing fear and exhilaration as you realise that you are presenting yourself for the blessing of Pan.
Feel both the longing and the freed life within you; let the priest and priestess be one within you; feel the rising of the inner sun.
Between the completion of this main practice and the next, final ritual, you will find many side issues, ideas, and byways that the story has planted in you. Hold them lightly but with focus. Pursue them in meditation, visualisation, and contemplation until you feel complete enough in this phase of the work. There is no rush.
To compete the work with Malkuth, perform this last ritual.
The Ritual of Malkuth
This deceptively simple ceremony completes the work of this sephirah. Through the magical relationship of story and the imaginal sense, you may sink into an appreciation of the sacred marriage within yourself. As always, ensure that you will be free of interruptions, and allow time to prepare and wind down afterwards, to make notes and gently return to the everyday world.
You Will Need:
• Space that you have cleared in preparation and with awareness
• Comfortable seating
• A green candle
• Low light in the room—sufficient to read easily
• A copy of The Goat-Foot God
• Optional: pine oil in a burner/pine cones/a branch of fir
Make yourself comfortable in a clear, clean space in front of the candle and with a token of the breath of Arcady present—pine oil scenting the room, with a fir branch, twigs, or scented cones, or whatever seems right to you. Light the candle and sit with your spine straight, thinking of the lowest sphere on the Tree of Life, as you repainted it in the chapel.
Perform the relaxation exercises and the interwoven light, and call into being the body of light. Let it settle around your physical body and feel the energy of the wild. This manifests in a green glow that spreads until it surrounds you with the light, sun-fused atmosphere of Arcady.
Remain aware of this imaginal space as you pick up The Goat-Foot God and riffle through the pages. Take time to read odd paragraphs as they catch your eye, retracing Hugh and Mona’s journey. Allow the images and scenes to resonate with your own experiences stored deep in the body—there is no need to remember them with the rational mind—and feel them resettle in a harmonious shape …
Relax completely into the experience of magical reading, and as the scenes become more vivid, turn to the last chapter and quietly read it aloud to yourself, in that place of inside and outside discernment—a mirror of the way that the books were written by the author.
As you finish reading, allow the ancient cry “Hekas, hekas, este bebeloi! Be ye far from us, oh ye profane!” to fade into the silence, and sink into a rich, profound stillness. Within this, feel the masculine and feminine energies within you, the satyr and the maiden, the sword and the chalice, the active and the passive principle of pursuing and yielding, dance and align themselves. The green-gold threads of nature permeate you, unifying the whole glorious complexity of your psyche in a constantly fluid, shifting pattern around a central core of spiritual life; the living caduceus of the sacred marriage.
Sit with the energies, becoming aware also of natural forces pouring into you, supporting and energising the process, and feel, almost simultaneously, the need to give them back to nature, so that they flow in and out in a never-ending stream, for the benefit of all and the evolutionary current.
Slowly this feeling stills, and you respond to the pull to return to the everyday, bringing back your feeling of harmony with the nature of all things.
Respect the end of this section and your own inner process: ground it with journaling and walking in nature. Give yourself time and space to settle within.
When you are ready, you will move on to contemplate the sephirah Yesod and the book The Sea Priestess.
78. Fortune, The Goat-Foot God, 5.