SECTION 1
LEAVING HOME
As we now follow each story in turn, we open further to the reality behind the reality and to the development of a deep embodied understanding of the Tree of Life.
In this section, two chapters are devoted to each book, evolved from the process of “close reading.” This technique involves focusing on short passages and scrutinising them for meaning—the reader might already have read the books in this way, intuitively picking passages that drew them and reading slowly and deeply.
An alchemical process occurs as we use this technique consciously. Through our close attention, our experience and wisdom are added to the mix, and new connections can emerge that the author could not have predicted. When we read thoughtfully, we start to own the texts, and their meaning finds expression through us. Like the fluid interconnections of the paths and sephiroth of the Tree of Life, our conscious, subconscious, and superconscious minds are beginning to find the pathways to relationship.
This section visits and then revisits the same ground from two viewpoints—a technique Dion Fortune used so effectively in Moon Magic. First we view the action from the psychological context, and then we place it firmly on the support of the Tree. Through this, each sphere makes valuable pathways and multilayered connections to the others. The reader is asked to deliberately disengage from each chapter after reading in order to view the similar content in the next afresh. In this way, we enable the two interpretations to meld and fuse deep within, ready for the work of sections two and three.