The Goat-Foot God:
Power of Nature
What I want is that something vital which I feel to be somewhere in the universe, which I know I need, and which I can’t lay my hand on. … Now I call that ‘something’ the Great God Pan. 6
In The Goat-Foot God, the subtle realms are singing from the earth as the breath of the god Pan and the reincarnation theme reinforce the “joining up” of the characters’ inner and outer worlds. As Pan gives life in fullness, so the book is about abundant, natural relationships of all kinds; first in the intimate family permutations between “Uncle” Jelkes, Mona, and Hugh, then between the hero and the local community, and, by inference, out to the widest reaches of possibility. It is a long journey for a man noted by Mona to be far more in sympathy with his car than with human beings.
It is clear that Hugh and Mona have complementary qualities. Mona, as priestess in waiting, has the spiritual understanding necessary for the expanded life and to facilitate Hugh’s development, as she needs Hugh to make her progression possible, from a practical and an esoteric point of view. In The Goat-Foot God, the priestess teaches overtly, whilst Hugh, the achiever, makes all possible in the mundane world. A base is found, and the derelict Abbey is soon transformed into a working temple and living space that is thoroughly embedded into its surroundings.
Relationships
The development of the relationships in each of the books reminds us first that we all share the frailties of human nature and cannot discount real life, and second that every character is also a facet of our essential nature and that we hold many warring relationships inside us.
The relationships grow naturally and include the minor characters: the enchanting but infuriating Bill and Lizzie, with their own lives and needs, are very much built in to the structure of the hugger-mugger, idiosyncratic household. It is a believable and organic development of small-community living. Dion Fortune possibly experienced communal living early in life at boarding school: she certainly “lived in” as a horticultural college student and shared living space at the teaching retreats of her first teacher, Moriarty. Later in her occult career, she lived communally at 3 Queensborough Terrace, the original headquarters of the Society of the Inner Light.
Hugh is lucky: his talent is for gathering precisely the people who will support him best. There is mutual fellow feeling between the two of them and the local solicitor, shopkeeper, and landlady at the local pub, who are sufficiently embroiled in local politics to enjoy upsetting the local “gentry,” Miss Pumphrey. Hugh shows himself to be a “man’s man” in dealing with the locals, who recognise his sincerity and are able to discount the veneer of class. And the influence of Pan, to bestow life in abundance to his followers, spreads out from Mona and Hugh’s work to influence their servants and others in the vicinity.
A House of the Mysteries
We find many similarities between the temple properties in all the books.
All the temples are disguised or overlooked buildings. They are old and well made and have suffered the depredations of time and unkind ownership before being rescued for esoteric work.
In The Goat-Foot God, Fortune puts into practice all her tenets for the preparation of magical space, starting with the conscious courting of Otherworldly influence through setting up a house dedicated to the mysteries. Hugh and Mona embark as servants of the gods in this, the most down-to-earth of the books. Monks Farm is placed where the ancient gods are accustomed to being worshipped and is quickly transformed by the first of the author’s old-fashioned craftsmen, who appreciate the opportunity to restore the timeless beauty of the ecclesiastical buildings.
Making a home is one of the most resonant themes in fiction, and even the most prosaic story can have a profound effect on the reader. Stripping out the cheap fittings and getting back to bedrock is a good analogy for the spiritual work of the characters: we are drawn to care deeply, to be intrigued by the homemaking that is a reflection of the characters’ individual development and their relationship, and the gradual uncovering of the beauty of the building echoes Hugh’s journey of discovering Ambrosius.
Monks Farm was originally built for a sacred purpose. Far from starting from scratch, they are, as Mona explains earlier, awakening old energies first invoked by the Pagan monks in the places where they are accustomed to being worshipped.
We can see the juxtaposition of Christian and Pagan practice as echoing the tenets of the Western Mystery Tradition, which does not deny Christianity but celebrates it in an expanded form, fused with an understanding of earth mysteries and ritual magic.
Mona gives the argument for a fusion of Christian/Pagan beliefs, both of which are the spiritual heritage of the West and the heritage of Ambrosius’s house.
On the outer level and the inner planes, the characters are “coming home” to a harmonious acceptance of all their cultural influences, just as we can.
The Tone of the Book
The subtle emanations of magic respond immediately to Hugh in the bookshop’s nurturing environment; he starts to forge an authentic way of being in the world. Immersion in ideas of the wider life of many dimensions coupled with his need and the empathy it provokes effectively change his direction.
Away from Mayfair, Hugh, for the first time, sees how people should and do behave in supportive relationships, as Jelkes and Mona treat him as an intimate. The habitual attitude of his former life—that his only use is as a cash cow—gradually diminishes, and later he is indignant at the family expectation that he will continue in this role. He is amazed by the way that Jelkes handles Mona when she is ill, and quickly develops an understanding with all the key members of the rural community. There is a joy and a deft touch in these small scenes of rural domesticity and the characterization of those who people them. After a lifetime of being disregarded by the servants, Hugh is helped immeasurably by the subsidiary characters, who assert his correct status and respond to him sympathetically. They provide a background of everyday life to contrast with the high drama of the spiritual journey. Dion Fortune’s skilful alternation between lyrical prose and the colloquial—for which she says she was criticized at the time—keeps her books fresh and accessible.
The magic in this earth-mystery story is of growing and integration, delving into a deep relationship with ancestry, with the soil, and with the psyche. It is a story of rooting and coming home through work and service and is both grounded and grounding. The dance of relationship is whimsical and gentle as Hugh and Mona come into synchronicity on the higher planes: they develop beyond the belief of the medieval period that the spirit must be elevated by the mortification of the flesh. By the conclusion of The Goat-Foot God, we understand the esoteric concept of honoring the spirit through the body, in the sacred marriage.
Adding to this expansion is a youthful, guilt-free relationship with the god Pan. This ancient being, who brought joy to the Olympian gods, brings them to an understanding relevant for the modern world. One concrete result is the ditching of their earlier plans for “medieval” gothic furniture in favour of streamlined, modern décor that relates better to ancient Greece.
Mona
Mona, a little brown rabbit disguised in her drab coat with its worn coney collar, is a far cry from the glamorous heroines Ursula, Vivien, and Lilith of the other books. The twitching, nervous, self-deprecating Hugh is an unlikely hero, with stooped, jerky movements and nervous energy but no stamina. Both are lacking “It”—then a current term for sex appeal. But insignificant Mona is the embodiment of the “pal”—the helpmate who was the ideal for soldiers returning from the First World War, who had lost so many pals at the front. She is the antithesis of the Mayfair “type,” being generous and capable of selfless love; a chum, a fellow quester, and an intimate. She is Hugh’s perfect complement, supplying the quality of earthed energy that he lacks.
Her circumstances are the realities of life in Britain before the welfare state, showing the very real dangers of poverty between the wars and the lack of opportunity—the ability of a poor craft worker to network successfully being necessarily limited. Mona is ready for the role of priestess, but Jelkes fears for her virtue and so presents her simply as an artist. He is a fiercely protective mentor to them both.
This can all be viewed as rather workaday, a business relationship chaperoned by an elderly bookseller, yet there is an important pointer early on. Considering the possible outcome of Hugh and Mona’s meeting, Jelkes compares Hugh’s quest to Arthur’s foray into the Otherworld. This reference, taken from the ancient Welsh poem Preiddeu Annwn, has a great mythic resonance. It describes King Arthur’s raid to steal a magical cauldron, which Dion Fortune equates to the quest for Cerridwen’s cauldron. To her this is the grail of the earth goddess, the ultimate symbol of the spiritual made manifest, and Jelkes hints that it might be achieved. Hugh does not understand, but the reference to Arthur, the once and future king, the hero of the primary myth of the British, tells us—even if we are not versed in the earliest Celtic literature—that great things are afoot.
Hugh
Hugh is the man of action. Whilst Jelkes is content to philosophize, Hugh’s instinct is to wind up his previous life, get a car, and go and do something. But, post-trauma, it must be something real, not the thrill-seeking that has distracted him from the shallowness of life in the past. His new quest to contact the gods comes from the critical urge to find a meaning in life, to put down roots and have a fulfilling home life. His deep self pursues what is needed for his spiritual welfare, going quickly beyond the fascination of the Black Mass to the larger, invisible reality that informs the physical world. He invokes and is answered at every stage, for as Mona says, sincere commitment is an invocation. His esoteric reading is a tool that urges him to the quest; he is compelled to experiment, to get on the trail. He is a student thirsty for knowledge that he can put to a practical application.
Their Relationship
Reciprocity is an important theme: Mona points the way and supports Hugh, both practically and esoterically, as he in turn begins to free her, from poverty and insignificance. Together they blossom, and deep calls to deep. The business relationship Mona tries to establish is useless for this purpose. Hugh resolves to humanize her, and fortunately his bereavement activates Mona’s maternal instincts: she feels a responsibility first of all to mother him—to care in a way that is new to him.
Hugh buys her a jade-green coat—a lovely analogy for their relationship; it protects and warms her, cutting through her disguise, so that, wearing it, her striking and elfin nature is apparent. With Hugh’s car and clothes, they stand out as exotic figures in a street scene where Jelkes blends in. It is the first intimation that the breath of Pan has already imbued them with a vitality out of the ordinary, and they go straight to the village where they will find Monks Farm and the Ambrosius contact.
Hugh’s noticing Mona’s discomfort in the car and acting on it is a tangible indication that the bubble separating him from the world is cracking. And as Mona sees his “Ambrosius” nature when driving, she wants ardently to protect him from exploitation. This she does, teaching him about human nature during the process of house buying and setting up his home. The many small instances of care between them throughout provide a contrast to the high drama of Ambrosius’s contacts with his succubus.
Establishing themselves in the farm, Hugh and Mona become hypersensitive to the beauty surrounding them; they are like people recovering from illness—in this case the illness of over-civilization. Pan is referenced in subtle ways: through the untamed landscape echoing Arcadia and in the smell of the herb goat’s rue. Living in Pan’s natural landscape gradually transforms Mona from her London persona of priestess-in-disguise into a representation of the active aspect of the Goddess. The change is lyrically noted: “Mona, whose neutral-tinted clothes looked so drab in London, looked here as if she had risen from the grey winter pasture like Aphrodite from the wave of the sea.” 7 The change alerts us to Mona’s increasingly active role in Hugh’s own transformation. And Pan works within through the extremes of emotion expressed by the emerging Ambrosius, as well as Mona’s responses, which become deeper through shared experience. The last change, into active priest/priestess of the gods, will be the culmination of their story.
The Quest
The quest allows Hugh to put his money and his organisational skills to his own creative use for the first time in his life. Through regressions into Ambrosius’s life, reenacting his final moments, Hugh integrates the experiences into his psyche. These scenes in the medieval buildings show Hugh’s development; they are an absorbing study in psychological process. As he comes into his rightful place, things move fast, and with synchronicity. And through it all, Hugh and Mona’s heart-searchings and explorations constitute the lessons of the spiritual mating.
We know of Mona’s limited Christian upbringing and its denial of her creativity. By opening up to the wider morality with Jelkes’s help, her worldview and spirit have expanded. Hugh’s similarly deep exploration and integration is laid out before us. Ambrosius, who could only dream of a fulfilment denied him by society, has been reborn in this life as Hugh the supplicant, coming into the presence of the God to be made whole. Gradually, his spontaneous and frightening experiences come under control as he deliberately works with them towards a synthesis of the two personalities: the medieval and the modern. The culmination comes when, donning the monk’s robe made by Mona, Hugh consciously brings Ambrosius back into himself, secure that he will not get lost in the past. Despite Mona’s constant support, it is a journey he must take alone.
Jelkes has taken a back seat: the Pan current is directing the action, and by now his mentoring role is purely practical. He realises that Mona is essential to hold the reins of the household and his concerns are for her safety and morals, as Ambrosius’s charisma becomes apparent in Hugh, who for the first time becomes capable of dominating other people, a heady and a testing experience. When Hugh steps back from the opportunity to force his will on Mona, he passes a test of integrity: coming down to bedrock, Hugh is sound. He is comfortable enough with his Ambrosius persona to tease Mona, and elicits her unguarded response to him in a startlingly modern phrase: “This is the Ambrosius that won’t get no for an answer.” 8 From the moment Mona asks Hugh to give Ambrosius her love, she is giving him a clear signal, and the courtship progresses with tenderness, concern, and subtle flirting as a counterpart to the tension of the spiritual work. These are journeys of personal development, but with a shared history, causing them to orbit as the God directs their dance of discovery.
The old church is very much Hugh’s own space, as the garden is Mona’s: she tends the shrine of the earth goddess. Here, with the scent of the aromatic herbs in her nostrils, she meets Hugh’s crisis with a spontaneous deep vision of her own. As Hugh reenacts the death of Ambrosius in the cellar, the monk’s original death cell, Mona’s vision is of the ship. She steers them both into harbour under the auspices of Pan, the guardian of outcasts who have no place in cities and towns, describing exactly what is happening on the inner planes: she sinks back into a surrender to nature and the cosmic life, which is the true invocation of Pan. It is magically potent, directed by the woman who, drab and starving in London, has come into her own through Hugh’s largesse.
After this, Mona enacts the scene that should have occurred in medieval times, consciously taking on the persona of the succubus and leading Hugh from the cellar of Ambrosius’s death to call his faithful acolytes. Coming fresh from her Pan meditation, she is gradually glamoured and dominated by Hugh/Ambrosius and feels the stirrings of the great love. It is Hugh who, after fulfilling Ambrosius’s ambition to embrace her, sends Mona back to the house to conclude the process. As he tracks back and rearranges the things in this life and the past, he realises that the invocation of Pan has produced the appropriate composition of place—the reverse of what he set out to do. The scene is set for the last acts of their magical journey.
The ritual in the church starts under the auspices of Jelkes. Through his methods of applied psychology, Hugh and Mona reveal themselves to each other and Hugh finally sheds the last vestiges of his old life: the guilt over his wife’s death. Mona takes charge then, leading the ritual from the psychological into magical realms, using her priestess persona to dominate the men. She leads them from the church to witness the magical dance of the moon that magnetizes and draws Hugh to her. Mona has held the direct spiritual connection through her quiet work of service as earth priestess combined with the qualities of Aphrodite, and this is a practical demonstration of the call of Isis that will be fully explored in its sexual aspect in The Sea Priestess. Here, it is necessary to complete the “Ambrosius” cycle. Mona is the Priestess of the Earth enacting the moon rites, in a reflection of The Winged Bull’s Ursula, Priestess of the Moon, who takes the part of the Earth in spring.
The Christian Jelkes, whom Mona suspects of mentally making the sign of the cross throughout, is helpless as she draws Hugh’s soul to her. He is the witness of Hugh/Ambrosius’s breaking free, as Hugh’s etheric body emerges from the shadow of the church to stand in the moonlight. He is helpless as the renegade priest holds Mona and the unseen world of sentient nature partly manifests in the dance of Pan around them. This is the result of Ambrosius’s experiments, and for its duration, the fabric of the world becomes fluid. Not until the rite is over is Jelkes released to earth the two with light, warmth, and food.
Later that night we look at the crossover between psychological and magical explanation, and its implications. Mona suffers a severe reaction. Ambrosius has had a marked effect on her, and she is shocked by her behavior. She is left to her aspirin and tears, whilst Hugh, also sleepless, is thrilled that Mona has been carried away; it opens up new possibilities for the future. Ambrosius is now fully integrated, and Hugh considers how he has achieved this and the use of magical fantasy that goes beyond psychological practice.
The vital truth he recognises is that Mona is not his problem—she is already a priestess—but that he is Mona’s. To proceed, he must become the priest, to mate and worship with her in the right way. It is the final realisation, and is of sufficient power to set the process working.
Becoming the Priest
Morning brings a change in the dynamic: an embarrassed Mona is reassured by the newly confident Hugh, released from stiff tweeds to the freedom of shorts and sandals. Although she has led the way throughout, it is his role to instigate this last change, the first stage of which is their marriage. The broad humour verges on slapstick: love among the moderns that scandalizes Jelkes. But as their clothes are the modern equivalent of the Greeks’ freedom of dress, so their horseplay represents their entry into the innocence and gaiety of Arcady, with the nymphs and satyrs.
Being free to lead is part and parcel of Hugh’s realisation that he has magically laid Ambrosius to rest by fulfilling his ambitions. He has become capable of leading his priestess with confidence because her subconscious has spoken. Mona, for her part, fulfilled Pan’s promise to Ambrosius when she took Hugh from the cellar death reenactment. In return, Pan gifts her the priest she needs for his worship.
The expression of the Pan within allows Hugh to experience life in abundance, which alters him irrevocably: he notes a simple happiness akin to inebriation. He goes at once to find a magical space for the marriage rite—connecting with Mona’s goat’s rue on the way, and becoming irresistible to nanny goats. He finds a gift from Ambrosius—the grove of yew planted in the Middle Ages, in order to celebrate just such rites as are proposed.
Becoming the priest is an act of mystery and faith. As Hugh and Mona’s relationship started with him admitting that he didn’t know how to achieve his objective, so it finishes this cycle with a ritual into the unknown, led solely by intuition. Hugh is like us: a seeker gradually making sense of his world and realising where fulfilment comes from. Hugh and Mona’s marriage rite will be a connection to the cosmic life, against which he will measure the rest of his life. Mona’s words have been proven true: they have gained the greater life by proving that they will work with the mysteries, and they are married in the sight of Pan.
The Challenge of Continuing Life
The fact that Hugh and Mona are from different worlds becomes irrelevant to their future life together: they will engage with the wider world only on their own terms. Hugh tells us how it will work out in the real world in the future: they will have an idiosyncratic, creative life in London and at the farm that will attract only those in sympathy with them. Their ongoing worship of the Pan principle will be in safeguarding a shared life that has transformed the mundane into the life of connection. It is the spirit behind what they—and we—do that counts, not the show that people put on for the world to see.
Committing to the spirit of Pan in the world gives them an understanding that fuses the everyday and the wider life in a seamless flow between practical and highly spiritual living. Their marriage is an initiation, a beginning: their invitation to the dance of life played on the pipes of Pan, in their Arcadia in Hertfordshire.