The Winged Bull and the Dance of Relationship
She was looking at him as if she had never seen him before; in the same way that he had looked at her when he saw her in her leaf-green robe, and Brangwyn, watching them, nodded to himself with inward satisfaction. The experiment had begun to move. 26
Although The Winged Bull is a story of magical transformation, its plot takes centre stage. The most potent magical connection between Murchison and the winged bull is spontaneous, and within the first few pages. After that and the sun ritual, overt magic, in theory or practice, is absent until much later, when Astley’s black magic ritual provokes a transformative response in both Ted and Ursula.
After the earthiness of The Goat-Foot God, The Winged Bull is airy in its nature—in the withdrawn intellectualism of Brangwyn, in the air element’s traditional correspondence to intellect and clarity, and in Ursula’s association with the moon. The story is not embedded in earth but moves back and forth between London and North Wales, between lands with historic associations that suit either the hero or the heroine. The two main dwellings direct our attention upwards—the roof garden with its view of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and Ursula’s sanctum in the high and rarefied places of Snowdonia, on top of the world, with clear air and long vistas. It is only at the end that Ted earths the current in his ancestral lands, in a farm that seems to have been grown organically over time.
This was the first book to be published in the Qabalah tetralogy. It is Dion Fortune’s toe in the magical pool, seeing just what truths she can express in fiction, and how; her way is through the psychology of the characters. Knowing the importance Dion Fortune accorded the “head” and “heart” centre of the land, working always with balance, the central axis of the middle pillar is the obvious place to start. But it is not the easiest place, for polarity issues were, by the standards of her time, very risqué subject matter. It is a delicate balance for an author relatively inexperienced in the genre, who also feels the weight of responsibility as an occult teacher.
We have made such a shibboleth of equality of the sexes that viewing past attitudes from a distance of over seventy years is a challenge. Our job is to interpret ideas in a way that is relevant today. We recognise first our physical gender and how we express it in a world full of choices, and then our inner reality that contains both male and female components, to be utilized for our health in all the realms—which include the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and magical. Externalizing “male” and “female” characteristics in the stories, Dion Fortune interprets magic in the light of psychology and interprets psychology with a magical perspective and understanding. The magic is there in the story, but we have to read carefully to access it—and much of it comes, surprisingly, through the character of Ursula.
Ursula’s Outward Appearance
Ursula is presented as passive and infantilised in the mundane world, a pawn in the magicians’ game. Brangwyn, Murchison, Fouldes, and Astley control her movements and her fate: both magicians repeatedly refer to her as “child.”
The writing is informed by the dominant patriarchal attitudes of the time, so that Ted, the novice, is consulted about Ursula’s treatment, whereas she, the “high grade pythoness,” is not, although Brangwyn acknowledges that, when not under hypnotic/magical control, she has psychological self-awareness. Ursula as a fully consulted partner, rather than a reactive cypher, could have contributed to a magical working of two partners and a mentor that we see in various forms in the other books.
Murchison’s Psychology
The infantilisation of Ursula, so uncomfortable to our thinking, is an important key to Murchison’s essential psychology. He is resentful of women in general and the cultivated Ursula in particular. But it is only through her child aspect that his compassionate, protective nature—the noblest attribute of the warrior—can open in service and giving. This is the only state in which he feels comfortable in their relationship, until the end of the story. Then, with Fouldes’s hold broken, Ursula comes into her power. For the first time she takes the initiative actively in the outer world as priestess, beginning to teach Ted the magical truths that support and inform adult intimacy.
Ursula’s customary stance, as a true priestess, is withdrawal and stillness; she appears suddenly in the flat and disappears to her own quarters silently after each scene. Even her domestic duties, such as making coffee, remind us more of Vivien/Lilith’s cooking alchemy than the unwholesome efforts of Ted’s sister-in-law or the flamboyant artistry of Luigi, Brangwyn’s chef. Her sanctum in Wales is isolated, supremely private: even after Fouldes’s attack, she refuses to leave it for the companionable farmhouse.
This space is necessary to one so active on the inner: it is through the mix of psychological/magical wisdom that she has imbibed from Brangwyn that we are kept keyed in to the inner reality. With this in mind, we can view Brangwyn’s ordering her from place to place as a device, to rationalise the habit of appearing and fading that is a necessity of her inner nature: each time she appears, she provokes change in Murchison.
Re-viewing the Story
When we start to view Ursula as an active priestess throughout, we can reassess the story. Overtly, the magician and apprentice save the maiden, but beneath the surface, the story is about the active saving of Murchison, who is truly helpless in the real world, unable to support himself or progress in life in any way. Ted’s active role makes it easy to overlook his limitations, but recognising them makes the story far richer and more evenly balanced.
It is the journey of two souls who must develop a relationship in order to become fully realised individuals. On the rocky road of coming to terms with each other’s true nature, learning to value and accept each other, they reflect our own foolish mistakes. They are like the figures in an old-fashioned weather house: one comes out for fine weather and one for stormy, but they are never in the same place together. In this story of misunderstandings, we notice how often it is Murchison’s complexes and insecurities that short-circuit what should, after the first magical ritual, be a seamless flow of magnetism.
The Dynamic
The couple’s misunderstandings, advances, and withdrawals form the dynamic of their relationship. Murchison activates the magnetic flow very early on through an emotional dance with Ursula, then his protective instinct takes the brunt of a magical strafing and opens a channel which embarrassment—made worse by Brangwyn’s comment “you little vamp”—makes Ursula reluctant to feed. She can only re-magnetise him when she remembers the war and recognises the nobility of the warrior. Then, she compares Ted to the pacifist Fouldes, and instinctively she responds to the fighting man. From our current place of privilege and safety, we should read the text with respect for the fact that the author had lived through the First World War and was married to a former soldier. Our twentieth-century views can be barriers to the deeper meanings that Fortune intends. She was, after all, brought up in the heyday of the British Empire. To balance this aspect of the story, we need only refer to Fortune’s The Magical Battle of Britain (letters to students during the Second World War) to be impressed by her forward-thinking, global, and humanitarian stance.
Effects of Ritual
The effect of a full magical ritual on Murchison is initiatory: he is reborn, with every part of him changed. From clumsy, he becomes light-footed and agile, a Norseman. Murchison’s was the active role as the sun, yet Ursula was not passive but a complementary nature force: she actively draws from him what she needs. After this, Ted has a liberating dream of riding the black horse: his transformation makes Brangwyn regret that Ursula cannot witness it. By sending her away immediately after the ritual, he has artificially cut their physical contact, yet progressing with that might have earthed the connection forged by the ritual too soon. He—surprised by the success of the ritual—has to train Murchison before they go further, lest he fail through inexperience; and Murchison, coming into his power and feeling the change of balance, resents Ursula’s removal. His relationship with Brangwyn is becoming mature, as opposed to the hero-worshipping stance of the young soldier.
The Work of the Book
The subsequent story shows how Ted and Ursula undergo diametrically opposed changes in order to bring them into magnetic flow.
Ted’s work is to integrate his inner and outer selves: to come into his magical personality and bring it through consistently into the world, in a way that happens naturally when his finest instincts are aroused. He will learn to generate a controlled power to make him effective in the everyday, and he must come to understand the magical component behind successful intimate human relationships. His habitual gaucheness and lack of confidence are overridden at moments of high drama—taking the blast meant for Ursula; carrying her off twice, the second time in spite of having just given grave offence. For all of these he fears he will never be forgiven—a view we might share—yet they are necessary actions in an unbalanced situation: it is a book of balancing polarities, and Ursula acknowledges his right to take control.
Ursula has only lived in a convent and as a withdrawn pythoness. 27 Her only male contact has been on a magical level; she undergoes a process of gradually integrating and applying this knowledge. Through the first ritual, she embarks for the first time upon what will become a normal adult relationship. Murchison’s flashes of crude misogyny during the ritual show the worst side of the dominant male out-of-balance. As the ritual takes hold, the goatish instinct is replaced by his real nature, and it is contemplating the winged bull that pulls him back on track. His instinct is accurate that Ursula needs rolling in Mother Earth to become a saner, more normal person. But far from that happening from his satyr-like instinct to “learn her,” the opportunities to teach her the ways of the world—ironically by saving her from danger—are activated by his true nature. She comes to recognise the nobility and self-sacrifice of the male instinct behind his actions, and her authentic response is to accept them.
Ted, the bull, symbolises strength and endurance; an earthy creature but with a fiery, solar strength; and Fouldes, the stag, carries the connections—shared with the greyhound and racehorse—of lightness and speed.
The latter’s quick, supple nature reflects Ursula’s own, and in her we see it as the liberating black horse, or the cat, an elegant symbol of supreme individuality. Fouldes and Ursula are too similar, with not enough complementary earth in their makeup, and she recognises this, comparing Ted’s tough nature to Fouldes’s brittle intellectual who snapped under the pressure of the magical work.
What she also realises after Fouldes’s attack is the unhealthy nature of his attraction for her. Fouldes’s magnetism is “epicene”—having characteristics of both sexes—which allows her to be dominant, an irresistible attraction in a world that had such strict expectations of the place of women. With Fouldes she has felt the heady freedom of intellectual equality. She has contrasted the two men to Ted’s detriment, yet later realises that she can talk to him “man-to-man”—as Lilith and Rupert will talk in Moon Magic. Then, it hurts Ursula’s pride; but she ultimately returns to that feeling of unfettered communication, in a totally feminine and intimate way.
Ursula decides to open to Ted completely, explaining all; but, as in real life, it all goes wrong. From that time there is a series of misunderstandings and unfortunate synchronicities. Their reactions dictate the action, which eventually allow each to move deeper and deeper into an understanding of the underlying principles of harmonious relationship. And, as is the way of us all, whether neophyte or magus, they suffer in the process.
The Effects of the Bull
The bull, after its first magical appearance, is strangely and subtlety present: absent from, yet active in, the plot development. Having set the esoteric wheels in motion, it is effortlessly hovering, until the successful conclusion. Murchison recognises that the bull image will “keep him straight,” for it is his particular doorkeeper to the mysteries, as Brangwyn is in the physical world. Significantly, when Ted first relaxes in Brangwyn’s flat, his host’s face and the bull’s face become interchangeable, as does his arm in its scarlet silk with the rose-granite arm of power. And we are given an early hint of Ursula’s role as mentor—her first appearance overwhelms Ted as if he witnesses the bull walking off its pedestal.
It is when the winged bull—on Ursula’s necklace—first appears to them simultaneously that she starts to explain the magical experiment to Murchison; the bull is their mutual friend. As the bull is guardian of the mysteries, it is not long before Ted realises that whenever it turns up, something extraordinary starts to happen.
Studying the bookplate starts his journey into an exploration of society and Christianity and all its attendant ills, followed by his first “tutorial” with Brangwyn. Whenever Ted has demeaning thoughts, the image of the bull brings him back to his proper state. He is glamoured by the hope that the bull will take wing, and speculates as to what sort of adventure it will bring. It is the thought of losing the glorious uprush of power, the sense of possibility and the feeling of being a baited bull, that makes him charge and rescue Ursula in the café in Wales and pursue Fouldes like a berserker in their final fight.
The situations that Murchison most fears—the “goatish” aspects of losing control, awakening the lowest passions—are transmuted by the influence of the winged bull: although Astley tries to arouse his base instincts with a pornographic retelling of the Minotaur myth, Murchison finds when he walks a labyrinth in fear of the minotaur that he finds instead the virgin. Fearing passion, he finds supreme peace, which is Brangwyn’s guide to a true spiritual mating.
A deep part of him recognises this—even before the Ritual of the Sun, when, plodding like the bull breaking new ground, he uses Ursula’s Christian name and communicates through touch, holding her hand. The peace that he experiences then foreshadows the final mating at the end of the book. Yet even as he forms the magical personality gradually throughout the book, his position of servant in the household constantly inhibits his initiative, so he keeps responding in the old accustomed way.
With our understanding of an underlying reciprocal, symbiotic, and, most importantly, equal exchange between Ursula and Murchison, their journey is a fluctuating wave of magnetism, constantly moving and changing. It carries the protagonists across countries that support their own energies, allowing the human protagonists to respond not only to events but to the deep energies of place.
Wales
Murchison is acutely aware of Wales as a foreign country. It has another language; it is primitive and the heights of the mountain are the place of gods strange to him. Here, where he is most disadvantaged, it is Gwennie the sheep dog, a guardian wedded to the soil, who protects Ursula. Murchison is disempowered, far from his native soil. It is Ursula’s role, in her sanctum of warmth and dim light, to make him welcome after his dash to her side. Instead he overhears a conversation that sounds the death knell of his hopes, turning him to stone. From thence, in Wales, his reactions all come from his ingrained insecurities.
But in Wales, the Celtic Ursula’s natural homeland, she comes to terms with the magical experiment and recognises Ted’s worth. Her deep introspection tells us what has been happening beneath the surface: her revealing self-analysis explains much of the modus operandi of the magic of relationship. Astley accurately explains the virginal warring with the bohemian in Ursula’s psychology, but in Wales she faces up to her fate, with the maturity to excuse Murchison’s worst excesses of behaviour. She has reached a level of understanding and is ready to progress to a physical level—unlike Ted, whose fear of intimacy still needs to be addressed.
His lack of desire, or inability to acknowledge and express it, will stop the circuit between them, for the impartial kindness of the warrior is not enough. Ted’s early vision of coming home to a wife and children shows the conclusion he desires, but it is beyond his power to initiate the process leading to that end.
From this point, Ursula will make the running, trying to be friends, and determining that the next kiss will be returned, so the rite can begin. Unfortunately Ted feels that his behaviour will never be forgiven and withdraws from all communication, until Ursula is kidnapped.
London
Back in London and the Scandinavian-settled East of the country, Ted comes into his own. He supports Brangwyn’s magical tussle with Astley and enjoys the seeming double-dealing, although it eventually results in Ursula falling into Astley’s clutches. It is one of the descents into comedic observational writing that punctuate Dion Fortune’s works, but the danger of the situation that develops allows Ted to respond from his depths once more. Ironically, the taste of the realities of life that Brangwyn and Ted agreed earlier would be good for Ursula is supplied not by high drama or “sheiking” but at Astley’s house, where Ursula is scrubbing the front steps.
Murchison’s selflessness in swabbing the steps after Ursula has dismissed him is pivotal: he is the only man she knows who would have considered such an action. They have a highly significant conversation on that doorstep. For the first time in the book, she is given a choice, and Murchison is the man who gives it to her. It is a reflection of the medieval story of the Loathly Lady,28 where Gawain discovers that what women want is sovereignty, the right to make their own decisions. Murchison offers to help, but never to overwhelm her again. He acknowledges her rights: “If you will take one step, I will take you the rest of the way, but you have got to do that, this time.” 29
She sees his depth of kindness and self-sacrifice again in the black magic ritual that is a parody of Brangwyn’s working of empowered and equal energies.
Astley’s house symbolizes Dion Fortune’s view that black magic is at the rearguard of the evolution of humanity, for his home has literally been overtaken by evolution. The building of the railway embankment has swamped the two lower floors. The cellar is tawdry, smelly, garish, and vulgar, a gimcrack venue for a prurient audience. It is an unwholesome setting within which Murchison touches the heights of abnegation.
For the first time since the ritual that caused the bond between him and Ursula, Ted touches the mystery of “the reality behind the reality.” Suspended as if crucified, he takes on the role of the God sacrificed for another who despises and rejects him. Yet after this revelation, he, who has always been the man of action, is helpless on the cross.
It is Ursula who unties him and supports him to a space from where they can plan their escape; she shares her cloak and apologies handsomely. Their closeness in the dark is followed by the high comedy of the standoff that culminates in Fouldes’s hold over Ursula being broken forever, as she sees him run like a frightened hen from Ted’s beating. During this, Murchison damages the pillars of the cellar, significantly undermining the house itself.
After heartfelt thanks, Ursula is once again removed, hopefully leaving Murchison to reach the conclusion that she has already drawn, that the experiment has succeeded. She writes frequently, keeping open a line of communication to which he is unable to respond.
Finding a house for the Brangwyns is medicine to Ted’s soul, but he breaks down at the deserted farmhouse. It is when the evening sun shines on the old farm, as it does on the church in Moon Magic, that he realises he is literally “at home” in a house of his childhood and the land of his ancestors.
The therapeutic work of restoring a home for Ursula is a period of forgetfulness, an enchanted time. Ted is totally absorbed in the here and now, and the expression of his feelings spills out into the planting of the garden. Whether or not Dion Fortune had a working knowledge of the Victorian language of flowers, those that Ted chooses are remarkably apposite. Lad’s Love was the plant used by inarticulate men to initiate courtship, and was dedicated to Artemis, a goddess of the bringing together of opposites—virgins and childbirth, the moon and nature. It is the plant both of Ted’s nature and of Ursula in her power. The primroses lining the path symbolise silent love, and the roses bring the promise of their future life together; purity, thankfulness, and grace from the pink and white; voluptuous love from the moss rose, and the sweetbriar carrying the message of the relationship we have been following: “I wound to heal.”
The last chapter is the culmination of their love story, and more to our point, it shows Ursula taking up the reins, initiating a conversation about the sexual aspect to relationship that inducts Ted into the deeper aspects of marriage. She starts by, in the parlance of the time, “making love,” as the only way to cut through his defences, declaring herself openly to him and demanding a response. The style is both tender and joking as they draw ever closer: “Put more water with it. Brangwyn’s given you an overdose.” 30 This is a real relationship, not one that is idealised. And again, Murchison acclaims her right to lead when he tells her to set the pace—and he is not just referring to the physical level. Their conversation ranges from charting the course of their relationship, as all lovers do, to the beginning of Ursula’s teaching.
She explains fully the principles behind the Ritual of the Winged Bull, the esoteric interpretation of sex, and the worship of God made manifest in nature. The “naturalness of the physical and the tremendous importance of the subtle and magnetic aspect” 31 behind it is what will make their marriage a true spiritual mating, blessed by the gods, and Ted’s agreement allows peace to fall between them. Ursula has come into her own as the bringer of the gifts of the divine feminine to the male. The winged bull, with his sexual aspect, human intelligence and spiritual aspirations, flies effortlessly: the rite is successful and its blessings inform their reverie.
26. Fortune, The Winged Bull, 53.
27. A pythoness was originally a prophetic priestess of Apollo at Delphi who mediated messages from the god to his petitioners.
28. A medieval Arthurian story of a lady enchanted into a hag who is freed by being given the choice over her own fate by the knight Gawain.
29. Fortune, The Winged Bull, 204.
30. Fortune, The Winged Bull, 238.
31. Fortune, The Winged Bull, 240.