Dion Fortune

The teaching

Taught from her own books, above all The Mystical Qabalah (1935), Psychic Self-Defence (1930) and The Cosmic Doctrine.

The yoga of the West

Dion Fortune holds that every people needs a way to the inner life fitted to its own mind and body, and that the Western student does better with a Western way than with methods borrowed from the East. That way is the Qabalah, which she calls the yoga of the West. Its heart is the Tree of Life, a glyph of ten spheres and the paths between them, on which every force of the universe and every faculty of the soul can be placed, so that it serves at once as a filing cabinet for the mind, a map for meditation and a ladder for the soul.

The Tree, sephirah by sephirah

She teaches each sephirah through the same keys: its titles, its name of God, its archangel and angels, its magical image, its virtue and vice, and its spiritual experience. Malkuth, the kingdom, has for its image a young woman crowned and throned; its virtue is discrimination, its vices avarice and inertia, and its experience the vision of the Holy Guardian Angel. Yesod, the foundation, has a beautiful naked man, very strong, the virtue of independence, the vice of idleness and the vision of the machinery of the universe. Hod, splendour, has a hermaphrodite, the virtue of truthfulness, the vice of falsehood and the vision of splendour. Netzach, victory, has a beautiful naked woman, the virtue of unselfishness, the vice of lust and the vision of beauty triumphant.

Tiphareth, beauty, at the centre, has three images, a majestic king, a child and a sacrificed god; its virtue is devotion to the Great Work, its vice pride, and its experience the vision of the harmony of things and the mysteries of the crucifixion. Geburah, severity, has a mighty warrior in his chariot, the virtue of energy and courage, the vice of cruelty and the vision of power. Chesed, mercy, has a mighty king crowned and throned, the virtue of obedience, the vices of bigotry, hypocrisy, gluttony and tyranny, and the vision of love.

Above the Abyss, Binah, understanding, has a mature woman, the virtue of silence, the vice of avarice and the vision of sorrow. Chokmah, wisdom, has a bearded male figure, the virtue of devotion and the vision of God face to face. Kether, the crown, has an ancient bearded king seen in profile; its virtue is attainment, the completion of the Great Work, and its experience union with God. The student meditates on each in turn, building its image until it lives, and lets its virtue and vice show where the work in their own character lies.

The descent and the return

The Tree is travelled two ways. The force of creation comes down it in the order of the sephiroth, from Kether to Malkuth, pictured as a flash of lightning; the soul climbs back by the paths, pictured as a serpent winding upward through each in turn. She sets the mystic, who rises straight up the middle pillar, beside the occultist, who works with the forces of the side pillars in turn, as the kabbalah art's branch The three pillars teaches.

The group mind and the Masters

Any group of people who meet with one aim, she teaches, build a group mind, a life of its own that outlasts its members and can be entered by those who come after. The mystery schools are such groups, formed and fed from the inner planes by the Masters, men and women who once lived on earth and now teach from beyond it. A lodge's rites build and keep the contact with them, and the student who joins enters a current older than themselves.

Psychic self-defence

Her rules against the fear of attack begin with the ordinary. Look first for a natural cause, an illness, exhaustion, a nervous strain, a mind out of order, for most fears of attack are that, and take it to a doctor. Fear itself is the door by which harm comes in, so refuse fear and keep to ordinary life: rest, sunlight, sound food, cheerful company and work in the world. Stop all meditation and occult work while the trouble lasts, since they open what now needs to be closed.

Then close the door in the mind. She teaches the student to picture themselves within a shell of light and to make the sign of protection their own tradition gives: the cross for the Christian, the Qabalistic Cross and the banishing pentagram for the student of the lodge. Never answer with hatred, she warns, for what is sent comes back upon the sender, and the one who keeps their own heart clean has nothing in it for harm to hold to.

The Cosmic Doctrine

The teachings she took down in trance picture the making of the universe in images of movement. In the beginning is the unmanifest, space at rest. Movement arises in it and becomes a ring, the Ring-Cosmos; its momentum sets up a second ring at right angles, the Ring-Chaos; and a third, the Ring-Pass-Not, marks the bound beyond which manifestation does not go. Within the rings the atoms form from the tracks of moving forces, the great entities are built, and the divine sparks, the seeds of souls, go out on their long evolution through the planes and return enriched.

She tells the reader how to take it. The images are not descriptions but symbols, meant to train the mind and not to inform it: the student holds them in meditation until the mind takes their shape, and does not argue over them as facts.

All the gods are one god

Her novels teach the side of the mysteries that she held her age had lost: the holiness of the woman's power and of the union of opposites. “All the gods are one god, and all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator,” the priestess says, and her rites by the sea call on Isis as the moon and the deep. The woman, in her teaching, is passive on the outer planes and active on the inner, the man the reverse, so that each quickens the other on the plane where they are strong: the priestess initiates the man inwardly as he gives her power form in the world. This is the magic of polarity, worked in ritual between a priest and a priestess, and she held it to be the key to the rites of the old mysteries.