Gareth Knight
Dion Fortune is recognised as one of the most influential figures intwentieth century occultism and her books on various aspects of theoccult tradition are now enjoying a much deserved reappraisal. Her worksof fiction are highly acclaimed both as vehicles for presenting complexmagical and psychical theory and as remarkably powerful piecesof genre literature.Gareth Knight, her biographer and a life long student of her work, heregives an overview of all her occult fiction, including her early work,The Secrets of Dr Taverner, a series of short stories based upon theapproach of her early teacher Dr Theodore Moriarty to methods ofesoteric healing, and The Demon Lover, a blood and thunder thriller ofblack magic and vampirism that developed in the writing into a story ofinitiation and redemption through love.In her later novels, Dion Fortune began deliberately to use fiction asa means of practical teaching. While she had presented the theory ofoccultism in her great work The Mystical Qabalah, it was through herworks of fiction that she sought to provide manuals for putting it intopractice, at a time when much of this material was considered highlysecret and to be revealed to initiates only.Gareth Knight gives a clear guide on how and where to look for thispractical instruction in these later books, which compriseThe Goat-foot God, an evocation of Earth Mysteries and the Rite of Pan;The Winged Bull with its polar Mysteries of Sun and Earth;The Sea Priestess, celebrating the Mysteries of the Moon; and theposthumously published Moon Magic that takes them to a higher arc withthe setting up of a temple dedicated to Isis.Many aspects of occultism receive practical attention in her pages,including place memories, karmic elements from past incarnations,animal magnetism, ley lines, sacred centres, techniques of ritual, andabove all the working out of right relationships between the sexesin polar interchange
