The Magical Battle of Britain by Dion Fortune.pdf

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BATT

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Introduction and Commentary by Gareth Knight

!GOLDEN GATESI

First published 1993 by

Golden Gates Press

PO Box 1650

Bradford on A von

Wiltshire BA151FE

©Gareth Knight 1993

No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the

prior permission of the Publisher.

The Moral Rights of the Authors has been asserted

Cover concept by Simon Buxton

Cover design by David Forman

Text design and production by Mentor DTP

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Butler

Tanner Ltd, Frome and London

This is an Authorised Edition of The Society of the Inner Light

The Society of the Inner Light, founded by Dion Fortune, is a fully contacted Mystery

School working within the Western Esoteric Tradition. Details of the Aims and Work

ofThe Society ofthe Inner Light may be obtained by writing to The Secretariat, PO Box

2430, London NW3 4RZ, England.

Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope, or, if writing rom overseas, a self addressed

envelope plus an International Reply Coupon

INTRODUCTION

by Gareth Knight

Dion Fortune and the Way Ahead

Dion Fortune was a remarkable woman in many ways, a pioneering type

of whom it may be said not only that she lived before her time but that she

did much to shape the times that came after her.

Born in Llandudno, in North Wales, in 1890, by her early twenties,

despite no great formal education, she had become a leading psychothera

pist. This was in a pre-First World War London, when horse drawn buses

still plied the streets, and when the psychoanalytic discoveries of Sigmund

Freud were beginning to take the world by storm. With his theories of the

subconscious, and the importance of dreams, and the role of the sup

pressed sexual libido of everyday life, a whole new approach to the

human mind was being born.

But revolutionary as these psychological theories were, Dion Fortune

felt they did not go far enough to explain some of the hidden powers and

secrets of the mind. She had stumbled almost by accident upon the powers

of telepathy, which she found to be demonstrable within herself.

This came about in a wholly unexpected and coincidental way. She

used to attend a local Theosophical Society meeting house for the simple

if lowly reason that it was near her clinic and had good catering facilities.

It was thus a convenient place to lunch. One day, almost in a spirit of jest,

she stayed on for one of the lecture demonstrations, and discovered to her

amazement that she was picking up the images that the lecturer was

projecting in a simple experiment in telepathy.

This first-hand evidence could not be ignored, nor could it be ex

plained by any of the current theories of psychology. So she made a point

of looking out for unusual conditions of the mind that even the new

psychoanalysis could not account for.

In this she was helped by a co-worker at one of the clinics. This was a

Dr Theodore Moriarty, who had long experience in India, where there is

more knowledge and less scepticism about the hidden powers of the

mind.

The Magical Battle of Britain

The bonds of convention were, in the mean time, tightening. The

British Medical Association ruled that only qualified medical practition

ers should be recognised as analysts. This squeezed Dion Fortune out of

her practice, but the war came along anyway, and in common with

thousands of other women of the time she aided the national war effort by

working on the land, to help make the country self-sufficient for food in

a time of blockade. At a later stage of the war she helped conduct research

into the use of soya as an alternative to meat.

She continued working with Moriarty, and what she learned and

experienced from their association she wrote up in fictional form as The

Secrets of Dr. Taverner. Dr Taverner is loosely based on Moriarty and an

approach to psychic or psychological disturbances that goes beyond the

current theory and practice of psychological and medical science.

This included the use of hypnosis, reading the state of the aura,

reference to past incarnations, very fringe methods indeed medically

speaking, to cope with various obsessions, suicidal tendencies, or appar

ent split personalities.

Dion Fortune claimed that although some of the stories might seem

unbelievable, or to have been written up for dramatic effect, she had in fact

felt it necessary to tone down some of the factual circumstances to make

them fit for general publication.

However, as her knowledge of the deeper side of the mind progressed

so she moved away from abuse and pathology toward the more positive

realm, of personal fulfilment, self improvement and spiritual enlighten

ment. To this end, like the analytical psychologist C.G. Jung, she studied

spiritual traditions from many parts of the world, including the myths

and legends of the ancient world, and discarded and outmoded sciences

such as magic and alchemy.

She also studied under different contemporary teachers, seeking any

where that might give her knowledge of the powers of the human mind.

This included membership of a famous occult society, the Hermetic Order

of the Golden Dawn, that attracted many notable personalities of the time,

particularly from the world of the arts. These included the poet W.B.

Yeats, the novelists Brodie Innes and Charles Williams, the children's

writer Edith Nesbitt, and a director of the Tate Gallery, Sir Gerald Kelly.

She studied directly under Moina Macgregor Mathers, the wife of its

principal founder, and a daughter of the philosopher Henri Bergson.

But as she progressed further in her quest so she found that powers

were awakening within her own mind. She seemed to be recovering what

appeared to be memories of past lives, with their ancient wisdom. In the

Introduction

process she taught herself the techniques of trance mediumship for she

was no believer in relying upon the psychic powers of others.

All this led to her deciding to form her own group and teaching centre.

Initially called the Community of the Inner Light, it later expanded into a

Fraternity and then into a Society, and has proved to be a source of

inspiration and guidance to sincere seekers ever since. An impressive roll

of occult writers and teachers have since passed through its portals.

The Community's first base was at Glastonbury, towards which Dion

Fortune was always strongly attracted. By one of those strange

synchronicities that occur when someone is about to find their true life's

work or destiny she was offered a plot of land at the foot of Glastonbury

Tor, on the actual holy hill itself, and a government surplus army hut to

put on it!

Soon she was established on the Tor, on the holiest earth in England,

and a group of small chalets was built within the enclosed garden to

accommodate students and kindred spirits.

Three strands of interest attracted her to Glastonbury and they re

mained the core of her teaching and life's work.

One was the Arthurian legend, of the Knights of the Round Table,

which includes the Quest of the Holy Grail. Second was the mystical

ambience of the place, as the site of the first Christian church in England.

And third was the elemental significance of the earth itself, for Glaston

bury is a site of ancient powers that go back far beyond recorded history,

as the remains of a spiral trackway up the Tor to the standing tower

suggest.

Glastonbury is full of associations of King Arthur. Some associate it

with Camelot, the King's great palace. Others, more mystically, see it as

the Isle of Avalon, from which the "once and future king" will one day

return to save his country and people. In the middle ages, the tomb of ing

Arthur and Queen Guenevere, complete with lock of yellow hair, were

found before the high altar of the abbey, on a plot still marked in the green

sward.

The full range of Arthurian annals was drawn upon by Marion

Zimmer Bradley in her epic novel The Mists of Avalon, drawing upon

traditions also expounded by Dion Fortune, concerning Merlin, Morgan

le Fay, the Lady of the Lake and other characters of ancient legend. Also

John Cowper Powys' monumental novel, A Glastonbuy Romance.

On the mystical side, Dion Fortune loved the abbey, once the finest in

England, but now no more than a ruin, desecrated by King Henry VIII

who also martyred its abbot. It still retains a grand magnificence from

vii

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