NEW Paperback version now available!
Dion Fortune encoded much practical magical lore within her novels, leaving it up to the reader to work out how to make use of it. Behind the novels were two major rituals, the Rite of Isis and the Rite of Pan, which Dion Fortune occasionally performed in public in the 1930s as part of her drive to open up occultism beyond the closed walls of esoteric fraternities. Now for the first time, these important magical workings have been released from her society’s archive in their complete and original form.
“The clearest, simplest – and best – analysis and explanation of what magic is and how it works that I have ever come across. Gareth Knight shows that DF’s novels are initiatory and were intended to be so. He supplements his exposition with DF’s own commentaries on her work and reveals the secret methods she employed in her art to link the reader’s imagination to spiritual and cosmic realities in order to activate the powers of the soul.” — Society of the Inner Light
Edited and explained by Gareth Knight, this book contains the full text of the original Rite of Isis and Rite of Pan which formed the basis for Dion Fortune’s Moon Magic, The Goat-Foot God, and The Sea Priestess. Further archive material elucidates the practical magical principles found in The Winged Bull. The book is supplemented by several articles written by Dion Fortune in the 1930s which shed further light on the practical content of her novels, including the essay Ceremonial Magic Unveiled, a review of the work of Israel Regardie in which she gives her views on the controversies within the Golden Dawn and frankly describes her own falling out with Moina MacGregor Mathers.
Here is a small sample from Gareth Knight’s introductory chapter:
“The deeper levels of the mind can be influenced by profound feeling and prolonged attention, and ritual is designed to take advantage of both methods. By means of a set rite we obtain prolonged attention, and by means of the “conditioned symbols” that make up the rite, we generate emotion. By means of a mood, or emotionally toned state of mind induced by the rite, we should be able to get in touch with a corresponding spiritual force. Thus by the use of that all-important factor, the pictorial imagination, the attention is held, a mood is achieved, and spiritual realisation or exaltation can follow.”
Dion Fortune’s Rites of Isis and of Pan is available from various retail outlets such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or direct from the Skylight Press website.
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