Dion Fortune Quotes

All gods are one God, and all goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator.

The highest development was in the Egyptian and Cabalistic systems, and it was blended with Christian thought in the schools of the Neo-Platonists and the Gnostics ... Its studies were only kept alive during the Dark Ages among the Jews who were the chief exponents of its Cabalistic aspect ... and it is still alive today.

The difference between magic and meditation methods is the difference between drugs and diet - medicines will do swiftly what diet can only effect slowly, and in critical cases there is no time to wait for the slow processes of dietetics, so it must be either medicines or nothing. Nevertheless, drugs are no substitute for right diet and wholesome regime, and although magic enables a speedy and potent result to be attained, is is only by means of right understanding and right ethics that the position which has been won can be held.

12. Each symbol, moreover, admits of interpretation upon the different planes, and through its astrological associations can be related to the gods of any pantheon, thus opening up vast new fields of implication in which the mind ranges endlessly, symbol leading on to symbol in an unbroken chain of associations; symbol confirming symbol as the many-branching threads gather themselves together into a synthetic glyph once more, and each symbol capable of interpretation in terms of whatever plane the mind may be functioning upon. 13. This mighty, all-embracing glyph of the soul of man and of the universe, by virtue of its logical association of symbols, evokes images in the mind; but these images are not randomly evolved, but follow along well-defined association-tracks in the Universal Mind. The symbol of the Tree is to the Universal Mind what the dream is to the individual ego; it is a glyph synthesized from subconsciousness to represent the hidden forces.

Phantasms of the Living, by Gurney and Podmore.

The man who is an initiate of one of the great Mystery Schools never fears to let his pupils outdistance him, because he knows that it stands him in good stead with his superiors if he is constantly sending up to them aspirants who 'make good.' He therefore never tries to hold back a promising pupil, because he has no need to fear that pupil, if allowed to penetrate into the Mysteries, would spy out the nakedness of the land; he will rather bring back a report of its exceeding richness, and thereby confirm the statements of his teacher and spur his fellow pupils to yet greater eagerness.

Magick is the art of causing changes in consciousness to occur in accordance with the will.

The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind.

The neurotic is very often psychic, and the psychic is very often neurotic.

In sympathetic magic one imitated a thing and so got into touch with it.

It has been well and truly said that in the exoteric church the ceremony is performed by one person for the benefit of the congregation; but in the Lodge the ceremony is performed by the congregation for the benefit of one person.

We take spiritual initiation when we become conscious of the Divine within us, and thereby contact the Divine without us.

In his imagination he performed the 'composition of place' reconstructing the scene from what he could remember of the classics, so laboriously and unprofitably rammed into his head at Harrow.

Unless men work at occultism as they work for the prizes of their professions they will not achieve.

Never trust the occultist who tells you that he is the head of a tradition, because if he were, in the first place, he would not tell the fact to the uninitiated, and in the second place he would in all probability be living in great seclusion and inaccessible to all but his immediate subordinates. If a man is a great artist he does not need to inform us of the fact; we shall know him by his pictures that are hung in the galleries of the nation, and we shall, moreover, find that he guards himself from casual acquaintances because of the inroads on his time to which his fame renders him liable. The more eminent a person, the harder he is to approach, not out of any spirit of pride and exclusiveness, but because so many people want to see him that discrimination has to be used in admitting them.

The old bookseller had learnt at the seminary that when it comes to conceiving transcendent things, minds vary enormously in their capacity, and the trained mind is a very different matter to the untrained; and the mind that is conditioned by music and incense and dim lights has very different capacities to the mind that goes at the job in cold blood.

I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.

If we intend to take our occult studies seriously and make of them anything more than desultory light reading, we must choose our system and carry it out faithfully until we arrive, if not at its ultimate goal, at any rate at definite practical results and a permanent enhancement of consciousness. After this has been achieved we may, not without advantage, experiment with the methods that have been developed upon other Paths, and build up an eclectic technique and philosophy therefrom; but the student who sets out to be an eclectic before he has made himself an expert will never be anything more than a dabbler.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if one of the team cannot handle the forces, everybody is going to suffer. A ritual lodge is no place for the well-meaning ineffectual.

It is one of the strictest conditions of initiation that occult knowledge may never be sold or used for gain.

The true secret of natural goodness lies in the recognition of the contending rights of the Pairs of Opposites; there is no such antimony as between Good and Evil, but only balance between two extremes, each of which is evil when carried to excess, both of which give rise to evil if insufficient for equipoise.

When we speak of the Path we mean much more than a course of study. The Path is a way of life and on it the whole being must co-operate if the heights are to be won.

The average man may be capable of benefiting by initiation, or he may not; it also depends upon his capacity; but each individual should have the opportunity of advancing to the highest development of which he is capable.

There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep.

The occultist does not try to dominate Nature, but to bring himself into harmony with these great Cosmic Forces, and work with them.

What you contemplate, you touch. What you enter into in imagination, you make yourself one with.

What mathematics are to matter and force, occult science is to life and consciousness,

Occultism has no Pope.

Now vampirism is contagious; the person who is vampirised, being depleted of vitality, is a psychic vacuum, himself absorbing form anyone he comes across in order to refill his depleted resources of vitality.

We all know that, when caught off our guard, there comes a dark temptation from the depths of our lower selves, something atavistic stirs, and we think thoughts, or even do deeds, of which we would never have believed ourselves capable.

There is something very intimate and personal about one's books. They reveal so much of one's private soul.

A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism.

One cannot blame an organization that picks up an occasional black sheep, one only takes exception if it retains an accumulation of them.

Esoteric science premises the existence of the Great Unmanifest, which may be conceived as a sea of limitless but latent force which underlies all things and whence all things derive their substance and draw their life.

In varying degrees and and upon different levels all gods and goddesses represent aspects of One God Which is both 'male' and 'female'.

I saw the sea-gods come, moving with an irresistible momentum, not rising into the air as the riders rose, but deep in their own element, unhasting, unresting; for the power of the sea is in the weight of the waters and not in the wind-blown crests. These Great Ones rose with the tide, and like the tide, nothing might withstand them.

The commonest form of psychic attack is that which proceeds from the ignorant or malignant mind of our fellow human beings. We say ignorant as well as malignant, for all attacks are not deliberately motived; the injury may be as
accidental as that inflicted by a skidding car. This must always be borne in mind, and we should not impute malice or wickedness as a matter of course when we feel we are being victimised. Our persecutor may himself be a victim. We should not accuse a man of malice if we had linked hands with him and he had stepped on a live rail. Nevertheless, we should receive at his hands a severe shock. So it may be with many an occult attack. The person from whom it emanates may not have originated it. Therefore we should never respond to attack by attack, thus bringing ourselves down to the moral level of our attackers, but rely upon more humane methods, which are, in reality, equally effectual and far less dangerous to handle.

The Door Without a Key is the Door of Dreams; it is the door by which the sensitive escape into insanity when life is too hard for them, and artists use it as a window in a watch-tower. Psychologists call it a psychological mechanism; magicians call it magic, and the man in the street calls it illusion or charlatanry according to taste. It does not matter to me what it is called, for it is effectual.