Beloved of Ishmael — Fortune’s Fourth Novel as V.M. Steele Published

On Winter Solstice, Twin Eagles Publishing released the fourth and final novel written by Dion Fortune under her pen name V.M. Steele. Set in Africa, Beloved of Ishmael follows the adventures of Nina Barnet who, finally swayed by the romance/adventure novels of the day, travels to the West Coast of Africa to marry a man she became engaged to after spending a short time with him in England. She arrives to find him a sodden alcoholic wreck, and faced with the ruin and degradation a marriage to him would entail, Nina jumps ship, so to speak, and escapes with the one man in the settlement who seems to have strength of character and at least some integrity. True to colonial experience, Nina quickly falls in love and marries this man, only to discover that he is the notorious Cassalis, an Englishman who has organized the African and Arab criminal underground.

There’s so much to say about this novel. It is problematic for the 21st-century reader because of the casual racism. Paul Blakey and Richard Brzustowicz both discuss this, and Brzustowicz’s Foreword gives us some esoteric and scientific background on the thinking about race at the time this novel was written. The novel will most likely offend you, but if you are a student of Dion Fortune’s work or simply interested in history, it is worth the read.

Shiva Shakti Ardhnarishwra

What they don’t discuss is the change in how we see male/female relationships that is apparent in all four novels. Each of these books involves a casual acceptance of the potentiality of male violence against the woman in the book, and handling him properly is seen as the responsibility of the female character. If she’s smart and knows her man, she’ll come out all right. If not, well, she should have known seems to be the attitude. Also, written in the 1930s and on, they reflect the reality of women’s possibilities at that time. Women were just entering the work force and still dependent on men to a good degree. True independence is in the future, and perhaps still is.

One aspect of this novel is the coming together of the primal male and female, represented in this case by Nina and Cassalis. Because Cassalis has fallen fully and truly in love with Nina, and because she is a true clergyman’s daughter who has imbibed morality along with her mother’s milk, he realizes he must stop his criminal activities if they are to have a successful marriage. On a more practical level, he knows he cannot live in constant danger of arrest or assassination and raise a family. One interesting point is that Cassalis offers the least amount of violence to Nina. It is only when he thinks she is interested in another man that his jealousy is roused, but he sends it to the appropriate target—his crooked lawyer.

Nina’s reaction to his crimes is rather mild, and Fortune shows us that she has not imbibed the rigid, pompous, class-bound hypocrisy of her English upbringing along with the comparatively healthy morals of Christianity. Male morality is still in the hands of women, however. It takes a strong female presence to reform Cassalis, who has tried to go “straight” by opening a copper mine, but his application was denied by the former governor out of spite. But the new governor sees the potential in Cassalis when he rescues the governor’s wife along with two other women and leads them away from the Arab gangs, parlays with the tribal leaders, and runs the river in the dark. This new couple represent the best of the British aristocracy—clear-eyed, not easily shocked, willing to compromise in the establishment of real order. They stand not on abstract principles, but reality. They will balance Justice and Mercy for the good of the state.

So this tension between the poles of male and female is one esoteric aspect of the novel. The second is the vitality of the African continent which is said to reach out and awaken Nina.  Fortune does not show this very well, though. Nina comments that she loves the sunlight on board ship as it progresses south. Then she tells Cassalis, who she knows as Lewis at the time, that even though she is in an extremely difficult situation, she still doesn’t want to go back to England because Africa seems so vital. Cassalis himself confesses to Nina he, too, has felt the strength of Africa and would never return. In fact, it is when she says she has fallen under Africa’s sway that he becomes interested in her.

Cassalis is also involved in the African religion. We see occasional references to earth-based vs. heaven-based religions, paralleling in an interesting way the reality-based new governor against the abstract-principle based old one. But we never see a genuine representation of this, except perhaps for the drums that speak through the night when the new couple escape in the boat. Nina is moved deeply by this. Cassalis does participate in a debased and insulting ritual with the African cult leaders, posing as a Messiah gorilla and eating from a pile of yams that symbolizes going to war to unite the tribes and set them against the Arabs and Europeans.

Which brings us back to the casual racism. It would be one thing to accurately portray the racial prejudice of the characters through their speech and attitudes, but the narrator of the novel, who is closest to Fortune’s own voice, shares in it to an extent. Some of the characters are more vile than others, but the book portrays Africans as childish, Italians and Portuguese as overly passionate, and Arabs as intelligent but devious. They are types—typical of the early 20th century. Here’s where Brzustowicz’s Foreword is interesting. He discusses how the esoteric schools at that time taught that different glands were associated with different chakras, and that different racial types vibrated in harmony with different glands. Science and esoteric teachings have progressed, of course. This novel was published 82 years ago. This is not an excuse. It’s a fact. Both Blakey and Brzustowicz suggest our reaction to this weakness reveals a lot about our own psychological state. This is also why in the Western Metaphysical schools, we are encouraged not to follow teachers blindly. They are human and have faults.

Brzustowicz discusses the current state of affairs in publishing books that take on race as a theme in fiction. Of this, I’ve had recent experience. School of Hard Knocks, just out in November, has received some criticism because I, as a white woman, have written from the point of view of an African-American woman. There is a white character who is too good for the time period according to one reviewer (thus evoking the “good White” narrative), but not good enough according to another. There’s more, but it’s not the point. Brzustowicz discusses this process, and in doing so seems to suggest that as a culture we have still not gotten out of the woods when it comes to dealing with our colonial and racist past. We are still in reaction. We are processing all our emotions about our past, some more successfully than others. He may disagree with my reading of what he says, but here’s the relevant passage:

It is almost inevitable that a reader nowadays will read this book through the filter of the conflicting, even paradoxical, demands of [21st century] cultural contradictions. Modern publishers tend to vet carefully books that touch on issues of race, sexuality, cultural conflict, and so on, even trying them out on focus groups or consulting sensitivity committees before committing to publishing them. (ix)

His next statement is quite interesting:  “. . . it may be helpful to remember that it [the novel] was written in a time when the modern complex fabric of anxiety, guilt and hostility was still to be woven, and before people had [started] treating such issues with exquisite delicacy” (ix).

It was the phrase “exquisite delicacy” that really caught my eye. It put me in mind of my teenage year spent in the Rap Room in Winston-Salem, NC, during the civil rights movement and other times working in that movement when frank and sometimes heated exchanges between white and black people were common. People from the African-American community spoke their minds and often told us when we’d made some stupid comment or made a racist mistake. They told us with some heat. We were free to leave or listen, to go into neurotic defense mode or to learn something. It was embarrassing. It was painful. It was interesting, too. And we all survived it. At least the people I knew did.

That’s what’s missing from today’s conversation about race. White people are supposed to have already gotten over all their prejudices, whether they have or not. Mistakes are fatal to careers in some cases, but for black folks, racism is still literally fatal. Talking about it, though, is a minefield. I wrote School of Hard Knocks in this spirit. I just wrote about my own experience, except when I made up a history for a woman who was important to my mother. Perhaps I still can’t see that past as clearly as I should. Opinions differ. Perhaps I’ve contributed a book to the vast history of how Western culture is coming to terms with its global dominance and slave past. That is enough for me, and that is also what Fortune’s book does.

Third Fortune/Steele Novel

Hunters of Humans was released on the fall equinox. This is the third novel written by Dion Fortune under the pen name V.M. Steele that Twin Eagles Publishing has saved from obscurity.

I have to say the very best part of this one is Fortune’s sharp insight into the human mind. I quite enjoy her rapid portraits of each character, painted up in a few brush strokes that bring the person’s deepest thoughts and feelings to the fore. Her prose rapidly brings us into the situation describing how even readers of crime novels assume a death in the neighborhood is natural. Then we see Ann reading about a death in her neighborhood which she compares to her own family’s history of heart trouble. We meet her, her father, and then the detectives, and within two pages, we’re off. It’s almost dizzying how quickly and skillfully Fortune brings this complex world to life.

The story both a romance and a mystery. Scotland Yard is called in to determine if the death of a local man was natural or a murder. The two detectives, two types aptly described by Fortune, lodge with a young woman, Ann, and her father. The book is a study of how the younger detective, Austen, and Ann find each other through class barriers that are rapidly falling and in spite of the crimes of her drunken father.

Ann is a reader of mysteries and Austen is the new detective, bringing science to solve the crime along with the older detective who is a master of his trade, although not educated in the new public school. But Ann is an aristocrat, a fallen one, but still. We watch post-war England break down social obstacles. We watch Ann gradually realize that not only is her father responsible for this death, but most likely killed her grandmother and mother, and has Ann in his sights as well.

The book is really about Ann and Austen managing each other’s temperaments.

“He had never paid much attention to women, having joined the police when he was only twenty and being extremely keen on his work . . . .  Consequently, when the flood-gates went down, the tide carried all away, never having spent its strength in backwaters.” (30)

The older detective fears this baby aristocrat will toy with his young apprentice and he shepherds the two through the dangerous psychological waters of both their budding relationship and the trial of Ann’s father for murder. So you see, I haven’t really given the mystery away, because the story is Ann’s realization and her struggle with familial ties and a new relationship outside the bounds of her class. But she doesn’t view it that way. She doesn’t want to disgrace Austen’s career by marrying her, a murderer’s daughter.

The novel is the least esoteric of the three published so far, but it is fascinating watching the psychologist that Fortune was at work. I enjoyed her deep insights and even the look at gender relationships that have changed a great deal. And yet some of those same forces still run through us, so there is always something to learn from reading Dion Fortune.

A New Spiritual Examination of Dion Fortune’s Novels

Dion Fortune wrote, “The Mystical Qabalah gives the theory, but the novels give the practice.” Penny Billington and Ian Rees have taken Fortune at her word and written a book that explains the spiritual system behind the novels, then offers interesting guided meditations and rituals for the reader to explore on their own.

The Keys to the Temple examines Fortune’s four main esoteric novels in light of the Qabalah and the spiritual journeys undertaken by the protagonists. The book briefly explains the Tree of Life for readers unfamiliar with it, then aligns the four novels with the sephiroth on the central pillar. They match The Goat-Foot God with Malkuth (Earth), The Sea Priestess with Yesod (Moon and the Treasure House of Images), The Winged Bull with Tiphareth (the Sun and home of the sacrificed God), and Moon Magic with Da’ath (fusion of opposites or the Abyss where the personality dissolves into the transcendental elements).

Billington and Rees provide a synopsis for each book, then trace the hero’s experience from his dead-end experience to his meeting with guides and then his magical education through to the transformative ritual that is the culmination of each novel. They point out the ways we share the challenges, disappointments, and restrictions that have so disheartened each hero, thus from the start inviting us to see ourselves in the novels and undertake these transformations ourselves. As the hero progresses, the authors analyze the experiences in the light of the Qabalah and Fortune’s teachings, making parallels between the characters and the spiritual energies inherent in each of the centers on the Tree.

https://www.akashicreading.com/discover-kabbalah-and-the-tree-of-life/

One of the things I found most illuminating was the way the authors described the initial set of centers on the Tree and how this compares to our beginning experiences in our spiritual journey. I started off in a Vedic practice. Eastern philosophy focuses on transcending, on reaching enlightenment. There was no invitation to explore the current personality in my training, and I perked along quite happily for a while, meditating and having some nice experiences, growing quite naturally. Until I’d done enough meditating to start uprooting some of the intense issues seeded by my childhood. Then I hit a road block. My current practice gave me no guidance. Luckily, I found a Zen Buddhist therapist who helped me quite a bit, which was still in the Eastern tradition, but he loved Jung and Reich. Jung was a master of the Western tradition.

The Western path is quite different. Rather than starting with the top as the goal, it works its way through the personality, the more spiritual individuality, and lastly the transcendent. It offers more guidance to the student who runs smack dab into their issues and needs to deal with them before they can go any further. As an aside, I would say I recommend doing both types of meditation, which is a bit of heresy on both sides of this supposed divide, but perhaps that’s a discussion for another blog.

Hod as the library

Billington and Rees talk about this process of resolving personality issues in terms of the four bottom centers on the Tree. We are in Malkuth (earth) and in our journey to Yesod, we bounce back and forth between the two centers on the side pillars, Hod (Though/Mind) and Netzach (Feelings/Natural Energy). Once we’re no longer content to accept the conventional world in Malkuth, our hearts and minds are illuminated by the imagery and spiritual potential experienced in Yesod. As we walk our early path, we bounce around in our feelings and thoughts until the constructs in our personality are softened and the issues resolved. Then it is easier for us to go on to Tipareth, the home of Cosmic Consciousness, if we return to the Eastern side of spirituality.

This is only one of the many pleasures and lessons I took from this book. After their more in-depth analysis of the books, the authors discuss how to proceed on our own spiritual paths, examining initial attitudes and practices, such as not going for glitz and how to set up magical space, all the while showing how these issues are faced by the characters in the novels. Then they offer a series of guided meditations using the imagery from the novels. Each section ends with a suggested ritual to cap off the work with that particular sephirah and set of energies.

All in all, a great read for fans of Fortune’s novels and serious spiritual seekers alike. Click to buy.

New Dion Fortune Novel

OMG, it’s good. At least I think so. I couldn’t put it down. Twin Eagles Publishing has released their second V.M. Steele novel, The Scarred Wrists. V.M. Steele is another of Dion Fortune’s pen names. She published four novels as Steele. The books were looked down upon at the time, rejected as trivial and commonplace.

Richard Brzustowicz found himself drawn in when he went to the British Library during a research trip and read them. He writes about this experience in his Foreword. This novel was published in the same year as Fortune’s occult novel The Winged Bull, 1935, and Brzustowicz explores how similar themes are present—a young, vital woman meets a man suffering ill health both mentally and physically and brings both of them new life by their interactions. One has magical content, the other doesn’t, or at least not overtly.

Julian Pharmakos, who has named himself after the Greek scapegoat, must have a red head for a secretary (so he can pass her off as his sister) and hires young, innocent Patricia Stone. But Pat, or Coppernob as she is affectionately nicknamed, is an illegitimate child raised by the resentful husband of her mother who is also his wife, and has had to fight every day for a place in the family that dislikes her. Pat’s father kicks her out of the house when she disobeys him and marches off to her new job the next morning. Pharmakos takes her in, not as a lover, but to protect her.

It turns out he’s a recent convict, now working as a private detective with ties to Scotland Yard and many police chiefs in the area. If you suspect shades of Sherlock, you’re right. Pharmakos has made his home in a dilapidated warehouse, leaving the exterior in its disrespectful condition, but fixing one floor for his exquisitely decorated open-floor home. Fortune anticipates 21st century design here. Having spent so much time in solitary confinement, his nerves can’t stand anything close to walls or prison bars. There’s another floor to fix for Pat. The relationship develops from there.

Fortune’s experience and knowledge as a psychologist is very much in evidence in this novel. She reveals why Pharmakos is in such bad shape, showing an understanding of what is basically PTSD, and demonstrates how it should be treated. One can see why many in the 1930s would have rejected this novel as below Fortune since she was from an upper crust family. The novel deals with the criminal class, and paints such a vivid, realistic picture of the types to be found in this world, one wonders where Fortune got this expertise. It must have been from her practice as a psychologist.

Like her other occult novels, the energetics that play between this young, practical and down-to-earth woman and this artistic, highly sensitive, emotional man result in a transformation of them both. The dynamics of magic are at play, but not obviously so. Another similarity in many of the novels is the mix of classes. Pat is from a solid, middle-class family, but it turns out Pharmakos is an aristocrat. And not just any aristocrat. The family has given the heir the same first name for over 1,000 years. He’s a de Claire, a background he rejects until the very end. The ever-practical Pat thinks that if there is a coronet to be worn, well, she might as well wear it.

This somewhat mitigates the race and class consciousness of the time on display in the book. The novel also suffers from what we writers like to call the “narrative knot,” where the story is downloaded in big chunks at times. Pharmakos nervous breakdowns got to be a bit much at times, but none of that really slowed me down. I enjoyed every minute of it. You probably will, too.

Buy The Scarred Wrists here.

New Book on Arthurian History and Legend

John and Caitlin Matthews have come out with an excellent resource for all you Arthurian fans. The Complete King Arthur:  Many Faces, One Hero is just that—complete. It takes us from a thorough investigation of all the historical figures who could have been our Arthur straight through to contemporary reworkings of the story in books, films, opera, paintings, and song.

The Complete King Arthur: Many Faces, One Hero by [Matthews, John, Matthews, Caitlín]

Just where did this larger-than-life story come from? Oddly enough, one contender is the Arthur of Rome, Lucius Artorius Castus, a soldier sent to the north to defend the empire. The troops he oversaw fought on horses carrying long spears under a dragon banner. The book then explores both battle leaders and kings who lived a bit after Lucius, many of whom may have inspired the legend. Then there is the warrior, Arthur of the battles, who probably originated from the Book of Taliesin. The Matthews explore the battles of the 5th and 6th centuries, looking at Geoffrey of Monmouth’s list as well, trying to piece actual history together with his rather loose telling of the story.

Next the Matthews jump into what I find more compelling, the Arthur of myth, exploring the oldest tellings of the tales. They show how Arthur became a symbol of the sovereignty and unity of Britain (which is more Wales than England during these times), then show how Arthur grew from a rather brutal warrior of the Dark Ages into a medieval king. Many British monarchs created ancestral bloodlines that directly connected them to King Arthur, a bit tricky since we can’t really say for sure who he was. Several had Arthurian stories enacted for their courts, allowing the lords and ladies to dress as these characters. Even as late as the 19th century, Queen Victoria had William Dyce painted her robing room with Arthurian frescos. Arthur represented ideal governance, fairness, emphasizing equality, helping those in need, rescuing damsels in distress, and searching for the Holy Grail—that enduring symbol of enlightenment.

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The Matthews trace how the Grail became associated with the Arthurian legend. Also how Merlin, who was not much present in the early tellings, became a central figure along with Lancelot, another late-comer. Some eras emphasize the supposed indiscretions of Guinevere and Lancelot, while others the quests and adventures. The Matthews point out that each age molds the story to reflect their own ideals and problems.

The book finishes up with a thorough examination of those who have told the tale of Camelot through the ages, starting with Taliesin and Geoffrey of Monmouth, to Chretien de Troyes, to Mallory, Tennyson, T.H. White, Mary Stewart and up to the late 20th century and early 21st with writers such as Marion Zimmer Bradley and on into writers whom I haven’t read yet, but am eager to dive into.

If you’re a fan of Arthur and all things related to this story, you’ll find something of interest in this book.

Dion Fortune Writing as V.M. Steele

A while back, I wrote about Dion Fortune’s novels for the Visionary Fiction Alliance.* At the end of that three-part blog, I said that she had written other novels under another pseudonym and that I would let you all know if I discovered them.

Paul Blakey of Twin Eagles Publishing has done just that and brought out the first of her four “romantic thrillers,” The Yellow Shadow. He promises the next three are on their way: The Scarred Wrists, Beloved of Ishmael, and Hunters of Humans.

Dion Fortune is a woman of several names. Dion Fortune is her magical name created this name from her family motto Deo Non Fortuna, ‘God not luck’. She was born Violet Mary Firth and writes these novels as V.M. Steele. The short introduction to the novel says this “combines the names Violet and Mary with Steele (as a node to the source of the family’s fortune).”

The Yellow Shadow is the story of a young woman, Stella Morris, whose father has died and who now will go to live with relatives in China. Used to conversation with her father’s older academic friends, she brings this same frankness to her conversation with a man traveling on the same ship she is on whom she assumes to be an older man. But at the end of this conversation, he reveals himself to be Chinese—just slightly older than she is.

Stella pushes aside British prejudices and forms a friendship with him, but at first he snubs her on the boat, much to her chagrin. Later, though, he rescues her from her loud and hot room, sets her up in a suite, and proceeds to befriend her in the evenings (properly, of course). He cautions her that their friendship must remain secret, it would seem because of this prejudice. But there is a bit more to it. This mysterious man is quite rich and a well-known business man. He doesn’t want to ruin her reputation or his own.

Once set up with her vacuous family in China, Stella gets to know Mr. Li through a series of happy accidents when her family realizes she speaks Chinese. They have not deigned to learn the language after living in the country a good number of years. They send her to bargain with an antique dealer. Because she knows Chinese manners as well as the language, having been taught by Mr. Li, she wins his admiration and gradually gains her independence from her rude and shallow family, finally finding a way to pursue her romance with Mr. Li.

Richard Brzustowicz has written an Afterword in which he gives some excellent historical background and discusses the similarity between this female character and the ones in The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic, who bring their magnetism to enliven a man who has been enervated by society, restoring him to his vitality. He points out that even the character’s name has magical implications: “Just as the Virgin Mary is associated with the sea (and the name Stella Morris is clearly reminiscent of one of the titles of the Virgin Mary, ‘Stella Maris’, Star of the sea) so is Kuan Yin” (198).

You’ll most likely enjoy this novel. You might bump your nose up against some of the frank language about race which seems dated now, but do remember that in The Magical Battle of Britain, Fortune argues that the new age coming after WWII will blast down the prejudices of the old, effete leadership of Britain and predicts an egalitarian global society for the Age of Aquarius. This novel shows some blasting away of those racial and class barriers.

Click to order a copy of The Yellow Shadow. Paul says the $10 price is a special offer, due to rise once we arrive at the summer solstice (and the release of her next book, The Scarred Wrists). I can’t wait to read the next one. Twin Eagles Publishing will use the proceeds from this novel to pay the cost of the British Library copying the others that are in their collection.

*If you want to read more about her novels, my blogs on her visionary fiction can be found at the Visionary Fiction Alliance website here:  The first was on her better known novels Moon Magic and The Sea Priestess. The second considered The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, and the third her lesser known novels The Demon Lover, The Winged Bull, and The Goat Foot God.