Esoteric Orders and Their Work.pdf

(822 KB) Pobierz
Esoteric Orders And Their Work
MAEVE Magickal Study Group
Training Material
250512338.002.png
Esoteric Orders And Their Work
Dion Fortune
Contents
Chapter I
Esotericism, Occultism And Mysticism ............................................................................................................................ 1
Chapter II
The Origin of the Mysteries................................................................................................................................................ 3
Chapter III
The Three Great Traditions.............................................................................................................................................. 5
Chapter IV
The Paths Of The Western Tradition .................................................................................................................... 10
Chapter V
The Evolution and Functions of the Masters............................................................................................................... 16
Chapter VI
The Training And Work Of An Initiate .................................................................................................................. 22
Chapter VII
The Occult Schools ...................................................................................................................................................... 26
Chapter VIII
Orders, Fraternities, Groups ....................................................................................................................................... 30
Chapter IX
The Use And Power Of Ritual .................................................................................................................................. 35
Chapter X
Oaths And Obligations...................................................................................................................................................... 37
Chapter XI
The Right and Left-hand Paths.................................................................................................................................. 41
Chapter XII
Seeking The Master...................................................................................................................................................... 44
Chapter XIII
The Choice Of An Occult School.......................................................................................................................... 53
Chapter XIV
The Path Of Initiation.................................................................................................................................................... 56
MAEVE Magickal Study Group Training Material
- Page i -
250512338.003.png
Esoteric Orders And Their Work
Dion Fortune
F OREWORD
by Gareth Knight
F IR ST published in 1928, The Esoteric Orders and Their Work, along with its companion
volume, The Training and Work of an Initiate (1930), represented the first serious statement of
Dion Fortune‘s aims and ideals in launching her famous school, the Fraternity of the Inner Light.
Her Fraternity was to be nothing less than an Esoteric Order consisting of trained Initiates. The
Esoteric Orders and Their Work thus expressed her vision of what such groups should do, and
The Training and Work of an Initiate declared how its members should be trained to fulfill this
group purpose.
At this time Dion Fortune had reached the midpoint of her occult career. This began in 1916,
when she met her first teacher, Dr. Theodore Moriarty, who so impressed her with his powers
that she threw up her work as a therapist at the Medico-Psychological Clinic, convinced that an
orthodox approach to the mysteries of the human mind now seemed completely inadequate.
She later wrote about the occult circumstances of this first meeting with Moriarty as a short
story, in ―Blood Lust,‖ the first in a series titled The Secrets of Dr. Taverner.
In the early years of her occult career, she imbibed most of the popular teachings of the
Theosophical Society, and Annie Besant‘s The Ancient Wisdom had a profound effect upon her,
inducing the vision of a contact with two powerful spiritual beings somewhere in the Himalayas.
For her practical training, however, she turned not to the esoteric section of the Theosophical
Society, but to Theodore Moriarty, who taught a system of what he called Universal Theosophy,
imparting a Western slant to Blavatsky‘s predominantly Eastern-based philosophy. He was also
a man of considerable charisma and power to judge from Dion Fortune‘s memoirs of him in
Psychic Self-Defence.
Moriarty was an advocate of co-masonry, that is to say, Masonic ritual and initiation open to
women, and by 1919 had founded a temple in London for its practice. From the rolls that
survive, it would appear that, apart from himself, the lodge was composed entirely of women.
Whether this was from policy, by chance, or through natural affinity is open to conjecture.
Certainly, from later remarks she made, Dion Fortune was not much enthused by her experience
with esoteric groups consisting only of women, and advocated a balanced representation of the
sexes wherever possible.
While she had great admiration and respect for Moriarty, it would seem that the work of his
group did not entirely satisfy her, for in 1919 she became an initiate of the Alpha et Omega
Temple of what had originally been known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This
Temple was under the aegis of the Scottish novelist J. W. Brodie Innes, and had two lodges, one
in Edinburgh and one in London. Dion Fortune joined the latter under the immediate tutelage of
an adept who also happened to be an old family friend, Maiya Curtis-Webb (later Tranchell
Hayes).
She was at this time still known as Violet Mary Firth, and her pen name — Dion Fortune —
derives from her magical name within the Temple, where she was known as Soror Deo Non
Fortuna. She was plainly no ordinary esoteric student, and although she may not have shone too
MAEVE Magickal Study Group Training Material
- Page ii -
250512338.004.png
Esoteric Orders And Their Work
Dion Fortune
much in performing the minutiae of the Order meditation discipline, she gave every sign of being
capable of developing her own inner contacts. These talents went beyond the abilities of most
other initiates, and also beyond the scope of most spiritualist mediums.
During 1921 she experimented along these lines under Maiya Curtis-Webb‘s supervision, and by
the Autumnal Equinox of the same year had developed so far as to be working publicly with
Frederick Bligh Bond at Glastonbury.
Bligh Bond is best known for his archaeological work upon the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey,
with which he had been associated since 1907. He made some remarkable discoveries which, it
turned out, were the result of following instructions obtained through a clairvoyant by automatic
writing. He did not admit to this source of revelation until the publication of his book, The Gate
of Remembrance in l918—whereupon the scandalised church authorities, who now owned the
ruins, took firm steps to marginalise him from any more work on the site. Working alongside
him in 1921, Dion Fortune picked up on an inner group very close to his heart and mind, who
were known as the Watchers of Avalon.
However, their collaboration did not last long. Bligh Bond, beset by various difficulties including
domestic ones, sought a more congenial intellectual climate in America, and he moved there in
1924.
Dion Fortune stayed on in Glastonbury, and in 1922 she met up with Charles Thomas Loveday, a
Royal Flying Corps veteran, who had a love of music, an enthusiasm for the new science of radio
and powerful Harley Davidson motorcycles! Some fifteen years her senior, Loveday was to
become her lifetime friend, and moral and financial supporter, in an avuncular rather than a
romantic liaison. Their meeting was entirely coincidental, as casual visitors one moonlit night at
Chalice Well, a residential hostel run by Alice Buckton at the foot of the Tor. Their instant
recognition of a common destiny sparked the foundation of a small group of like-minded friends
that eventually developed into the Fraternity of the Inner Light.
During 1923, with Loveday as her diligent scribe, Dion Fortune began to make contacts with the
Masters, or Inner Plane Adepti as her school preferred to call them. These contacts were to guide
and instruct her in everything that followed throughout the rest of her life.
The communications began with a wide variety of teachings, the more elementary of which were
published as The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage, while the more advanced were
eventually released to the public as The Cosmic Doctrine. Of lasting practical importance was
their acquisition of two pieces of real estate in 1924. One was a site upon which to build a chalet
at the foot of Glastonbury Tor, opposite Chalice Well, and the other a house in the west end of
London to develop as administrative headquarters with both lodge and lecture room facilities.
They required a few more years to find their permanent identity as a Fraternity in 1927, and the
period of preparation was a far from easy one. Their first external corporate identity was as The
Christian Mystic Lodge of the Theosophical Society. This small group had been founded in
1919, and for the first six years of its existence followed a fairly quiet existence as a kind of half
house between Theosophy and Christianity. All this was to change when, on instructions from
her inner contacts, Dion Fortune, Charles Loveday and their friends joined it in 1925, and soon
after Dion Fortune became its President.
MAEVE Magickal Study Group Training Material
- Page iii -
250512338.005.png
Esoteric Orders And Their Work
Dion Fortune
In this role they placed themselves within the Theosophical Society in direct conflict with
another movement within it that, under the aegis of Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, had
been gaining ground since 1909. This was the Star in the East movement which sought to
promote the young Krishnamurti as a spiritual world leader, virtually ranking as a second coming
of the Christ. This caused considerable controversy in various esoteric circles, including the
Theosophical Society itself, and other major occultists, such as Rudolf Steiner also had grave
reservations about it. Dion Fortune‘s contacts appeared very concerned on account of it being
what they considered to be an oriental interpretation distorting the true religious heritage of the
West.
Although they had been instructed to try to avoid a deliberate confrontation, considerable heat
was generated at the time, and by the end of 1927, Dion Fortune and her friends had broken free
to form their own independent organisation, the Community (later Fraternity) of the Inner Light.
The Star in the East movement came to an end in 1929, with Krishnamurti‘s own repudiation of
it.
In 1927 things also came to a head with Mina MacGregor Mathers who, not without reason, felt
that this young member of her Temple was really too much of an independent spirit. The events
at the Vernal Equinox this year, which Dion Fortune later wrote about in Psychic Self- Defence,
brought an end to her formal affiliation to the Golden Dawn tradition, at least for the time being.
Such links were to be made and broken twice more in her life, first with Hope Hughes of the
Hermes Temple of the Stella Matutina in 1930, and then with Maiya Tranchell-Hayes again in
1940.
In October 1927, the Fraternity of the Inner Light proclaimed its presence with the first issue of
The Inner Light Magazine as a valid Esoteric Order in its own right, with its own inner contacts
and training system for initiates. The following year saw publication of The Esoteric Orders and
Their Work, to be followed in 1930 by its companion volume, The Training and Work of an
Initiate.
In another respect, 1927 was a crucial year in that Dion Fortune married Dr. Thomas Penry
Evans. He was a Welshman of humble origins who enlisted as a private soldier in the Artists
Rifles at the beginning of the 1914- 1918 war and came out as a 2nd lieutenant in the Machine
Gun Corps, when he somehow found the money and influence to enter medical school. He had
been a lodger at Dion Fortune‘s London headquarters since 1925, along with his sister Hazel, a
nurse who later married the first Director of Studies of the Fraternity. Early ambitions at this
time included forming a group that also had a clinical function in esoteric healing, somewhat
along the lines of the Dr. Taverner ideal. This vision foundered, it would appear, through the
conflict between the demands of a normal medical career on Penry Evans and that of playing a
leading role in a burgeoning esoteric society.
In 1938 they went their separate ways. He via the Spanish Civil War, as an advisor on child
nutrition to the Republican government. When he returned it was not to Dion Fortune or the
Society of the Inner Light. They were formally divorced in 1945, and after her death, he
remarried and ended his days in 1959 as a popular and respected country doctor.
However, during the 1930s the Fraternity they jointly headed up, along with C. T. Loveday,
developed with increasing success. After Mina MacGregor Mathers‘ death in 1928, affiliation to
the Golden Dawn tradition was renewed in 1930 via the Hermes Temple of the Stella Matutina in
MAEVE Magickal Study Group Training Material
- Page iv -
250512338.001.png

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin