by Dion Fortune
DION FORTUNE
MISTRESS OF RITUAL MAGIC
THE WINGED
BULL
‘The author’s knowledge and experience of psychology are indisputable, and her ability to expound the modus operandi of magic is second to none.’
OCCULT REVIEW
BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THE MIND
A chance meeting in the swirling London fog plunged Ted Murchison into a fearfully unfamiliar world. A world in which a role had already been planned for him, according to the ancient cult of the Winged Bull.
For Colonel Brangwyn, his new employer, was engaged in the release of his sister from the malignant influence of a black magician, a man who schemed to use her in a dangerous, obscene ritual.
Her sanity was already failing and to save it, Murchison was needed to undergo certain magical experiments that would draw her back to the world she knew. Reluctantly, Murchison agreed, but it was a pact that would have untold consequences, both on himself and on his strange, developing relationship with the girl . . .
THE WINGED BULL
‘Murchison was sauntering idly down the centre aisle, lost in thought, paying no attention to his surroundings, when suddenly he was startled out of his oblivion by the sight of a face staring at him through the gloom with a curious, questioning expression, as if its owner were about to speak to him. It was a good-humoured face, though slightly cynical, and its eyes seemed to probe his very soul. They looked at each other, he and the owner of the face, without speaking.
‘Then he suddenly realized that the face was larger than human, that it was high above his head; he saw the shadow of a vast wing stretching away into the gloom; a vast hoof on a plinth was planted by his knee. It was one of the winged, human-headed bulls that guarded the temples of Nineveh that he had been communing with!’
DION FORTUNE
Perhaps no other occultist in the twentieth century has so fully combined a practical knowledge of magic with a thorough understanding of psychology as Dion Fortune. The first mass-market paperback editions of her famous novels are well overdue, marking as they do a peak of literary entertainment and a disturbingly authoritative introduction to the ancient teachings of the occult. The series includes:
THE DEMON LOVER
THE SEA PRIESTESS
MOON MAGIC
THE GOAT-FOOT GOD
THE WINGED BULL
A Star Book
Published in 1976
by Wyndham Publications Ltd.
A Howard & Wyndham Company
123 King Street, London W6 9JG
First published in Great Britain by
The Aquarian Press
Copyright © Society of the Inner Light 1976
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk
ISBN 0 352 39720 9
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CHAPTER ONE
There was a sky-fog in Central London that made the heavens look like dirty metal and caused the street lamps to be lit at three o’clock in the afternoon. The British Museum, seen across its hazy forecourt, looked like the entrance to Hell. Ted Murchison had no wish to return to his brother’s house at Acton before the hour of the evening meal. He disliked his sister-in-law, and the house was full of kids that needed a spanking and didn’t get it. He turned in at a gateway in railings that dripped soot and fog-dew, and set out across the wide expanse of gravel in the gathering gloom.
The Museum would be warm and lighted, and would give him something to think about and distract his mind from the memory of the interview which had just ended. He had gone up for that interview on a personal introduction from his brother, and had failed to get the job. Now he had to go back to Acton and tell his brother and hear his comments on the failure. And his sister-in-law’s comments, too. She was a strong believer in kicking a man when he is down as the best way of helping him to rise.
A rush of hot air smote him in the face as he entered the building. It was warm, as he had expected, and he was glad of the warmth, for there was no overcoat under the old trench-coat that he wore. A relic of the War, it had been good in its day, and had outworn a succession of cheap overcoats. Coats like that did not come his way nowadays. His father had been a colonel in the Old Contemptibles, and one of the first to fall. He himself had joined up straight from school. When he came out of the army there was no money to give him a start in life, and no one to care whether he had a start in life or not. So he took the first job offered, and when that proved to be a blind alley, took another. So the years had gone by. Clerking, salesmanship on commission, anything and everything that would enable him to hand over his weekly board to his sister-in-law at Acton.
With demobilization Ted Murchison’s halcyon days were over. He had been an officer and a gentleman, even if a very young one. Digging out the old trench-coat to wear in this drizzling fog had turned his mind back to those days. As he handed over his hat and coat to the attendant in the muggy warmth of the Museum, he speculated upon what had become of the rest of the members of his mess. Had any of them missed the boat as he had, or were they all getting on in the world and raising families to fight in the next war? Marriage had been out of the question for him, and life had not been any easier in consequence. He was thirty-three now, and was beginning to steady down. The handling his colonel had given him had stood him in good stead during those difficult years and steered him past much miscellaneous trouble.
Brangwyn had been the chap’s name. He wondered what had become of him. No one knew whence he came when he joined up, and no one knew whither he went when he had been demobbed. He was of the soldiering type, but was not a professional soldier. He had been a most marvellous handler of men, both in billets and in action. There was less crime and fewer casualties in his command than in any other down the line. As a lad in his teens, Ted Murchison had adored him. As an older man, with wider experience, he realized more and more clearly that his old chief was a man of no ordinary calibre.
The Museum, though warm, was not brightly lit, for the fog hung in wreaths down the long galleries and haloed the lights with a golden haze. It was not the best of conditions under which to see the exhibits, and Murchison was sauntering idly down the central aisle, lost in thought, paying no attention to his surroundings, when suddenly he was startled out of his oblivion by the sight of a face staring at him through the gloom with a curious, questioning expression, as if its owner were about to speak to him. It was a goodhumoured face, though slightly cynical, and its eyes seemed to probe his very soul. They looked at each other, he and the owner of the face, without speaking. Then he suddenly realized that the face was larger than human, that it was high above his head; he saw the shadow of a vast wing stretching away into the gloom; a vast hoof upon a plinth was planted beside his knee. It was one of the winged, human-headed bulls that guarded the temples of Nineveh that he had been communing with!
The realization gave him something of a shock. He had been so sure the beast was alive, and it had seemed to have something very important to communicate to him; something that would have altered his whole life if he could have learnt it. He gazed up into the quizzical, cynical face that gazed back so steadily, and it seemed to him as if it had a life of its own, a very definite life, despite his disillusionment. as to its nature. He had a curious sensation that he had made a friend. Reluctantly he turned away and moved off down the gallery.
He passed slowly on down the Egy
ptian Gallery, and the shadowy gods on their pedestals sat quietly watching him. They, too, were alive with a strange life of their own in the uncertain light of the mist-filled gallery; but they had not the energy of his Babylonian friend, nor did he get en rapport with them in the same way, though he felt their life, till he came to an enormous arm in rose-red granite outstretched with clenched hand upon its pedestal; an arm so vast that it was inconceivable what manner of statue it had come from, ending in a Hand of Power, if ever there was one.
Murchison remembered the Ingoldsby Legend of the Hand of Glory that could open locked doors; but this rose-red granite arm was utterly different in the feeling it gave him from that sinister relic. It was its benignity that impressed him; the benignity that controlled the awful power it possessed. It was an utterly different kind of god to the crucified God in the Christian churches; but it was a good god nevertheless; and it was very much of a god; let the orthodox say what they would.
Reluctantly he moved on again. He drifted on at random up the broad, shallow stairs, and presently found himself in the Mummy Room, and stood gazing thoughtfully at the desecrated dead. A scanty handful of fog-bound sight-seers were gathered around the official lecturer, and Murchison joined them. The lecturer exasperated him by patronizing the dead. Why should one credit them with the mentality of imbeciles? They had known enough to build the pyramids.
He quitted the party, and drifted off towards the gallery where aboriginal godlets vied with each other in ugliness. But on the threshold he halted. This was altogether too much of a good thing. These, too, had come alive under the influence of fog and dusk, and he backed away, startled. The place smelt of blood.
Murchison turned and went striding away down the long galleries in search of the exit. He had had enough of these presences, and he wanted to smoke. Their effect was altogether too queer. Something in him that the dragging years had numbed into a merciful insensibility woke up and began to ache again.
Murchison took his hat and coat and went towards the exit. As he approached the glass doors he saw that it was now quite dark outside, but it was not until he passed through them that he realized that a black wall of fog, opaque as a curtain, pressed against his face. He hesitated for a moment. Then suddenly stepped forward into the clinging, smothering darkness, which closed behind him as water closes over a swimmer.
There was no sound whatsoever in that impenetrable blackness. Murchison wondered whether the end of the world had arrived at last, after so many abortive prophecies; or whether, under the influence of his new friend, the man-bull, he had slid back to the dawn of creation, and this was the formless void before the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. He stood motionless, staring with unseeing eyes into the slowly swirling invisibility. Any moment he might see the vast forms of great winged bulls formulate out of the mist.
Someone passed him in the smother, and, desiring to be alone with the gods, he advanced a few paces diagonally across the broad portico, felt the edge of the steps under his feet, and passed down them, striking off at random across the wide stretch of invisible gravel. A queer feeling came to him that in so doing he had committed himself beyond all possibility of return. He had left the flagged path that would have guided his feet to the gate, despite the murk, and was astray in black vacancy. He had left the lighted and land-marked ways of men and was adrift in primeval darkness. And who, in that darkness, would come to meet him? The hideous godlets? The spirit of the Ancient of Days, with a long white beard and a golden crown? Or a mighty rose-red Arm that parted the clouds and gave light? He stood alone in the breathless smother and called mentally to his new friend, the winged bull of Babylon.
‘I am upon your side!’ he cried aloud in his imagination. ‘Come to me, O winged one. Door-keeper of the gods! Open to me the doors!’
His chant ceased abruptly. By what name should he call upon his new friend? For names were needful in order that the gods might be invoked. Man-headed, eagle-winged, bull-footed, how should he name him? ‘Rushing with thy bull-foot, come!’ The words of the old school crib came back to him. ‘Evoe, Iacchus! Io Pan!’
Murchison stood alone in the fog-bound darkness of the forecourt of the British Museum and cried aloud, ‘Evoe, Iacchus! Io Pan, Pan! Io Pan!’
And echo answered ‘Io Pan!’
But a voice that was not echo also answered, ‘Who is this that invokes the Great God Pan?’
Murchison was so startled by the immediate response to his invocation that he involuntarily exclaimed, ‘Good Lord!’ He heard a footstep on the gravel beside him, and held his breath. A hand touched his arm.
‘You seem to have lost your way pretty thoroughly,’ said a voice, and Murchison came back to earth with a bump. It was a strangely resonant voice. He had only heard one other voice as resonant as that. Curious how his mind kept on going back to his brief soldiering career. He was so astray among his thoughts that he neglected to answer and the invisible voice went on again.
‘I think you had better come along with me, whether you want to or not. No, I am not a policeman, but you don’t appear to me to be in any state to take care of yourself at the moment.’
Murchison, feeling very foolish, allowed himself to be led by the arm through the darkness, made a desperate snatch at his scattered wits, and managed to say:
‘I’m sorry. I am afraid you must think me a fool. I’m not drunk. I — I was just thinking of something else, and got lost in the fog.’
‘Hullo? I have heard that voice before somewhere. I never forget a voice,’ said his invisible companion.
Murchison stiffened. He wondered what sort of confidence trick was about to be played upon him, and did not answer.
‘Quite right,’ continued the voice, ‘never tell a stranger your name in the dark. My name is Brangwyn. Now can you place me?’
If the Great God Pan had appeared in person the effect upon Murchison could not have been more overwhelming. ‘Good Lord, sir, is it you?’
‘Yes, it’s me all right. You are Murchison. Right?’
‘Yes,’ said Murchison, and that was all he could find to say. When one has offered one’s soul to the devil, and the god of one’s youth suddenly accosts one out of the darkness, the association of ideas is irresistible.
Brangwyn could not see his companion’s face in the murk, but he listened attentively to the timbre of his voice, for his quick ear told him that something was very much amiss with this man, and that he was under high emotional tension. He remembered well the alert, eager youngster of the last years of the War, and wondered what the years of the peace had made of him.
‘How has life used you since last we met?’ he asked. ‘I’m still alive,’ said Murchison, with a curt laugh.
A dull orange glow loomed up through the haze ahead of them.
‘I expect those are the lamps by the gates,’ said Brangwyn. ‘Now, if I can continue to pilot you successfully, I will steer you into a certain teashop of my acquaintance in Southampton Row.’
Now that there were the street lamps and the kerb to guide them, it was easier going. The lit-up shops gave them all the, guidance they needed, and in a few moments they turned into a big café whose brightness almost blinded them after the gloom in which they had been groping for so long.
Brangwyn led the way to a corner table, and for the first time was able to see the face of his companion as they sat down opposite each other.
He studied him closely. He was looking rather dazed and self-conscious, Brangwyn thought, and wondered what had been at the bottom of that extraordinary outcry of ‘Io Pan’ in the foggy forecourt of the British Museum. It was exceedingly curious that the fellow should have turned up when he did, for he had just been thinking that the type of man he was looking for was the Murchison type. Big-boned, up standing, Nordic. Murchison, if he remembered aright, was a Yorksbireman, and therefore probably of Viking stock. It would not do to be sentimental because the fellow was down on his luck. He must be cautious. A mistake would have very
far-reaching repercussions.
Brangwyn had no mind to come straight to the point. He wanted to walk round his companion sniffing before he committed himself. It would not be fair to rouse the fellow’s hopes and then dash them. So he turned the talk on to old comrades and wartime experiences, and Murchison followed him thankfully, for he had no mind to be asked about himself, since he had nothing good to tell, and had no love for pitching a hard-luck story.
So they chatted contentedly over their tea and cigarettes. ‘Have you far to go tonight, before you get home?’ Brangwyn asked at length.
‘Acton,’ said Murchison curtly.
‘Good Lord, you’ll never get there,’ said Brangwyn, secretly delighted, and grabbing his opportunity. ‘Let me put you up for the night at my place. I’ve got bachelor quarters just round the corner.’
Murchison agreed. Brangwyn had all his old fascination for him. He could imagine nothing more delightful than to sit up half the night yarning with him.
They left the shop together, and found that the fog had lifted considerably. They left Southampton Row, and went down an alley, crossed a square, and went down another alley. It was a cross-country journey, and the district was distinctly insalubrious. Despite the slum to which it had been reduced, the district had a charm of its own, and even the extremes of grime and dilapidation of the houses could not destroy the grace of the Georgian architecture.
They turned south, into a street of mean shops, and Brangwyn inserted a key in a narrow door beside an Italian restaurant on the corner, and entered. Sufficient light from the street lamp shone through the fanlight to reveal the worn oilcloth of the entry, and a long flight of dingy stairs leading upwards into darkness and flanked on either side by a wall bereft of handrail. It was an unprepossessing abode, and Murchison concluded that Brangwyn must also have come down in the world since the War, for he had been reputed to have money.