by Beech, Mark
Through his wife, Rose Edith Kelly, he ‘received’ the Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt in 1904. By received I mean it was communicated through a non-corporeal or praeter-human entity named Aiwass. Crowley would base his new philosophy of Thelema on this divine contact. He went on to form his own occult society called the A.A. (Astrum Argentum) and also became the leader of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) He led a religious community in Cefalu, Italy from 1920-1923.
Crowley saw himself as the Prophet of a new Aeon, the Aeon of Horus, and continued to promote his philosophy of Thelema until his death on December 1, 1947. On December 5, 1947 during his funeral at Brighton Crematorium, excerpts of his notorious Hymn to Pan were read aloud by Louis Wilkinson, which caused no end of consternation and controversy.
Crowley wrote his (in)famous invocation to Pan in Moscow in 1913. I have personally worked with it in a ritual context, during which time the energy of the Priest flowed wild and free with reckless abandon. It had power and purpose and was totally encompassing. Time was stretched. The atmosphere was intense, lush and heady. A spontaneous synchronization of music was heard that combined seamlessly with the choreography of the ritual.
Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me...
—from Hymn to Pan by Aleister Crowley
Victor Benjamin Neuburg
Victor Benjamin Neuburg (known to his friends as Vickybird) was born on May 6, 1883 to an upper middle class Jewish family in Islington, London, England. Victor’s Father abandoned the family shortly after his birth and his Mother and maternal Aunts subsequently brought him up. I tend to think that this added to his sensitivity and sense of otherworldliness. He was a very fae-like being. It was as if he had feet in two worlds.
Being extremely well read, he undertook the studies of medieval and modern languages at Trinity College, Cambridge. Victor was known as a ‘freethinker.’ It was a time of Pan experiencing resurgence amongst the drama and art worlds of the period. Victor was an agnostic and vegetarian with remarkable psychic abilities. He is mostly known for his association with Crowley, but was a poet and mystic in his own right. After reading a piece by Victor in the Agnostic Journal in 1906, Crowley went to meet him in his rooms at Cambridge. Incidentally, Victor was a member of a poetry group at Trinity known as The Pan Society. Victor was soon initiated into Crowley’s magical order, the A.A. taking the name Frater Omnia Vincam. The two were lovers and engaged in acts of sex magick in the desert of Algiers. In 1910, through Crowley’s publication the Equinox, Victor produced an anthology of poems entitled ‘The Triumph of Pan.’
Sweet Wizard, in whose footsteps I have trod
Unto the shrine of the most obscene god,
So steep the pathway is, I may not know,
Until I reach the summit where I go.
In the final days of 1913 and the first few of 1914, Victor and Crowley engaged in what is known as the Paris Working. The entire working was dedicated to Pan, although other gods such as Hermes and Thoth were invoked. Later in 1914, Victor broke with Crowley and never truly recovered from his association with him. It haunted and weakened him mentally and physically the rest of his life.
He served in the British Army during World War I, subsequently moving to Steyning, Sussex where he ran The Vine Press. In 1933 he began to edit The Poet’s Corner in the British newspaper, the Sunday Referee, giving young poets a chance to win prizes and be recognized. He is solely responsible for the discovery of Dylan Thomas, among others.
Victor died of tuberculosis on May 30, 1940. Upon hearing of Victor’s death, Dylan Thomas was quoted as saying “Vicky encouraged me as no one else has done... He possessed many kinds of genius, and not the least was his genius for drawing to himself, by his wisdom, graveness, great humor and innocence, a feeling of trust and love that won’t ever be forgotten.”
His biographer, Jean Overton Fuller, a member of the small gathering of poets in Victor’s home, sums this rare soul up quite nicely by writing of him: “He was a well from which one could draw to the extent of one’s capacity. He received all who came to him, and gave each one back his own image, brightened. If that is not true magic, I do not know what is.”
Dion Fortune
Dion Fortune was born Violet Mary Firth in Llandudno, Wales, on December 6, 1890, to parents who followed the Christian Science religion. Her father, Arthur Firth, was a solicitor, and her mother was a Christian Science healer. Reportedly cognizant of her mystical abilities from an early age, Fortune claimed to have received visions of Atlantis when she was four years old and believed that she had been a temple priestess there in a former life. Fortune claimed that she first recognized her mediumistic abilities during her adolescence. She is said to have joined the Theosophical Society of Madame Helena Blavatsky briefly in 1906 when her family moved to London.
Fortune worked as a lay psychoanalyst in a medico-psychological clinic in London and became a therapist in 1918. While working at the clinic, Fortune is believed to have met Dr. Theodore Moriarty, an Irish Freemason who expressed his metaphysical and theosophical beliefs in a series of lectures on the esoteric subject of astro-etheric psychological conditions. Perhaps more influential on her occult interests, however, was Fortune’s childhood friend, Maiya Curtis-Webb, who introduced her to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
In 1921, Fortune worked with Frederick Bligh Bond in a group of Arthurian enthusiasts called the Watchers of Avalon. In 1922, Fortune established her own outer-court Golden Dawn lodge called the Christian Mystic Lodge of the Theosophical Society. She eventually severed her ties with the Golden Dawn and embarked upon a busy and productive period that included establishing the Community of the Inner Light, which later became the Fraternity of the Inner Light in 1927, and exists into the twenty-first century as the Society of the Inner Light.
During the mid-1930’s Dion Fortune worked with what is known as the Green Ray (nature contacts.) She wrote the Rite of Pan slightly before or around the time of writing The Goat Foot God in 1936. This invocation appears at the beginning of the book:
Came the voice of Destiny,
Calling o’er the Ionian Sea,
“The Great God Pan is dead, is dead.
Humbled is the horned head;
Shut the door that hath no key—
Waste the vales of Arcady.”
Shackled by the Iron Age,
Lost the woodland heritage,
Heavy goes the heart of man,
Parted from the light-foot Pan;
Wearily he wears the chain
Till the Goat-god comes again.
Half a man and half a beast,
Pan is greatest, Pan is least,
Pan is all, and all is Pan;
Look for him in every-man;
Goat-hoof swift and shaggy thigh—
Follow him to Arcady.
He shall wake the living dead—
Cloven hoof and hornèd head,
Human heart and human brain,
Pan the goat-god comes again!
Half a beast and half a man—
Pan is all, and all is Pan.
Come, O Goat-god, come again!
—from ‘The Rite of Pan’
On January 8, 1946, Dion Fortune died of leukemia at Middlesex Hospital in London. She continues to inspire pagans, witches and occultists to this day.
Rosaleen Norton
Rosaleen Miriam Norton (known as Roie to her friends) was born on October 2, 1917 in Dunedin, New Zealand. In 1925 she immigrated with her family to Sydney, Australia. From an early age she was the ultimate non-conformist, opposing authority Figures in her life and rebelling against the
norm. Dark and mystical subjects came quite naturally to her. She spent a lot of time alone, preferring the company of herself to that of her parents, teachers and other children. She was expelled from the Church of England girls’ school that she attended for drawing depictions of demons and otherworldly spirits, but subsequently found inspiration studying art at the East Sydney Technical College.
Rosaleen briefly worked for Smith’s Weekly as an illustrator, but her creations were too esoteric and controversial for the times. Subsequently, she found work as an artists’ model for Norman Lindsay who ultimately became a great inspiration to her. At about this time she began to study comparative religion, qabalah and magick. She relished the works of occult luminaries such as Eliphas Levi, Madam Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune.
After having been married for a relatively short time, she continued life living pretty much hand to mouth in boarding houses and working for a magazine called Pertinent, where her work with occult themes became more and more evident. It was there that she met a young man named Gavin Greenlees who was a published poet. She eventually moved to King’s Cross with him, where a very bohemian atmosphere prevailed. Roie created her own cosmology with Pan as the head of the pantheon, along with Hekate, Lilith and Lucifer (also known as the Adversary.) She viewed the universe as divine and sacred, Pan being the ultimate personification of the Cosmos. In the Australian Post on January 24, 1957, she describes her beliefs:
Some occult theories hold the stars and planets to be the bodies of great beings and so do I. I think the God Pan is the spirit whose body—or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time)—is the planet Earth, and who, therefore, in a very real sense, is the ruler and god of this world. Perhaps that is why he was given the name ‘Pan’, which in Greek means ‘All’, for he is the totality of lives, elements and forms of being—organic, ‘inorganic’ and otherwise, comprising the planet as a whole: much as an animal body is a totality of myriads of cells, bacteria, etc.
She was what is known as a trance artist, altering her consciousness and entering other worlds, exploring them for inspiration and a deeper understanding of the fabric of the universe. She utilized vision and experimented with the techniques of selfhypnosis and automatic drawing. Her artwork is extremely provocative and confrontational. It challenges one’s thoughts, beliefs and boundaries and therefore is not for the faint of heart. Living with several of her pieces for years I have found that the images have ‘lives of their own’ which are able to interact as is their will (and mine for that matter!)
She ultimately had some of these visions put into print, alongside Gavin Greenlees’ poems in ‘The Art of Rosaleen Norton’, published by Walter Glover in 1952. The content was considered indecent and contentious, resulting in copies of the book being burned and confiscated by U.S. Customs.
Rosaleen continued with her art and fostered the image of The Witch of King’s Cross. She enjoyed the publicity and courted the tabloid press before becoming a recluse in later years. She died of colon cancer on December 5, 1979, her devotion for her beloved Pan never having wavered.
We stand upon the shoulders of those who have gone before. For many of us who have come after these illustrious trailblazers, I have always felt we owe a debt of gratitude and would do well to bear in mind what Dion Fortune was wont to say: “I wish to know in order to serve.”
Diane Champigny is a High Priestess of the Alexandrian Tradition of Witchcraft and an initiate of the Ordo Templi Orientis. She has contributed to several Avalonia Press anthologies and is a regular contributor to Brigid’s Fire Magazine. She frequently leads lectures and workshops on the Western Mystery Tradition.
REFERENCES
Knight, Gareth & Fortune, Dion, Rites of Isis and Pun. (Skylight Press, 2013)
Knight, Gareth, Occult Fiction of Dion Fortune (Thoth Publications, 2007)
Fortune, Dion, The Goat-Foot God (London: Williams & Norgate, 1936)
Crowley, Aleister, Magick in Theory & Practice (Paris: Lecram, 1929)
Neuburg, Victor Benjamin Triumph of Pan (London: The Equinox, 1910)
Fuller, Jean Overton The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg (W.H. Allen, 1965)
Owen, Alex The Place of Enchantment (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
Norton, Rosaleen & Greenlees, Gavin The Art of Rosaleen Norton (Teitan Press, 2013)
Drury, Nevill Pan’s Daughter (Mandrake Press, Revised and Expanded, 2013)
Leaf-Foot, Petal-Mouth
Bethany van Rijswijk
I
They say that the voices of birds buried you on an island of Greece,
that you, deathless one, were dead and turning to dust,
that you had been seen, naked and covered with wild ants,
in the form of an animal-headed man.
Men of the islands, they knew well the wild and multiform ocean,
yet they believed that you, carrion-king, had only one body.
They did not know that the green man is as deathless and relentless
as their beloved blue woman, the sea.
Thrown down like a stone, the gulls cried out for your bloodletting
and you bled the bitter juices of a bitter coastal plant.
The hands of tender fishermen sank you in the soil
and wondered at the strange scent of resinous pine.
II
Born on the snowy peak, you were wrapped in the velvet skins of mountain hares,
yet your own skin, dusky animal, is like that of a mountain goat.
Husband to the hanged woman, you drew down the moon in a whitened fleece
and, in the forest, you ate her wild heart.
You have worn many skins and many masks, mountain-whelp,
so that few now know the fierce beauty of your countenance.
More real than the body you inhabit, you have been a meadow and a leaf of myrtle,
you have been a crystal in the salt-marsh and a midsummer fire.
You have been a grey wolf, a white tree, and a swarm of black bees.
You have swum, silver-scaled, in the river, and swung, silver-bodied, with the stars.
You have been a violet in the rain-soaked wood, and a branch of greening pine,
and, when your body was broken, you have burst into leaf and bud.
III
Leaf-foot, petal-mouth, they say that you are half man and half beast,
yet they have forgotten that you are a god.
Far from the sea, you have as many sacred names as you have forest shrines,
though the ocean-tongue has no name for your cult.
Some have heard your name, horned one, in the steady pulse of root and sap,
some have heard it in the springtime hymns of stags and the bleeding songs of wolves.
Sons of the swan-herd, they have found it in the soft reeds that fatten swan-flesh,
and hauled it up, still glimmering, in their nets.
Washed up on the rocks, they blamed the weeds for your green blood
and marvelled at the strangeness of your brow, your cloven feet.
They did not know your cairn would soon be shattered from within and cried out to the sea that you, the wild man, were dead.
The Rose-White Water
Colin Insole
In negotiating the sale of Lugley’s Copse, a substantial Georgian house, in the Hampshire town of Polkhurst, twenty-five-year-old Ellie Crinan had scarcely noticed the extent of its back garden. Instead, she had been attracted by the elegant spacious rooms, the weathered grandeur of its brick façade and the manicured front lawns and borders. The old farmhouse was an ideal location for showcasing her emerging career in modern country house design and celebrity lifestyle. Already, she had secured lucrative contracts with magazines and television companies, to feature the property. And the town, with its fashionable restaurants and exclusive health club was only an hour by motorway from London, where her lover worked as a professional sportsman and model.
But like all the houses in the old quarter of the town, ranging from modest terraces, manorial villas and tiny thatched cottages, Lugley’s Copse swept down into a dense wooded valley. The boundaries between the gardens and the wilderness were vague and equivocal, forming a hinterland of secluded groves, clearings and copses. These obscured an ancient pathway, unrecorded on any ordnance survey map, that snaked under the canopy of branches. It climbed from a rocky pool and waterfall to a landmark known as Toogy’s Cave’, on the hill that overlooked the town. From that promontory, the path’s entrance was concealed by gorse bushes, that gave the illusion of being on the edge of a perilous chasm, that plummeted onto boulders, far below.
The waterfall and its pool had been inaccessible for over a century. Thickets of impenetrable blackthorn bushes screened the path from the gardens of Ellie Crinan and her neighbour, Mr Coates. An athletic child, braving the thorns, might have manoeuvred through the undergrowth and network of animal tunnels, to reach the water. But they would have emerged bleeding, their clothes cut to ribbons, on a precarious rocky bank, where the foothold on each stone was treacherous. The shore was lined with towering arches of pendulous white roses and in summer, their perfume, heady and intoxicating, drifted into the two gardens.
The residents jealously protected the secrecy of the path; even discussing its existence with neighbours, was taboo. Each regarded the valley as a place of awe and quiet sanctity and their solitary visits were rewarded by a strange sombre beauty. One garden led from a patch of rhododendrons, alive with birdsong, to a grove of yew, where the youngest trees, centuries old, grew from the gaping skeletons of ancient trunks. Locked and entwined with the dead wood, they seemed burdened with memory and loss. And there was a silence and watchfulness. No bird sang and even the rush of the nearby waterfall was mute.
During times of drought, on the fringes of several gardens, the outlines of small primitive structures were revealed in the soil. A few fallen stone receptacles and pedestals remained, covered in moss and lichen. Dwarfed by the trees, these ghost shrines or temples to a forgotten god, appeared fragile and vulnerable. They seemed intended to placate rather than worship; to keep something from their homes that was dangerous and unwelcome.