Chariot of the Soul

“It is a false teaching which bids us eradicate from our natures anything which God has implanted there, as false and foolish as ham-stringing a spirited thorough-bred colt because it is wild and unbroken. … What God’s law forbids is the abuse of these things, not the use for the purposes for which they are intended.  The Path of the Hearth-fire gives a far sounder and more effectual discipline of the instincts than the hermit-caves of Thebes, with their ascetic tortures and self-mutilations, doing violence to Nature and outraging God’s handiwork.  Frightened by the Elemental forces when he meets them unpurified and unprepared, the ascetic flees from what he believes to be temptation.  It is a far sounder policy to equilibrate the warring forces in our own nature until we can handle our unruly team of instincts and make them draw the chariot of soul with the power of their untiring speed” (Dion Fortune, Applied Magic, 3).

I’ve valued the writings of Dion Fortune, born Violet Firth, ever since I ran across them about 15 years ago.  From her one may learn the difference between the dubious seeking after psychic thrills and occult dabbling that characterize much that passes for “magic” today, and the true magnum opus or “great work” which is to make the human soul the fit vessel for the divine forces to individuate and manifest, fulfilling the image of God in which we were created, to use Christian language and imagery. 

Even Fortune’s pen name, based on the Latin motto Deo, non Fortuna (“by God, not by chance”) indicates her aspiration to truth, however much the pursuit and reporting of it runs up against tradition and accepted mores and values.  Magic has certainly suffered from its share of bad press and vilification, but Fortune goes far to correct our understanding.  We often think that because our culture approves or castigates a particular practice or custom, it must be correct and universally true, or completely abhorrent and morally repugnant.  But of course all cultures, as human constructs, are imperfect, nor can they be anything else, after all, and so their received opinions and wisdom deserve investigation and testing.  Many of the ordering principles and practices of a culture are simply arbitrary, such as the appropriate physical distance between two people who are talking.  If you want to see cultural relativity in action, watch an Arab and a Japanese talk, for instance.  The Arab keeps moving closer, toward what is for her a comfortable distance, while the Japanese keeps retreating, toward what for him is a respectful distance.  The Arab seems pushy and intrusive to the Japanese; the Japanese seems distant and cold to the Arab.  Both are ”right,” and “wrong.”  More accurately, neither label is appropriate.  But cultural norms are works in progress, meant to accommodate inevitably conflicting human needs and beliefs and practices.  Like all things human, they’re compromises — and compromise is much of the genius of being human.  Too often we perceive compromise to be weakness, or appeasement, selling out to “the other side.”  But our ability to find a middle, a mean between extremes, rather than to hold out for and insist on an unachievable ideal against all common sense and experience, is the mark of true civilization.  The challenge, of course, is to tell the difference, to distinguish lasting wisdom from the fluid and relative norm that may shift tomorrow.  And in our foolishness, because so much is indeed relative, we proclaim that everything is, and then abandon wisdom altogether.  But as the medieval philosopher Francis Bacon observed, “They are ill discoverers who think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.”