Reading Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defence – I
Over the last few days on Twitter, I have been engaged in a close, chapter-by-chapter reading of Dion Fortune’s book, Psychic Self-Defence (first published in 1930). I began this exercise after becoming involved in a discussion about the merits of ‘psychic hygiene’ and I posted a thread detailing my own experiences and perspectives on ‘psychic attack’. I thought it would be instructive to take a look at the content of Psychic Self-Defence (PSD) in order to discuss the origins of the genre of ‘psychic defense’ texts, of which Fortune’s book, widely hailed as a classic, is one of the first.
The reception of these threads has been very positive, and several readers have requested that I turn them into permanent posts here. I shall return to them periodically in an attempt to explore their various ramifications and lines of inquiry emerging from them. What began as a rather light-hearted exercise in critical commentary became increasingly complex as I began to look for supporting material with which to contextualize Fortune’s remarks.
Here then, is the first thread, posted on 26 August 2021. My specific comments, observations, and asides are given in parentheses. Links to supportive material have been provided where appropriate. I have omitted the comments of others and my responses to them.
In her Preface to PSD, Dion Fortune states:
“I am of the opinion that psychic attacks are far commoner than is generally realised, even by occultists themselves. Certainly the general public has no conception at all of the sorts of things that are done by people who have a knowledge of the powers of the human mind and set to work to exploit them. I am convinced that this factor played a large part in the witch-cult, and was the real cause of the universal horror and detestation of the witch”.
[This is the first of quite a few assertions throughout PSD to the effect that our Dion does not like witches.]
Chapter One
After a bit of opening preamble, DF starts explaining about the “invisible world” inhabited by beings, as well as men and women with trained minds. This is a dangerous space – you have to be a strong swimmer to survive. But there are people in there who are unscrupulous – the “adepts of the Left-hand Path” (da-da-da-DAH!).
The commonest form of psychic attack is from “the ignorant or malignant mind of our fellow human beings”.
Or you can go to a place where the veil is thin sort of thing and be stirred, without realizing it.
More commonly, is that psychic attacks of “sufficient force” are indicated by characteristic dreams, possibly a sense of weight on the chest “the weight is due to the concentration of etheric substance or ectoplasm and is sufficiently tangible to press down the scale of a balance when it is possible to capture it for measurement.” [what?]
Occult attacks are preceded by a sense of fear and oppression, then nervous exhaustion, and eventually, the victim “is reduced to a mere bloodless shell of skin and bones, lying on the bed, too weak to move.”
She goes on to talk about bruises appearing on the body, evil odors, slime, and gigantic footprints appearing.
[This is all very “The Dunwich Horror” isn’t it?]
Chapter 2.
Here DF gets down to business, explaining how psychic attack works. There are 3 types of suggestion: Auto-suggestion, Conscious Suggestion, and Hypnotic suggestion. Auto-suggestion is one’s own conscious mind influencing the primitive subconscious. The subconscious mind is the key factor in all forms of suggestion. Conscious (or waking) suggestion is when suggestions come from another person and are conveyed to our own minds through language. Hypnotic suggestion bypasses consciousness and goes direct to the subconscious mind. She says that “The skillful suggestionist always aims at making his suggestions harmonise with the bias of the personality … all he can really do is reinforce and stimulate the ideas and impulses that are already there, though perhaps latent. He cannot plant an entirely alien seed.”
What we have to do then is “purify the soil of our own natures that no harmful ones can find a congenial seed-bed”. But she goes onto say “It is possible to reduce anybody to anything provided suggestion has unchecked scope for a sufficient length of time.”
[hang on, doesn’t that contradict what she said in the preceding paragraph?]
Back to psychic attack. “The primary aim of the suggestion is to create a mental atmosphere about the soul of the person, whether that person is to be attacked or healed, until a sympathetic response or reaction is elicited within the soul itself.” She says she is using the term soul to include mental and emotional processes, but not spiritual ones. The attacker can only do this by creating that atmosphere within his own consciousness whilst thinking of his victim. “If he wants to perform a psychic murder, he must fill his own soul with the rage of destruction until it overflows.” And what happens then? “He has sounded a ringing keynote in the abyss. It will be answered. All beings who have this keynote for the basis of their nature will respond. “Dark Uriel and Azrael and Ammon on the wing” – and will join in the operation, working through the operator”.
The best defence apparently is to inhibit the “instinctive emotional reaction” which is called out in sympathy with the attack, so ensuring that “the edge of the aura will remain impenetrable – just like healthy skin “is a defence against bacterial infection.”
[This seems to echo Theosophical anxieties about the necessity to keep one’s passions in check.]
A complication is “that a rapport has been formed with the attacking entity in a previous incarnation … Such a problem is a very difficult one, and external assistance is needed for its solution.”
Time for a “case history”. This is long and involved, involving epileptic fits (DF says – and I’m paraphrasing her here – that true epileptics always piss themselves in the course of the fit. If fits are not accompanied by pissing, then the fit is not epilepsy, but something else.] Anyhow, the case involves a woman who was a witch in a previous life and was visiting her victim at night, due to unrequited passion. She thinks these visitations might have taken place at the “Hecate phase, which is the period of evil witchcraft.”
[I did mention earlier that DF doesn’t like witches didn’t I?]
On to Chapter 3 entitled “A Case of Modern Witchcraft”
This is another of DF’s case histories. In short, she goes off to an occult college in Hampshire, being joined by a Miss L, who earlier DF has described as having a sadistic temperament – obvious in hindsight from her Vegan lifestyle, ultra-cleanliness and ultra sensitiveness. Anyhow, DF starts having horrid nightmares, feeling a weight on her chest. Others seem to suffer from nightmares too. Miss L confesses she has a “crush” on DF, who rebuffs her, then suffers more nightmares “I saw the head of Miss L reduced to the size of an orange, floating in the air at the foot of my bed, and snapping its teeth at me.” Further disturbances follow.
Later on Miss L. goes for DF with a carving knife. The head adept appears and tells them off. Eventually he starts creating a psychic barrier on Miss L’s door so she cannot go about disturbing people. Anyhow, it turned out that Miss L had memories of dabbling in black magic in her previous lives, as you do. She also had a horror of sacred symbols, wouldn’t wear crosses and would never ever enter a church. According to DF this is another witch thing.
[NB: DF really does not like witches]
Chapter 4 is about “Projection of the etheric body” which is to do with the projection of ectoplasm. [Do people still do this, and can you weigh it on your kitchen scales afterwards?]
More discussion of the much-admired Adept Z. and his abilities, including visiting DF in his etheric form. Then there’s more about physical manifestations “bruises resembling finger-marks … found on the throats of people who had been victims of an astral attack”.
Next thing is “artificial elementals” – not thought-forms says DF but they do sound like the more modern concept of thought-forms (often called Servitors (from the French “serviteur”) insofar as they can assume an independent existence and volition for a while, until their batteries run down. DF accidentally creates a thought-form, a Werewolf, out of her vengeful brooding, which lies on her bed until she tells it to push off. Other people in the house have dreams of wolves. It could have been worse. It might have been her first -unwitting – step on the Left-hand path (ba-ba-ba-BOOM!).
On to Chapter 5 – Vampirism.
DF talks about patients who left her and her colleagues feeling “drained”. Apparently they affected electrical apparatus in a similar way. Then there’s a bit about “morbid attachments” between two people and its symptomatology. The dominant person in the relationship is feeding on the vitality of the other. She then distinguishes between “parasitism” (very common and involuntary) and Vampirism, which is conscious, and involves projection of the etheric double.
Time for another case study. A youth in his late teens (“D”) “one of those degenerate but intellectual and socially presentable types” experiencing odd goings on. Visited by an entity. Turns out he was visiting a cousin who’d been at the front (WW1) and was invalided back to blighty, suffering from shell-shock. He’d been caught out doing necrophilia – not an uncommon thing at the Front according to DF. “It also came out that the relations between D. and his cousin were of a vicious nature, and one on occasion, he bit the boy on the neck, just under the ear, actually drawing blood.”
[I’d read “vicious nature” as DF delicately alluding to the fact that the two cousins were having a sexual relationship – she does go on to say that the case was a mix of “neurotic taint, vice, and psychic attack”. There’s an interesting subtext in this case study that both men are of an aristocratic, but of “decayed stock”. DF was from a wealthy, upper middle-class background. Class anxieties?]
She goes on relate what her adept had to say about this. Well. Eastern European troops with traditional knowledge of black magic were vampirising the wounded, having used their knowledge to live on after death. See: “The Secrets of Dr. Taverner” for the fictive version.
[I wonder if Gerry Finley-Day had read PSD as background for his classic story “Fiends of the Eastern Front” in 2000AD?]
Anyhow, Vampirism is contagious. DF’s adept was of the opinion what D’s cousin was being exploited by the “earth-bound soul of some Magyar magician” and had become vampiric himself because, well, “unstable morale” [i.e. upper class, queer, sensitive, PTSD].
Apparently, people who are suffering from vampire attacks will have minute bites all over their body [pro tip from DF: use a powerful magnifying glass] but these are not insect bites.
In closing, persons with vampiric tendencies develop “abnormally long and sharp canine teeth” [she’s seen this]. Vampirism in Western Europe is rare, but her Adept “Z” thinks that “obscure cases of tropical debility” involving anemia might be of vampiric origin.
[Takeaways: Stay away from Eastern Europe, it’s full of black magician vampires, also the tropics and the colonies. Particularly if you’re a neurotic queer youth from an upper-class family.]
Chapter 6: Hauntings.
Straight in, there are two kinds of haunting to be examined. A discarnate soul who is interfering with a person, and places which affect anyone going there who is sufficiently sensitive. [Warning, here comes a bit of racial stereotyping] “…children, Celts and the coloured races suffer severely from such interferences, and the stolid Nordic type is comparatively immune, and to a lesser extent, the lively, materialistic and skeptical Latin.”
First then, interference of a person by a discarnate soul. Not malicious, just a soul in distress on the inner planes clinging to the living. If you have any unpleasant experiences after your partner dies, this is probably what’s behind it. Much rarer is the case of a soul who has occult knowledge but is bound to earth by sensual desires creating a kind of rapport with a living person “in order to gratify those desires through the physical body of another.”
Two case studies follow, both women who had lost their husbands.
On to places where manifestations happen. DF says we must distinguish between the “earth-bound entity” attached to a particular spot, and “the thought-atmosphere which is left behind after violent emotions have been experienced there.”
[This sounds more like the Besant/Leadbeater thought-form stuff.]
Some discussion of thought-forms here
Some brief examples follow elucidating the nature of thought-atmospheres. The first example is a woman speaker experiencing stage fright in front of her audience.
[It’s a bit of a relief after all the vampirism, werewolves, floating heads, etc.]
DF says the stage fright is because the speaker was picking up on the historical mental atmosphere left by other girls who’d been nervous. Second is her own experience of experiencing depression in a room, where, it turns out, the last owner was an alcoholic and had gone bankrupt. “It is a curious fact that drunkards and drug addicts make very evil psychic atmospheres, whereas a person who is a common criminal, however bad, is not nearly so noxious and his atmosphere fades rapidly.”
[Very Theosophical in tone. See Annie Besant quote in my thread of 25 Aug.]
Here it is:
“In a town like London, or indeed in any western town, we cannot walk through the streets without being offended at every turn, and the more we refine the body the more delicately acute do the physical senses become, and the more we must suffer in a civilization so coarse and animal as is the present. Walking through the poorer and the business streets where there are beerhouses at every corner, we can scarcely ever escape the smell of drink, the effluvium from one drinking-place over-lapping that from the next—even reputedly respectable streets being thus poisoned. So again we have to pass slaughter-houses and butchers’ shops, and to travel in trains and omnibuses with bodies reeking with flesh and alcohol. Of course one knows that when civilization is a little more advanced better arrangements will be made, and something will be gained when all these unclean things are gathered in special quarters where those can seek them who want them.”
from Man and His Bodies (Lucifer, January 1896)
On to earth-bound entities. “Where a ghost is both seen and heard, we may be sure there is an actual haunting.” If the ghost is seen but not heard, it may be the person is just “perceiving the images in the reflecting ether … there may be no actual entity present. But if the disturbances are heard but not seen, it could be down to “astral forces set in motion by ritual magic”. Harmless, unless of course “powerful evocative rituals have been performed” and not banished properly.
[Bad.]
More illustrative examples. An occultist friend in a house experiences a haunting. Turns out the house used to be “an old madhouse of sinister reputation.” Someone in their committed suicide, thus creating the atmosphere. [Simples.]
The second example is a bit more complicated – “a very definite poltergeist haunting with vampirism.” This one’s much more dramatic. Child deaths, Irish nurse “going off her head.” DF puts it all down to an earth-bound spirit “on the Left-hand Path” [Da-da-da-Doom!] drawing on the vitality of the children.
DF then cites a couple of passages from “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley” in order to illustrate how hauntings can be produced by ceremonial magic where the forces invoked “are not adequately dispersed.”
[I think perhaps she is not overly keen on Mr. C.]
She goes on to talk about sites that are potently charged with psychic force – ancient temples, monasteries, churches. Then a bit about what we would now call psychometry, her experiences in the British Library, going to Stonehenge, Mummies.
There’s an odd bit about statues of the Buddha you have to be careful with, becoz “Some of the worst black magic in the world is a debased form of Buddhism.” It’s the Tibetan Dugpa sect you have to watch out for.
[This is something both HPB and Leadbeater have a bee in their bonnets about.]
Some explanations here
Also a wonderful essay by Ben Joffe: Evil Dukpas, ‘Woke’ TV Reboots, and Dreams of Tibet: On the Blavatskyisms of Twin Peaks
In closing, DF says that one should never respond to an attack with an attack – basically don’t do anything at all, which will turn the forces being projected back to their sender. She then has a bit to say about “lunatics” who believe themselves to be under psychic attack. A psychic will see the “dissociated complex extruded from the aura as a thought-form.” The psychologist will talk about repressed instincts coming out. Both are right, DF says. You can try breaking up the thought-forms but the lunatic will just generate some new ones if the underlying illness is not treated.
To close then, some observations on where I’ve got to with DF so far.
There is an invisible world all around us, populated by beings, human and non-human, some of whom are not nice. It can be very dangerous, particularly if you are (a) a bit psychic and (b) have not been properly trained by one of the Orders or being looked after by an adept. Some people (well, races) are more susceptible than others. Witches are bad. Beware of evil Buddhists. Our own thoughts and those of others can do us harm. We have to be aware of all this so we can guard against it. It is all very dramatic. Tales of Werewolves, Vegans, floating snappy heads, Vampires, children having their vitality sucked out.
Her aim is to bring psychology and occultism together. In doing so she adopts a very matter-of-fact tone (very reminiscent of Leadbeater) – there’s none of the equivocation or qualifications that a contemporary occult author might inject into her or his writing style.
She’s inherited some ideas from Theosophy (i.e. thought-forms and not liking Tibetan Buddhists) but her explanatory framing is much less convoluted than, say, HPB or Leadbeater.
In general (and this is relevant to my earlier discussion of theosophy) there is an interesting question of agency here. The language of emotion we are familiar with presumes interiority – they are subjective (in here) rather than objective (out there). I can experience an emotion, but someone else will only know that when I express it. Sara Ahmed calls this the “inside-out” model of emotions (see her excellent book The Cultural Politics of Emotions). Ahmed’s critique of this model begins with the view (not unique to her) that emotions are not psychological states but social and cultural practices. More about that another time.
What’s common to these occult discourses of the body is the idea that the source of an emotion or a desire resides not in the self (which we tend to think of as bounded rather than permeable) – but beyond it.
No, the source is from other beings, past lives, atmospheres. If, say, I have a sudden desire for crisps, is that a desire I have generated myself, or have I walked into a bunch of decaying thought-forms left over from someone addicted to scampi nick-nacks?
It’s easy to tie yourself in knots obsessing over how much of your own volition actually belongs to you and what you are impelled to do by others – and I did spend a few months being treated by a psychiatrist in my mid-teens precisely due to this kind of worrying (this was long before I read PSD).
