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This is the last (for now) of my four mammoth Twitter threads commenting on Dion Fortune’s 1930 book, Psychic Self-Defence. This thread was originally posted on Twitter on 29 August 2021.
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The third of my excessively long Twitter threads examining Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defence, originally posted on 28 August 2021.
Continue reading »Continuing on from the previous post, here is a condensation of my Twitter thread originally posted on August 27, 2021. Here’s part two (see thread of 26 August) of my interrogative reading of Dion Fortune’s classic Psychic Self Defence, a book for which the phrase “paranoid reading” seems somehow appropriate (with apologies to Eve Sedgwick).
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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.
Continue reading »The East, formerly a land of dreams, of fables, and fairies, has become to us a land of unmistakeable reality; the curtain between the West and the East has been lifted, and our old forgotten home stands before us again in bright colours and definite outlines.
Max Müller, 1874
It’s frequently asserted that Nazi racial ideology came directly out of nineteenth-century esoteric movements – in particular, the writings of H.P. Blavatsky and other members of the Theosophical Society. This is an over-simplification of a complex subject, and one worth examining in detail. In order to do this comprehensively, I will first take a look at some of the background context – the ideas about race that were circulating prior to the advent of the Theosophical Society. I’ll begin with a brief examination of the term “Aryan” and its tangled historical trajectory prior to its adoption by Theosophists, focusing on the influence of two orientalist scholars, Sir William Jones, and Max Müller.
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