Look what just arrived in the post! Of course, I’ve also ordered the American edition―this one is the British―from an independent bookseller in the U.S. because it comes with a free Murakami book bag (Because one can never have too many book bags, yes? Especially when they have black cats on; or, in the case of my Harper Lee bag, a mockingbird.)

This is the Harvill Secker hardcover without the dust jacket on. The boards and spine are beautiful. I enjoy our daily post so much more now that our bills come via email so that our letter box is normally filled with things like books, greeting cards, or other nice surprises. I highly recommend this method of upgrading your daily deliveries!

Book Review: Tales From The Inner City, by Shaun Tan

td Whittle

Posted on October 9, 2018

Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Your money is meaningless to us,’ said the bears. ‘You grasp economics with the same clawless paws you use for fumbling justice.’

And, once again, the bears showed us.

There they were, God help us, the Ledgers of the Earth, written in clouds and glaciers and sediments, tallied in the colours of the sun and the moon as light passed through the millennial sap of every living thing, and we looked upon it all with dread. Ours was not the only fiscal system in the world, it turned out. And worse, our debt was severe beyond reckoning. And worse than worse, all the capital we had accrued throughout history was a collective figment of the human imagination: every asset, stock and dollar. We owned nothing. The bears asked us to relinquish our hold on all that never belonged to us in the first place.

Well, this we simply could not do.

So we shot the bears.

Never fear, gentle reader, for while we cannot resurrect the bears, the cows will surely avenge their deaths. I have been following Shaun Tan’s work for years now, and was exceptionally happy to attend a talk he gave at a Melbourne bookshop around the time The Bird King was published. This one is my favourite of his works so far, though I love quite a few of them, including the aforementioned Bird King.

In the Author Notes Tan released about Tales From The Inner City, he opens with this statement: Tales from the Inner City, a sister volume to my anthology Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008), is a collection of 25 illustrated stories about relationships between humans and animals. The basic premise I set for myself was quite simple: think about an animal in a city. Why is it there? How do people react to it? What meaning does it suggest? The first story I wrote concerned crocodiles living across the entire upper floor of a skyscraper, and this triggered a flow of similar daydreams. (See Allen & Unwin Book Publishers link to download Commentary by Shaun Tan.)

This type of artistic process fascinates me, which is probably why I love authors such as Murakami, too, who says he writes in the early mornings before he’s fully awake because that’s when his subconscious is still tossing up interesting ideas (that’s my paraphrasing, not what he actually said). Like Murakami, Tan’s books are shot through with images that evoke something powerful in us, through pictures and words, yet they are both elusive and ephemeral. We feel constantly that we are on the brink of grasping something important, which we may lose upon wakening.

Tan also had this to say in his notes: What I love about speculative fiction is the way it can address commonplace problems in unusual, hypothetical ways. He offers us a series of poetic and thoughtful illustrated vignettes in Tales From The Inner City, with each story spinning off one of his unusual hypotheticals. The results are stunning.

Importantly, my animals never really speak, and their animal natures remain inscrutable. They are beings that move in and out of each story as if trying to tell us something about our own successes and failures as a species, the meaning of our dreams, and our true place in the world . . . (See Allen & Unwin Book Publishers link to download Commentary by Shaun Tan.)

Book Review: The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng

td Whittle

Posted on September 21, 2018

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book slayed me. I loved The Gift of Rain which I read first, but The Garden of Evening Mists has surpassed it in my admiration. The story is hard to endure at times, due to its historical context: Malaya during the Japanese invasion, which began on 8 December 1941, just after midnight (thus preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor). It carries us through the experiences of our narrator, Teoh Yun Ling, who was held for three years in a brutal camp, along with her sister, and who is the sole survivor of that camp. As if subjugation and torture from the Japanese weren’t enough to cope with for the tormented people of Malaya, the Chinese Communists insurgency also terrorised them for twelve long years, both during and after the war.

That story on its own would make hard reading, but the fore story is that of Yun Ling as she is now, a woman near seventy and a retired Supreme Court judge, suffering with an incurable illness that affects her memory, who has travelled back to the garden of Yugiri (Evening Mists) in the Cameroon Highlands, where she had once been apprenticed to a Japanese master gardener with the dream of eventually building her own garden as a memorial for her dead sister. The novel thus moves us, gently and with an exquisitely deft touch, backwards and forwards in time, from Yun Ling’s present situation, back to her childhood, and through her life after the war. She tells us of her years with the gardener, Aritomo, who becomes her lover and the only person with whom she shares the story of what happened in that concentration camp.

At its heart, this is a story of a Chinese-Malaysian woman who comes to love a Japanese man, despite the horrors of her experiences at the hands of the Japanese; a man who helps her to heal, as she helps him, even as his particular role in the occupation and subjugation of the Malaysians remains obscured by its own evening mists. It’s rich and complicated, the way these people relate to each other and learn not only to accept but to love one another in spite of everything.

All of the characters are beautifully real; so that I felt completely immersed in their lives and cared deeply about their survival. The book is gracious and subtle and forgiving in a remarkably tender way that I rarely encounter in modern fiction. And the writing is like this:

The temple was a collection of low, drab buildings barnacled to the side of the mountain; I was disappointed, having expected more after the arduous climb. A stream ran past the temple, draining into a narrow gorge. In the sprays steaming over the drop, a small rainbow formed and wavered. Aritomo pointed to the rocks on the opposite bank. They seemed to be trembling. A second later I realised that they were covered with thousands of butterflies. I watched them for a moment, but was impatient to move on.

‘Wait,’ Aritomo said, glancing up at the sky.

The sun hatched out from behind the clouds, transforming the surface of the rocks into a shimmer of turquoise and yellow and red and purple and green, as thought the light had been passed through a prism. The wings of the butterflies twitched and then beat faster. In small clusters they lifted off from the rocks, hanging in the light for a few moments before dispersing into the jungle, like postage stamps scattered by the wind. A handful of the butterflies flew through the rainbow above the gorge, and it seemed to me that they came out looking more vibrant, their wings revived by the colours in that arc formed by light and water.

We walked up to the temple’s entrance. A pair of cloth lanterns, once white, hung from the eaves, like cocoons discarded by silk worms. Blackened by decades of soot and incense smoke, the red calligraphy painted on them had ruptured and bled into the tattered cloth, words turned to wounds.

I had a tiny personal victory whilst reading this book, which I began several months back and then had to set aside for various reasons, having only just completed it last night. In the opening chapters back when I first was reading this, I noticed a small flake of something on the page and moved my hand to see if it would brush off. Just before I touched it, I realised it was a living thing: a larva. I had been reading the book outside earlier and thought it must have dropped onto the page from the maple tree I’d been sitting beneath. It was so delicate that I did not expect it to survive.

Growing a larva into a moth or butterfly sounds simple, and yet they are fragile and have very specific requirements. Many of them will only eat one specific plant. As it turned out, this one liked an heirloom rose we keep in a container on our balcony, so that’s what we nourished it on, keeping it in a habitat we made until it was fully grown into a robust caterpillar. When we ran out of viable leaves, my husband and I walked all over town until we found another rose like ours, outside a public building, from which we pilfered a branch.

I named our guest Aritomo.

One day, Aritomo stopped eating (which was obvious because up until then, it had been chomping merrily away at the leaves on its branches, which we replaced every couple of days). Then, Aritomo disappeared. I could not figure out how it had managed this as the enclosure was secure netting, surrounding a clay dish which was filled with soil, in which the leafy branch resting upright in a small water pot. I learnt then that some caterpillars bury themselves in soil and stay there until they are ready to emerge as moths. (I was pretty sure by this time that we had a moth.)

We took down the netting and peeked beneath the soil to find that, sure enough, there was a little Aritomo bundle resting beneath it. I removed the branch but put the netting back, then waited for several weeks until one morning when I woke to find a beautiful moth resting inside the net. I waited till dusk to set her free, as that seemed only appropriate. Anyway, it was evening, and maybe even a little misty at the time. In my memory, I like to believe it was.

Book Review: The Thin Man, by Dashel Hammett

td Whittle

Posted on September 12, 2018

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had never read a Hammett novel until now and, while I did enjoy it, I would be lying by omission if I did not say I like the movies so much better. I suspect this would be the case, too, with Hammett’s other famous novels, in which his snappy detectives are the most enjoyable and memorable aspect of the stories. Hammett’s writing is as crisp and clean as fresh-pressed linen, which suits his material. I found the book to be a real page-turner, in many ways.

And yet . . . *

I think whether readers enjoy Hammet’s writing must depend on whether they are truly a fan of the hard-boiled detective novel because it’s a specific kind of fiction, stylistically. Hammett was apparently the hard-boiled writer par excellence, the one to whom all others were compared. I haven’t read many of these types of books before. I read people like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers when I’m in the mood for vintage mysteries. Hammett’s writing is high quality but aesthetically minimalist, almost terse at times. The book is nearly all action and dialogue with little to no reflection. I might have liked this more in my youth when I was a big fan of Hemingway and his highly-restrained style. (It’s very obvious in reading Hammett that Hemingway was a fan, by the way.) These days, I prefer less focus on action and more quiet reflection and internal dialogue, at least in the books I read. I am different about movies.

When it comes to films, I am happy with lots of action and snappy dialogue. I just spent a long flight from L.A. to Melbourne binge-watching all the Bogart-and-Bacall movies I could find on the entertainment module, though of course I’ve already seen them all more than once. They never disappoint but I think it’s not that the stories themselves are so gripping. It’s the smoke coming off the screen whenever the two of them are together that rivets the attention. And really, can anyone say they prefer reading The Maltese Falcon to watching Bogart play the role of Sam Spade?

William Powell (Nick), Myrna Loy (Nora), and Asta (Skippy) were perfectly cast. Powell and Loy had a playful, sexy chemistry between them that bounces off the screen even now, so many decades on. Both actors have wonderfully expressive faces, flawless delivery, and perfect timing―which is the only kind of timing you can have in comedy of course.

I would have to agree with Paul Bryant’s review, too, that most of the witty repartee is in the film, not the book. The surprising (for the time) sensuality is intact in the book, rather like a water gun that sprays every attractive person within a ten-foot radius. Everybody notices everybody else’s sex appeal; everyone drinks constantly; no one ever expresses themselves openly and honestly except Asta, the Schnauzer, who cannot help herself. (She morphs into a male wire-haired terrier in the film but just as endearing, because dogs just are, aren’t they?)

I have to go back and re-watch the movies now. I have not seen them in years. I had forgot who actually perpetrated the series of crimes, so that did come as a surprise. I could not work it out, since no one ever talks straight in this book. Nick, despite drinking heavily and having to wrestle down women and punch men from time to time, managed to work out all the details in the end. I didn’t care for the very last line of the book, but perhaps I am too particular about such things. Last lines, to me, are as important as first ones. The final line of the book is Nora saying, “That may be … but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory,” which left me with the feeling that she hadn’t quite liked the way Nick had come to his conclusions in this very messy case. I found her response pretty unsatisfactory, as it ended the book an a rather banal note.

* Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

Book Review: Moon Magic, by Dion Fortune

td Whittle

Posted on July 12, 2018

Moon Magic by Dion Fortune
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was first published in 1957, eleven years after Fortune’s death, so it was completed by friends of hers. This is somewhat obvious, but not tragically so. In Moon Magic we pick up the trail of Vivien Le Fay Morgan after her adventures in The Sea Priestess. Vivien has travelled to London, following an inner calling, where she has changed her name to Lilith Le Fay and is seeking to establish an Isis cult.

I liked Moon Magic better than The Sea Priestess and I am not entirely sure why. I think I felt more connected to Vivien/Lilith because this second book is narrated by her, in first person, for all but the final chapter. (The Sea Priestess was in third person and we were only able to understand Vivien through Wilfred’s view of her, as it was more his story than hers.) Having said that, there is a lot more explanation of the theory and practice of ceremonial magic in this book, too, which amounts to pages and pages of description. Fortune believed that the initiate who read The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic, along with her nonfiction text The Mystical Qabalah, would then hold the “keys to the kingdom” of the hidden cosmic realms and be well set to participate in the rites and rituals of Isis. I am not interested in becoming a priestess myself but nevertheless found it interesting.

The Moon Goddess ~ Early 1900s postcard by Reutlinger

Lilith is a fascinating woman, especially for her time, not only because she lives entirely by her own lights but also because she is an unabashed predator, who willfully emanates a powerful spiritual and sexual magnetism to attract potential acolytes to her, hoping that she may find one to initiate as a priest in her rituals. What the men (Wilfred in the last book, Rupert in this one) expect and what they end up with are very far apart indeed, and one can’t help but feel a bit sorry for them, as they inevitably fall in love with her. Their love is useful to Lilith because, as she explains, it makes her stronger as a priestess, thus empowering her magic and, ultimately, benefiting her goddess. To be fair, she does explain to Rupert fully and completely what she can and cannot offer him in their relationship, so that he goes into the depths of it with eyes wide open, which was not quite the case with Wilfred in The Sea Priestess.

Because Lilith has no emotional needs of other people, she is able to remain aloof and independent and center herself in her own world. She has her own money and, as a priestess, has set herself part in service to her goddess. All that she requires from people (besides a servant or two) is a particular type of male to complete the spiritual work she wants to carry out, which is meant to serve not only her goddess but, ultimately, humankind. Given such lofty and noble goals, Lilith makes no excuses for being completely ruthless in reaching them, as she sees the ends as being worth the means. This tends to leave her men feeling used (as they should!) but, in fairness, she does leave them with a renewed sense of purpose and an enlightenment that they did not possess when they met her. Also, in this book, the fellow who is drawn to her, outwardly a tremendously successful endocrinologist and neurologist, is quite miserable and lost in his life. As with Wilfred in the first book, Rupert ends up enriched by his relationship with Lilith, even though his hopes for love are dashed. Both Wilfred and Rupert, having proved themselves and declared their devotion to the goddess, are empowered to act as priests in serving her, either with Vivien/Lilith or another priestess.

Whoever you are, you look fabulous!

Lilith explains her aesthetic and practical choices in some detail in Moon Magic, and also explains why she must remain celibate. There is a kind of cosmic sexual engagement that occurs between priest and priestess during the ceremonial rites; so, the sexual energy between the pair is used for the magic and cannot be used in the normal fashion. Apparently, it is understood in certain occult communities that, “When sex comes in the door, magic goes out the window” (i.e. they become magically impotent). In the rituals Fortune describes in her books, the goddess has thankfully stopped demanding literal sacrifice of men’s lives and is content to have their energy and vitality drawn off them during the ceremonies, to use to her own ends. The goddess promises to bless them in exchange for their service, but the blessing will come in her own time and her own way. After these rites, both priest and priestess are left vigorous and revitalised (following a brief period of post-ceremonial exhaustion) much as couples feel after good sex. So their energy that is taken up by the goddess is returned to them manifestly amplified (which is not the case with the blood sacrifices of earlier times, where the reward had to be gained in the afterlife, or not at all).

This particular approach to ceremonial magic, from what I have read so far, takes a traditional approach to gender and sexuality. It relies on the “magnetism” between male and female and assumes a “divine feminine” that belongs to all women and is represented, in Nature, by the Moon and the Sea. Likewise, it assumes a “divine masculine” that is represented by the Sun. These elemental forces can be “drawn down” into the priest and priestess during their ceremonies and used for magical ends. I don’t believe any of these things to be true, in a literal sense, but I can see how they might be psychologically potent for some people.

What I really like about the book though is that Lilith buys herself a decommissioned church ** to refurbish into her home and temple, and wafts about the place wearing gowns made out of draperies. She paints all her ceremonial shoes gold and silver and wears a headdress, and creates similar garments for Wilfred and Rupert. Whilst reading this, I could not help but think of Carol Burnett’s send-up of Gone With The Wind, in which Scarlett tears down Tara’s green velvet curtains to remake them into a ball gown. 🙂

Rhett: That gown is gorgeous.
Scarlett: Thank you. I saw it in the window and I just couldn’t resist it.

I am currently reading Gareth Knight’s biography of Dion Fortune, after which, I will be done with my Dion Fortune readings. There are more to read but I’m full up for now. I am not sure who I would recommend these books to, to be honest. They are kind of fun to read. Fortune was a brilliant woman with a fascinating mind but, on the other hand, I think her beliefs were … well, unbelievable. But then, I do not believe there is anything otherworldly about Tarot cards, crystals, or psychics who supposedly channel spirit guides, either. Clearly, these books would hold more than just entertainment value for those who do.

Mossiman’s Club in London, which used to be The Belfry

* There are magic cults that belong to specific LGBTQI groups, nowadays, who come together as outsiders or refugees from mainstream religion, seeking enlightenment and empowerment through their own rites and rituals.

** I believe the church she uses is based on The Belfry in London, where Fortune used to perform the Rite of Isis for the public, and which is now a fine-dining club.

Book Review: The Model, by Robert Aickman

td Whittle

Posted on July 10, 2018

The Model by Robert Aickman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Description from the publisher, Faber & Faber: After Robert Aickman’s death in 1981 the manuscript of The Model, a wintry rococo fable set in Czarist Russia, was located among his papers. Aickman had told a friend he considered this novella to be ‘one of the best things I have ever written, if not the very best.’

The Model tells of Elena, a grave girl inclined to losing herself in dreams of becoming a student ballerina or coryphee. Her dolour darkens further when she learns she is to be sold into marital slavery by her father so as to settle the family’s debts. Refusing an unendurable future she sets out to the city of Smorevsk to pursue her dream. First, however, she must traverse a landscape crowded by highly curious characters and creatures.

Comments from other writers:

‘A must for Aickman fans … A model of eloquent elegant enchantment.’ – Robert Bloch (author of Psycho)

‘He is a weatherman of the subconscious.’ – Fritz Leiber

‘A Strange and delicate winter fable, chilling and dreamlike.’ – Michael Swanwick

This art doll is, I believe, a creation of Alisa Filipova

The Model was published in 1987, six years after Robert Aickman’s death. I find it interesting that he considered it to be possibly the best thing he’d ever written and could not get that out of my mind as I read it. Without a doubt, it is charming and very funny. I have read most of Aickman’s other work, and believe that his sense of humour is often subverted to other effects, such as striking the right note of creeping dread. If you are unfamiliar with Aickman’s writing, I can only say that he is utterly unique in my experience. He wrote horror stories, but of a sublime and literary style. Many of his stories have left me pondering what it is he does that gets under my skin so much. I am not alone in this, as that is his usual effect on his readers.

The blurb on the back of Aickman’s story collections is by Neil Gaiman, who says, ‘Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I’m not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.’ Peter Straub explained him this way, ‘What attracted Aickman to ghosts was not the notion of dripping revenants but the feeling – composed in part of mystery, fear, stifled eroticism, hopelessness, nostalgia and the almost violent freedom granted by a suspension of rational rules – which they evoked in him.’ Victoria Nelson really nails it, though, in her introduction to The Model: ‘He loves oblique, corner-of-the-eye effects, throwaway asides that don’t bear directly on the narrative, and the fact that the uncanny lurks in the margins instead of being front and center makes it doubly unsettling.’

Imagine my surprise in reading The Model, then, which I began with my now-usual expectations of bewitchment and bemusement, in equal parts. The author’s style, tone, and effect are set apart for this tale, which evokes no one so much as Angela Carter. Once I got going, I could clearly discern Aickman’s beautiful descriptions and subtle insights, but had you given me the book without telling me who wrote it, I might not have got it right, and probably would have guessed Carter.

I was so caught off-guard by the way he immersed me in Elena’s world, with a delicate and exquisite tenderness (balanced with dark, subversive humour) that I kept thinking, ‘Really? This is Aickman?!’ I did enjoy it, very much, but I think it is the sweetness of his care for the child Elena that startled me. In retrospect, though, I am reminded that Aickman is always kinder to his female protagonists than his males. Though described often as an irascible curmudgeon, it seems to me he had a kind heart for girls and women who captured his fancy. The upshot of this is that, while The Model reads as a dark fairy tale or fable, Aickman sees it through to the end. Our heroine is not destroyed but merely grows up (which is sad in its own way).

The description of this book, by the publisher, as a ‘rococo fable set in Czarist Russia’ tells you all you need to know, really. Since I am a sucker for the rococo, fairy tales, fables, and stories about Czarist Russia, it all came together for me. Elena is a delightful girl who pushes against the confining expectations of the life her parents wish to thrust upon her, in order to grow into her own person and realise her own dreams. This is quite a stand for a girl of that time and culture! The journey she takes and the bizarre and wondrous experiences she has are much like a dream sequence, and one could read the story simply as a young girl’s daydreams.

If you enjoy Angela Carter, and most especially The Magic Toyshop, I think you will like this one, although I will need to reread it, now that my expectations have been adjusted away from horror, in order to decide whether it’s the best thing he ever wrote. As it stands now, my favourite story of his is Into the Wood which can be found in the collection The Wine-Dark Sea, but many of his stories amaze and haunt me. (The Hospice wins, easily, the award for creepiest story I have ever read. It can be read in the collection Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories.)

A toy theatre not unlike Elena’s (I was unable to find the creator)

Here are a couple of links to articles, and one to a BBC Radio talk, about Robert Aickman, which you may enjoy. He was a fascinating man.

Robert Aickman’s Cult Horror Books Are Being Resurrected For The Centenary Of His Birth, The Independent, 7 August 2014

Strange Interludes, The Weekly Standard, 25 May 2015

The Unsettled Dust: The Strange Stories of Robert Aickman, BBC Radio, 11 August 2017

Book Review: The Demon Lover, by Dion Fortune

td Whittle

Posted on July 10, 2018

The Demon Lover by Dion Fortune
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher Weiser Books’ description: The Demon Lover was first published in 1927, the same year as H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. Dion Fortune was among a generation of occult horror writers that formed popular culture’s obsession with secret societies, vampires, demons, ritual magic, and dark powers lurking in the shadows. What sets Fortune apart from so many of her contemporaries is her deep knowledge of the inner workings of magical orders, rites, and practices, and her own freethinking on occult subjects, demonstrated in the classic Psychic Self-Defense and The Mystical Qabalah.

Warning: Plot Spoilers Ahead!

I am on a Dion Fortune binge. I discovered her through the books of Phil Rickman, an author whose books I read voraciously because I love his mix of the quotidian with the elusively terrifying.

Dion Fortune was a ceremonial magician and an Adept in Western mysticism. She genuinely believed all of the things she wrote about in her novels, or so I have read. Her biographer, Gareth Knight, says that she exaggerated some elements for effect, whilst downplaying others assuming they would seem unbelievable to readers who had no experience of the otherworldly. Her novels describe and explain not only her theology but also the magic rituals that can be undertaken in order to harness the powers of the universe and bring about change in oneself and the world at large.

Fortune was no black-magician though. All of her esoteric practices were intended to help bring peace and further the spiritual evolution of humankind. Perhaps her biggest claim in that direction is that she and her priests believed themselves to have magicked the Nazis away from Britain during World War II and bewitched Germany towards peace. They were adherents of what is called the Right-Hand Path, the path of light.

Having said that about those with good intentions, this book (with its truly terrible cover and stupid title) is about a man named Lucas who takes a wrong turn during his soul’s evolution, wanders away from the Light and pursues the Left-Hand Path of darkness, whereby he commits himself to Evil in all its manifestations. The female protagonist is a naive, tender-hearted, and not terribly bright young woman named Veronica, whom Lucas draws into his orbit.

First published in 1927, The Demon Lover was Fortune’s first novel, and it’s less polished than her later books. It is not well-paced, bogging down in some parts, and the characters are rather flat; yet it did hold my attention, mainly because I kept wondering what the spiritual leaders of the fraternity would do next and how they would morally justify their choices. This quote explains, for me, the crux of the problem:

Let it be realized, in judging the action of these men, that they had a grave trust to fulfil in safeguarding the knowledge placed in their keeping, and that no one values human life more cheaply than the occultist, for he holds the belief in eternal life as a fact of his own personal experience, not as a theory, based, at best, upon the evidence of sacred writings. Some one had learnt their secrets, and that person, must, at all costs, be effectually silenced, only thus could their trust be held to have been fulfilled.

I don’t trust anyone who values life, any life, cheaply. That goes against my nature and my own spiritual beliefs, and the obvious fact of that statement appears again and again throughout the novel. It reminds me of the Inquisition, in which priests were willing to sacrifice the body in order to save the soul (or so they believed). Whatever high moral ground one claims to stand on while making such proclamations, it’s clearly and plainly evil to me. To illustrate my point: Several children, a sweet old dog, a kind-hearted man, and half a town are destroyed because of one idiotic and selfish man (Lucas) whose own soul is salvaged in the end, for reasons which I found unworthy and unjustifiable.

Furthermore, at the book’s conclusion, our girl Veronica has been harnessed, for yet another lifetime, to the needy and clinging soul of Lucas, despite the fact that he tends to lead her to danger every single time. We are meant to believe that this is the right thing to have done because the two souls supposedly need one another: she needs his intellect, and he needs her compassion. I didn’t buy this at all. Veronica was no genius but certainly had enough ethical and emotional intelligence to live well and right. Lucas lacked these. He might have been smart in some ways but was clearly an idiot in many others. So, binding them together in irrevocable dependency was right for whom? Surely not for Veronica, who feels a sense of dread and repulsion at what she’s agreed to, even as she agrees to it. One wonders if she will ever be free of Lucas.

I won’t give away the whole story-line, but I will say in no uncertain terms that (as in Fortune’s other books) the supposed good guys have highly questionable ethics and I found myself arguing with them throughout the book. I would not trust my soul, or even my bank account, to such as these.

I am still giving The Demon Lover three stars, though, because I genuinely enjoy Fortune’s way with words and her stories, overall, as genre fiction. Where the novels fall short for me is that they are meant to be taken seriously as spiritual texts. It is not that I am utterly opposed to Fortune’s beliefs and practices, even though my own spiritual leanings differ significantly; but the assumed righteousness of her occult leaders using whomever they will to whatever ends they deem necessary, in a cold and ruthless manner, sickens me.

A warning: the plot gets really seriously absurd and quite gruesome in the final few chapters. (It is maybe not gruesome by today’s standards, but I am a lightweight in that regard.)

If you want to read more of my thoughts on Fortune, please refer to my more extensive review of her book The Sea Priestess. I just received Dion Fortune & the Inner Light in the post, and will review that once I’ve read it.

Book Review: The Sea Priestess, by Dion Fortune

td Whittle

Posted on June 28, 2018

The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Weiser Books’ description: The Sea Priestess is the highly acclaimed novel in which Dion Fortune introduces her most powerful fictional character, Vivien Le Fay Morgan- a practicing initiate of the Hermetic Path. Vivien has the ability to transform herself into magical images, and here she becomes Morgan Le Fay, sea priestess of Atlantis and foster daughter to Merlin! Desperately in love with Vivien, Wilfred Maxwell works by her side at an isolated seaside retreat, investigating these occult mysteries. They soon find themselves inextricably drawn to an ancient cult through which they learn the esoteric significance of the magnetic ebb and flow of the moontides.

NB: Should you choose to read this book, I do not recommend the Kindle version pictured here (published June 1st 2003 by Weiser Books). The publisher put almost no effort into producing this, which is a shame and disrespectful to the author. Judging by the outcome, I assume a manuscript was scanned and then word-recognition software was used to translate it. The formatting is a muddle and it’s full of typos, some of which are so mutilated that I struggled to figure out what the words should have been: Imagine if the auto-correct function on your phone wrote a book for you; it’s like that.

Warning: Plot Spoilers Ahead!

The Sea Priestess is a novel about Pagan spirituality, ritual magic, and the archetypal Goddess representing the “divine feminine”, whose passions reveal themselves through the ever hypnotic Moon and the Sea in her infinite mystery.

And I saw in my imagination all the life that is behind the sea, and it seemed to me that there was intelligence behind it; a mind not unlike our own, but vaster, and vastly simpler. The life of elemental nature differed from our life in degree, but not in kind. It had the same kind of corporate being as a hive or a herd, which is not embodied, but overshadowed.

It is a lively and engaging read that made me feel a bit dizzy by the end with all the atmospheric goings on. I say “lively” and, while that is true, it’s also full of long passages of philosophical musings that not everyone will like. As I am a bit given to musing myself, I enjoyed it, but I would add that how you feel about The Sea Priestess will largely depend on your world view and whether you take it seriously as a spiritual text. I read it as fiction but the author meant for it to be much more than that.

Dion Fortune’s (1890-1946) novels were a medium through which she shared her spiritual beliefs and practices. She was a highly successful Jungian analyst, an occultist, a priestess of a pagan religion which worshiped the “old gods” as the embodiment of nature’s elemental forces, and a ceremonial magician. If you don’t know much about her, it’s worth perusing her Wikipedia page: Fortune is recognised as one of the most significant occultists and ceremonial magicians of the early 20th century. The Fraternity she founded survived her and in later decades spawned a variety of related groups based upon her teachings. Her novels in particular proved an influence on later occult and modern Pagan groups such as Wicca.

I learnt of Dion Fortune because I read a lot of Phil Rickman novels, which frequently involve the pagan elements and rituals of pre-Christian Britain and brings them into a modern context. So, knowing that Fortune, unlike Rickman, was writing truth (as she defined it) masked as fiction, I found some of the beliefs and practices sinister and disturbing. If you have ever seen the 1973 film The Wicker Man, you will have a good idea of what I mean.

Our hapless protagonist, Wilfred, feels himself to be a bit of a loser. He lives in a small English town in Somerset, near the coast, where he looks after his mother and sister in the family home, his father having died some years earlier. Wilfred runs an estate agency and, in turn, is run by his mother and sister. At the novel’s opening, he is a self-described mother’s boy who quarrels endlessly with his pushy sibling. Watching him change to embrace his manhood and its attendant virility as the novel progresses is satisfying in some ways and disturbing in others. (There is a phase in Wilfred’s development in which he becomes, for a while, an obnoxious drunk and a bit of a lout; but he overcomes this by the end of the novel.)

Wilfred’s catalyst for change comes in the form of a beautiful and mysterious woman who goes by the name of Vivien Le Fay Morgan. A long-term client of Wilfred’s real estate firm, the two meet after many years of doing business solely through letters. Wilfred, to his surprise, finds a young, vibrant, and magnetic female instead of the ninety-year-old granny he should, by rights, have encountered. He is immediately drawn to her as representing everything his life lacks: beauty, sex, vitality, strength, courage, and unconventionality. To be sure, Wilfred had been waiting for something or someone like Vivien his whole life, never having been content to go along with the mindless herd, whom he sees as beneath him. One also feels that he needs to give himself in subjugation to an object of worship, and Vivien is more than happy to receive his veneration. Wilfred’s faith in Vivien nurtures the Sea Priestess image that they both hold of her, which calls to them from their remote shared past and from the “fourth dimension” which is accessible to them only in dreams and visions.

The relationship between the two, while fascinating on a spiritual level, ends up being frustrating for Wilfred. In short, Vivien will not only not marry Wilfred, she will not even have sex with him. Frankly, I found this prudish and ridiculous and not what one would expect from a pagan priestess. She is willing to “sacrifice” him, or at least use his life force to her own ends, to feed him well, and to put him up for the weekends in her refurbished fortress by the sea; but hands off, little man! The priestess is a cold fish who does not sully herself on the physical plane! Poor Wilfred. He really is kind of a loser in life. Nevertheless, he persists, and the two become intimate emotionally and spiritually, if not physically.

There is a curious power in silence when you think alike without word spoken and each knows the other’s thoughts. As long as nothing is said, the thing you are thinking remains in another dimension and is magical, but as soon as you speak it, you lose it. It is the old story of the jewels bought in the goblin market, which you must only look at by moonlight or you find them to be a handful of dead leaves.

Over the weeks that follow, as Wilfred paints sea murals over the interior walls of the temple he has redesigned and refurbished for his goddess, from the remains of an old fort, the two spend many hours together, basically getting high on the elements. They spend evenings staring into fires made of particular woods that bring about visions. They stand on slippery rocks at the edge of the sea, beneath the full Moon, and let the sea water lap at their ankles. They are able to confirm through a series of visions manifested during ceremonial magic that they have been together in a previous life, she as the Sea Priestess and he as her sacrificial victim. Once this knowledge is certain and Vivien feels that Wifred is ready, all that is left for them is the playing out of an ancient ritual, in which Wilfred loses not his earthly life but certainly his reason for living. The Rite of Isis completed, Vivien leaves him cold, and he never sees her again.

Don’t worry though. Things turn out okay for Wilfred in the end. He marries a lovely and perfectly decent young lady and moves her out to the old farm down by the abandoned temple (at her insistence), where she begins to speak to the Moon and turn herself into a priestess, just as Vivien had been.

There are some really ludicrous ideas in this book, as you may have gleaned. Taken as fantasy, it was fun; but then, I am not into the woman-as-goddess mysticism, as a spiritual belief system or even as a useful metaphor. Also, several of the plot elements and their implications just irked me. Firstly, why do people who believe themselves to be reincarnated insist on being some character of legend or, at the very least, an important figure in history? In this case, Vivien is meant to be Morgan Le Fay (but of course!). One wonders if Dion Fortune thought herself to be a reincarnation of someone fabulous and legendary. Probably yes.

Regarding that “Probably yes”: Gareth Knight is one of the world’s foremost authorities on ritual magic, the Western Mystery Tradition and Qabalistic symbolism. He trained in Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light, and has spent a lifetime rediscovering and teaching the principles of magic as a spiritual discipline and method of self-realisation. (Source) I read this blog essay he wrote about The Sea Priestess. One of the comments which follows says:

I truly believe that Dion Fortune was a reincarnation of Morgan Le Fay , I am sure they were from the same soul group and even Dion’s style for red dresses long cloaks all reflecting her past soul connection to Glastonbury and this area of the Earth. I wonder if Dion realized that she was in affect channeling her her soul origins, and her origins as a high priestess of Isis. Even the land she lived on in Glastonbury is the same land that Morgan Le fay lived on, as she was able to awaken the land and work with and its magical properties. Its a shame that as I walk past that land now it seems sad, like it holds many secrets, also that it has many tales to tell .

I don’t know whether Fortune believed herself to have been the mythical Morgan Le Fay, but it appears that at least some of her fans believe it.

Secondly, the sacrificing of oneself to these elemental pagan gods really creeped me out. The earlier scenes describing men who were drowned in caves as offerings to the sea goddess were disturbing enough. (Oh but they are blessed because they will pass into the temples of the gods, under the sea, and live happily forevermore!). Talking men into killing themselves by promising them good fortune in the realms of the dead reminds me of Islamic suicide bombers who are told they will be blessed with virgins in heaven. It’s deeply perverse and profoundly wicked.

Humans (or any creatures) being sacrificed to ancient gods is evil, in my opinion, and cannot be justified. But the sex rite that completes the story was somehow even worse, to my mind. By the end of the book, Wilfred and his lovely new wife, Molly (who is no siren like Vivien but a very sweet and capable girl) have offered themselves up to the Moon Goddess, who represents ALL goddesses. In Fortune’s religion, all gods are one god, all goddesses are one goddess, and the masculine and feminine energies come together, physically and spiritually, in an eternal dance of give and take. These elemental gods and goddesses are ruled over, themselves, by the One, who is the great Initiator of all creation and whom, as I understand it, Dion Fortune believed to be Christ. Oddly, Fortune did consider herself to be a Christian, albeit a very unorthodox one, and considered both Christianity and the ancient Pagan religions of the West to be the right and proper traditions for the Anglo Saxon peoples. She believed it to be spiritually unhealthy and unwholesome to take on other races’ and cultures’ gods, saviors, rituals, and traditions.

Anyway, back to the sex rite. The upshot is that Molly offers herself sexually to her husband, Wilfred, after both of them have already offered themselves spiritually to the Moon Goddess. This takes their lovemaking to a whole new level, one in which they are no longer simply themselves but representative archetypes of All Men and All Women. In a shared vision, Molly and Wilfred make love in a pagan temple while the nature gods watch on with approval, and the elemental forces of the universe flow through them. This is supposed to be an awesome blessing from the gods, but it bothered me on a visceral level.

Why would anyone want to offer themselves, body and soul, to these supposedly sentient embodiments of Nature? For these beings are never depicted as sympathetic to and nurturing of our species. In fact, I kept recalling the opening paragraph of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds: Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

To be fair, I do not understand women who need to envision themselves as goddesses or as figures of myth and legend. I mean, I can understand enjoying the fantasy for as long as the book or film lasts,* but not embracing this as one’s personal truth. Why isn’t being a human being, a real woman in the real world, sufficient for us and for our men? I am absolutely sure that my husband would not want to take me to bed whilst imagining some crumbling old god leering over us and nodding approval. Peter Beagle said, The grave’s a fine and private place … and, to us, so is a marriage bed. It’s a microcosm made for two and inviting onlookers would be a corruption, turning the sacred profane.

Here’s an excerpt from the sex rite:

(Molly speaks)

Lo, I receive the gifts thou bringest me
Life and more life-in fullest ecstasy

I am the Moon, the Moon that draweth thee.

I am the waiting Earth that calleth thee.

Come unto me, Great Pan, come unto me!

Come unto me, Great Pan, come unto me!”

(Wilfred reflects while watching Molly)

I knew that she was exercising her ancient right and giving me the mating-call in the name of the moon, far truer to Nature than any convention of duty and modesty. And I knew why Morgan had said that on the inner planes the woman is positive and should take the initiative, for the Astral Plane is ruled by the moon and woman is her priestess; and when she comes in her ancient right, representing the moon, the moon-power is hers and she can fertilise the male with vitalising magnetic force. And the answering power awoke in me from the very deeps of my being, far deeper than the overflow of desire that comes from a physical pressure; for she called up from me the reserves of vital force and brought them into action-the reserves that the law of our nature guards against the great crises when we fight for life itself—the things that give the madman his strength and the poet his creative frenzy. Not until these things are called up by the call of the beloved can we be said to have mated to the depths of our being. They are not called forth when the man wooes the woman because he feels like it, but they are called forth when she comes to him in the name of Great Isis and bids him worship the goddess with her and through her.

Interestingly, Fortune herself seems to have been more like Vivien, who, as a priestess, did not indulge in sex. Fortune married once but was … well, unfortunate. From what I can glean, sexual chemistry did not spark between Dion and her husband, and he sought partners elsewhere, which led to their divorcing. She seems to have been rather prudish sexually, which explains a lot about this book and her philosophies. Pagan priestess or not, Fortune was born in a time when bold female sexuality belonged only to whores. So perhaps she had to make something grand, cosmic, and sacrificial out of lovemaking, because she could not appreciate it in its (natural and human) right.

About the setting

My favourite part of the book was the setting. The old abandoned fort sitting atop a promontory facing the vast and lonely sea is a romantic image. Wifred undertakes to repair and redesign the fort as a temple for his goddess, sculpting bridges and arches festooned with sea creatures, painting wild sea murals on interior walls, replacing bricks with wide panes of glass to open up a panoramic view of the sea, and creating gothic arches over the windows to soften the stark facade. The setting was based upon Brean Down, which is described as follows in Wikipedia: a promontory off the coast of Somerset, England, standing 318 feet (97 m) high and extending 1.5 miles (2 km) into the Bristol Channel at the eastern end of Bridgwater Bay between Weston-super-Mare and Burnham-on-Sea.

Made of Carboniferous Limestone, it is a continuation of the Mendip Hills. Two further continuations are the small islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm. The cliffs on the northern and southern flanks of Brean Down have large quantities of fossils laid down in the marine deposits about 320–350 million years ago. The site has been occupied by humans since the late Bronze Age and includes the remains of a Romano-Celtic Temple. At the seaward end is Brean Down Fort which was built in 1865 and then re-armed in the Second World War.

Brean Down is now owned by the National Trust, and is rich in wildlife, history and archaeology. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to both the geology and presence of nationally rare plants including the white rock-rose. It has also been scheduled as an ancient monument.

Image: Brean Down Fort (Source )

Image: Sunset from Brean Down (Source)

* Admittedly, I kept grabbing hold of the rubbish bin lid and yelling “shield!” to my husband for weeks after seeing Wonder Woman. I blame Robin Wright for being so fabulous in that movie.

** As my GR friend, Richard, points out, Beagle is quoting Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress but, honestly, I was thinking of Beagle and had forgot Marvell when I wrote this so I will leave it as is.

Book Review: Caraval and Legendary, by Stephanie Garber

td Whittle

Posted on June 10, 2018

Caraval by Stephanie Garber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Note: I read both Caraval and Legendary over the past couple of nights, so this review discusses both novels in a general way. I think I have avoided plot spoilers though and stuck to what I liked and disliked about the books.

Oh my stars! Someone needs to give Garber’s editor a sound thrashing. Why, you ask? Because today I have a hangover from bingeing on buckets of broken stars; mismatched lovers that cling to hope like lost kites over frozen lakes; silver-blue sadnesses that feel like skyfall-peonies rotting in an autumn wind; amber skies smelling of lost dreams and broken promises; betrayal that wreaks of old love letters inked on torn parchment, trembling in the hands of an ancient and weeping monk; whispered dreams shared hurriedly in stinking back alleys; and other strings of syrupy similes and meaningless melodious metaphors.

The Caraval story is not lacking in charm, but Garber has this writing tic that drives me spare. The sky smelled like amber and falling stars, for example. Okay, I made that one up; but all those I have listed here are not unlike what Garber has written on just about every page of both novels in this series. Here’s a quote from Legendary: “The air tasted like wonder. Like candied butterfly wings caught in sugared spiderwebs, and drunken peaches coated in luck.” * It’s a fact too that she simply cannot get enough of stars: stars that are at various times broken, bleeding, crying, watching, planning, and (always and endlessly) falling.

This haphazard whimsy is the kind of thing Catherynne M. Valente carries off almost effortlessly. Yes, it’s purple prose, drastically overwritten, but that’s part of her brilliance and her personal style. It may be purple but Valente’s is a gorgeous hue. She makes it work. I have to add the “almost” though because sometimes I find that I can get exasperated with Valente too. Not all of her books work for me, but I love quite a few of them, and I don’t expect to get a hundred percent hit rate with any writer. Valente has a fantastic mind though. She seems to be super smart and that shows in her writing even if sometimes her verbal acrobatics go over the top. I don’t know of another writer of fantasy who is quite like her in intelligence, humour, and creativity with ideas and language. In summary, I believe Valente to be a solidly good writer who has the command of her craft in hand and her muses at her beck and call, even if occasionally she goes places where I don’t care to follow, or falls under the enchantment of rhythm to the abandonment of all else.

Garber has woven an extended fairy tale in her books that is evocative of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, in many ways, while lacking the sardonic wit of Dahl. I don’t hold that against her. We can’t all be Dahl, after all. Also, Garber brings romance to the forefront of her stories. Both books start off at a good pace and gallop onward valiantly to the end. They are not boring and are, in fact, good late-night reads for when you are wide-awake at three a.m. and your brain is not up for anything demanding.

But to tolerate reading Garber, you will have to inoculate yourself against the virus of the rampaging similes and metaphors that clog the books, consisting almost exclusively of pretty words strung together randomly, smelling of vapidity and (of course) fallen stars. Why didn’t her editor help her with this? A good editor should have punished her by making her eat buckets of broken stars that taste like dying dreams, whilst quaffing the black ink of the creatively-damned. Perhaps that would have purged her of these tendencies.

I would be more forgiving, but Garber has been published by a major imprint; or, am I just too old to appreciate a writing style that is meant to appeal to thirteen-year-old girls, who think it’s poetry? (Heaven help us.) Caraval is a world in which virtually everything looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like sentimental drivel from the poetry notebook of a tween girl. And I should know because I used to be just such a girl with just such a series of notebooks. I was clever enough to burn them rather than publish them though, so give me some credit.

I did not know these were YA books, actually, until I started reading. I don’t live in the U.S., so I hadn’t heard of them until recently, though I understand they’ve been bestsellers there. I did not see any advertisements about their being YA but I suppose they must be because they definitely read that way. I would peg the series as appropriate for twelve to sixteen-year-old girls but I think older girls may want something gutsier. There’s no actual sex, and all the steamy intimate scenes involve nothing racier than kissing. Having said that, the second book, Legendary, plays with an ongoing erotic theme involving blood rather than sex, which says something about our values as a society: It’s fine to feed a virginal girl your blood to save her life, or to slowly exsanguinate her with a death-kiss, but don’t you dare have sex with her! In short, there’s a lot of blood and death in both books, as with any fairy tale worth its salt.

The two other major complaints I have is that Garber over-explains everything and repeats those explanations so many times that one wonders if she suspects her readers are stupid or have exceedingly poor memories; also, the plots have some major inconsistencies regarding the overlapping real and fantasy worlds. Not all of the resolutions make sense in the end and you just have to accept that. In order to avoid spoiling the plots and subplots, I won’t go into the details of that criticism here. Also, to be fair, I am aware that the finales may not seem lacking to everyone.

So, if all I’ve got are complaints, why did I not only finish the first book but read the second as well? Good question! You win a stardust posy that feels like regret and smells like yesterday’s sorrows! Well, I am a sucker for slipstream novels, where the real and the surreal are woven together throughout the text. Also, I am a sucker for dark fairy tales that come good in the end, and for bespoke worlds that run according to their own rules and rituals, where the cost of everything is high and currency comes in the form of personal, irretrievable sacrifices. Also also, I like sister stories and ones where the heroines triumph in the end, even though they are forever changed by their hardships, both for better and worse. And I enjoy a romance, even a cheesy one, from time to time.

I think Garber writes a well-paced book with characters who suit the piece, even if none of them won me over in a lasting way. She’s created a beguiling world that is reminiscent of the Carnevale di Venezia. I know there are other famous Lentian Carnivals, too, but Garber’s world as she describes it, with its theatrical balconies, lamp-lit streets of old stone, canals with taxi boats, an abiding sense of claustrophobia, and mystery hiding behind every corner, is more like Venice than anywhere else. Also also also, I like games that involve full commitment of heart, mind, and soul, where losing may cost everything the player holds dear, but not playing would mean imminent doom. (I should add that I like these types of games in a fictional sense, as I prefer a calmer, less existentially-rife life myself.)

Because of these elements, I still enjoyed both books even though they are quite seriously in need of a better editor to guide an otherwise strong storyteller. Then again, perhaps I am putting too much on Garber’s no-doubt overworked editor. Maybe it’s impossible to finesse a writer away from the gushing, flowery phrases that glut her text, which might feel to her like the hallmark of her personal style? Hard to say, really. Nevertheless, each book only takes a few hours to read so it’s not a huge investment of time. Garber is worth those hours, if you enjoy this sort of tale. As an added bonus, the covers are gorgeous and since I am basically shallow, that gets me every time.

I will continue to follow this writer’s work because I have faith that she will improve and because there is simply something appealing about the stories she tells. Perhaps they remind me of being that thirteen-year-old with the notebooks full of terrible poetry. Garber’s second book is, in fact, stronger in its plotting and its various levels of intrigue than the first, but her metaphors are still making my teeth itch. I finished Legendary in my sleepless, pre-dawn hours and woke up this morning feeling like sugar-spun cobwebs and ancient dying stars crying hydrogen tears. Probably also like old memories and something to do with really black ink on rain-moistened parchment that smells like heartache and tastes like migraine.

Image: Swirling Memories by Jim Yarbrough

* To be fair, Garber does introduce Scarlet as someone with synesthesia―a person who experiences subjective sensations or images of a sense (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated. Judging by her writing, perhaps Garber is synesthetic herself. However, this is only explored in passing and is not woven into the story in a way that makes sense of it, enriches Scarlet’s character, or alters her experiences regarding the challenges she faces. So, it’s kind of random and unevolved as a character trait. Furthermore, the same synesthesic description permeates the second book, whose main character is Donatella, but there is no further mention of synethesia at all. So, we must assume this is more about the author’s writing style than an attribute of a particular character.

I know this much is true

td Whittle

Posted on January 13, 2018

La Création de l’Homme, by Marc Chagall

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. ― Vincent Van Gogh

We don’t usually post our thoughts about spiritual matters, directly, on our blog but I (Tina) decided, ‘Oh, why not!’ So, here we go. Lately, I have received more than my usual share of recommendations via friends, acquaintances, and strangers of books and events promoting ‘spiritual’ ideologies that confound me and leave me wondering if people are really so desperate and lost that they will swim to any port in a storm. Perhaps this statement, which I’ve long mused over, is true: ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.’― G.K. Chesterton

I decided to post a few of my own thoughts, cobbled together from years of practice as a psychotherapist, as well as studying and exploring various religious and philosophical paths. There are a few foundational principles which are the markers of any great philosophy or religion, and quite a few more which are poison. This list is by no means exhaustive, but represents my musings on this particular Sunday morning.

A worthy and noble religion or philosophical belief system:

Encourages a noble aim (noble: reflecting high moral principles) based on the belief that life, while unavoidably filled with suffering, is also meaningful and worthwhile (i.e. does not promote nihilism).
Teaches and exemplifies principles based on the ancient wisdom and traditions humans have developed over thousands of years, rather than their gutted and insubstantial offspring that have been flourishing since the 1970s, which only serve to feed our natural vanity and promote the cult of the self.
Understands that human beings thrive when living a purpose-driven life and contributing to their communities—i.e., the focus is outwards, on others, rather than on oneself to the exclusion of others. Whether your community is made up only of your family and friends and workplace, or extends to the world at large, the outcome of following any path to ‘enlightenment’ should be to integrate you more fully with humanity, not to isolate you within a self-selected group that alienates you further from others. A sense of belonging and contributing are necessary to people who are not psychopaths, but they cannot be sustained in a vacuum.
Recognises that happiness and contentment can only be achieved and sustained by living with purpose and caring for others. * Of course we want to be happy! But happiness is an outcome, not a goal, and it cannot be hit when aimed at directly. (As in archery, you have to aim a little off centre to hit the target.)
Is neither selling you ‘secret, exclusive knowledge’, nor making you pay in order to advance to the next level of ‘enlightenment’, nor promising miracle cures for whatever ails you. (‘You will no longer have problems! You will never suffer pain again! You can manifest any life you want by changing how you think and opening yourself up to receiving abundance!’) I have seen this particular charlatanry sprouting like topsy, and I cannot stress this enough: These folks are frauds. It is sad to see otherwise intelligent people foundering in a cesspool whilst seeking transcendence. Sadder still, once they are sucked in, they do not welcome any suggestion that they may have been duped, so the rest of us stand by idly, watching them drown. I hope their inevitable collision with reality isn’t too painful when it occurs. **
Does not encourage you to be self-absorbed, rigidly unforgiving, dishonest, hateful, cruel, or violent. We humans do this all on our own, quite naturally. We are forever trying to mediate between our reason and our passions, and our moral principles should give us a higher goal to reach for rather than encouraging us to wallow in our basest impulses.
Whilst seeking the transcendent, nevertheless remains tethered to reality, the facts of which will never be erased via linguistic gymnastics and thought experiments. NB: 1. The earth is really and truly here. 2. We are living on it with other humans and other real species. 3. There are physical laws of the universe, which we are still struggling to comprehend; these, too, are real and not created or controlled by us. 4. As biological beings bounded by space and time, we and all other animals suffer and eventually die—whether we survive in spirit beyond death is outside the scope of this post. 5. Our thoughts do not create or sustain the universe. (That should be obvious to anyone who thinks, but apparently is not.)

Suffering is one of the most profound ways by which we know we are alive. It doesn’t get more real than that. The answer to pain is not tricking yourself into believing that it’s not real and trying to do so is, I believe, an egregious error against psyche and soul that will only amplify your pain and that of others. No path which denies reality and the pain of existence is going to take you anywhere worth going, because it’s predicated on a lie. While we do live our lives guided by our perceptions, emotions, and reason, we do not create reality. We are a part of a shared reality in which all creatures live and strive and suffer and die together. There is not only pain but also beauty and grandeur in living out that fundamental truth.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” — Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

* For me, caring for others includes being loving custodians of our planet and its creatures.

** ‘We welcome illusions because they spare us emotional distress, and enable us instead to indulge in gratification. We must not complain, then, if now and again they come into collision with some portion of reality and are shattered against it.’ — Sigmund Freud, Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, (1915)

Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami

td Whittle

Posted on October 18, 2018

Book Review: Tales From The Inner City, by Shaun Tan

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Posted on October 9, 2018

Book Review: The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng

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Posted on September 21, 2018

Book Review: The Thin Man, by Dashel Hammett

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Posted on September 12, 2018

Book Review: Moon Magic, by Dion Fortune

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Posted on July 12, 2018

Book Review: The Model, by Robert Aickman

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Posted on July 10, 2018

Book Review: The Demon Lover, by Dion Fortune

td Whittle

Posted on July 10, 2018

Warning: Plot Spoilers Ahead!

Book Review: The Sea Priestess, by Dion Fortune

td Whittle

Posted on June 28, 2018

Warning: Plot Spoilers Ahead!

About the setting

Book Review: Caraval and Legendary, by Stephanie Garber

td Whittle

Posted on June 10, 2018

I know this much is true

td Whittle

Posted on January 13, 2018

La Création de l’Homme, by Marc Chagall

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. ― Vincent Van Gogh

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” — Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross