Writing Quotes from, “The Sea Priestess”

music playing:  Swan Lake

Here are some quotes on writing  from Dion Fortune’s, “The Sea Priestess” (1938)

From the Introduction:

1.  “It was said by a reviewer of one of my previous books that it is a pity I make my characters so unlikeable.  This was a great surprise to me, for it had never occurred to me that my characters were unlikeable.  What kind of barber’s blocks are required in order that readers may love them?  In real life no one escapes the faults of their qualities, so why should they in fiction?”

2.  “Any writer will agree that narrative in the first person is a most difficult technique to handle.  The method of presentation is in actuality that of drama, though maintaining the appearance of narrative; moreover everything has to be seen not only through the eyes, but through the temperament of the person who is telling the story.  A restraint has to be observed in the emotional passages lest the blight of self-pity appear on the hero.”

3.   ” People read fiction in order to supplement the diet life provides them…It is too well known to need emphasis that readers, reading for emotional compensation, identify themselves with the hero or heroine as the case may be, and for this reason the writers who cater for this class of taste invariably make the protagonist of the opposite sex to themselves the oleographic representation of a wish-fulfilment.  The he-men who write for he-men invariably provide as heroine either a glutinous, synthetic, saccharine creature, and call the result romance, or else combine all the incompatibles in the human character and think they have achieved realism.”

4.  “Equally the lady novelist will provide her readers with such males as never stepped into a pair of trousers; on whom, in fact, trousers would be wasted.”

From Main Text:

5. “The keeping of a diary is usually reckoned a vice in one’s contemporaries  though a virtue in one’s ancestors.”

6. “We read novels as a kind of supplement to daily life.   If you look over the shoulder of the mildest man in the railway carriage, you will find he is reading the bloodiest novel.  The milder the man, the bloodier the novel- and as for maiden ladies-!  Any particular tough-looking individual, with overseas tan still on his skin, is probably reading a gardening paper.”

Dion Fortune’s, “The Sea Priestess”

 

“I am the soundless, boundless, bitter sea;

All things in the end shall come to me.”

 

Violet Mary Firth Evans was born on December 6, 1890 in Llandadno, Wales.  At four years -old, she reported experiencing visions of the lost city of Atlantis. These visions, and the blossoming of psychic abilities, drew her to the occult studies when she was in her twenties. After becoming a member of both The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, she formed her own esoteric group: Society of the Inner Light.

 

 Born to a family of Christian Scientists whose motto was, “Deo, non Fortuna” (God not chance), Miss Evans chose the pseudonym, Dion Fortune, and set out to transcribe her spiritual beliefs down on paper. Since witchcraft was still illegal in Great Britain, Ms. Fortune hid her magical teachings in the guise of novels. Her most famous, The Sea Priestess, was self-published in 1938.

 

Covering the themes of Hermeticism, reincarnation, and Atlantis, – it concerns Wilfred Maxwell, a bachelor, who is bored of his life tending to the family business and to his interfering mother and sister. Upon becoming afflicted with asthma, Wilfred takes to long bouts in bed. “As I lay there, doped and exhausted and half hypnotized by the moon, I let my mind range beyond time to the beginning. I saw the vast sea of infinite space, indigo-dark in the Night of the Gods; and it seemed to me that in the darkness and silence must be the seed of all being.”  Wilfred spends his nights staring down at the moon and discerning,  “I found that the more I dwelt on her, the more I became conscious of her tides, and all my life began to move with them.”

Soon after, Wilfred meets the cold and mysterious Vivien Le Fay Morgan, who claims to be a Priestess of Isis.  “Little by little, she learnt and built, always handicapped by the fact that the moon-magic requires a partner, and partners were hard to find.“ With the warning that she can never give herself to one man, Vivien enlists Wilfred to help her develop her magical image as a sea-priestess.

Months are spent at an isolated seaside retreat, communing with the sea and the moon. Discovering the hidden works of nature. Isis Veiled and Isis Unveiled.

At one point, Vivien stands looking out over the moonlit sea. Raising her arms, she sings:

“Oh Isis, veiled on earth, but shining clear

In the high heaven now the full moon draws near,

Hear the invoking words, hear and appear-

Shaddai el Chai, and Ea, Binah, Ge.”

 

Just when Wilfred is coming out of his shell, Vivien disappears, leaving him shattered. Time passes and Wilfred begins a tentative romantic relationship with the reserved Molly. He teaches her the rituals, and she blooms, finding her personal power, not as a sea-priestess, but as one of the earth. “There was awakening in her something of the primordial woman, and it was beginning to answer to the need in me.”

 Molly discovers that “All Women are Isis”;Wilfred begins his own relationship with the Priest of the Moon.   As a couple, Wilfred and Molly play out the themes of Hermeticism, and help bring  forth each other’s magical abilities.

Through destruction and sacrifice they are reborn.