Penny Billington - The Keys to the Temple

About the Authors

Penny Billington is a Druid speaker and author and is active in the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, having edited their magazine, Touchstone , for fifteen years. She regularly runs workshops, organises rituals, and gives lectures and has also authored a Druid Detective series of novels. She resides in Somerset, England. Visit her online at www.pennybillington.co.uk. Author photo by Sue Ball.

Ian Rees is a psycho-spiritual psychotherapist practicing in Glastonbury, Somerset, United Kingdom. He has been a therapist for twenty years and spent ten years before that working in probation work and social work. He designed MA programs and taught at the Karuna Institute in Devon from 1999 to 2009. Since 2009 he has concentrated on developing and presenting workshops for the Annwn Foundation. Author photo by Alan Hudson.

The authors and publishers wish to thank the Society of the Inner Light for permission to reproduce copyrighted material from the following books by Dion Fortune:

Esoteric Orders and Their Work & The Training and Work of an Initiate

Moon Magic

Psychic Self-Defence

The Goat-Foot God

The Sea Priestess

The Winged Bull

Disclaimer

The information herein is not a substitute for professional medical or legal care or advice. The authors do not assume responsibility for your thoughts, decisions, or actions.

Contents

List of

Unlocking The
Mystical Qabalah

SECTION 1: LEAVING HOME

. The Goat-Foot God: Power of Nature

. Entering Malkuth and The Goat-Foot God

. The Sea Priestess: Currents and Rhythms

. Yesod and The Sea Priestess: Making a Foundation

. The Winged Bull and the Dance of Relationship

. Tiphareth and The Winged Bull

. Moon Magic: The Depths and the Heights

. Daath and Moon Magic

SECTION 2: FOLLOWING

. The Work of Change

. First Steps on the Path

. The Emotional Connection

. Thresholds, Guardians, and Obstacles

. Magical Space

. The Mentor and the Threefold Way

SECTION 3: CROSSING THE BRIDGE

. Magical Work: Guidelines and Boundaries

. The Qabalah Applied

. Working with Malkuth and The Goat-Foot God

. Working with Yesod and The Sea Priestess

. Working with Tiphareth and The Winged Bull

. Working with Daath and Moon Magic

Figures

. The Path from Malkuth to Yesod

. The Spinning Wheel of Yesod, Hod, and Netzach

. The Underworld and Alchemical Paths from Malkuth to Tiphareth

. The Wheel of Stillness

. The Three Paths up to Daath

. The Supernal Triangle

. The Completed Tree of Life

Introduction

Writers will put things into a novel that they darent put in sober prose, where you have to dot the Is and cross the Ts.

Dion Fortune (18901946) was one of the most significant occultists of the twentieth century and is still considered to be a major influence on the current Western Mystery Tradition. She was one of a small band of people who brought the ancient mysteries out of obscurity and arcane ritual and made them relevant to the modern day and the issues we now face. She did this by combining an understanding of psychology with the mystical practices of the Qabalah and suggesting practices and methods that can be applied to give direct experience of inner realities.

The Qabalah is a spiritual system that has been practiced secretly in Europe since at least the twelfth century, though it draws on deep roots within Judeo-Christian tradition. In particular, it draws on the myth of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden through having eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Qabalah is based around the image of the other tree in that myth, the Tree of Life. This Tree is an image and diagram that enables us to explore the inner aspects of our own nature and of the world and in that process to come into communion with a fuller, deeper life.

Dion Fortunes way of making this tradition more available to people outside her private occult group was unusual: she wrote one of the first modern accounts of the Tree of Life and the system of the Qabalah that makes ancient mythology and the mysteries behind them come to life here and now. She also wrote a series of novels that on one level can be read as slightly unusual romance novels but on a deeper level contain key images and patterns from those mysteries that speak to our subconscious and, if consciously related to, bring us into a deeper experience of our life and being.

In the beginning of the 1998 edition of her book The Sea Priestess , Fortune says this about the novels and the Qabalah:

It is because my novels are packed with such things as these (symbolism directed to the subconscious) that I want my students to take them seriously. The Mystical Qabalah gives the theory, but the novels give the practice. Those who read the novels without having studied the Qabalah will get hints and a stimulus to their subconscious. Those who study the Qabalah without reading the novels will get an interesting intellectual jig-saw puzzle to play with; but those who study the Mystical Qabalah with the help of the novels get the keys of the Temple put into their hands. As Our Lord said: Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?