The Training & Work of an Initiate
By Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight
4/5
()
About this ebook
The Training and Work of an Initiate shows how, from ancient Qabalistic, Greek, and Egyptian roots, the Western Esoteric Systems have an unbroken initiation tradition that has been handed down from adept to neophyte. In this book, Dion Fortune indicates the broad outlines and underlying principles of these systems, illuminating an obscure and greatly misunderstood aspect of the path. Thanks to her teaching, even those who cannot give their lives to the pursuit of esoteric science can still evolve a philosophy of life and discover their individual relationship to the cosmic whole. Revised edition contains a new introduction by Gareth Knight, and an index.
Dion Fortune is a celebrated teacher of the Western Mystery Tradition. She founded a study group, The Society of Inner Light, which is still active in London today. She died in 1946.
Read more from Dion Fortune
Moon Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cosmic Doctrine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mystical Qabalah Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThrough The Gates Of Death Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Demon Lover Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEsoteric Orders and Their Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Machinery of the Mind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDion Fortune's Book of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Esoteric Orders and Their Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat Is Occultism? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Goat Foot God: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sea Priestess Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Winged Bull Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secrets Of Dr. Taverner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Training & Work of an Initiate
Related ebooks
The Cosmic Doctrine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Esoteric Orders and Their Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Esoteric Christianity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween the Gates: Lucid Dreaming, Astral Projection, and the Body of Light in Western Esotericism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gleaning of a Mystic: Essays on Practical Mysticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Practical Qabalah Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Applied Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Is Occultism? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dion Fortune's Book of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sea Priestess Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secrets Of Dr. Taverner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aspects of Occultism Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Mystical Qabalah Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winged Bull Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Machinery of the Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Return of the Ritual (Fantasy and Horror Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary: Magical Antiquarian, A Weiser Books Collection Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Gold: Israel Regardie's Lost Book of Alchemy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rosicrucian Magic: A Reader on Becoming Alike to the Angelic Mind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Philosopher's Stone: Spiritual Alchemy, Psychology, and Ritual Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son of Chicken Qabalah: Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford's (Mostly Painless) Practical Qabalah Course Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of True Healing: The Unlimited Power of Prayer and Visualization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Hermetics: 21st Century Magick for Illumination and Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Psychic Self-Defense: The Definitive Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Transcendental Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Training & Work of an Initiate
16 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Training & Work of an Initiate - Dion Fortune
Other books by Dion Fortune
Occult Study
Machinery of the Mind
The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage
Psychology of the Servant Problem
The Soya Bean
Esoteric Orders and Their Work
The Problem of Purity
Sane Occultism (to publish as What is Occultism? Weiser, 2001)
Training and Work of an Initiate
Mystical Meditations on the Collects
Spiritualism in the Light of Occult Science
Psychic Self-Defense
Through the Gates of Death
Glastonbury—Avalon of the Heart
The Mystical Qabalah
Practical Occultism in Daily Life
Applied Magic
Aspects of Occultism
The Magical Battle of Britain
Occult Fiction
The Demon Lover
The Goat-Foot God
Moon Magic
The Sea Priestess
The Secrets of Dr. Taverner
The Winged Bull
First published in 2000 by
Samuel Weiser, Inc.
with offices at
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
500 Third Street, Suite 230
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.redwheelweiser.com
10 09 08 07 06
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Text copyright © 1967 Society of Inner Light
Foreword copyright © 2000 Samuel Weiser, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser. Reviewers may quote brief passages. First published in 1930 by Rider & Co., 1930.
Dion Fortune™ is a registered trademark
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Fortune, Dion.
Training and work of an initiate / Dion Fortune.—Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes index
ISBN 1-57863-183-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Occultism. 2. Fraternity of the Inner Light. I. Title.
BF1411.F59 2000
131—dc21 00-040896
Printed in the United States of America
MG
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992(R1997).
www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter
CONTENTS
FOREWORD by Gareth Knight
INTRODUCTION
PART I—ETHICAL
I. LAYING THE FOUDATIONS
II. THE WAY OF INITIATION
III. PREPARATION FOR INITIATION
IV. THE PATH OF THE HEARTH-FIRE
V. THE INITIATE'S IDEAL
VI. DAILY LIFE UPON THE PATH
PART II—THEORETICAL
VII. A GROUND PLAN OF ILLUMINISM I
VIII. A GROUND PLAN OF ILLUMINISM II
IX. A GROUND PLAN OF ILLUMINISM III
X. THE HEAD-WATERS OF OCCULTISM
XI. THE SOURCES OF THE ESOTERIC CHRISTIAN TRADITION
XII. THE ALPHABET OF THE MYSTERIES
PART III—PRACTICAL
XIII. THE TRAINING OF THE MIND
XIV. THE TRAINING OF THE BODY
XV. INITIATION AND CELIBACY
XVI. THE WESTERN ESOTERIC SYSTEMS
TABULAR CLASSIFICATION OF ILLUMINISM
INDEX
THE SOCIETY OF THE INNER LIGHT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
BY GARETH KNIGHT
FIRST published in 1930, The Training and Work of an Initiate, along with its companion volume, The Esoteric Orders and Their Work (1928), represented the first serious statement of Dian Fortune's aims and ideals in launching her famous school, the Fraternity of the Inner Light.
In her view, the Fraternity was to be nothing less than an Esoteric Order consisting of trained Initiates. The Esoteric Orders and Their Work thus presents her vision of what such groups should do, and The Training and Work of an Initiate describes how its members should be trained to fulfill this group purpose.
This training is not meant to be confined to an inner charmed circle at the heart of an Esoteric Order however. If it is to mean anything, it needs to take into its ambit anyone who feels the least stirrings toward the work and ideals of an initiate. Indeed if we take seriously the tradition that it takes at least three lives to make an initiate, then some form of appropriate training and guidance must be available to those who might be still on one of those preparatory lives leading to the door of initiation.
In practical application of this, Dian Fortune pursued her publishing and lecturing activities, and also developed an extensive Outer Court
for her Fraternity, with a body of affiliates and associates who received an appropriate selection of private teaching and knowledge papers, along with The Inner Light Magazine.
As in most things connected with the Mysteries, the Outer Court fell naturally into a three-tier system. An inner ring consisted of students enrolled upon the preliminary study course leading to full membership. Affiliates were mostly students who had completed the study course, but who, for various reasons domestic or geographic, could not or did not wish to take the final step of initiation. Associates were any sympathetic members of the public willing to pay a small subscription in return for selected papers and newsletters, and it was considered no small privilege to be formally linked in this way with a genuinely contacted
esoteric fraternity.
The actual implementation of the system varied over the years. Like all institutions, esoteric fraternities develop and adapt to meet the needs of the times if they are to survive in anything but a quiescent or moribund form. Thus at the beginning of its existence the ideal of an enclosed community was paramount in the organisation of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, in fact its first chosen title was the Community of the Inner Light. Gradually it came to be less enclosed during Dion Fortune's lifetime, until eventually the concept was abandoned in favour of the belief that the primary role of an initiate should be to lead a normal life in the world, rather than to emulate the role of an incumbent of an enclosed religious order.
Until this realisation came about, there tended to be a tacit assumption that the Path of the Hearth-Fire
was somehow inferior to that of a fully committed and fully enclosed initiate, devoted exclusively to esoteric work with no outer world distractions of family, work, and friends. The view today, on the contrary, tends to see the enclosed initiate as somewhat in danger of being out of touch with the times, even to the extent of seeking a subjective refuge from the challenges of the outer world. The modern initiate is expected to take a full part in the ways of the world, striving to exemplify the spiritual life within it.
In her chapter upon the Path of the Hearth-Fire, Dion Fortune strikes the right balance, seeing neither the one nor the other as superior, but each in their way as a valid expression of the life of an initiate. It is true that she is still sufficiently imbued with the community idea to see the issue in terms of one of conflict: Which is the higher duty, the service of the Masters or the service of the family and home?
She poses this as the big question, apparently without considering the possibility that the conflict may be an illusory one. She turns to the law of karma for an explanation of it, yet paradoxically immediately puts her finger on the correct answer: ... the path of the Hearth-Fire... is as true a way of initiation as any of the disciplines imposed by the occult fraternities. . . Neither is it a quicker or slower way of initiation than any other.
¹
Initiation, therefore, is a state of mind, rather than a pattern of circumstances. As she explains in her two chapters on the way of initiation and preparation for it, it is a matter of the illumination of the soul by an inner light. This illumination implies becoming conscious of an idea within the Divine Mind and thereby expressing it in a concrete form that is embodied in outer life.
It follows that the environmental circumstances in which that illumination is expressed is somewhat of a secondary factor. We can be initiates in a temple, in a church, in the street, in the home, in a hospital, in a prison, in any of the circumstances of contemporary life. In a sense, it is not what we do that counts, but the way that we do it—or how and where we let our light shine. And this depends upon what we are, or what we aspire to be. In Dion Fortune's terms, this is to be an illuminated initiate.
There are, of course, different grades of initiate and adept, and this difference is demonstrated by the life style rather than the possession of any high-sounding titles or magnificent ritual regalia—the failure to realise which has caused a considerable amount of self-deception within the extensive fringes of occultism, and even alas in hallowed circles where those concerned really ought to have known better.
This difference depends upon what Dion Fortune, in common with most modern esoteric teaching, calls the acquiring of consciousness focused within the Higher Self or individuality; although in latter days her Fraternity has favoured the term evolutionary personality.
That is to say, a consciousness that looks upon the vicissitudes and challenges of daily life from a higher standpoint than the Lower Self or personality, with its genetic and environmental patterning. This is by no means a denial of the values of the ordinary life of the senses, emotions, and lower mind, but an ability to see them in a broader context and to act accordingly.
This dawning consciousness is what is sometimes referred to as the Second Birth, although it can well be a very gradual and continuing process rather than a sudden revelation—as of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. The training and work of an initiate is intended to assist and guide in this general process which, according to occult tradition, may well take several Personality lifetimes, or incarnations, to accomplish.
The acid test is, of course, in the practical application and demonstration in life rather than in a simple intellectual acceptance of the theory from out of a book. And while an acceptance of the theory of reincarnation, that goes with all this, may seem a help to some people, it can also have its more difficult side. A recent case in point was of the manager of an international football team dismissed from his job by popular acclaim because of his professed belief that those who were afflicted with physical problems in this life might have misdeeds in a previous life to blame for it. There were very many who felt such a claim to be grossly unfair and demeaning to the plight of the physically or mentally handicapped. So the esoteric philosophy is not necessarily a soft option to explain away all ills, as it is sometimes assumed to be. All