Dion Fortune
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@Metzareph said
"Do you know what was Crowley's opinion of Dion Fortune?
I've heard different stories."Yes. Quite extensively. In fact, I know even more since reading Alan Richardson's recent book, "Aleister Crowley & Dion Fortune: The Prophet of the Aeon & the Shakti of the Age."
It would take at least half a book to summarize it in more than a superficial sense.
Do you have specific questions, based on the different things you've heard?
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Thank you Jim,
Specifically, if there was a sense of respect from Crowley or that at least he was amicable, given Crowley's fame of being sexist.
Talking to a friend recently about Crowley the very usual sexism, racism thing came up.
Thanks again.
~Juan -
@Metzareph said
"Specifically, if there was a sense of respect from Crowley or that at least he was amicable, given Crowley's fame of being sexist."
A very definite sense of respect. I don't know that it ever reached the level of "partnership" but was more than collegial.
When he sent the Word of the Equinox out in 1946, besides the usual A.'.A.'. members and O.T.O. collaborators one would expect on the list, we find the name of Dion Fortune. (She had recently died, but perhaps he didn't know that yet.)
Her now somewhat famous letter to him from March 14, 1945 (first published by Richardson), said:
"The acknowledgement I made in the introduction to The Mystical Qabalah of my indebedness to your work, which seemed to me no more than common literary honesty, has been used as a rod for my back by people who look on you as Antichrist. I am prepared to dig in my toes and stand up to trouble if I have got to, but I don't take on a fight if I can help it nowadays because it wastes too much time. I am fully aware that there will come a time when I shall have tocome out into the open and say: This is the law of the New Aeon, but I want to pick my time for that, because I propose to be in a strong strategic position when I do so and if you give Mrs. Grundy advance information, I may not be properly entrenched when the inevitable blitz starts. Therefore I ask you not to mention my name for the present."
They were close enough that she consulted him for personal guidance on several occasions (either just from his wisdom, or specifically for Tarot readings). On the other hand, though they each slept with a very wide range of people, they appear not to have slept with each other.
When he sent her a copy of The Book of Thoth, he inscribed it in part (again, from Richardson):
"To Dion Fortune, this small tribute to her achievement and attainment in the Science of Wisdom and to her eminence as an Artist in Words. No. 9 to Dion Fortune, as to the High Priestess of Our Lady Selene..."
I was looking, just now, for the few lines he wrote when he learned of her death, but couldn't find them.
