The first article in the series inspired by Dion Fortune's occult novels contains quotations relevant to the topic of operating from a position of weakness versus operating from a position of strength.
This article features three memorable statements from The Sea Priestess about what Douglas Adams called Life, the Universe and Everything. They seem both very true and very depressing to me.
It was this statement that inspired this article:
“It seemed to me that life is an all-in wrestling match without a referee. It had fairly got me down.“
It seems like that to many people!
Life does indeed often feel like one long fight for survival, one long battle against hostile forces with no one to see fair play.
The problems and attacks keep coming; they are unrelenting and never-ending and there is often no respite.
There is no justice in the world; no one is minding the store, so people who behave badly towards others do indeed often get away with it.
No wonder people get depressed!
All this reminds me of something that Marvin the Paranoid Android says in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
“Life! Don't talk to me about life.”
These quotations from The Sea Priestess suggest that there is a great price to be paid in return for a great advantage:
“It is said that the gods always make you pay the price for any great blessing, but in my case, having sent me a pretty unmitigated curse, they funded up handsomely in other directions.”
“Then I told her my idea that whereas the gods are always reputed to make mortals pay up for any great benefit bestowed, I, by virtue of my asthma, seemed to be running a kind of credit account with them. She agreed.”
The context of the speaker's remarks is not really relevant to this article; it is the proposition that great gifts come at a great price that is of interest here.
Assuming that life and the gods are much the same thing and that the proposition is true, it can be looked at in two ways: some people will see the curse as the payment that life demands in return for the blessing; conversely, others will think of the benefit as the compensation that life gives for inflicting the curse. This is similar to the question of whether the glass is half empty or half full.
The proposition may not always be true, and one man's curse might be another man's blessing, but the quotations are worth thinking about.
It seems to me that life plays the 'heads I win, tails you lose' game on people!
Rudyard Kipling's story Dayspring Mishandled is accompanied by the poem Gertrude's Prayer.
Dion Fortune quotes a – slightly changed - line from this poem a few times in The Sea Priestess, so the message it gives must have seemed significant to her.
From Gertrude's Prayer:
“Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe.“
Dion Fortune's version:
“Spring, mishandled, cometh not again.”
The message here is very depressing: it is saying that there are no second chances for people who have messed up their early lives.
Some people waste their youth following will-o-the-wisps; some waste their resources on unrealistic or unsuitable goals; some just fritter away the time with nothing to show for it. They won't get that time back.
People who wasted their lives when young will just have to live with it. The missed boats have sailed and the lost opportunities have gone for ever.
There is still a little more material to come from The Sea Priestess.
