This is yet another article in the series inspired by Dion Fortune's occult novels. It contains a few more of her thought-provoking propositions.
The Demon Lover contains what might be called a person specification for advanced occult work:
“Dr Latimer had brains and kindness, but no strength; the hard-faced man had brains and strength, but no kindness; the newcomer had all three, and Veronica knew by this that he was a far greater man in every way than either of the others was ever likely to be.”
Each of these qualities needs to be developed to a far greater than average degree. Finding people who meet two of the requirements must be difficult enough; good luck with finding someone who meets all three! Such people may exist in fiction, but how many are to be found in real life?
Assuming that kindness includes mercy and that strength includes justice, this further extract from The Demon Lover is of interest because it reminds me of of a very similar statement in a very different novel:
“...although unbalanced mercy is but weakness, unbalanced justice is cruelty and oppression.”
When I first saw this, I immediately thought of some words from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre that support the above proposition:
“Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”
Feeling that is not balanced with rationality may well be not much good to anyone on the receiving end, and judgement that is not balanced with compassion may indeed be too harsh for most people to digest.
Dion Fortune quotes a few lines – slightly changed and without attribution - from Rudyard Kipling's poetry in her occult novels.
One of these quotations is featured in the article that contains some of her comments about life.
These words from Kipling's Holy War appear in both The Winged Bull and Moon Magic, with Dion Fortune saying 'snap' where Kipling says 'crack':
“...brittle intellectuals
Who crack beneath a strain-”
This makes me think of people who have just one of the three essential qualities, i.e. brains. They lack the strength that would sustain them through the strain, and they have not got the strong feelings of interest in, kindness towards and compassion for others that would irrigate the dried-up river bed of their emotions and give them some resilience.
I wonder how Dion Fortune would have evaluated herself in terms of the three essential qualities.
