Get it in writing!

This article was inspired by a comment that I came across in one of Dion Fortune's occult novels.

The speaker, a man, decides to send a male colleague who will make a good impression to talk in person to a woman about property matters: 

“It is my experience that women take things in much better when they are told than when they are written to. As a matter of fact, being out of their depth when it comes to house property, they judge the man and not the scheme.”

From The Sea Priestess

This may at first sight seem rather patronising, not to mention just not true! However, the speaker does qualify what he says: he is not generalising about all women, just the ones he has been involved with in connection with his estate agency business.

The context of his remark is not relevant to this article; it is the underlying propositions that some people prefer to receive information in person and that the messenger is sometimes more important than the message that are of interest here.

While I much prefer to get information in writing and see the message as being more important than the messenger, I know from experience that some people do indeed want to be told rather than written to and often are more influenced by the teller than by the tale.

Passing on information in person
I suspect that many of the people who prefer to do everything in person are extroverts and/or feeling types! They just want company; they want human contact and personal attention so they look for pretexts to arrange a get-together.

Introverts may find it frustrating and annoying when such people want to meet rather than just exchange emails, however despite my personal preferences I can see that there is something to be said in favour of passing on information in person.

Did distress signals attract a predator?

Some posts on here contain material that supports the proposition that distress signals often attract predators. A particularly good example of this phenomenon can be found in the article that features a predator with a pram. 

It is advisable to be very wary of anyone who suddenly appears in our lives when we are in a distressed state.

The predators usually attack in person, but they sometimes sense the distress remotely.

This reminds me of yet another incident of interest; it happened many years ago. 

I received an email one evening from someone who was in a bad way. He was tormented by the feeling that he hadn't tried hard enough to persuade someone not to leave him. He was convinced that she would have stayed if he had only managed to get his feelings across to her and begged her desperately not to go.

I disagreed; I said that he was wrong to blame himself. I told him I knew from experience that once someone's mind is made up in such situations there is nothing that can be said or done to change it.

We exchanged a string of messages. I became more and more affected not only by the state that I sensed he was in and the messages that he was sending but also by the distressing memories from the past that I was digging up and giving as examples for his benefit.

Our conversation was suddenly interrupted by a new email message. It was from someone I didn't know who had heard on the grapevine about my freelance services and wanted to discuss the possibility of my doing some database work for their company.

All my warning bells went off! The abrupt arrival, uncanny timing and rather peremptory tone of the message gave me some bad feelings about the sender. I felt threatened; I sensed possible trouble ahead! 

A few words from a Celtic exorcist

The thought-provoking proposition that people of Celtic origin are particularly open to certain unseen influences was first mentioned in an article about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novella The Parasite.

A list of writers of interest with Celtic connections followed, and there are references to this heritage in a few other articles.

The Reverend Dr. Donald Omand, a Scotsman and a Church of England exorcist, is another example of someone who attributes his psychic powers to his Celtic origin.

From his book Experiences of a Present Day Exorcist (1970):

“...the gift of ‘second sight’, so prevalent among people of Celtic origin...”

“Ferguson was a strange mixture of devil and saint, as is so often found in Celtic peoples.“

“Being called on so often to counter the machinations of Black Magicians, I have learned how they achieve their ends. If I did turn from Jekyll to Hyde, I should be more dangerous than most through the feyness which has been passed on to me by my Celtic forebears, I am afraid to think uncharitably of people, even of those who may wish to harm me, for I know what the result may be.”

It is lucky then for everyone he encountered that Dr. Omand always used his powers for good rather than evil!

He has some amazing stories to tell and much to say about topics such as witchcraft, ill-wishing and curses in his book:

A last look at cult expert Steve Hassan's Freedom of Mind

After producing a series of articles in which I highlight and comment on material of special interest from Steven Hassan's best-selling guidebooks Combating Cult Mind Control and Freedom of Mind, I thought that I had reached the end of the exercise. However, Freedom of Mind has inspired just one more post.

Steve Hassan's detailed advice about how families and friends can help cult members and cult leavers via his Strategic Interactive Approach (SIA) is very useful indeed. It is best to go straight to the source for his wise words on building teams, planning interventions, role playing, winning the trust of the cult member, asking key questions and other associated exercises and procedures; here I just want to feature a few miscellaneous extracts of particular interest, some of which have a wider application.

Indirectly asking for help
Steve Hassan describes a technique used by clever cult members to drop subtle hints to their families:

“I have had several families contact me after their cult son or daughter told them not to get a professional counselor to get them out. Before the cult member made that remark, the families had not realized that they could contact someone like me for help.”

This approach could be used in other situations - and I don't mean just by people who say, “It's my birthday tomorrow, but please don't tell anyone and don't get me anything!”

Echoes of Dion Fortune
A recent article contains this quotation from a Dion Fortune occult novel:

“You don’t know what you do want, but you do know what you don’t want.

Steve Hassan says something similar:

“It is useful, for instance, to be able to recognize and articulate the difference between what you do not want (a mediocre job) and knowing what you do want (a fulfilling career).”

It is indeed very useful to bring goals, preferences and requirements out into the open and nail them down. 

Steve Hassan calls this exercise 'assertive motivation'. It can help to remove blocks, increase understanding and get someone going in the right direction.

Another scene of interest from a Dion Fortune occult novel

As mentioned in the article inspired by The Demon Lover, there are scenes in Dion Fortune's occult novels that have particular relevance to some of the topics on here. 

This post features another of these scenes, this time from Moon Magic (1956). It presents the idea that people with certain metaphysical powers and the right training and intention can use occult methods to draw others to them for mutual benefit.

Lilith Le Fay calls out for a colleague
Moon Magic contains much occult-related material that people who live entirely in the three-dimensional universe would dismiss as ridiculous rubbish, purple prose, or, as Richard Hannay describes a speech he makes in John Buchan's Greenmantle, confounded nonsense!

I skip through many of the occult scenes myself, but find this novel worth reading for the commentary-inspiring material that it contains.  

Lilith Le Fay is one of the main characters. She is a priestess of Isis and a practitioner of ceremonial magic. 

She needs to find someone to work with her when she performs the rituals. She advertises the job vacancy in a very unusual way:

“There was nothing for me to do but watch and wait. I could not go and find the people I wanted; I had to wait for them to find me. This I knew they would do because I was sounding the call of Isis, vibrating it on the Inner Planes as a wireless operator sounds his key-call. Those who were on my wave-length would soon be picking it up, and then curious combinations of circumstances would do the rest. They would come from the ends of the earth like homing pigeons, picking up the call subconsciously and not knowing what it was that drew them.“

The procedure may seem preposterous and the practitioner delusional, but it works! Lilith Le Fay attracts the right man for the job by broadcasting on the right wavelength: she puts out the call, and a man who has the qualities that she requires eventually appears in her life.

The shadow side of the Moon Magic scene
Most people will immediately dismiss the suggestion that some people can communicate via other dimensions as very unlikely indeed - or even crazy. However, when people who are interested in unseen influences and have had certain unusual experiences are first introduced to this idea, they find that it makes sense and could explain a lot. 

Further consideration by such people may cause them to realise that, assuming it is correct, this proposition has some alarming implications; they may rightly suspect that the forces involved do not always work for the benefit of the people using or affected by them. 

In particular, there is a negative or shadow side to the calling phenomenon. 

A few more quotations from L. M. Montgomery's Green Gables Letters

Many elements in the life, letters and works of L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery are of great relevance to this blog; several topics and publications associated with her have been featured or referenced on here in various articles in the past. 

This article contains some further extracts of interest from The Green Gables Letters, which were written by Lucy Maud to her pen friend Ephraim Weber between 1905 and 1909. 

Each of these extracts reminds me of something that I have read in the works of another writer.

More wise words about writing
Everything that L. M. Montgomery has to say about the art of writing, the compulsion to write for example, is of great interest and worth highlighting. 

This is her advice to Ephraim Weber:

“...don’t give up writing; it’s the best method of soul cultivation there is; even if you never published another thing the writing of it would bring you a beatitude.”

This reminds me of what Steve Hassan has to say about how cult leavers benefit from writing their story down.

The battle between the Orange and the Green
The connection between Irish Catholics and the colour green  has been mentioned earlier. Their long-term enemies the Irish Protestants favour the colour orange. 

The battle continued when Irish people emigrated to the New World. 

This amusing anecdote describes an incident outside the building of L. M. Montgomery's American publisher L. C. Page & Company:

“In July a big party of Orangemen were going on a picnic. At the Boston North St. station, they saw a copy of Anne of Green Gables bound in green on a newsstand. They took, or pretended to take—they were likely half drunk—the title as a personal insult, marched across to the Page building, the band playing horrible dirges, and nearly mobbed the place. One of the editors came out and told them that although the title might be offensive “the heroine, Anne, had hair of a distinct orange hue.” Thereupon they “adopted” Anne as their mascot, gave her three cheers and went on their way rejoicing.”

So the Orangemen accepted Anne's orange connection and overlooked the green. 

This story has made me think of the rejection by both the Red and the White sides in the Wars of the Roses of a member of Anthony Armstrong's Prune family because he wore a pink rose!  By coincidence, L. M. Montgomery says in one of her letters that she much prefers pink roses to red ones.

A scene of special interest from a Dion Fortune occult novel

There are a few scenes in Dion Fortune's occult novels that have particular relevance to some of the material on here. 

These scenes contain familiar elements; they provide supporting evidence for some key theories about certain metaphysical influences and phenomena; they enable people to put similar experiences into a wider context and learn some useful lessons.

This post features one of these scenes. It caught my attention when I was skimming through Dion Fortune's novel The Demon Lover (1927). It describes the negative effect that a girl who is being controlled by an evil entity has on someone she encounters.

Bad energy repels the doctor
A mediumistic young girl called Veronica Mainwaring is a major character in The Demon Lover. While she is harmless in herself, everything changes when she comes under the hypnotic influence of a black magician called Justin Lucas.

After his death, he uses her to help him drain children of their vital energy so that he can materialise; some of the children die.

Possessed by the spirit of Lucas, a huge mastiff goes crazy and kills the doctor's son; this man had hoped to marry Veronica, so Lucas saw him as a rival.

Veronica is taking her morning walk when the doctor drives past in his dog cart:

“He gave her one glance, and shaking the reins, drove swiftly past without any other sign of recognition than was conveyed by that look of hate and repulsion.”

The doctor knows nothing but senses everything:

“...there was something about the girl which did not fall within the laws of his three-dimensional universe. What it was, he could not define, even to himself, but he hated and dreaded her as children and dogs hate and fear, without reason assigned, yet with an unerring instinct.“

The doctor senses that Veronica is overshadowed by Lucas's malign influence, he is repelled by the negative energy around her, and his intuition rightly tells him that she was somehow involved in his son's death. No wonder that he hates and fears and hurries away from her. 

Veronica behaves in a similar way towards the huge killer dog that she has inherited from Lucas. She is a dog lover and at first she quite likes the friendly old thing, but this changes after he comes under the evil influence of the dead Lucas:

“...to Veronica...the whole ‘feel’ of dog, kennel, and surroundings was so repellent that she drew hastily back and hurried away from the yard and its sinister occupant.”