The Canon / Pillars / Ceremonial Magic & Occult
Pillars · 1930
Psychic Self-Defense
Ceremonial Magic (Western Mysteries)Psychic Self-Defense is a practical manual addressing the experience of psychic attack, intrusion, and disturbance, framed within Fortune's wider conviction that mind and unseen forces interact lawfully. Its central claim is that disturbances often attributed to external malevolence are best understood and met through trained understanding of consciousness and the subtle planes.
Drawing on her own occult training and early psychoanalytic study, Fortune catalogues forms of apparent attack, distinguishes them from pathology, and prescribes methods of protection grounded in discipline, discernment, and ritual hygiene. The argument consistently relocates power into the operator's own mental and energetic state rather than into external agencies alone.
The book remains a touchstone of the Western Mysteries tradition, valued for fusing depth psychology with esoteric practice. It exemplifies Fortune's bridging role between the occult and psychological branches of modern mind-power thought.
In its words
We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them.
Lineage
The author
Dion FortuneTree of Life as map
Full voice →
Kindred books