The Canon / Pillars / Ceremonial Magic & Occult
Pillars · 1935
The Mystical Qabalah
Ceremonial Magic (Western Mysteries)The Mystical Qabalah is Fortune's systematic exposition of the Tree of Life as a comprehensive map of both cosmos and psyche. Its central claim is that the sephiroth and their connecting paths constitute a coherent symbolic system through which the structure of reality and the structure of mind may be studied as one.
Proceeding sephirah by sephirah, Fortune gathers correspondences across Kabbalah, mythology, astrology, and Tarot, integrating psychoanalytic insight to read the Tree as a model of inner development. Magic, on her account, is the art of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will, and the Tree is its working diagram.
Long regarded as the standard modern treatment of the subject, the book anchored Kabbalistic symbolism at the heart of twentieth-century Western magic. It anticipated the later psychologized magic of Regardie and DuQuette and clarified the tradition for a broad modern readership.
In its words
The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind.
Practices it teaches
Pathworking — Trained Creative Visualization as a Guided Symbolic Inner Journey
Pathworking is Dion Fortune's disciplined form of creative visualization: you build a vivid symbolic image or guided inner journey and hold it with trained, sustained concentration, allowing it to unfold while you…
The Middle Pillar — Vibrating Divine Names Through the Sphere of Sensation
The Middle Pillar is a Qabalistic energy-balancing exercise drawn from the Hermetic tradition Dion Fortune taught.
Lineage
The author
Dion FortuneTree of Life as map
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