The Secrets of Doctor Taverner Read online

  Also by Dion Fortune:

  Fiction:

  The Demon Lover

  Goat-Foot God

  The Winged Bull

  The Sea Priestess

  Moon Magic

  Non-fiction:

  Machinery of the Mind (as Violet Mary Firth)

  The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage

  Psychology of the Servant Problem (as Violet Mary Firth)

  The Soya Bean (as Violet Mary Firth)

  The Problem of Purity (as Violet Mary Firth)

  Esoteric Orders and Their Work

  What Is Occultism? (formerly Sane Occultism)

  Training and Work of an Initiate

  The Cosmic Doctrine

  Psychic Self-Defense

  Glastonbury—Avalon of the Heart

  Spiritualism and Occultism (with Gareth Knight; formerly Spiritualism in the Light of Occult Science)

  Dion Fortune's Book of the Dead (formerly Through the Gates of Death)

  Practical Occultism (with Gareth Knight; formerly Practical Occultism in Daily Life)

  Mystical Meditations on the Collects

  The Mystical Qabalah

  An Introduction to Ritual Magic (with Gareth Knight)

  The Circuit of Force (with Gareth Knight)

  Principles of Hermetic Philosophy (with Gareth Knight)

  Principles of Esoteric Healing (with Gareth Knight)

  Applied Magic

  Aspects of Occultism

  The Magical Battle of Britain (with Gareth Knight)

  This edition published in 2011 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

  With offices at:

  665 Third Street, Suite 400

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  First published in 1926.

  Copyright © The Society of the Inner Light 1989.

  Foreword copyright © 2011 by Diana L. Paxson.

  ISBN: 978-1-57863-337-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fortune, Dion.

  The secrets of Doctor Taverner / Dion Fortune.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-57863-337-1 (alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  PR6011.I72S44 2011

  823′.912—dc22

  2011008492

  Cover illustration by Owen Smith

  Cover design by Jim Warner

  Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

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  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD BY DIANA L. PAXSON

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  BLOOD LUST

  THE RETURN OF THE RITUAL

  THE MAN WHO SOUGHT

  THE SOUL THAT WOULD NOT BE BORN

  THE SCENTED POPPIES

  THE DEATH HOUND

  A DAUGHTER OF PAN

  THE SUBLETTING OF THE MANSION

  RECALLED

  THE SEA LURE

  THE POWER HOUSE

  A SON OF THE NIGHT

  FOREWORD

  A STUDY IN SECRETS

  I said: ‘I have come out of the Army with my nerves shattered. I want some quiet place till I can pull myself together.’

  ‘So does everybody else,’ said the clerk. . . .

  He sent me round to one of the tributaries of Harley Street, and there I made the acquaintance of the man who, whether he was good or bad, I have always regarded as the greatest mind I ever met.

  The place is London; the narrator, an Army doctor who has just returned from war and is looking for a place to live while he recovers. He becomes the assistant of an eccentric genius for whom he develops a deep admiration. One might be justified in identifying this as the scene in which Dr. Watson is introduced to Sherlock Holmes. It is not, however, the opening of A Study in Scarlet, but the beginning of the first story in The Secrets of Doctor Taverner by Dion Fortune.

  In these ten stories, Fortune reveals a spiritual world that, like J. K. Rowling's Wizarding community, exists invisibly alongside our own. The stories collected in The Secrets of Doctor Taverner were published in magazines during the twenties, a time of rapid social change when new ideas, spiritual and scientific, were challenging old assumptions. But though esoteric trends come and go, the workings of the human psyche remain the same, and contemporary readers will find much that is familiar. The New Age movement and the rise of paganism have gained recognition for many of the concepts Fortune was trying to convey, but both the blessings and hazards of the esoteric path remain, and we still have a long way to go.

  In my own training program for pagan clergy one of the standard topics is pastoral counseling, and the first step is always to determine what kind of problem we are dealing with. When we have referred those whose problems are physical to an appropriate professional, and found a sympathetic therapist for those whose issues are psychological, we are left with the (fortunately) small percentage of people whose difficulties actually have a spiritual or supernatural cause, and who can only be helped by esoteric means. These are the kinds of problems brought to Dr. Taverner, who like Holmes, prefers the inexplicable, the outré, the problems that baffle conventional interpretations and interpreters.

  The collection came out in 1926, a year before the last compilation of stories about Sherlock Holmes. To Dion Fortune's first readers, both the archetype of the investigator and the template of a case study would be familiar. Faced with the challenge of writing about a psychic detective, she brilliantly adapted a format that readers of popular fiction would understand. For the collection she added an introduction, in which she asserts that the stories “. . . are, however, all founded on fact, and there is not a single incident herein contained which is pure imagination.” She describes them as “composites” with elements drawn from many examples, of what she calls “the psychology of ultra-consciousness.”

  When I consider Fortune's approach to presenting real magic under the guise of fiction, I am reminded of the meeting at which my editor commented that there were “a lot of rituals in The Sea Star, but they work.” I did not tell him that they ought to, since I had actually done most of them. Fiction, which allows the author to express subjective experience and atmosphere, can often be a more effective means of describing magical operations than a detached description.

  Many of us grew up with a sense that there was more to life than we see on the mundane surface of things. Some feel themselves alien to the human society into which they were born. Others are parents to children who are different in ways science does not seem to understand. We all come up against fate eventually, and find ourselves asking why? When we exhaust mundane explanations, we look for a Dr. Taverner to help us make sense of it all.

  In her non-fiction books, Fortune set forth the principles of the Western Esoteric tradition, some of which she illuminates in these tales. The action in stories such as “The Return of the Ritual,” “The Man Who Sought,” “The Soul That Would Not Be Born,” and “Recalled” is motivated by karmic debt and reincarnation. In stories such as “Blood Lust,” “Subletting,” and “The Sea Lure,” the etheric or astral body, w
ith or without the will of its owner, goes out on its own. “The Return of the Ritual,” “The Scented Poppies,” and “The Power House” show what can happen when dabblers or charlatans meddle with powers they do not understand, and they introduce the hidden organizations that can police or protect those whom they threaten. “A Daughter of Pan,” “The Sea Lure,” and “A Son of the Night” deal with the Elemental Powers and those who are drawn to or belong to them.

  No one's life is without difficulty, and for some problems, neither science nor logic can identify a cause. Suffering without reason is the hardest to endure, and it is this kind of trauma that Dr. Taverner, with the authority of his initiations and training, is able to diagnose and explain. Rather than imposing change through physical or magical means, Taverner seeks to restore spiritual balance by placing his patients in situations in which they will encounter the people or experiences that they need. In the stories in which esoteric powers are being misused, he takes action, but even here, his role is to arrange matters so that the consequences of an act will recoil upon the perpetrators. As he points out, “. . . there is no special hell for those who dabble in forbidden things, it would be superfluous.”

  The stories are linked by the characters of Dr. Taverner and Dr. Rhodes. Taverner, with his unorthodox methods and stimulating manner, has much of the same attraction as Sherlock Holmes. Doyle based his great detective on the brilliant physician, Dr. Joseph Bell. Fortune's portrait of Dr. Taverner was inspired by an Irish occultist and physician named—ironically—Moriarty, who had been an officer in the Medical Service in India. Fortune was a student at his training center in Hampshire at the end of World War I, and had ample opportunity to observe his work with people suffering from unusual mental problems. Interestingly enough, an illustration depicting Dr. Taverner in an issue of The Royal Magazine, dated September 1922, is not only said to strongly resemble Dr. Moriarty, but looks a great deal like Paget's illustrations of Sherlock Holmes. Like Bell and Moriarty, Fortune had a lively interest in applying scientific methods to unusual phenomena, tempered by a great deal of common sense.

  It is Dr. Rhodes (who takes Watson's role in the stories) who not only provides a perspective with which the reader can identify, but in the end becomes both the narrator and the protagonist. Taverner, however fascinating, remains a rather mysterious and distant figure. During the course of the stories, Rhodes, unlike Dr. Watson, undergoes a transformation. When he first takes up his post as medical supervisor for Taverner's nursing home, he is an ordinary man—a “muggle”—although somewhat damaged by his experiences in the Great War. His experiences as Taverner's assistant open his eyes to a greater reality and he longs to understand the invisible world that he senses is all around him.

  By the end, well, Dion Fortune could work magic with a pen—and you shall see. . . .

  —Diana L. Paxson

  PREFACE

  The works of the late Dion Fortune were written a long time ago and since then a great deal more has been understood and realized so that many of the ideas then expressed are not now necessarily acceptable. Also, much of what she wrote was written from the viewpoint of the psychic. Psychism is simply one type of inner awareness and there are other types at least as valid and as common. Non-psychic readers, therefore, can translate experience in terms of psychic imagery into terms of their own inner awareness.

  The publication of these books continues at present because there is still much of value in them and because they can act as valuable pointers to seekers.

  Details of the aims and work of the Society of the Inner Light, founded by Dion Fortune, may be obtained by writing (with postage please) to:

  The Secretariat

  The Society of the Inner Light

  38 Steele's Road

  London NW3 4RG, United Kingdom

  INTRODUCTION

  These stories may be looked at from two standpoints (and no doubt the standpoint the reader chooses will be dictated by personal taste and previous knowledge of the subject under discussion). They may be regarded as fiction, designed, like the conversation of the Fat Boy recorded in The Pickwick Papers, ‘to make your flesh creep,’ or they may be considered to be what they actually are, studies in little-known aspects of psychology put in the form of fiction because, if published as a serious contribution to science they would have no chance of a hearing.

  It may not unreasonably be asked what motive anyone could have for securing a hearing for such histories as are set forth in these tales, beyond the not unreasonable interest in the royalties that usually fall to the lot of those who cater for the popular taste in horrors; I would ask my readers, however, to credit me with another motive than the purely commercial. I was one of the earliest students of psychoanalysis in this country, and I found, in the course of my studies, that the ends of a number of threads were put into my hands, but that the threads disappeared into the darkness that surrounded the small circle of light thrown by exact scientific knowledge. It was in following these threads out into the darkness of the Unknown that I came upon the experiences and cases which, turned into fiction, are set down in these pages.

  I do not wish to imply by that, however, that these stories all happened exactly as set down, for such is not the case; they are, however, all founded on fact, and there is not a single incident herein contained which is pure imagination. That is to say, while no picture is an actual photograph, not one is an imaginary sketch; they are rather composite photographs, obtained by cutting out and piecing together innumerable snapshots of actual happenings, and the whole, far from being an arbitrary product of the imagination, is a serious study in the psychology of ultra-consciousness.

  I present these studies in super-normal pathology to the general reader because it has been my experience that such cases as I chronicle here are by no manner of means as uncommon as might be supposed, but, being unrecognized, pass unhelped. I have personally come across several instances of the Power House, some of which are well known to the members of the different coteries who are interested in these matters; ‘Blood Lust’ is literally true, and both these stories, far from being written up for the purposes of fiction, have been toned down to make them fit for print.

  ‘Dr. Taverner’ will no doubt be recognized by some of my readers; his mysterious nursing home was an actual fact, and infinitely stranger than any fiction could possibly be. To ‘Dr. Taverner’ I owe the greatest debt of my life; without ‘Dr. Taverner’ there would have been no ‘Dion Fortune,’ and to him I offer the tribute of these pages.

  —Dion Fortune

  BLOOD LUST

  I

  I have never been able to make up my mind whether Dr. Taverner should be the hero or the villain of these histories. That he was a man of the most selfless ideals could not be questioned, but in his methods of putting these ideals into practice he was absolutely unscrupulous. He did not evade the law, he merely ignored it, and though the exquisite tenderness with which he handled his cases was an education in itself, yet he would use that wonderful psychological method of his to break a soul to pieces, going to work as quietly and methodically and benevolently as if bent upon the cure of his patient. The manner of my meeting with this strange man was quite simple. After being gazetted out of the Royal Army Medical Corps. I went to a medical agency and inquired what posts were available.

  I said: ‘I have come out of the Army with my nerves shattered. I want some quiet place till I can pull myself together.’

  ‘So does everybody else,’ said the clerk.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I wonder whether you would care to try a place we have had on our books for some time. We have sent several men down to it but none of them would stop.’

  He sent me round to one of the tributaries of Harley Street, and there I made the acquaintance of the man who, whether he was good or bad, I have always regarded as the greatest mind I ever met.

  Tall and thin, with a parchment-like countenance, he might have been any age from 35 to 65. I have seen
him look both ages within the hour. He lost no time in coming to the point.

  ‘I want a medical superintendent for my nursing home,’ he told me. ‘I understand that you have specialized, as far as the Army permitted you to, in mental cases. I am afraid you will find my methods very different from the orthodox ones. However, as I sometimes succeed where others fail, I consider I am justified in continuing to experiment, which I think, Dr. Rhodes, is all any of my colleagues can claim to do.’

  The man's cynical manner annoyed me, though I could not deny that mental treatment is not an exact science at the present moment. As if in answer to my thought he continued:

  ‘My chief interest lies in those regions of psychology which orthodox science has not as yet ventured to explore. If you will work with me you will see some queer things, but all I ask of you is, that you should keep an open mind and a shut mouth.’

  This I undertook to do, for, although I shrank instinctively from the man, yet there was about him such a curious attraction, such a sense of power and adventurous research, that I determined at least to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what it might lead to. His extraordinarily stimulating personality, which seemed to key my brain to concert pitch, made me feel that he might be a good tonic for a man who had lost his grip on life for the time being.

  ‘Unless you have elaborate packing to do,’ he said, ‘I can motor you down to my place. If you will walk over with me to the garage I will drive you round to your lodgings, pick up your things, and we shall get in before dark.’

  We drove at a pretty high speed down the Portsmouth road till we came to Thursley, and, then, to my surprise, my companion turned off to the right and took the big car by a cart track over the heather.

  ‘This is Thor's Ley or field,’ he said, as the blighted country unrolled before us. ‘The old worship is still kept up about here.’