Yet, I digress. My book story. I'll tell you of moonlit nights, that are worth drawing from memory, another time.
In younger years, the last two troubled ones of college, I made a friend who was the sloppy... fat type of desparate lesbian esoteric. She claimed to have been initiated by witches who said she had a sense about her. Still she had no magical studies as much as a hodge podge of intuitive experiences. While staying with her family, one day we took a trip to a town known for its esoteric magical air and shops. Yes indeed, somedays it is all about the shops and the trinkets small and smaller.
We went into a book store and I was agape and stunned at all the titles and the artwork. Mind you again, this was only a bookstore. I kept trying to pick up books and would get interested in a title, but I always put it down. It was a small shop-- possibly carved out of the way space between two other stores. Most customers would find their needs in less than 10 minutes and out of the door in 15 total. Still we were there for at least two hours it seemed. As we started to leave I felt pulled to a display I had passed earlier in the day. The title that grab my attention was Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune. I couldn't put it down no matter how much I scheduled and planned my studies in my mind to figure out, what must come next. A feeling and voice made it clear that was the only book I was leaving the shop with. Strangly or sensably enough, I put all the other items back. That was my only purchase.
As any mind fascination would impell, I read it, outlined it, researched it. Every few years I buy a copy, no matter the preface that an organization or two does not exist.
Considering psychology, religion, art, and all forms of personally relating with belief, Dion Fortune's life was fascinating. I say this with another chagrin. A symbol, important to the whole book, I found this year. It is a living functioning symbol and not dead. Although the users lend the mind more to science and medication, maybe somewhere, I hope there is still a couselor of the imagination.