The Western Gate

Muses No More: Portraits of Occult Women
Ùna Maria Blyth
(Hexen Press)

There is no Dion fortune in this book, the author explains she became ill even thinking about the inclusion. Dion is now cancelled, her views were from a time that will be erased and forgotten, well I assume so, as the author doesn’t give us any evidence or reasons for the omission save her own subjective ideas and a brief accusatory finger pointing exclamation. Without evidence or quotations or exact statements made by D.Fortune with regards to her ignorant views we are perplexed and therefore can only conclude the omission is, a subjective decision. The most serious accusation against occultists are to those who do not address the ‘why’s’, the ‘what ifs’ and most certainly in this case the ‘because’…..
There’s no Madame Blavatsky either, presumably because her racial pigeonholes offended (as they should), nor Maxine (“only pretty girls can be a priestess”) Sanders, nor a living so called ‘avator’ incarnation~Mother Meera and I could go on but a definitive assay of the female personalities in the occult world, this certainly aint.
Its an easy read, a few eyebrows raised, not many, a wry smirk here and a deft smile there. Not many. It’s ok.
I do understand how the views of some of those formidable women in the occult world now offend, as Dion fortune says in all her books, there are things that I have wrote in the light of experience that I would now differ from, this is evolution. To omit certain people based on ones viewpoint I feel would be like refusing to mention Thatcher in a book of women politicians, because lets face it, we hate her.
We can learnso much more from discussing the ignorance of others than we do ignoring them ourselves, which actually teaches us nothing, and if it does make you ill, perhaps the long and wefting path is not one that fragile personas should be traversing.
I am not A Dion fortune devotee, but she was one of the first serious authors I had read, and she did introduce many to these paths with her works, even though…. we all moved on…. and don’t keep harping on about it or forcing others to adopt our view, we are free to use our judgement.

Astral conversations ~ An Occult Investigation
AKA ~ A Listener
(Aula Lucis Publishing)

One of two new books from a new publisher. (The other at the time of writing being hermetica Arcanum).
This book from a Ghost writer or pseudonym of mystery purports to be an occult investigation. Conducted by two seemingly questers of the truth who embark upon discourse appertaining to all manner of occult, new age, and conspiracy topics.
The protagonists~ Bombast and Flitterflop bumble their way through theories and damn all sorts of occult nuances and other such ‘bollocks’. Socrates it isn’t, the dialogues of Tibetan Buddhists discoursing on spirituality it certainly isn’t. The smiles and the jokes and the supposed light hearted approach doesn’t really get the stomach bubbling in merriment, and the revelations are not so much eye opening, perhaps to be fair the odd nod in appreciation here and there. I’m not sure the format works, at the end of the work I was neither enlightened nor satiated nor prompted to dig deeper into other uncharted territory, it is akin to reading pulp fiction or a comic or some other throwaway meme that grabs the attention for the merest of glances and then dashed away never to be thought of again.
The fact that the two would be assassins of occult knowledge use Blavatsky as a means to validate some of their vindication is questionable, if not laughable, and perhaps the biggest laugh of the whole series of chapters.
Some higher spiritual being pops up later on in the book to relay some spiritual wonder, I forget its name and more, forget the astounding wisdom provided.
… I want to like it, I want to say at last, sarcasm, the finger pointing at the naked king, but with the use of questionable personas to give, hoped, credibility to their theories it all falls flat and into folly. The occult world is full of egos and those who litter their works with so much rhetoric and nonsense that we need more nay-sayers, accusers and adversaries. Bombast and Flitterflop are no threat to the legions of false prophets and esoteric confounders, but its a good start.