Dion Fortune - Psychic Self-Defense

Then a curious thing happened. I distinctly heard an inner voice say: "Pretend you are beaten before you really are. Then she will let up the attack and you will be able to get away." What this voice was, I have never known.

I immediately followed its advice. With my tongue in my cheek I asked my employer's pardon for everything I had ever done or ever should do. I promised to remain on in my post and to go softly all the days of my life. I remember I went down on my knees to her, and she purred complacently over me, well satisfied with the morning's work, as she had every reason to be.

Then she let me go, and I went up to my room and lay down on the bed. But I could not rest until I had written her a letter. What that letter contained, I do not know. As soon as I had written it and put it where she would get it, I fell into a sort of stupor, and lay in this state with my mind completely in abeyance till the following evening. That is to say, from two o'clock one afternoon till about eight o'clock of the following day, thirty hours. It was a cold spring day with snow on the ground. A window close to the head of the bed was wide open and the room unheated. I had no covering over me, but I felt neither cold nor hunger, and all the processes of the body were in abeyance. I never stirred. Heartbeat and respiration were very slow, and continued so for several days.

I was found eventually by the housekeeper, who revived me by the simple application of a good shaking and a cold sponge. I was dazed, and disinclined to move or even to eat. I was left to lie in bed, my work taking care of itself, the housekeeper coming to look at me from time to time, but making no comment on my condition. My employer never showed herself.

After about three days my especial friend, who thought I had left the house, learnt of my continued presence, and came along to see me; an act requiring some courage, for our mutual employer was a formidable antagonist. She asked me what had happened at my interview with the Warden, but I could not tell her. My mind was a blank and all memory of that interview had gone as if a sponge had been passed over a slate. All I knew was that out of the depths of my mind a most terrible state of fear was rising up and obsessing me. Not fear of any thing or person. Just plain fear without an object, but none the less terrible for that. I lay in bed with all the physical symptoms of intense fear. Dry mouth, sweating palms, thumping heart and shallow, hasty breathing. My heart was beating so hard that at each beat a loose brass knob on the bedstead rattled. Fortunately for me, my friend saw that something was seriously wrong and she sent for my family, who fetched me away. They were exceedingly suspicious. The Warden was exceedingly uncomfortable, but no one could prove anything, so nothing was said. My mind was a blank. I was thoroughly cowed and very exhausted, and my one desire was to get away.

I did not recover, however, as had been expected. The intensity of the symptoms wore off, but I continued to be exceedingly easily tired, as if I had been drained of all vitality. I knew that, somewhere at the back of my mind, was hidden the memory of a terrible experience, and I dared not think of it, because if I did, the shock and strain would be so severe that my mind would give way altogether. My chief consolation was an old school arithmetic book, and I used to spend hour upon hour doing simple sums to keep my mind from racing itself to pieces in wondering what had been done to me and sidling up towards the memory, and then shying away from it like a frightened horse. Finally I gained some measure of peace by coming to the conclusion that I had simply had a breakdown from overwork, and that the whole queer transaction was the fruit of my imagination. And yet there was a lingering feeling that it was real and this feeling would not let me rest.

About a year after the incident, my health still being very poor, I went away to the country to recuperate, and there came across a friend who had been on the spot at the time of my breakdown. It had apparently caused a good deal of talk, and I found here one who was not inclined to explain away my experience, but asked pertinent questions. Another new friend became interested in my case and haled me off to the family doctor, who bluntly gave it as his opinion that I had been hypnotised. It was before the days of psycho therapy, and his ministrations to a mind diseased were limited to patting me on the back and giving me a tonic and bromide. The tonic was useful, but the bromide was not, as it lowered my powers of resistance, and I speedily discarded it, preferring to put up with my discomfort rather than to render myself defenceless. For all the time I was obsessed by the fear that this strange force, which had been applied to me so effectually, would be applied again. But although I feared this mysterious power, which I now realised was abroad in the world, I cannot tell what a relief it was to me to find that the whole transaction was not an hallucination, but an actual fact that one could rise up and cope with.

I obtained my release from the bondage of this fear by facing the whole situation and determining to find out exactly what had been done to me and how I could protect myself against a repetition of the experience. It was an exceedingly unpleasant process, in fact the reaction caused by recovering the lost memories was only a little less violent than the original one; but I finally succeeded in freeing myself from my hag-ridden condition of fear, although it was a very long time before my physical health became normal. My body was like an electric battery that has been completely discharged. It took a long time to charge up again, and every time it was used before the charging was completed, it ran down again rapidly. For a long time I had no reserves of energy, and after the least exertion would fall into a dead sleep at any hour of the day. In the language of occultism, the etheric double had been damaged, and leaked prana. It did not become normal until I took initiation into the occult order in which I subsequently trained. Within an hour of the ceremony I felt a change, and it is only upon the rarest occasions since then, after some psychic injury, that I have had a temporary return of those depleting attacks of exhaustion.

I have told this story in detail because it is a useful illustration of the manner in which the little-known powers of the mind can be abused by an unscrupulous person. First-hand experience is of far more value than any amount of illustration from the pages of history, however well authenticated.

If such a transaction had taken place during the Middle Ages, the parish priest would have organised a witch-hunt. In the light of my own experiences I am not at all surprised that people who had acquired a reputation for the practice of witchcraft were lynched, the methods are so terrible and so intangible. We may think the records of the witch-trials are ridiculous, with their tales of wax images melting in front of slow fires, or the crucifying of christened toads, or the reciting of little jingles, such as "Horse, hattock, To ride, to ride." But if we understand the use of mind-power we soon realise that these things were simply aids to concentration. There is no essential difference between sticking pins into a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a waximage of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny reality and potency to the other. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal may as truly be said of the practitioners of Black Magic as of the Church.

My own case belongs more to the realm of psychology than to occultism, the method employed being an application of hypnotic power to improper ends; I have given it, however, because I am convinced that hypnotic methods are very largely used in Black Magic, and that telepathic suggestion is the key to a large proportion of its phenomena. I cite my own case, painful as it is to me to do so, because an ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory. It was this experience which led me to take up the study of analytical psychology, and subsequently of occultism.