The Fisher King: Western Mysteries in the Occult Revival
摘要
In this chapter I will explore the influence the Arthurian myth cycle had on Fortune’s initiation project and consider the relationship between this myth cycle and the theme of rejuvenation which runs through many other occult and modernist texts. Jennifer Walters notes that the Occult Revival does not just describe a period, but a philosophical principle and socio-cultural aim of occultism as it moved into the new century: regeneration. Social rejuvenation and cultural regeneration were key preoccupations of the modernist project, and this broad cultural movement away from degeneration and towards regeneration was reflected in the development and preoccupations of occultism in this period. Relying on the esoteric axiom of correspondence between the micro- and macrocosm (one of Faivre’s key signifiers of esoteric thought), occultists saw a tie between individual initiation, and the initiation of humankind into a spiritual New Age. The idea that the spiritual initiation of individuals and the evolution of humanity are intimately entwined is perhaps the key metaphysical underpinning to the literary initiatory projects of Fortune, along with those of her contemporaries, Charles Williams, and Aleister Crowley. Fortune was committed to personally furthering the regeneration of interwar British society through her occult work, including public rituals, private magical work, and her publications. In all these endeavours Fortune drew upon the Fisher King mythos, utilising a thematics which emerged in the 1920s, with post-Great War Britain being identified with the fabled Waste Land (most famously in T.S Eliot’s 1922 poem). Fortune developed the idea that the interwar crisis of masculinity had a spiritual dimension, and that the return of the Goddess would lead to spiritual and cultural rejuvenation. The story of Parsifal had been used by Wagner to create an initiatory opera: Fortune took the initiatory power of this mythos in a new, modern direction, creating popular occult romances which communicated the importance of social and spiritual regeneration, locating this potential in a new, spiritual understanding of sexuality, gender, and romantic relationships. The Fisher King thematics of fertility, the connection between a land and its people, and the Grail quest, are central to Fortune’s initiatory project: they underpin it theologically, and it is these themes which Fortune draws upon throughout her novels.