The title “The Winged Bull” refers to a ritual and the hero of the story, Murchison. Murchison is engaged by Brangwyn to help cure his wayward and “vampiric” sister from the psychic influence of Fouldes and Astley.
It is interesting to note that it is only the main female character and two sheepdogs that are referred to by their first names. It is also interesting that Branwyn is shown in a very positive light compared to his sister even though it was his use of her as a guinea pig in his magical experiments that led to her breakdown and loss of any agency. This is a damsel in distress story full of villains.
Branwyn plans to marry off his sister to Murchison even though she finds the latter repulsive and Murchison has told Branwyn that he’d be likely to beat her if they were together for any length of time. Perhaps Fortune saw in Wuthering Heights a great romance between Heathcliff and Cathy, where the rest of us saw a dangerous and violent obsession.
I am fascinated with occult magic. My take on rituals like that of the winged bull is that they allow people to communicate with a part of their own minds, which is usually inaccessible. Dion Fortune’s book “The Mystical Qabalah” was the most useful and accessible text I studied while researching for “Psychonaut”, the second book in my Starblood trilogy. Within “The Winged Bull” she makes the hidden worlds of magic understandable and vital without the slightest hint of pretension. It is also a decent suspense story, which I often enjoyed reading. In spite of this, the novel is deeply flawed.
Sadly, the narrative style is far from polished. The author simply tells her story rather than showing it to us through action and dialogue, which would allow the reader to feel part of the world.
The villain, Astley, reputably based on Crowley, is mixed race, although Fortune uses a racial slur to describe him. His butler too is described with Enid Blyton style overt racism. I am not one of those readers who attempts to justify this as a product of its time. Dion Fortune was an otherwise intelligent, working-class woman and it’s disappointing to say the least that she was far from immune from the strong links between Western Hermeticism and white supremacy. With her depictions of the unfortunate Ursula she seems equally burdened with internalised misogyny. Neither of which I noticed while reading her non-fiction texts. It reminds me of the warning that we should “Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers." A perceptive quote from Gustave Flaubert.
All in all “The Winged Bull” isn’t a terrible book. I would rate it 3/5 stars.
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