Revisiting "The Sea Priestess"

I reread Dion Fortune's novel, "The Sea Priestess."  I don't recall when I purchased my copy—probably something like thirty years ago—so it's been a while since I read it.  In the first reading, I read it as a reader with NeoPagan interests; in the second reading, I was reading both as a writer looking at another writer's style and as a NeoPagan looking at ritual technique.  

I remember that the characters were unsympathetic, which Fortune herself remarks upon in her forward.  In the first read, the plot was slow; in the second read I realized it's because there's a lot of "talking heads."  I'd forgotten the story was set in 1930's England, in a small coastal town near Bristol (probably based on the area of Brean Down Fort), with its attendant British Middle Class Problems with hiring good help, small town conformity, and family finances.  

In the first read, I hadn't read much of her magical theory work; in the second read, I realized much of the dialog was statements on Fortune's theories on the magical polarity of male and female forces.   The Child and I were talking about 1930's England, and he pointed out that there would have been some gaps in the male population as a result of casualties during World War I.  This made me wonder at Fortune's focus on male and female vitality.

In the first read, the rituals' descriptions were dense; in the second, I was more interested in them technically.  There was recognizable material in "The Sea Priestess" that appears in some Wiccan ritual; a kind of "Isis-Istarte" chant shows up in the invocations.

I had forgotten that reincarnation and past lives from Atlantis were major plot points.  It occurs to me that "The Sea Priestess" may be one of the first "I was Morgana Le Fey in a past life" pieces of fiction.    There was some of the typical Fortune racial stereotypes, with some "the Atlantian religious clan did not allow out-clan breeding in order to keep the bloodline pure and attuned to the higher powers," lore thrown in—which doesn't age well.

What works best is some of the evocative language of the coastal setting,  the rituals, and when the characters commune with the moon, the sea, and the land.