The Goat-Foot God

by Violet M. Firth (Dion Fortune)

Desperate and wretched after the death of his wife at the hands of her lover, Hugh Paston becomes engrossed in the occult and goes on a quest for Pan, aided by an old bookseller called Jelkes. In order to fulfil his desire he buys an old monastery to convert into a temple for Pan. The monastery is haunted however by the spirit of a fifteenth century prior who was walled up for his pagan beliefs and who is also searching for the goat-foot god and seems to possess Paston who begins to wonder if the spirit is not actually the restimulation of a previous incarnation memory of his own. The key to the increasingly complex mystery is held by Mona Freeman whose awakening magical abilities bring success in a moving ritual climax in an old pagan shrine. In esoteric terms it is Dion Fortune's fictional representation of inner powers relating to the Qabalistic sphere of Malkuth – the Sephirah pertaining to Earth.