The Earth Priest

The Earth Priest
Alan Richardson
ISBN 979-8325914386
Independent Publisher
$5.72

If you were to compile a list of seminal figures in 20th century occultism, Dion Fortune’s name would undoubtedly appear near the top. Her novel The Sea Priestess has inspired generations of occultists, Witches, Goddess worshipers and Pagans. In the introduction to The Earth Priest, Alan Richardson describes his own experience of finding a copy of The Sea Priestess in a library as a teenager. He relates that reading it was a transformational experience for him, saying, “I was never quite the same boy again.” He also discusses two key insights into the work that came later in his life: first, that the places described in The Sea Priestess are real—although renamed—places of power, and second that the narrator Wilfrid Maxwell is an “alcoholic, a drug addict, a sneering, snobbish, cross-dressing, sister beating mummy’s boy,” a reality that Anderson states was originally obscured by Fortune’s hypnotic prose.

In The Earth Priest, Richardson retells the story of the Sea Priestess from the perspective of Daniel Steele, who represents a more grounded and salt-of-the-Earth—but no less obsessive—counterpoint to Fortune’s titular priestess. Richardson also invites the reader to re-explore the landscape of Fortune’s book with the names corrected for a clearer sense of where these places are in the physical world.

For those who, like Richardson himself, found The Sea Priestess to be a formative, even transformative read, The Earth Priest will offer fresh perspective on this important work. For readers who, also like Richardson, found Wilfrid Maxwell’s flaws hard to overlook, The Earth Priest will offer a new avenue into the text and an opportunity to consider who Vivien Morgan may be in the eyes of a worthier partner. If you have not revisited Fortune’s novel in some time, The Earth Priest will serve as a welcome refresher on this classic of occult literature. For any reader, The Earth Priest is a chance to spend some time in the odd, witty and always insightful world of Alan Richardson.