Devils, Witches, and Curses - the occult fiction of J. W. Brodie-Innes

John William Brodie-Innes (1848-1923 ) is perhaps the least discussed of the original Golden Dawn leaders. But he is also the most fascinating and diverse of them all; a devout Christian who was fascinated by witchcraft, a respectable lawyer and clubbable member of literary circles like the Sette of Odde Volumes who was also a practising psychic, and  a Theosophist absorbed in Celtic mysticism.

Brodie-Innes' influence in the Golden Dawn tradition has been persistent but underrated.

Yet he was the best known Golden Dawn author of his time. His novels Morag the Seal (about the legend of the Selkie) and The Devil's Mistress, based on original records of the Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie. were popular and enduring occult classics.

The latter novel combines Brodie-Innes'  investigations of the original Scottish legal documents of Gowdie's trial with his magician's interest in witchcraft practices. Brodie-Innes also wrote several articles on witchcraft for ‘The Occult Review’ which were influential on the early 20th century witchcraft revival, for example, his description of the ritual creation of the Moon paste in The Devil's Mistress.

Brodie-Innes was working on The Curse on Bally na Bride at the time of his death in 1923. It was nearly complete, with only minor editorial corrections required. However it remained unpublished and forgotten until Holythorn Press acquired the original manuscript in 2025. 'The Curse' is now revealed as the culminating work in Brodie-Innes' remarkably career as an occult novelist and forms a trinity in combination with Morag and the Devil's Mistress.

'The Curse' draws on all his interests: witchcraft, the devil, theology, magic, nature powers, sex and love. Set on the western coast of Ireland, it tells the story of landed gentry, the Bryans, who live under a family curse associated with their home Bally na Bride. Through an action-packed and romantic story, it treats the perennial mystery of evil and the devil, like Goethe's Faust, as a mystery of perception and perspectives. What is evil, what power really is the devil, are his promises false or true? Are his gifts illusions or actual phenomena, and does his work have a place in our world?

The protagonists are a learned, aging Professor of Ancient Religions, Raymond McGrath, and a beautiful young Irish noblewoman Patricia Bryan. There is also a charismatic but degenerate poet and devil worshipper, who is the son of a brewer, and makes trouble in Bally na Bride. He is plainly modelled on Aleister Crowley whom Brodie-Innes knew and disliked. The conflict between the natural and the illusory, and between Celtic Christianity and the older powers, is played out in the rugged and dramatic landscape of the West of Ireland, culminating in a love story which is also a meditation on the nature of reality, and what makes life joyous and worth living. The Curse is funny, exciting and theologically sophisticated.

So who really was this respectable lawyer and novelist with deep and seemingly contradictory interests? The connection between his occult fiction and the Golden Dawn lies in the unique culture of the Temple he led, Amen Ra No. 6 in Edinburgh and its sister Temple, the Cromlech (a Temple of the mysterious Sun Order). The Cromlech did not focus on Hermetic or Qabalistic ritual magic, but on Solar Mysteries from other traditions. It included Druidic and Christian elements and was particularly devoted to healing, psychic powers, clairvoyance, nature spirits, and the aura or Sphere of Sensation.

Brodie-Innes was a devout High Anglican who had written The True Church of Christ, and his pupil Maiya Curtis-Webb was a leading member of the Sun Order in Southern England. Maiya is well known as having been Dion Fortune’s initiator and leading mentor in the AO (Alpha et Omega, a successor branch of the Golden Dawn) which the latter joined in 1919. There is no doubt that some of Dion Fortune's ideas about Glastonbury and the relationship between the pre-Christian Druids and the coming of Esoteric Christianity to Britain can be traced to the influence of ideas of the Cromlech Temple, through Brodie-Innes and Maiya. Dion Fortune’s writings in turn had a vast influence on a wider occult readership. Indeed even Fortune’s Mystical Meditations on the Collects use the Scottish Episcopalian Collects, no doubt because of the Scottish influence through Amen Ra.

The importance of the Scottish subculture in the Golden Dawn, and its survival along with the Cromlech Temple through the leading influence of Brodie-Innes’ successor W. E. Carnegie-Dickson, will told at greater length elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the conventional story - that the GD offshoots had run out of steam – suited authors with their own breakaway groups such as A.E. Waite and Crowley, as well as authors such as Regardie and Dion Fortune. But this story ignores the fact that, following the death of Moina Mathers, the splits in the Order were almost entirely overcome, with Carnegie-Dickson the ultimate head of both of them; and that not merely the Stella Matutina tradition but the Sun Order survived in New Zealand long after they disappeared from Britain.

Brodie-Innes and his circle of Celtic-focused magicians have had a large, unsuspected influence on the roots of Wicca, Dion Fortune’s Western Mystery Tradition and the Glastonbury mythos. Lovers of these traditions and more will find that The Curse on Bally na Bride is Brodie-Innes’ final meditations on these great, inexhaustible themes.

James North August 2026