Dion Fortune’s The Cosmic Doctrine is a spiritual work that resulted from a psychic experiment between two friends in Glastonbury, 1923. It has since become one of the most important works in modern esoteric literature and a constant source of inspiration and instruction to many practitioners. Sparks from the Cosmic Flame is a series of essays written by some of those inspired practitioners, which rather than seeking to ‘explain’ the work or re-write it in more modern vernacular, instead develops various and different aspects of its ideas that can be applied to one’s practice. It’s a book about how The Cosmic Doctrine can be used, or perhaps used differently and more flexibly.

Wendy Berg, author of Red Tree, White Tree and Gwenevere and the Round Table has collated a series of illuminating essays by those who share a common enthusiasm for The Cosmic Doctrine and its applicability to contemporary practice. The contributors include the editor as well as M. E. Beardsley, James North, Stuart Delacey, Dale Kendrick, J.R. Petrie, Derek Thompson, Gwen Blythe, Christian Gilson, Holly Mulhern and Alan Robinson. There is no single or orthodox interpretation but rather a call for individual imagination and intuition, as well as the reasoning mind. It is unlike any other book and the reader will find that the guidance and inspiration of the original Inner Plane communicators are still there to be contacted; the words are the catalyst. One needs only to read a portion of the text and hold the images and concepts in the mind for the magic to work.