My employer’s secretary came to my room one night, after “lights out,” and warned me that the Warden, as we called our employer, had found out who it was that had engineered “Auntie’s” escape, and I had better look out for trouble.
Knowing her to be of an exceedingly revengeful nature, I knew that my best refuge was flight, but flight was not altogether easy to achieve.
The institution in which I was employed was an educational one, and a term’s notice had to be given before leaving.
I did not look forward to working out that term under the unchecked control of a spiteful woman.
So I watched for an opportunity that should justify me in walking out.
With my employer’s uncontrolled temper it was not long to seek.
I was up late the following night packing, in preparation for my intended flight, when there came to my room another member of the staff, a girl who seldom spoke, had no friends, and went about her work like an automaton.
I had never had any dealings with her, and was more than surprised at her visit.
It was soon explained, however.
“You are going to leave?” she said.
I admitted that it was so.
“Then go without seeing the Warden.
You will not get away if you don’t.
I have tried several times, and I cannot get away.” However, I was young and confident in my untried strength, with no means of gauging the forces arrayed against me, and next morning, dressed for the journey and suitcase in hand, I went down and bearded my formidable employer in her den, determined to tell her what I thought of her and her methods, quite unsuspicious that anything save ordinary knavery and bullying was afoot.
I was not allowed to get started with my carefully prepared speech, however.
As soon as she learnt that I was leaving, she said: “Very well, if you want to go, go you shall.
But before you go you have got to admit that you are incompetent and have no self-confidence.” To which I replied, being still full of fight, that if I were incompetent, why did she not dismiss me herself, and anyway, I was the product of her own training- school.
Which remark naturally did not improve matters.
Then commenced a most extraordinary litany.
She resumed her old trick of fixing me with an intent gaze, and said: “You are incompetent, and you know it.
You have no self-confidence, and you have got to admit it.” To which I replied, “That is not true.
I know my work, and you know I know it.” Now there was no doubt that much could be said concerning my competency in my first post at the age of twenty, with a great deal of responsibility on my shoulders, and newly inducted into a disorganised department; but nothing whatever could be said against my self- confidence, except that I had too much of it.
I was quite prepared to rush in where archangels would have hung back in the collar.
My employer did not argue or abuse me.
She kept on with these two statements repeated like the responses of a litany.
I entered her room at ten o’clock, and I left it at two.
She must have said these two phrases several hundreds of times.
I entered it a strong and healthy girl.
I left it a mental and physical wreck and was ill for three years.
Some instinct warned me that if I admitted I were incompetent and had no self-confidence my nerve would be broken, and I would never be good for anything afterwards, and I recognised that this peculiar maneuver on the part of my employer was an act of revenge.
The doctrine that human volition, cultivated by discipline and emancipated from passion and servitude, is the primary instrument of magical operation — will confirmed by persistent acts acquires causal power over self, others, and nature; distinct from faith and from mere desire.
The employer's ability to inflict harm through focused repetition and intent demonstrates the doctrine that cultivated volition has causal power over others.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The passage describes a deliberate, sustained mental assault by the employer using repetitive suggestion to break the narrator's nerve and cause physical illness, which is the core definition of psychic attack in Fortune's work.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The employer uses specific repeated phrases ('You are incompetent') as a litany to alter the narrator's reality and state of being, functioning as an incantatory technique.