81 Facts About Dion Fortune

Dion Fortune was a co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, an occult organisation that promoted philosophies which she claimed had been taught to her by spiritual entities known as the Ascended Masters.

Dion Fortune became interested in esotericism through the teachings of the Theosophical Society, before joining an occult lodge led by Theodore Moriarty and then the Alpha et Omega occult organisation.

Dion Fortune came to believe that she was being contacted by two Ascended Masters, the Master Rakoczi and the Master Jesus, and underwent trance mediumship to channel the Masters' messages.

Dion Fortune began planning for what she believed was a coming post-war Age of Aquarius, although she died of leukemia shortly after the war's end.

Dion Fortune is recognised as one of the most significant occultists and ceremonial magicians of the early 20th century.

Dion Fortune was born Violet Mary Firth on 6 December 1890 at her family home on Bryn-y-Bia Road in Llandudno, North Wales.

Dion Fortune's background was upper middle-class; the Firths were a wealthy English family who had gained their money through the steel industry in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where they had specialised in the production of guns.

Sarah was keenly interested in Christian Science, and Gareth Knight notes that both of Firth's parents were active practitioners of the religion, while fellow biographer Alan Richardson expresses doubt that there was sufficient evidence as to the seriousness with which Dion Fortune herself regarded it.

The Firths were still in Llandudno in 1900, although by 1904 Dion Fortune was living in Somerset, south-west England.

From January 1911 to December 1912 Dion Fortune studied at Studley Agricultural College in Warwickshire, a horticultural institution which advertised itself as being ideal for girls with psychological problems.

Dion Fortune later claimed that at the college she was the victim of mental manipulation from her employer, the college warden Lillias Hamilton, resulting in a mental breakdown that made her abandon the institution and return to her parental home.

Dion Fortune studied psychology and psychoanalysis under John Flugel at the University of London, before gaining employment at a psychology clinic in London's Brunswick Square, which was likely run under the jurisdiction of the London School of Medicine for Women.

Dion Fortune was initially stationed on a farm near to Bishop's Stortford on the borders between Essex and Hertfordshire, before later being relocated to an experimental base for the Food Production Department.

Dion Fortune had befriended him while still involved in psychotherapy, believing that he could help one of her patients, a young man who had been fighting on the Western Front and claimed to be plagued by unexplained physical phenomena.

Dion Fortune became an acolyte of Moriarty's Masonic-influenced lodge, which was based in Hammersmith, and joined his community of followers living at Gwen Stafford-Allen's home in Bishop's Stortford.

In tandem with her studies under Moriarty, in 1919 Dion Fortune had been initiated into the London Temple of the Alpha et Omega, an occult group that had developed from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Dion Fortune later claimed that in the period after the First World War, the Order had been "manned mainly by widows and grey-bearded ancients".

Dion Fortune was not enamoured with the ceremonial magic system that had been developed by the Golden Dawn, however it did provide her with the grounding in the study of the Hermetic Qabalah which would exert a great influence over her esoteric world-view.

Dion Fortune claimed that in doing so, she had contacted spirit-entities known as "the Watchers of Avalon" who informed her that Glastonbury had once been the site of an ancient druidic college.

Bond subsequently commissioned Dion Fortune to write an article, "Psychology and Occultism", which was published in the transactions of the College of Psychic Science in 1922.

In September 1922, Dion Fortune returned to Glastonbury to visit her friend Charles Loveday.

Meanwhile, Dion Fortune's parents relocated to the garden city of Letchworth, Hertfordshire in 1922, and it was here that Dion Fortune carried out what she deemed to be additional communications with the Masters through trance mediumship between 1923 and 1925.

Dion Fortune appointed herself as the group's "Adeptus", while five acolytes joined.

Dion Fortune later claimed that she subsequently came under psychic attack from Mathers, during which she was confronted and assaulted by both real and etheric cats.

Dion Fortune soon became its president, and under her leadership the group's membership expanded and the readership of its published Transactions grew.

Dion Fortune publicly criticised another Theosophical group, the Liberal Catholic Church founded by J I Wedgwood and Charles Webster Leadbeater, alleging that it was not concerned with the Master Jesus and was instead preoccupied with the Master Maitreya.

Dion Fortune directed many seekers who lacked the self-discipline for ceremonial magical activity to the Guild, whose members were known by one senior Community member as the "teeny-weenies".

When Jiddu Krishnamurti abandoned Theosophy, causing problems for the Theosophical movement, Dion Fortune endorsed the 'Back to Blavatsky' faction, attacking Leadbeater in print by accusing him of being a practitioner of black magic.

Dion Fortune then involved herself with Bomanji Wadia and his United Lodge of Theosophists, through which she claimed to have contacted the Himalayan Masters.

Dion Fortune was present throughout a program of trance mediumship in which Fortune claimed to be channelling the messages of a "Master of Medicine".

Some members of Dion Fortune's group believed that the "Master of Medicine" was actually Paracelsus, although a later channelled message claimed that this Master's earthly identity had been Ignaz Semmelweis.

In 1927 Dion Fortune published her first occult novel, The Demon Lover, which received a brief but positive review in The Times Literary Supplement.

At the vernal equinox of 1931, Dion Fortune stepped down as leader of the Fraternity, with Loveday being appointed Magus of the Lodge in her place.

In late 1931, Dion Fortune began mooting the idea of the construction of a permanent base, or Sanctuary, at the Chalice Orchard, and despite the economic obstacles of the Great Depression was able to raise sufficient funds.

Dion Fortune had begun renting The Belfry, a converted Presbyterian chapel in West Halkin Street, where she then took up residence.

Dion Fortune published many articles in Inner Light magazine, a number of which were collected together and published in books.

In 1930, the first such collection was published as Mystical Meditations upon the Collects, in which Dion Fortune emphasised her Christian commitments.

Dion Fortune drew a distinction between normal Spiritualist mediums and 'cosmic mediums' such as herself who contacted the Ascended Masters, arguing that the spirits of the dead should not be contacted without good reason, a view that generated controversy among the occult milieu.

Over four years, Dion Fortune published a number of articles in Inner Light that discussed the Hermetic Qabalah.

Dion Fortune corresponded with a number of prominent occultists in this period.

Dion Fortune corresponded with Olga Frobe-Kapteyn, the Dutch esotericist who founded Eranos in Switzerland.

Dion Fortune renewed her interest in Jungian psychology, which was then growing in influence among the esoteric milieu, and was influenced by her reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy.

From October 1939 through to October 1942, Dion Fortune organised group meditations every Sunday with the intent of focusing Fraternity members towards the cause of peace.

Dion Fortune urged Fraternity members to repeat a mantra every time the German Luftwaffe began bombing Britain, through which she hoped to call upon "Invisible Helpers" from the "Inner Planes" to aid the people affected.

Dion Fortune later visited him at his home in Hastings, with Crowley's assistant Kenneth Grant noting that the pair got along well.

In late 1945, Dion Fortune fell ill, and was unable to give her scheduled address to the Fraternity on that year's winter solstice.

Dion Fortune died at Middlesex Hospital of leukaemia in January 1946, at the age of 55.

Dion Fortune bequeathed most of her money to her Society.

Dion Fortune saw her occult novels as an important part of her Fraternity work, initiating readers into the realms of occultism by speaking to their subconscious, even when their conscious mind rejects occult teachings.

Dion Fortune thus perceived them as a means of disseminating her teachings to a wider audience.

Dion Fortune meets with Le Fay Morgan, a spiritual adept, and together they enter an obsessive but platonic relationship while establishing a temple to the sea gods.

Dion Fortune identified her beliefs as being part of what she termed "the Western Mystery Tradition".

Dion Fortune adhered to a form of esoteric Christianity, and has been described as a Christian Qabalist, and as "a devout mystical Christian", albeit "a very unorthodox one".

Dion Fortune expressed the opinion that "in any school of Western mysticism the author and finisher of our faith must be Christ Jesus, the Great Initiator of the West", and treated "the Master Jesus" as her personal spiritual guide.

Dion Fortune believed that the teachings passed down from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn served the purpose of recovering "sacred mysteries" or gnosis that had been overlooked by mainstream Christianity.

However, by the late 1930s, Dion Fortune had developed some interest in the religion of ancient Egypt, but treated it as a preparation for the higher truth of Christianity.

Dion Fortune believed in the existence of an underlying commonality between the teachings of Western esoteric orders and Asian religious traditions.

Dion Fortune nevertheless perceived value in Westerners studying Asian disciplines like Yoga on a theoretical level, so long as they eschewed any attempt to put these teachings into practice.

The magical ceremonies performed by Dion Fortune's Fraternity were placed into two categories: initiations, in which the candidate was introduced to magical forces, and evocation, in which these forces were manipulated for a given purpose.

The Fraternity's rituals at their Bayswater temple were carried out under a dim light, with Dion Fortune claiming that bright light disperses etheric forces.

Dion Fortune believed that this erotic attraction between men and women could be harnessed for use in magic.

Dion Fortune was among those who popularised the idea of a division between the left-hand path and right-hand path which had been introduced to Western esotericism by the Theosophist Helena Blavatsky.

In doing so Dion Fortune connected her disparaging views on what she considered to be the left hand path to the moral panic surrounding homosexuality in British society.

Dion Fortune's works contained commentaries in which she condemned the "homosexual techniques" of malevolent male magicians, and she claimed that the acceptance of homosexuality was the cause of the downfall of the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations.

The historian Claire Fanger noted that Dion Fortune exhibited a "dynamic personality and confident leadership".

Chapman noted that while studying at horticultural college, Dion Fortune had earned a reputation for having a "keen sense of humor", being particularly fond of practical jokes.

Richardson characterised Dion Fortune as being "honest, and often ruthless with her honesty", adding that she was "an essentially good woman who had strands of darkness within".

Dion Fortune did not involve herself or her group in any explicitly political movement or party.

The historian Ronald Hutton noted that in her political and social views, Dion Fortune was likely a High Tory, with Richardson noting that politically, she was "somewhat aligned" to the ideas of the Conservative politician Winston Churchill.

The historian of esotericism Dave Evans agreed, stating that Dion Fortune had been "somewhat less" influential than Crowley.

Dion Fortune's Fraternity survived her, and was renamed the Society of the Inner Light in 1946; the change was a legal refinement to help the group achieve charitable status.

Knight agreed, leaving his own lodge to publish two works by Dion Fortune based on her material in the Society's archive, and authoring a biography of her.

The 1990s saw a number of pioneering biographical studies of Dion Fortune, including Alan Richardson's in 1991 and Janine Chapman's in 1993.

However, in 2007 Graf noted that Dion Fortune had yet to receive much scholarly attention.

Dion Fortune laid the groundwork that has been followed by later neo-pagans and goddess-centered practitioners who want to find a religion that is not patriarchal and offers divine images other than that of a male god or a passive, human, mother of god.

The practices and beliefs that Dion Fortune found, and has passed on, offer a balance of power, a kind a partnership model for the divine.

The religious studies scholar Hugh Urban noted that Dion Fortune was "one of the key links" between early twentieth-century ceremonial magic and the developing Pagan religion of Wicca.

Graf agreed, adding that Dion Fortune's works found "resonance" in the work of the later feminist Wiccan Starhawk, and in particular in the latter's 1979 book, The Spiral Dance.

In researching ceremonial magic orders and other esoteric groups active in the London area during the 1980s, Luhrmann found that within them, Dion Fortune's novels were treated as "fictionalized ideals" and that they were recommended to newcomers as the best way to understand magic.

Dion Fortune's priestesses were an influence on the characters of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, and her ideas were adopted as the basis for the Aquarian Order of the Restoration, a ceremonial magic group led by Bradley.

Dion Fortune's works influenced Bradley's collaborator and fellow Order member Diana Paxson.