Dion Fortune
British occultist and co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light.
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Dion Fortune, born Violet Mary Firth, was a British occultist, ceremonial magician, and writer who co-founded the Fraternity of the Inner Light. She claimed that her teachings were communicated by spiritual entities known as the Ascended Masters. A prolific author, she produced numerous articles, books on occult ideas, and seven novels, several of which explore occult themes.
Lore / Story / Guide
Fortune's occult career took shape after she joined the Women's Land Army during the First World War. While stationed at an experimental base for the Food Production Department, she underwent a spiritual experience and immersed herself in Theosophical literature, becoming preoccupied with the idea of 'Ascended Masters' or 'Secret Chiefs'. She claimed to have had visions of two such entities: the Master Jesus and the Master Rakoczi. Her first magical mentor was the Irish occultist and Freemason Theodore Moriarty, whom she befriended while still involved in psychotherapy.
Moriarty performed an exorcism on a young soldier she was treating, claiming the man was victim of a parasitic soul from a deceased East European soldier. Fortune became an acolyte of Moriarty's Masonic-influenced lodge in Hammersmith and joined his community at Gwen Stafford-Allen's home in Bishop's Stortford. In 1919 she was initiated into the London Temple of the Alpha et Omega, an occult group that had developed from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where her primary teacher was Maiya Curtis-Webb.
In 1922 Fortune and Charles Loveday claimed that during a trance mediumship ceremony they were contacted by Masters who provided them with a text, The Cosmic Doctrine. She later split from the Theosophical Society to form the Community of the Inner Light, renamed the Fraternity of the Inner Light, establishing bases in Glastonbury and Bayswater, London. During the Second World War she organised a project of meditations and visualisations designed to protect Britain. She died of leukemia shortly after the war's end.
Biography
Fortune was born Violet Mary Firth on 6 December 1890 at her family home on Bryn-y-Bia Road in Llandudno, North Wales. Her family was wealthy upper middle-class English, with money from the steel industry in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where they specialised in gun production. Her paternal grandfather John Firth devised the motto 'Deo, non Fortuna' ('God, not Luck'), which she later used for her pseudonym. Her uncle was historian Charles Harding Firth, and her father Arthur ran a Sheffield law firm before establishing a hydropathic establishment in Limpley Stoke, Wiltshire.
In August 1886 Arthur married Sarah Jane Smith, and they relocated to Llandudno where Arthur founded the Craigside Hydrotherapeutic Establishment. Sarah was keenly interested in Christian Science, and both parents were active practitioners of that religion. Little is known of Fortune's time in Wales, as she was deliberately elusive about her early life. She reported having visions of Atlantis from age four, which she believed were past life memories.
By 1904 she was living in Somerset, and that year she authored a book of poetry titled Violets, followed by More Violets in 1906.
Novels
Fortune completed seven novels during her lifetime. Four were occult and fantasy themed: The Demon Lover, The Winged Bull, The Goat-Foot God, and The Sea Priestess. The other three were romantic thrillers published under the pseudonym V. M. Steele: The Scarred Wrists, Hunters of Humans, and Beloved of Ishmael. An eighth novel, Moon Magic, was left unfinished and completed by her protégé for posthumous publication.
Fortune saw her occult novels as part of her Fraternity work, initiating readers into occultism by speaking to their subconscious even when their conscious mind rejected the teachings. Each occult novel was associated with a Sephirah on the Qabalic Tree of Life: The Winged Bull with Tiphareth, The Goat-Foot God with Malkuth, and The Sea Priestess with Yesod. The Demon Lover tells of Veronica Mainwaring, a young virgin who becomes secretary to a malevolent magician, Justin Lucas, and escapes through her Christian devotion.
The Winged Bull focuses on Ursula Brangwyn, harmed by an unscrupulous occult group, who meets and marries Ted Murchison; characters are based on real people, with Murchison modelled on Fortune's husband and Brangwyn on herself. The character Hugo Astley has been interpreted as a fictional portrait of Aleister Crowley. Andrew Radford suggested the novel reflected a zeal for socially responsible occultism rooted in orthodox gender roles.
Belief and teachings
Fortune identified her beliefs as part of the Western Mystery Tradition. She adhered to a form of esoteric Christianity and has been described as a Christian Qabalist and a devout mystical Christian, albeit a very unorthodox one. She held that in any school of Western mysticism, Christ Jesus must be the author and finisher of faith, and treated the Master Jesus as her personal spiritual guide. She believed the teachings from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn recovered sacred mysteries overlooked by mainstream Christianity, and she had no allegiance to established Christian churches, often criticising mainstream clergy.
She rejected traditional doctrines such as those concerning Heaven and Hell. She is also described as a student of Hermetic Qabalah, and her work has been recognised as Hermetic in nature. There is no evidence she considered herself a Pagan, but by the late 1930s she developed interest in ancient Egyptian religion, treating it as preparation for Christianity. In the 1930s her attitude shifted to become more favourable to pre-Christian religion, likely influenced by her husband Seymour and D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow.
By The Winged Bull she declared pre-Christian gods as valid facets of the divine, and she adopted an increasingly critical attitude toward Christianity, stating it had been degraded since its origins. In The Goat-Foot God she embraced the idea of modern Paganism reviving pre-Christian beliefs, calling it Vitamin P. During the Second World War her writings became more pronouncedly Christian again.
Reception and legacy
After her death, Fortune fell into relative obscurity, overshadowed by her contemporary Aleister Crowley, and historian Dave Evans agreed she was somewhat less influential than Crowley. However, Ronald Hutton considered her the foremost female figure of early 20th century British occultism, and Alex Owen called her one of the most significant clairvoyants and occultists of the postwar period. Gareth Knight termed her one of the leading occultists of her generation, and Tanya Luhrmann referred to her as one of the most influential twentieth-century magicians.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke said she was an important heir of the Golden Dawn with significant influence on modern Western esotericism. Stephen Sutcliffe described her as having played a key role in the cult of Glastonbury in the interwar years, and Susan Greenwood thought her emphasis on masculine/feminine polarity influenced both ceremonial magic and Wicca. Her Fraternity survived her, renamed the Society of the Inner Light in 1946, and continues into the early 21st century.
The Society sold Chalice Orchard and its Bayswater headquarters, establishing a base in North London. Over the years it has been influenced by Alice Bailey's ideas, Subud, and Scientology's E-meters. In 1961 the Society adopted a new Christian emphasis, causing Gareth Knight to leave and form his own group. In 1973 W. E. Butler split to found the Servants of the Light in Jersey, which remains one of the world's largest esoteric organizations with about 1000 active students.
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Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Dion Fortune (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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