Dion Fortune
Dion Fortune, born Violet Mary Firth on December 6, 1890, in Llandudno, Wales, was a prominent figure in the early 20th-century occult movement. She adopted her magical name from a family motto, which translates to "From God, not from chance." As a child, Fortune experienced visions and claimed to have psychic abilities, including communication with the deceased. Her search for understanding began with psychology but led her to the occult, where she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later founded her own group, The Fraternity of the Inner Light, in Glastonbury, a site of historical significance.
Fortune authored numerous works on occult philosophy, with notable titles including "Psychic Self-Defense" and "The Mystical Qabalah." Her writings, characterized by themes of paganism and ritual magic, have had a lasting impact on modern paganism and spiritual practices. After a brief marriage that ended in divorce, she continued her mystical pursuits until her passing from leukemia on January 6, 1946. Dion Fortune remains a significant figure in the study of esotericism and continues to influence contemporary spiritual movements.
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Dion Fortune
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- Born: December 6, 1890
- Birthplace: Bryn-y-Bia, Llandudno, Wales
- Died: January 6, 1946
Biography
Violet Mary Firth, better known as Dion Fortune, was born December 6, 1890, in Llandudno, Wales, and died January 6, 1946. Little is known about her family. Her father was a lawyer and her mother, Sarah Jane, belonged to the Christian Scientist church. Dion Fortune was Firth’s magical name and was taken from the Latin phrase, Deo, non fortuna, meaning “From God, not from chance.” This was her family’s motto, and Dion Fortune became the penname for almost all of Fortune’s occult writings.
As a child, Fortune supposedly had visions of her past life as an Atlantean priestess. At puberty, her psychic powers blossomed and she claimed that she could communicate with the dead. Many believed her. In 1906, Fortune’s family moved to London, and she joined the Theosophical Society, a group of free thinkers. She soon suffered a nervous breakdown, however, which resulted from a “psychic attack” by a female enemy. The attack sent Fortune in search of answers. She first looked to psychology, especially to the theories of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. She decided, however, that neither Jung nor Freud could explain the mind’s complexities, and so she concentrated her energies on studying the occult. She joined the Alpha and Omega Lodge of the Stella Matutina, part of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an esoteric society founded in England that greatly influenced the development of occult interests in Europe and America. Other prominent Golden Dawn members were Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, and William Butler Yeats.
Fortune established her own society within the Golden Dawn, called The Fraternity of the Inner Light, but she had a falling out with Golden Dawn, and she and her followers left. They established a headquarters at Glastonbury in Somerset, which was considered an ancient place of power. Fortune’s society became a training ground for occult practitioners, and Fortune herself claimed psychic contact with the Greek philosopher Socrates and with Merlin, the famous druid of British mythology.
Fortune’s first foray into literature was Violets, a poetry chapbook she had published in 1904, at age thirteen. More Violets followed in 1906. Her first major adult work was Machinery of the Mind (1922), which focused on psychology and appeared under her own name. The following year saw the arrival of Dion Fortune’s first major occult work, The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage. Although she wrote some nonfiction under the Firth name and some fiction as V. M. Steele, Fortune used the Fortune pseudonym for most of her writing, more than a dozen occult nonfiction works and several occult novels. Of her nonfiction books, Psychic Self-Defense (1930) and The Mystical Qabalah (1936) are the most famous. The former contains many autobiographical elements.
In 1927, Fortune married Thomas Penry Evans, a medical doctor, but the couple divorced in 1939, apparently leaving no children. Fortune died of leukemia at age fifty-five and is buried at Glastonbury. Modern paganism was strongly influenced by both Fortune’s nonfiction and by her novels, the latter of which frequently contained pagan themes and ritual magic.