Dion Fortune

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THIS ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Dion Fortune was a prominent British Occultist and author who founded the Society of the Inner Light.

Early Years

The magician, occultist, and prolific author known as Dion Fortune was born Violet Mary Firth on 6 December 1890, in the town of Llandudno, county Caernarvonshire, Wales. The Firth family were well-to-do steel manufacturers whose wealth derived largely from weaponry and the business of war. Dion’s paternal grandfather, John Firth, devised the family motto: Deo, non Fortuna, or “God, not Luck,” which apparently summed up his viewpoint on the vagaries of life and which was, obviously, the source of her nom de plume. Her mother was a registered Christian Science healer, which would have introduced Violet to ideas about health and wellness that were quite out of the mainstream.

Not much is known about her childhood. Although well known in her day, she valued her privacy and never sought the limelight or encouraged personal questions. We do know she wrote two books of poetry as a teenager, both of which were likely published (in the early 1900s) by her family. The first was titled Violets; the second, More Violets.

Like many highly sensitive children, Violet Firth was aware of much more than the world visible to the adults around her. As an adult herself, she reported having had visions as a four-year-old, which she believed to be past-life memories of Atlantis.

When she was about 20, Violet was employed by a woman whom she reported to be both powerful and very, very controlling. The woman may have been a hypnotist; she was, in any event, emotionally abusive, and Violet suffered a nervous breakdown after a prolonged attempt to leave the woman’s employ. This was not the last time Violet would feel psychically attacked by other people. Her book Psychic Self Defence (originally published in 1930), on how to protect oneself from the negative energy of others, came out of these experiences.

Prior to World War I she also studied psychology at the University of London, in particular the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. She found Jung’s theories regarding archetypes and the collective unconscious highly significant.

Theosophical Connections

Miss Firth became a member-at-large of the Theosophical Society on January 12, 1924 in London.

Writings

Non-fiction

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists over 80 articles by or about Dion Fortune. She wrote dozens of articles for The Occult Review.