page_title: Dion Fortune
section_title: Reception and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Dion Fortune / Reception and legacy
caption_attribution_description: St John the Baptist - the parish church of Glastonbury.
context_page_description: Dion Fortune was a British occultist, ceremonial magician, novelist and author. She 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. A prolific writer, she produced a large number of articles and books on her occult ideas and also authored seven novels, several of which expound occult themes.
  Fortune was born in Llandudno, Caernarfonshire, North Wales, to a wealthy upper middle-class English family, although little is known of her early life. By her teenage years she was living in England's West Country, where she wrote two books of poetry. After time spent at a horticultural college she began studying psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of London before working as a counsellor in a psychotherapy clinic. During the First World War she joined the Women's Land Army and established a company selling soy milk products. She 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.
context_section_description: According to Richardson, Fortune fell into "relative obscurity" after her death, having been overshadowed by her more famous contemporary, Aleister Crowley. The historian of esotericism Dave Evans agreed, stating that Fortune had been "somewhat less" influential than Crowley.
  Hutton nevertheless considered her to be the "foremost female figure" of early 20th century British occultism, while historian Alex Owen referred to her as "one of the most significant clairvoyants and occultists of the postwar period". Similarly, Knight termed her "one of the leading occultists of her generation", and the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann referred to her as "one of the most influential twentieth-century magicians". Another esotericism scholar, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, said Fortune was an "important heir of the Golden Dawn, and she had a significant influence on modern Western esotericism". Religious studies scholar Stephen Sutcliffe described her as having "played a key role in the cult of Glastonbury in the interwar years", while anthropologist Susan Greenwood thought Fortune's emphasis on a masculine/feminine polarity as the basis for magical working was a significant influence on both later ceremonial magic and Wicca.
  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. It continues to operate into the early 21st century. The Society sold the Chalice Orchard, which was eventually purchased by Geoffrey Ashe, and in 1959 sold their Bayswater headquarters after the socio-economic decline of the area, instead establishing a base in North London. While retaining its basis in Fortune's original teachings, the Society has changed its emphasis according to who has led it over the years. At various points it has been heavily influenced by Alice Bailey's ideas about the Ascended Masters, the ideas of Subud, and the use of Scientology's E-meters. In 1961, the Society adopted a new approach which further emphasised and foregrounded its Christian identity. This generated controversy in the group, with Gareth Knight leaving to form his own lodge based on Fortune's teachings, known as the Gareth Knight Group. In 1973 one of Fortune's students, W. E. Butler, likewise split with the Fraternity to found his own group in Jersey, the Servants of the Light, which would later be taken over by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and remains one of the world's largest esoteric organizations in the early 21st century maintaining about 1000 active students. In 1975, another member of the Society, Alan Adams, departed to start the London Group, which was initially based in outer London but later moved to the East Midlands.
  By the late 1990s the Society's membership had dropped to a few dozen, and under the control of a new warden it invited Knight to return to the group in order to help promote it. Knight agreed, leaving his own lodge to publish two works by 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 Fortune, including Alan Richardson's in 1991 and Janine Chapman's in 1993. Richardson's book relied heavily on the recollections of Christine Hartley, while the publication of Fielding and Carr was based upon the authors' interactions with older members of the Society. However, in 2007 Graf noted that Fortune had yet to receive much scholarly attention.
  In the early 21st century, Evans noted that Fortune's work was "still influential in some magical quarters", highlighting that in his experience she was one of only three female ceremonial magicians—alongside Leah Hirsig and Jaq Hawkins—that modern esotericists could readily name.
caption: The church of St. John the Baptist, Glastonbury; Fortune's funeral was performed here by the Reverend L. S. Lewis, and her body interred in the Wells Road cemetery nearby
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