Dion
Fortune - Violet Mary Firth Evans (1890 - 1946), (D.O.B December
6, 1890) - some sources give her year of birth as 1891 - born
Violet Mary Firth, was a British occultist and author who was
born at Bryn-y-Bia in Llandudno, Wales Her pseudonym was inspired
by her family motto "Deo, non fortuna" (which translates as "God,
not fate").
She reported visions of Atlantis at age four and the developing
of psychic abilities during her twentieth year. She attended courses
in psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of London ,
and became a lay psychotherapist at the Medico-Psychological Clinic
in Brunswick Square.
Her first magical mentor was the Irish occultist and Freemason
Theodore Moriarty In 1919 she was initiated into the London Temple
of the Alpha et Omega [7], a lodge of the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, before transferring to the Stella Matutina Lodge
of The Golden Dawn, then run by Moina Mathers, widow of Samuel
Liddell MacGregor-Mathers. Of her non-fictional works on magical
subjects, the best remembered of her books are; The Cosmic Doctrine,
meant to be a summation of her basic teachings on mysticism, The
Mystical Qabalah, an introduction to Hermetic Qabalah, and Psychic
Self Defence a manual on how to protect one's self from psychic
attacks.
Though some of her writings may seem dated to contemporary readers,
they have the virtue of lucidity, and the avoidance of the deliberate
obscurity that characterised many of her forerunners and contemporaries.
