Dion Fortune

Dion Fortune born Violet Mary Firth (6 December 1890 – 8 January 1946), was a prominent British occultist, author, psychologist, teacher, artist, and mystic. Schooled in Western Esotericism, she was influential in the modern revival of the magical arts. She was also a prolific writer of the supernatural and the occult in both novels and non-fiction works. As a psychologist, she approached magic and hermetic concepts from the perspectives of Jung and Freud.

Psychic Self-Defense (1930)

 * The driving forces of the universe, the framework upon which it is built up in all its parts, belong to another phase of manifestation than our physical plane, having other dimensions than the three to which we are habituated, and perceived by other modes of consciousness than those to which we are accustomed.


 * We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them.

The Mystical Qabalah (1935)

 * The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind.


 * Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand—an extended application of its powers.

The Sea Priestess (1938)

 * All gods are one God, and all goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator.


 * There is something very intimate and personal about one's books. They reveal so much of one's private soul.

Other quotes

 * To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect.
 * Spiritualism and Occultism


 * Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind.
 * The Machinery of the Mind (1922), Violet M. Firth (Dion Fortune), p. 96


 * The spirit of religious persecution is not the special failing of any particular faith, but springs eternal in the human breast.
 * As quoted in Experience of the Inner Worlds by British esotericist and Fortune biographer Gareth Knight