Dion Fortune And The Inner Light

by Gareth Knight

Dion Fortune played a significant role in modern esotericism, and we are indebted to Gareth Knight for this intriguing biography. Dion Fortune & the Inner Light is enthusiastically recommended to anyone interested in the western esoteric tradition and in the colorful individuals who contributed to it over the last 100 years.

Genres: Occult

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

Gareth Knight is one of the world's foremost authorities on ritual magic, the Western Mystery Tradition and Qabalistic symbolism. He trained in Dion Fortune's Society of the Inner Light, and has spent a lifetime rediscovering and teaching the principles of magic as a spiritual discipline and method of self-realisation.

He has written around forty books covering topics as diverse as Qabalah, history of magic, Arthurian legend, Rosicrucianism, Tarot, the Inklings (Tolkien, C.S.Lewis et al) and the Feminine Mysteries, as well as several practical books on ritual magic. He has lectured worldwide and is a regular contributor to Inner Light, the journal of the Society of the Inner Light.

The group founded by Gareth Knight in 1973 is now run by Wendy Berg and known as the Avalon Group.

See: http://garethknight.blogspot.com/

Reviews

[T.D. Whittle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got more than halfway through this but it felt like a chore and I had to stop reading due to mind-numbing boredom. I had hoped to read a more general biography about DF's life: stories about her with her friends and lovers, her favourite music and art, her dining habits and whether she preferred milk or dark chocolate, her interesting reflections, etc. But this book reads like a chronological record of her experiences as a trance medium. The information provided contains no personal reminiscences or intimate vignettes but is only about her esoteric activities. It seems to be entirely based on documents pulled from the archives of the Society of the Inner Light.

I don't blame Knight, as I realise his main interest in Fortune would be her roles as a trance medium and ceremonial magician. I expected there to be quite a lot about her as a Western mystic, but I had thought there would be an intimate portrait of the woman and her life included as well. Sadly, that is not the case. Matters are further complicated because I don't share Fortune's spiritual beliefs, yet there are things which pique my curiosity about her. I wanted to read about this unique woman who exhibited exceptional knowledge and skill with chickens; who earned a reputation for being a talented Jungian analyst; who wrote strangely captivating but very weird novels about the lives of goddess worshipers; and who (I am led to believe based on some of her novels) made her own ceremonial gowns out of curtains and painted slippers.

In other news! Fortune genuinely believed that, along with her band of fellow ceremonial magicians, she played a role in keeping the Germans from ever landing on British soil during WWII by performing magic rituals to keep her country and people safe. Unfortunately, their powers were insufficient to prevent the Germans from bombing the living daylights out of Britain or carrying out the Holocaust on a massive scale.