Dion Fortune (Violet Mary Firth) Welsh Occultist Born

Dion Fortune was born Violet Mary Firth at her family home on Bryn-y-Bia Road in Llandudno, North Wales on 6th December 1890 into a family of Christian Scientists.

Dion Fortune (born Violet Mary Firth, 6 December 1890 – 6 January 1946) 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.

Her background was upper middle-class; the Firths were a wealthy English family who had gained their money through the steel industry in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where they had specialised in the production of guns.

Fortune’s paternal grandfather John Firth had devised a family motto, “Deo, non Fortuna” (“God, not Luck”), to mark out their nouveau riche status; she would later make use of it in creating her pseudonym.