Wicca History : The Influence of Dion Fortune

As many other Priestesses of my generation, my interest and views on magic was shaped at times by the work of the author Dion Fortune.  Her “Sea Priestess” in particular shaped my views on the role of a Priestess when I first started facilitating training and teaching for others, and some of her other fictional books, such as the “Goat Foot God” and the “Winged Bull” inspired some of the ceremonies I wrote.  So its easy to see why I would be curious about whether or not Dion Fortune had an influence on some of the modern traditions, such as Wicca – something which has often been claimed. 

Around the time David and I wrote “Wicca Magickal Beginnings” he was also asked to write an article for the Children of Artemis’ magazine “Witchcraft & Wicca” and he decided to write on the influence of Dion Fortune on modern pagan witchcraft. His article is reproduced below for those of you who also have a passion for her work, and indeed for those who have not considered her work yet!

I Speak of the Great Goddess:
The Influence of Dion Fortune on Wicca

Article by David Rankine, first published in Witchcraft & Wicca Magazine.

Dion Fortune was the magickal nom de plume of the occultist and author Violet Mary Firth (1890-1946). She drew this name from her magickal motto, Deo Non Fortuna – “God not Fate”. In the early 1920s she was a member of the Alpha et Omega, an offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Following disputes with Mina Mathers, who was the head of Alpha et Omega, she left this organisation and went on to later found the Society of the Inner Light (SIL), a Western Mystery Tradition school that still runs today, with an emphasis on Christian occultism.

Dion Fortune remained in contact with other magicians after leaving Alpha et Omega, corresponding on Qabalah with a young Israel Regardie, and in her later years writing to Aleister Crowley for advice on a range of magickal topics. She also worked with a number of less well-known but significant figures like Colonel Seymour and Christine Hartley, and trained significant occultists who followed in her footsteps, like W.E. Butler.

Dion Fortune is best known for her book The Mystical Qabalah, Psychic Self-Defence and her occult novels. Of these, the most significant and influential are the two consecutive stories of the priestess Morgan Le Fay, The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic, though there are gems to be found in all of them. The former novel contains an exposition still used today:

“Do you not know the Mystery saying that all the gods are one god, and all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator? Do you not know that at the dawn of manifestation the gods wove the web of creation between the poles of the pairs of opposites, active and passive, positive and negative, and that all things are these two things in different ways and upon different levels, even priests and priestesses”

In these books the idea of the universal goddess, of whom all goddesses are aspects, is clearly set forth as a theology. In this instance, as with Apuleius, it is Isis who is used as the main name of the universal goddess. Fortune wrote of this perspective in The Sea Priestess, and it became a recurrent theme, as can be seen at the end of her subsequent novel The Goat Foot God, where the emphasis is moved more onto the god (and significantly it is a horned god to balance the moon goddess – the two major aspects of Wicca).

“All the gods are one god, and all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator. The All-Father was celestial Zeus – and woodland Pan – and Helios the Life-giver. He was all these things, and having known Pan, a man might pass on to the heavenly gate where Helios waits beside the Dawn.”

This philosophy is one that has become an integral part of Wicca, where the deities of ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, the Celts and others are all celebrated in ceremonies and rituals as aspects of the ultimate divine.

An underlying theme throughout all of Fortune’s six novels is the vital importance of the polarity between woman and man. This is stressed side-by-side with the view of the universal goddess and god, and has become a major aspect of the standard Wiccan perspective.

Even in the novels which concentrated on the goddess, Fortune still refers to the importance of the god and the polarity of female and male. Hence in Moon Magic she observes the protagonists live “in a world that has forgotten the holiness of the Great Horned One.”

The idea of seasonal rites is also implied through a ritual enacted in The Winged Bull (1935), as significant in its way as the two better known novels of Morgan Le Fay. Here the hero and heroine are performing a Spring Equinox ritual that bears a strong resemblance in concept to the Wiccan perspective of the Sabbat.

“Ursula represents the earth in spring. You are the sun-god gradually gathering strength as the days lengthen …. He knew they danced together to slow rhythms. He knew they came up to the altar and drank together from the cup of dark, resinous-tasting wine, and ate together of the broken bread dipped in the coarse salt.”

It is interesting to note that reference is made here to partaking of wine, bread and salt, the traditional three items which if shared were said to give a witch power over a person.

During her life Fortune fluctuated between mystical Christianity and the old gods celebrated in magick and paganism. At times her attraction to the pagan world shines through in her writings, making it easy to see how some of the material she wrote could be incorporated into Wicca. This is particularly evident in some of the short stories in her collection The Secrets of Dr Taverner, such as A Daughter of Pan.

“Frost lay white upon the grass, and the bleak March wind cut keenly, but the air was full of the odour of flowers with an undercurrent of sun-warmed pine-woods … and a huge hare shot past us … ‘Good gracious,’ I exclaimed. ‘Whatever brought him here?’ … ‘We should know some rather important things if we knew that.’”5

An example of how Wicca has continued to evolve and incorporate material from other sources can be seen with the Fire of Azrael. This is described by Dion Fortune in The Sea Priestess as a means of divination, using the woods of juniper, cedar and sandalwood.

“That evening Mrs Treth cleared the ashes of driftwood off the hearth and we laid the Fire of Azrael, invoking the dark Angel of the Doors that he would permit egress.”

The accompanying invocation and use of the Fire of Azrael are the central themes of the chapter A Seashore Ritual 7 given by Stewart and Janet Farrar in A Witches’ Bible (in the second part, formerly published as The Witches’ Way). This beautiful ritual has become a very popular one amongst Wiccans, despite the problems in getting hold of sandalwood.

Whilst Dion Fortune may seem very dated in places, her legacy endures, and we should not forget this bold and charismatic woman who has contributed so much to the current pagan renaissance.

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