The Order Dion Fortune Built Between Magic and the Church

The Society of the Inner Light is among the most influential currents in modern British esotericism, and its character is set by the effort of its founder to hold ceremonial magic and Christianity together.

A Christian mystery school

Founded in London in the 1920s by the occultist and author Dion Fortune, whose given name was Violet Mary Firth, the society teaches a system of the Western mystery tradition drawing on the Kabbalah, ritual magic and meditation, framed in a distinctly Christian register. It began within the wider Golden Dawn tradition and then became independent. Fortune set out its working ideas in a series of books, among them The Mystical Qabalah and the novels, that remain in print and continue to shape the field.

Continuation and reputation

The society carries on after the death of Fortune in 1946, having passed through changes of direction and produced offshoots founded by former members, which is the ordinary pattern of such orders. Its lasting importance lies less in its numbers than in the influence of its founder on the vocabulary and practice of twentieth-century British occultism, so that a great deal of later magical writing works within terms she set.