Description
Dion Fortune
The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, United Kingdom, 1977. Paperback. 94 pages. Fourth impression. Some shelf-wear/rubbing, Very Good.
Dion Fortune (the pen-name of Violet Mary Firth Evans) was an inspired adept who worked with such esoteric luminaries as MacGregor Matthers and Theodore Moriarty. She is also credited with inspiring both Diana Paxton and Doreen Valiente during the Wicca renewal. In ‘Through the Gates of Death’, the author describes the process of dying: how the soul severs its connection with the physical body, and what awaits the disembodied personality on ‘the other side’. Ghosts, earth-bound spirits and traditional customs for helping the dead are all given surprising esoteric explanations, and Fortune also offers an intriguing occult perspective on such concepts as Heaven, purgatory and communication with the departed. An insightful, open and informative guide to a subject that remains western culture’s ‘Last Taboo’.
Dion Fortune is the pen name of Violet Firth, one of the most mysterious and significant figures of the British esoteric tradition of the early twentieth century. Born in Llandudno, Wales, in 1890, she exhibited strong psychic tendencies even as a child. She decided at an early age to pursue a career in nursing, which led her to an interest in human psychology. She became an early Freudian, but soon saw the limitations of psychoanalysis and pursued the deeper implications of human psychology in occult and magical traditions. Raised on Christian Science, she gravitated first toward Theosophy and then to the Order of the Golden Dawn, where she became an initiate and received the hieratic name of Deo Non Fortuna, which eventually became her pen name, Dion Fortune. In 1922, she formed her own esoteric society, The Society of the Inner Light. Dion Fortune s legacy is her writings, both fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, her books Psychic Self-Defence, The Mystical Qabalah, Through the Gates of Death, and Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage still stand, 75 years later, as the premier statements on their respective subjects.
