Inner Light, The.
Devoted to Esoteric Christianity, Occult Science and the Psychology of Super-consciousness.
There is a Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world
Other titles: The Inner Light Magazine
1927-1940 Monthly
Bayswater (London), England.
Editor: Dion Fortune.
Publisher: The Fraternity of the Inner Light Publishing Society.
Succeeded by: Letter . . . to Members and Friends of the Fraternity of the Inner Light; The Inner Light Magazine
1/1, October 1927-August 1940, 13 volumes. 6/6 a year. 20 pp. (stapled reproduced typescript), subscription included in 10/6 associate dues of the fraternity.

This journal was the private organ of the Fraternity of the Inner light of "Dion Fortune" (Violet Mary Firth Evans, 1890-1946) which had an enormous influence on Western (Christian) non-Crowlean occultism from the 1930s through the 1950s. This journal was revived about 1990, devoted to work by and about Fortune and her disciples. Dion Fortune, probably because of the popularity and quality of her literary output, was the apex of the British occult world between the world wars, promulgating a Golden Dawn-derived system of practical occultism based on her contact with advanced spiritual entities on the Inner Plane. She had been raised a Christian Scientist and entered upon her occult studies by joining a Universal Theosophy occult lodge presided over by the mysterious Theodore Moriarty (Theodore William Carte Moriarty, 1873-1923), who is the "Dr. Tavener" of Fortune's later novel of that name, and then passed through Alpha and Omega, Moina Mathers' Order of the Golden Dawn offshoot, where she took the motto "Deo, non Fortuna" that was later transformed into her pseudonym and where she learned the formal magical ritual that later featured prominently in her own fraternity. In 1922 she was contacted in ritual trance by the Company of Avalon and then the Ascended Masters Jesus and Rakioczi who dictated "The Cosmic Doctrine" to her over the following years. On that basis she and others formed her own group in 1924 and this became the Fraternity of the Inner Light, of which Fortune became Warden. As the journal proclaimed: The Fraternity "is a Society whose purpose it is to pursue the study of mysticism and esoteric science and to develop their practice. Its aims are Christian and its system is Western." It was organized in three degrees and offered three methods of training, all based on mail-order lessons and study groups (all included in the annual associate membership, although voluntary contributions were welcomed and a "small fee" was required for handling). The study groups were the core of the society. Their object was "study of a Script received on the Inner Planes from certain Masters of the Western Esoteric Tradition" and they offered comradeship" "based upon the fundamental belief in the reality of 'the Masters,' and the possibility of human beings contacting these Entities, receiving Their guidance, and partaking of Their wisdom." The journal contained Fortune's exposition of the Cosmic Doctrine Script on cosmology, explanations of the relationships between the Kabbalah and the chakras, etc., and articles by her students. BL; Warburg Institute, University of London.

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