Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Dion Fortune

I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.

The difference between magic and meditation methods is the difference between drugs and diet—medicines will do swiftly what diet can only effect slowly, and in critical cases there is no time to wait for the slow processes of dietetics, so it must be either medicines or nothing. Nevertheless, drugs are no substitute for right diet and wholesome regime, and although magic enables a speedy and potent result to be attained, is is only by means of right understanding and right ethics that the position which has been won can be held.

Magick is the art of causing changes in consciousness to occur in accordance with the will.

The man who is an initiate of one of the great Mystery Schools never fears to let his pupils outdistance him, because he knows that it stands him in good stead with his superiors if he is constantly sending up to them aspirants who 'make good.' He therefore never tries to hold back a promising pupil, because he has no need to fear that pupil, if allowed to penetrate into the Mysteries, would spy out the nakedness of the land; he will rather bring back a report of its exceeding richness, and thereby confirm the statements of his teacher and spur his fellow pupils to yet greater eagerness.

Psychotherapy may begin with the primitive, but it must end with the divine, for both are integral factors in the human mind.

Do you believe in an invisible reality behind appearances?

The automatic mind of the patient, the lowest level of subconsciousness which controls the etheric double, is manipulated and is the vehicle of the healing.

We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them.

A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism.

The Door Without a Key is the Door of Dreams; it is the door by which the sensitive escape into insanity when life is too hard for them, and artists use it as a window in a watch-tower. Psychologists call it a psychological mechanism; magicians call it magic, and the man in the street calls it illusion or charlatanry according to taste. It does not matter to me what it is called, for it is effectual.

Superstition has been defined as the use of a form whose significance has been forgotten.

The true secret of natural goodness lies in the recognition of the contending rights of the Pairs of Opposites; there is no such antimony as between Good and Evil, but only balance between two extremes, each of which is evil when carried to excess, both of which give rise to evil if insufficient for equipoise.

Those without the gate frequently question the wisdom and right of the occultist to guard his knowledge by the imposition of oaths of secrecy. We are so accustomed to see the scientist give his beneficent discoveries freely to all mankind that we feel that humanity is wronged and defrauded if any knowledge be kept secret by its discoverers and not at once made available for all who desire to share in it. The knowledge is reserved in order that humanity may be protected from its abuse at the hands of the unscrupulous.

Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.

All gods are one God, and all goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator.

There is no essential difference between sticking pins into a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a wax image of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny reality and potency to the other.

The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if one of the team cannot handle the forces, everybody is going to suffer. A ritual lodge is no place for the well-meaning ineffectual.

The spirit of religious persecution is not the special failing of any particular faith, but springs eternal in the human breast.

We take spiritual initiation when we become conscious of the Divine within us, and thereby contact the Divine without us.

Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand--an extended application of its powers.

The driving forces of the universe, the framework upon which it is built up in all its parts, belong to another phase of manifestation than our physical plane, having other dimensions than the three to which we are habituated, and perceived by other modes of consciousness than those to which we are accustomed.

No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments, no one can do more than mark out the little plot of infinity which he intends to cultivate, and thrust in the spade, trusting that the soil may eventually be fruitful and free from weeds so far as the bounds he has set himself extend.

What mathematics are to matter and force, occult science is to life and consciousness.

There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep.

In varying degrees and and upon different levels all gods and goddesses represent aspects of One God Which is both 'male' and 'female'.

The highest development was in the Egyptian and Cabalistic systems, and it was blended with Christian thought in the schools of the Neo-Platonists and the Gnostics...Its studies were only kept alive during the Dark Ages among the Jews who were the chief exponents of its Cabalistic aspect...and it is still alive today.

It is one of the strictest conditions of initiation that occult knowledge may never be sold or used for gain.

Esoteric science premises the existence of the Great Unmanifest, which may be conceived as a sea of limitless but latent force which underlies all things and whence all things derive their substance and draw their life.

What you contemplate, you touch. What you enter into in imagination, you make yourself one with.

To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect.

When we speak of the Path we mean much more than a course of study. The Path is a way of life and on it the whole being must co-operate if the heights are to be won.

The descent into matter must be complete before the ascent to spirit can commence.

The Scorpion connects with the Serpent through the Dragon.

One cannot blame an organization that picks up an occasional black sheep, one only takes exception if it retains an accumulation of them.