The Candle of Vision

by AE (George William Russell)

[1918]

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This book by Irish author, poet, painter and mystic George William Russell, is a set of transcendent essays on Celtic mysticism. Known by his pen name AE (which is short for Aeon), Russell was friends with many other figures of the Celtic renaissance of the early 20th century, including Y.B. Yeats, and James Stephens.
The Candle of Vision describes Russells' luminous excursions into the otherworld, including clairvoyant and prophetic visions, precognition of Gnostic concepts, past-life and astral journeys, and, always, heightened awareness of the beauty that pervades mundane reality. Russell describes encounters with what today we would call UFOs, and attempts to construct a private Kabala based on an intuitive reconstuction of a primal language and alphabet. Lastly, he attempts to put a mystical gloss on the primeval Celtic pagan deities. Lovers of Celtic lore and ecstatic mystic literature will both find much to enjoy in this short book.

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Title Page
Preface
Contents
Retrospect
The Earth Breath
The Slave of the Lamp
Meditation
The Many-Coloured Land
Analytic
The Mingling of Natures
The Memory of Earth
Imagination
Dreams
The Architecture of Dream
Have Imaginations Body?
Intuition
The Language of the Gods
Ancient Intuitions
Power
The Memory of the Spirit
Celtic Cosmogony
The Celtic Imagination
Earth