The Candle of Vision

By AE

This special commemorative edition of AEs The Candle of Vision is published on the 10th of April 2017ev. This is the 150th anniversary of the Feast for Life (birthday) of George William Russell, the man who bore the name Æon. This is also the 113th Anniversary of the writing of the third chapter of Liber AL vel Legis, the Book of the Law.

The Candle of Vision is part spiritual biography, part inquiry into the mechanism of visions, and partly instructional. Originally published in 1918, AEs Candle of Vision is still a classic of contemporary mystical writing.

Featuring a foreword by Brian Breathnach

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781326968953

Book preview

The Candle of Vision

The Candle of Vision

Æ

Fortified Island Press

2017

The Candle of Vision

By Æ

(George William Russell)

Published by

The Irish Order of Thelema/ Fortified Island Press

http://www.irishorderofthelema.com

First Edition: London, Macmillan and Co. limited, 1918

Fortified Island Edition: 10th April 2017ev

© The Candle of Vision, Public Domain

Introductions, supplementary material and formatting © Irish Order of Thelema

E book ISBN:

978-1-326-96895-3

All rights reserved. The contributors have the right to be identified as the authors of their work. No part of this book may be copied, transmitted, or used in any form including, but not limited to, print and digital mediums without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in accordance with the principles of ‘fair use’.

Proceeds from the sale of this book support the efforts of the Irish Order of Thelema, a community based not-for-profit organisation.

The Spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. --PROVERBS.

When his candle shined on my head and by his light I walked through darkness.--JOB

Dedication

This book is published on the 10th of April 2017ev. This is the 150th anniversary of the Feast for Life (birthday) of George William Russell, the man who bore the name Æon. This is also the 113th Anniversary of the writing of the third chapter of Liber AL vel Legis, the Book of the Law.

Æ is a prime example of combining a unique sense of place or Irishness with the zeitgeist. This combination is our ongoing Work in the Irish Order of Thelema and it is fitting that his work should be marked at this time. That word which he heard whispered to him as a child, Æon preceded the then still-coming revelation of our modern age. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

* * *

The gods have returned to Erin and have centred themselves in the sacred mountains and blow the fires through the country. They have been seen by several in vision, they will awaken the magical instinct everywhere, and the universal heart of the people will turn to the old druidic beliefs…

…though now few we would soon be many, that a branch of the school for the revival of the ancient mysteries to teach real things would be formed here soon. Out of Ireland will arise a light to transform many ages and peoples.

George Russell (Æ) to W B Yeats, June 1896

Foreword

We have the universe to roam it in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity

George William Russell

George William Russell was born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh on the 10th of April 1967. That was 150 years ago from the time of writing this foreword, and a lot has changed in the world, and yet the figure of George Russell remains relevant to many today through his poetry, through his ethereal artwork, and through his mystical writings.

Russell is warmly remembered as an active Irish nationalist, and in this capacity he edited the Irish Homestead (1904–23) and the Irish Statesman (1923–30), beacons of all things Irish. Such literary luminaries as the then young Patrick Kavanagh and the fellow-mystic W. B. Yeats graced the pages of these periodicals during Russell’s editorship and they were both staunchly Irish. This said they were the literary and liberated Ireland, touched by art, poetry and romantic idealism. After the Irish Statesman ceased publication in 1930 following a successful libel suit, the Irish Times wrote: Russell, and the Statesman, was often accused by the more bigoted and ultramontane sections of the population of being pagan and anti-Irish, but what they really meant was that he stood for intellectual liberty at a time when almost everyone else was clamouring for some restrictions everywhere.

Next to gainful employment as an editor, the core of Russell’s life work was mysticism. It appears in the fairy folk that are almost painted with light in his paintings, so ethereal is their presence, as well as in his poetry and in several books with mystical themes.

Unlike his literary companion Yeats, who became a ceremonial magician in the Golden Dawn, the sense of spirituality that touched Russell brought him to the door of the Theosophical Society in Dublin. Theosophy, which sports a slogan of There is no religion higher than truth fit well with the open sense of imbued mysticism that fills Russell’s books and poetry. While many in the Theosophical society were chasing Eastern systems of attainment, Russell’s seems uniquely occupied with all things Irish. Part of the reason for this is his mysticism arises from experience long before encountering Theosophy, observing, through the active imagination, a humming and eminent sense of life and presence in the nature that surrounded him. This evoked a romantic view of the natural world reminiscent of the Romantische Naturphilosophie of Germany. In the Candle of Vision he describes this experience as follows:

Every form on that tapestry appeared to be the work of the gods. Every flower was a word, a thought. The grass was speech; the trees were speech; the waters were speech; the winds were speech. They were the Army of the Voice marching over spirit; and I listened with my whole being, and then these apparitions would fade away and I would be the mean and miserable boy once more.

The word mystic is used to describe him in almost all biopics, and yet he was also essentially ‘pagan’ in his Pantheism. This led to a worldview of wonder and awe, taking note of the miracle of the small things in nature. In his poem Natural Magic he captures this attitude perfectly:

. . . "Oh, it was magical!

Can I Recall? The blinding sunlight ran

Over the burning hyacinth to fall

Starry upon water. So began

The incantation of the light which brought

Rapt face and fiery wing,

The Heaven of Heavens: a myriad marvel wrought

And from so slight a thing."

So you, the reader may well be asking why a group of Thelemites are republishing his book The Candle of Vision. Firstly we are an Irish Order of Thelema and a lot of Russells outlook on life was essentially Irish or Celtic in its attitude. The relationship with the world as magical in its own right, and the evocative possibilities of nature fit well with our general sensibilities. Further his journey inwards mirrors the journeys many today take through the introspective path of initiation.

The Irish Order of Thelema has a sense of place, and this is a theme that has run through all the thelemic work that has happened here in Ireland. The official start of Thelema in Ireland might begin with the forming of Fortified Island Oasis of the OTO in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1993, however before this, when the possibilities of that start were being mulled over, there were two brothers who would be instrumental in bringing Thelema to Ireland, and formulating a unique system that honours the sense of place and tradition, as reflected in the Irish Order of Thelema. When all that has come to pass in terms of Thelema in Ireland was but an idea, these two brothers found themselves reading Russell’s Candle of Vision and found an omen of sorts, a call to action in his visions.

At the time I was seventeen or eighteen my brain began to flicker with vivid images. I tried to paint these, and began with much enthusiasm … I asked myself what legend I would write under the picture. Something beyond reason held me, and I felt like one who is in a dark room and hears the breathing of another creature, and himself waits breathless for its utterance, and I struggled to understand what wished to be said, and at last, while I was preternaturally dilated and intent, something whispered to me, Call it the Birth of Aeon.

The word Aeon thrilled me, for it seemed to evoke by association of ideas, moods and memories most ancient, out of some ancestral life where they lay hidden; and I think it was the following day that, still meditative and clinging to the word as a lover clings to the name of the beloved, a myth incarnated in me, the story of an Aeon, one of the first starry emanations of Deity, one pre-eminent in the highest heavens, so nigh to Deity and so high in pride that he would be not less than a god himself and would endure no dominion over him save the law of his own will. This Aeon of my imagination revolted against heaven and left its courts, descending into the depths where it mirrored itself in chaos, weaving out of the wild elements a mansion for its spirit. That mansion was our earth and that Aeon was the God of our world…it was a day or two after that I went into the Library at Leinster House and asked for an art journal. I stood by a table while the attendant searched for the volume. There was a book lying open there. My eye rested on it. It was a dictionary of religions, I think, for the first word my eye caught was Aeon and it was explained as a word used by the Gnostics to designate the first created beings. I trembled through my body.

From this time Russell became known by this nom-de-plume, Aeon, abbreviated to Æ. This first born image of Aeon, the one who revolted in many ways mirrors the child principle in Thelema, and lord of the Aeon, Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

Finally, George Russell’s birthday, 10th of April, is the third day of the Writing of the Book in which the third chapter was transcribed. It is the chapter of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. On the 150th anniversary of his birth we release this reprint of what is a kind of mystical autobiography to remember the life of Æ. George William Russell was an author, poet, mystic and a strong advocate of liberty, both of State and of those subtle inner liberties which are just as hard won. There is much we find of merit in these sensibilities and thus we celebrate his legacy.

Brian Breathnach

Fortified Island Press

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/George_William_Russell_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_19028.jpg

George William Russell (

Æ)

10 April 1867 – 17 July 1935

Preface

WHEN I am in my room looking upon the walls I have painted I see there reflections of the personal life, but when I look through the windows I see a living nature and landscapes not painted by hands.

So, too, when I meditate I feel in the images and thoughts which throng about me the reflections of personality, but there are also windows in the soul through which can be seen images created not by human but by the divine imagination.

I have tried according to my capacity to report about the