The Candle of Vision

The Candle of Vision is a book by George William Russell, first published in 1918. Russell — better known by his pen-name Æ — assembles a series of luminous, reflective essays that chart his visionary experiences, Celtic-mythic imagination and perennial-mystic thinking.

The tone is part confessional record, part poetic meditation: he describes moments of clairvoyant insight, encounters with nature as a living presence, and the artist’s task of translating inward vision into form. Written during the height of the Irish Literary Revival, the book sits beside Russell’s poetry, painting and journalism as a practical expression of a wider spiritual and cultural ferment — friendships with figures like W. B. Yeats and an interest in Theosophical and Celtic traditions shaped its concerns.

Readers drawn to early-20th-century mysticism, symbolist poetry and the Celtic revival will find it a compact, idiosyncratic handbook of inward seeing that influenced other poets and artists seeking to recover mythic depth in modern life.