George W. Russell (1867–1935), an Irish poet, painter, mystic, and journalist, used the pen name AE.
Russell joined the Theosophical Society in 1887, and the following year, when Madame Blavatsky visited Dublin, he studied under her.
Her thoughts had a profound impact on him.
He spent a few years living in a tiny Theosophist society in Dublin at 3 Upper Ely Place.
He wed Violet North, a fellow Theosophist, in 1898.
Russell founded the first Dublin Lodge of the Theosophical Society in April 1886 with Charles Johnston, Lewis Johnston, William Butler Yeats, H. M. Magee, and others.
He became acquainted with a number of American Theosophists, including Henry A. Wallace, James Morgan Pryse, and William Quan Judge.
You reject H. P. Blavatsky somewhat too lightly as "hocus pocus," he said in a letter to the Irish writer Sean O'Faolein, a month before he passed away.
Nobody has ever used "hocus pocus" to influence the thoughts of so many capable men and women.
The Secret Doctrine, a treatise on the world's religions that suggests or reveals an underlying oneness between all major faiths, is where her genuine effect may be discovered.
If you read it only as a romantic collection, it is one of the most thrilling and exhilarating novels produced in the previous 100 years.
Maeterlinck said that it contained the most magnificent cosmogony in the world.
Assuming they were drawn to "hocus pocus" is a poor compliment to men like Yeats, Maeterlinck, and other notable men, to men like Sir William Crookes, the greatest chemist of the modern era and a member of her society, to Carter Blake, F.R.S., the anthropologist, and to the scholars and scientists in numerous nations who read H. P. Blavatsky's books.
You may read "The Proem" to The Secret Doctrine if you ever find yourself at the National Library on Kildare Street and have a few hours to kill.
You'll learn the secret of how that amazing lady influenced her contemporaries.
Russell mentioned his friend William Quan Judge, who was a key co-founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875, in a letter to Carrie Rea.
Russell wrote: I have given you today... a book which I think you will appreciate Letters that have helped me.
They were written by W.Q. Judge, a guy I regard as the smartest and loveliest I have ever encountered (Z.I.Z.).
I hold him in higher regard than any other individual I am aware of.
I hope you will value them as much as the majority of us do.
They are not poorly written, but while reading them, keep in mind the things you should be keeping in mind at all times rather than fancy words or beautiful phrases.
I guess he only expresses what he is aware of.
One such buddy was James Morgan Pryse.
In his description of Russell and the Irish Theosophists, he stated, "I first met Russell on his numerous travels to the T.S.'s London Headquarters.
I once saw the Shamrock, a tiny steamer, approaching Dublin while on a walking trip in Wales and seeing Druidic antiquities on the Isle of Anglesea.
I boarded it and spent the remainder of my holiday with Russell and the other Dublin Lodge members.
I transferred the original H.P.B. Press, which belonged to Dr. Keightley, to Dublin in 1895 on the recommendation of Mr. Judge and Dr. Keightley.
I then joined the lodge there and assisted Russell and the others for more than a year in distributing the Irish Theosophist.
I would have stayed there longer, but Mr. Judge urged that I go to New York since he needed me there because of his sickness.
Russell produced a number of lovely small poems when he first started studying theosophy, but when I reconnected with him in Dublin, I discovered that he was really despondent since it seemed as if his Muse had abandoned him.
Every time he tried to compose a rhyme, it failed, and he sadly lamented, "My bogy is dead." Understanding the source of his difficulty, I explained to him that, when he was first introduced to Theosophy, he spontaneously expressed his own ideas in verse, but that his study of the philosophy had filled his mind with new ideas that he had not yet assimilated and could not, therefore, express naturally.
I told him he would write better than ever after he had internalized these concepts and expanded his mind.
He immediately accepted my offer to compose poetry for the magazine on an alternating basis as a way to get him going.
When I was still in my teens, I stopped composing poetry, therefore my main goal in producing poems for the magazine was to inspire Russell to get up again.
His "bogy" sprang from the grave, and his many mystical poetry went on to enhance literature for many years.
I put up a favorite hypothesis of mine: much as the Greek dramatists and those of Shakespeare's day, great writers, artists, etc., are usually found in groups.
In order to discuss our writing, we organized a small group of talented young Irish authors. We met once a week.
When Mr. Judge summoned me back to New York, I was forced to leave school, but Russell continued the project for years and saw it through to a glorious conclusion, inspiring a lot of talented authors to create the great Irish literary renaissance.
The captain P. G. Bowen was a friend of Russell's. When Bowen returned to Ireland in 1922 after fighting in South Africa and then France during the First World War, they became friends. AE was a Theosophist first and foremost.
He disclosed to me that his ultimate goal in life was to spread awareness of the World of Spirit, "where all hearts and minds are one," into the murky realm of human thinking, with the same crystalline honesty and innocent simplicity that always set him apart.
Not because he ever forgot about the equal needs of the rest of the world, but rather because he believed—and believed rightly, as every true Theosophist will agree—that we should cultivate the field that is closest to us with the tool that is most convenient.
He sought to bring it first and foremost to Ireland, his own country.
Because they provided a ready channel made by "the instrument built up by many lives" (his personal selfhood), his literary pursuits were not pursued in order to gain money or fame, things to which he was utterly indifferent.
Rather, they provided a channel through which "something of the rhythms of the ONE Life" might flow, and with their touch, "restore to some sort of tune the jangled strings of human consciousness." Henry A.
Wallace, an American Theosophist with whom Russell had a lot in common, was a correspondent.
They both came from small towns, produced agricultural publications, belonged to the Theosophical Society, and had mystic spiritual practices.
Wallace emphasized Russell's effect on rural America, recalling how A.E.'s Irish Homestead was read aloud in Iowa and how Wallace's Farmer included an item on Russell on August 15, 1913.
Wallace later rose through the ranks in the administration of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt to become the Secretary of Agriculture and eventually Vice President.
W. Q. Judge was friends with Irish immigrant and publisher of The Canadian Theosophist Albert E. S. Smythe (1861–1947).
In a letter to James M. Pryse from 1931, Russell explained: "The grey visitor was James M. Pryse who first instructed me in magic, conjuring up pictures in the astral light and holding them before my inner eyes so that I could see initiation scenes, the evolution of the astral from the physical, and the movement of cells and forces in the body." He showed me a significant portion of what he wrote in the "glass" while interpreting the Apocalypse.
He was one of the few T.S. members that had a considerable degree of occult power and knew things for himself.
He was a fairly enigmatic individual whose writing and speaking were informed by personal experience.
As far as I'm aware, only he, Judge, H.P.B., Subba Row, Damodar, and Jasper Niemand were T.S. members who had their own sources of information.
Though Pryse said Archibald Keightley, who seldom wrote, understood a lot, the majority of the others either wrote intuitively or recounted what they had read.
Russell left the Theosophical Society after the passing of William Quan Judge in 1896 and Madame Blavatsky in 1891. The Hermetic Society was thus founded by him.
