George William Russell, better known as 1867-1935, mystic, poet, painter, journalist, editor, and practical rural economist, was a pivotal figure in the Irish literary revival and in the emergence of modern Ireland. From the beginning of the twentieth century he formed life-long friendships with W. B. Yeats, George Moore, Lord Dunsany, James Stephens, Stephen Mackenna translator of the Enneads of Plotinus, James Joyce, and other writers, thinkers, and artists, and was closely associated with the Irish National Theatre Society later the Abbey Theatre. In his biography of , Henry Summmerfield relates of him that probably in mid-1884 he began to experience waking dreams of astonishing power and vividness which seemed to be thrust into his consciousness by a mind which was not his. Images of cosmic happenings and other worlds overwhelmed him with a majesty far removed from anything of which he was aware in his own being. 'I remember how pure, holy and beautiful these imaginations seemed