View from the Big Hills

Over the past few months I’ve been carrying out some further research about the great artist and Theosophist, Art O'Murnaghan. As readers will know from my earlier post on him, the trip has taken me down some odd paths that at times appear strange bedfellows – WB Yeats, The Society of the Inner Light, Ella Young, Irish Nationalism, Sara Allgood, Theosophy, Irish Drama, Dion Fortune and Philadelphian whiskey maker, Joseph McGarrity . In these searches I was delighted to come across a 1946 book, All for Hecuba, by Anglo-Irish dramatist and actor, Micheál Mac Liammóir .  A photograph of the book's cover is shown below. In his autobiography Mac Liammóir provides a captivating description of Art acting in Denis Johnston’s play The Old Lady Says No . Art O’Murnaghan wielded the drumsticks with untiring devotion  and a rapt expression like a druid at some sacred rite. He was an elderly saint who worshipped Angus and Lu and the ancient  gods of  Ireland...

Having heard a little bit about the mysterious Maiya Tranchell Hayes, I will now move on to Dion Fortune's "Hibernian Adept." I first learned of Art O’Murnaghan from someone we shall call "Hestia" at a public discussion meeting in Friends Meeting House on St Martin’s Lane, London (pictured below).  The meeting was one of a series of public meetings advertised in both Prediction Magazine and Aquarian Arrow , and run by members of Charles Fielding’s The London Group in the 1980s.  Resident for many years in 3 Queensborough Terrace (pictured below), "Hestia" had been a member of the Fraternity of the Inner Light and had worked closely over many years with Dion Fortune, Charles Seymour, Christine Campbell Thomson, Gladys Lathbury, Margaret Lumley Brown, Arthur Chichester, Rosina Mann and Art O'Murnaghan.  During one of the breaks in a meeting, having by then worked out my nationality and accompanying passion for all things...