Irish author of children’s books and fairy-tales, theosopher, teacher of Celtic mythology and Celtic poet.
She was born in a protestant family, attended the Royal University and got a masters degree at Trinity College, Dublin. But as a member of the women’s paramilitary organisation “Cumann na mBan” (founded 2 April 1914), she smuggled rifles in support of Republican forces.
She was also an early member of the Hermetic Society, the Dublin branch of the Theosophical Society. She became a friend with the Irish revolutionary, illustrator, feminist and actress Maud Gonne, the first love of W.B. Yeats. Gonne illustrated Young’s first book Celtic Wonder Tales (1910).
She had a role in the Celtic revival among poets and writers like W.B Yeats, George William Russell (Æ, A.E. may also refer to the mathematical or spiritual term “almost everywhere” or “almost Everyman”), Kenneth Morris and became acquainted and learned from the dramatic “occult” mystic MacGregor Mathers, who performed in an Egyptian costume the rituals of Isis in the lodge of the Golden Dawn.
In a similar way, Ella Young, years later, was wearing the purple robes of a Celtic Druid, when teaching with charismatic enthusiasm at the University of Berkeley, California, about the seemingly death Ancient Celtic mythology with the for her really existent fairies and elves and of the benefits of talking to ancient trees. For her the metaphysical world of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” written in wartime, was a spiritual reality, just like the more ancient spiritual myths she delved in.
She impressed her American audience of now famous writers and artists among which were: The poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), the philosopher and priest Alan Watts (1915-1973), the famous Yosemite National Park photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and breaking all barriers (instruments) composer and musicologist Harry Partch (1901-1974), who designed new instruments to express himself and who also set some of her Celtic poetry into new music.
She became the “godmother” of the artists and spiritual seekers group called “The Dunites”, who tried to build a “Walden” kind of Utopia in the Oceano Dunes (The Dunites: Building a Utopia in the Oceano Dunes | San Luis Obispo | Artbound | KCET): “They were … a group of individuals, ‘individuals’ being the operative word, who wanted/needed to live outside the normal parameters of social living,” explained Jan Scott, collections curator for the South County Historical Society. “I don’t think they chose the county as much as the county chose them.”
In 1945 she wrote her autobiography “Flowering Dusk”.
Young died at old age (88) 23 July 1956 between the dunes of Oceano, California, .
Link to Wikipedia biography