Cecil Collins (1908-1989) is arguably one of the greatest English visionary artists since Blake and Palmer. With emblematic figures such as the Fool, the Angel, the Pilgrim and the Sibyl in extraordinary landscapes, Collins portrayed an original and inspiring philosophy of life. He has been recognized as belonging to the Neo-Romantic movement of poetical art which flourished in the postwar period, but his dedication to depicting his mystic understanding made his work highly distinctive. His lyrical art is in some ways closer in spirit to the French Symbolists, especially Odilon Redon, and he has some affinities with Paul Klee and Georges Rouault.

All things bright and beautiful; all creatures great and small; all things wise and wonderful, the incredible Ashley Bryan illustrates them all!

The late Cecil Collins was 20th century English artist originally associated with the Surrealist movement.

Focusing on how spiritual initiation takes place in Western esoteric religious, literary, and artistic traditions from antiquity to the present, Restoring Paradise provides an introduction to Western esotericism, including early modern esoteric movements like alchemy, Christian theosophy, and Rosicrucianism. The author argues that European and American literature and art often entail a written transmission of spiritual knowledge in which writing itself works to transmute consciousness, to generate, provoke, or convey spiritual awakening. He focuses on several important figures whose work has not received the attention it deserves, including American writer and Imagist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and British painter Cecil Collins, among others. While Arthur Versluis presents a new way of understanding Western esotericism in a contemporary light, above all he has crafted a book about knowing, and about how we come to know, and what "knowing" by way of literature and language actually means.