Sean Finn was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1889. He was orphaned at an early age and was bought up in the care of the Jesuit Fathers. There are no further records of Finn's life until the age of 39 when he is mentioned in the Irish Times of January 10th 1928 as 'a curious fellow who courts blasphemy through word and action but is said to bring great relief to those suffering from delusions and afflictions of mind and body'.

The mark of Sean Finn and his followers (The Arc of Being) was a symbol that he claimed was shown to him in a dream, somewhat Jungian in his thinking, he was a believer in a form of universal unconscious as a continuous subconscious communicator, he claimed to be unconcerned with what he called the 'ethereal physical'. Finn also stated that individuals who repeatedly drew this sign or symbol would have it appear in their dreams and gain access to each other and in time, what he called 'an everything'. It has been suggested that the symbol encompasses a past, present and future and all of time, which is symbolised by the overlap of the three elements in the center of the image. This may have been derived from Finn's slightly obscure statement that "we are but water and steam in an egg of ice".

Finn had the habit of burying himself in sand to communicate with 'an everything' and he had a small band of followers who perused this same practice. Each practitioner had a sandbox about the size of a coffin and a breathing tube, they would assist each other in this process and often remained in this state for up to 12 hours. In a later development a low electrical charge was passed through the sand at regular intervals. This process was known as 'Earthing'. His followers saw him as a sort of conduit to knowledge, not a holy man but someone who could perceive on another level and with other consciousness. He stated that after his physical existence he would attempt to communicate through dreams with the users of his symbol.

Finn was said to have kept many animals on a small farm at his house in Inchicore, Dublin. These were not for reasons of food but to attempt communion with their illusive forms of subconscious communication. He felt that there was much going on in a peripheral way, something only ever glimpsed and best intercepted by being ignored whilst remaining cognizant of this continual activity. The Finnian's shunned publicity and would allow no photography at their meetings or of the Earthing process. The group seems to only propagate through lineage.

By all accounts (and there are not too many) Finn came across as a scientific man though his ideas are certainly animistic. Some of his basic beliefs are laid down in 'Tenants of Existence' published in 1934, there are said to be coded references to 'The Finnians' in the works of some prestigious authors such as James Joyce and Flann O'Brien. There is only one surviving recording of Finn, a record was pressed of an interview with a BBC correspondent in Beirut in 1939. Some of his answers were reproduced in text by various groups, including a branch of Spiritualists, once supported by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Extracts are reproduced here and do not seem at all out of place with many of today's belief structures.

· Seek lucidity not truthfulness, there is no ultimate truth save what you already know and have always known.

· Of symbols and ritual, these are only devices used to focus meditation and reception, they themselves possess no power. They are keys within us, deliberate manifestations of a natural instinct.

· Do not be concerned with memory or prophecy, there is no past or future, all was, is, and will be, now.

· There is no spiritual hierarchy, as we must eventually obey only ourselves.

Finn lived in Inchicore, a small village on the outskirts of Dublin through most of the 1920's and 1930's though he frequently traveled abroad. He was eventually found dead in Berlin in 1942 in a basement surrounded by several prime breeds of dog. He was 53 years old and in seemingly good health, an autopsy proved inconclusive.