Rabbi Isaac Luria was a Jewish mystic in Safed. His name today is attached to all of the mystic thought in Safed: while his literary contribution to the Kabbalistic school of Safed was extremely minute (he only wrote a few poems), his fame led to the school and all its works being named after him. The main popularizer of his ideas was Hayim Vital, though Vital's claim to be the official interpreter of the Lurianic system was not undisputed. Wikipedia
Rabbi Isaac Halevi Luria has become famous as the "Ari," the holy lion; Ari represents the initials of Ashkenazi Rabbi Isaac As his name indicates, his family originally lived in Germany, whence they had wandered to Jerusalem. www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=111878
Though the impact of Lurianic Kabbalah upon the Jewish World, particularly the World of Chassidut, has been tremendous, his personal literary output was relatively meager. www.ou.org/about/judaism/rabbis/ari.htm
Only due to the INDIVIDUAL aspects of the Lurian kabbalah what is the everlasting method that is in this time revealed to the human race, there is a positive chance. www.kabbalah-arizal.nl/eng.html
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Isaac Luria. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Luria
