Plotinus

The founder, teaching in Rome in the 240s — an Egyptian-born Greek who would not sit for a portrait, on the grounds that the body was already a poor enough likeness of the soul. He never called himself anything but a reader of Plato, yet what he built is new: a single source beyond being, overflowing into Intellect, Intellect into Soul, Soul into the world, and every level yearning back toward the one above it. Porphyry reports he "attained union" four times in the years they were together. Nearly every emanation scheme in Judaism, Christianity and Islam for the next thousand years is downstream of him — including the Tree.