In the autumn of 1917 William Butler Yeats was at a turning point in his life and his two careers, the public one and the other, secret one. In his public career as an author, he had clawed his way up from among the crowd of writers whose work kept the British publishing industry of the time well fed, making a name for himself as a poet, playwright, essayist, critic, and one of the leading figures in the renaissance of Irish literary culture that would get its enduring name from one of Yeats’s own books of poetry: the Celtic Twilight. Gone were the days when he was so poor that he had to smear black shoe polish on his white socks to make the holes in his shoes less visible. The income from his writing was ample enough that he could think seriously about getting married and raising a family.
That opened the door to another major change in his life. He had spent decades hopelessly in love with Maud Gonne, who was perfectly willing to accept his adoration but had no further use for him—the modern term “friendzoned” fits his situation quite well. In the years leading up to 1917, however, Gonne found herself pitted against an unlikely rival: Georgianna Hyde-Lees, “George” to Yeats and his friends, a woman much younger than Gonne or Yeats. She wasn’t anyone’s idea of a raging beauty but she had a considerable intellect, shared nearly all of Yeats’s interests, and was also crazy in love with him. She was the obvious solution to Yeats’s romantic troubles, and Yeats finally accepted it.
Then there was his secret career, the hidden life he had as a participant in the burgeoning occult revival of the age. From his teen years on, Yeats had been fascinated by occultism; in 1885 he helped found the Dublin Hermetic Society; in 1887, after moving to London, he joined the London lodge of the Theosophical Society and was quickly advanced to the inner Esoteric Section of the Society; at some point in the three following years—there is some question about the date—he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most influential magical order of the time. It was a good fit; he rose quickly through its ranks, mastered its teachings and practices, and became one of its leading members.
That side of Yeats’s life was also in crisis in 1917. The original Golden Dawn had blown itself to pieces in a series of bitter political quarrels between 1900 and 1903. Yeats, who had been heavily involved in the struggles surrounding the order’s death, played a central role in founding the largest of the successor orders, the Stella Matutina. By 1917, however, that was fading under the pressures of dwindling membership and the increasing mental instabilities of its leader Christine Stoddart, who would soon abandon occultism and (under her pen name Inquire Within) go on to become one of the most strident conspiracy theorists of modern times. George was also a Stella Matutina initiate; she and her fiancé must have made many worried conversations about the future of occultism in Britain as the once-brilliant light of the Golden Dawn guttered out.
All this came to a head in the autumn of 1917. Three days after their marriage, while Yeats and his bride were honeymooning in the New Forest, George started working with automatic writing. That was a standard occult practice at the time, and one with which Yeats in particular was very familiar—as an active member of the Society for Psychical Research, the world’s premier parapsychological research organization in those days, he knew a great deal about its use by spiritualist mediums. It’s done by taking pen in hand, clearing the mind, and allowing the pen to move without conscious interference. It takes practice and a certain amount of skill to do well, but in the hands of a talented medium it can produce astonishing things. Entire novels have been written that way; so have the holy scriptures of numerous sects and faiths.
George was more than adequately prepared for the work ahead of her. Like her husband, she held the grade of Adeptus Major in the Stella Matutina, the highest level of initiation the order worked at that time. Then as now, earning that grade requires roughly as much work as getting a Ph.D. from a reputable university; the initiate who aspired to become an Adeptus Major was expected to master the entire body of magical lore that existed at that time, including astrology, geomancy, tarot card reading, practical clairvoyance, and the design and performance of elaborate rituals for many purposes, along with a thorough grasp of occult philosophy and the complexities of the Cabalistic Tree of Life.
To this substantial training George added her own considerable personal research into Renaissance occultism and the mystical writings of the ancient Greek Neoplatonists. She was in fact an even more learned and capable occultist than her husband, and only her dislike of publicity—in sharp contrast to his thirst for it—kept her from having a reputation in the occult community higher than his. The results of her experiment were of the robust quality that her background would suggest.
“What came in disjointed sentences,” Yeats wrote later, “in almost illegible writing, was so exciting, sometimes so profound, that I persuaded her to give an hour or two day after day to the unknown writer, and after some half-dozen such hours offered to spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together those scattered sentences. ‘No,’ was the answer, ‘we have come to give you metaphors for poetry.’” Metaphors for poetry there certainly were, and many of Yeats’s poems from 1918 on—including some of his most iconic work—drew heavily on the material George brought through.
Yet there was more than this, much more. The unseen communicators detailed a set of 28 basic human personality types symbolically linked with the phases of the Moon. They developed these from first principles, rooted in two essential human conflicts—one between the individual and his circumstances, the other between the individual and himself—and showed how these unfold in turn from the paired relations between the mind and the world it seeks to understand, on the one hand, and on the other the will and the dream it seeks to realize. The communicators applied these same principles to life, death, and reincarnation. Then, in a breathtaking leap, they did the same thing with history, showing that popular fashions, social and political movements, and whole civilizations followed the sequence mapped out on the wheel of the 28 phases.
As the quote given above suggests, the communications very soon settled into a dialogue in which Yeats posed questions and whatever moved George’s hand gave answers. This is an extremely common pattern in magic around the world. Those of my readers who know something of the history of Western occultism will know about Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, and his work with the disreputable Edward Kelly; Kelly did not use automatic writing—he had the gift of seeing visions in a crystal—but the interactions followed the same pattern, with Dee posing questions and Kelly passing on answers from the spirits. On the far side of Eurasia, similarly, one very common pattern in Japanese magic is for a male wizard to work with a female medium; he conjures the spirits, and she relays their answers. The Yeatses were thus working in an ancient and widespread tradition.
Their contribution to that tradition is unusually well documented, as a result of the impressive energy of a handful of scholars intrigued by the occult dimensions of Yeats’s work. Every surviving scrap of George’s automatic writings, Yeats’s detailed notes on the later phases of their work together, the hefty card file he created to keep track of the teachings, and the early drafts of the book that would become A Vision have been published in four hefty volumes. I have copies of all four sitting on my bookshelf, as well as quite a bit of academic literature exploring them, and we’ll be discussing the material from those sources as we proceed.
After a few years, the method of communication changed. George developed the ability to enter trance and repeat the words of the spirits while sound asleep. Yeats continued his role as questioner, though he also took on the task of writing everything down. He also began the gargantuan task of assembling the material he and George had received into publishable form. The result was a book titled A Vision. The first edition, dedicated to one of Yeats’s occult teachers, privately printed, and sold only to subscribers—nearly all of them Yeats’s fellow occultists—saw print in 1925.
A dozen years passed. In 1937, after many more sessions talking with the communicators and many more hours wrestling with the ideas they had passed on, Yeats published a second edition, which was released to the ordinary book trade by one of his usual publishers. This second edition is the one that has been widely available ever since. It is a far more polished, more literary version, and it includes some of Yeats’s best prose, including his one venture into comedy—a tour de force with so lively a wit and so perfect a mastery of deadpan humor that I wish he’d written much, much more along the same lines. Yet it also leaves out a significant amount of material the first version had included.
That was anything but an accident. Between 1925 and 1937, the occult community Yeats had hoped to influence with A Vision had all but collapsed. The reason for that collapse was the coming of the Great Depression.
Few people nowadays still remember just how huge a chasm ran through Western society before 1929: the gulf between “the masses and the classes,” to use a term current in those days. The dividing line was whether you had enough invested wealth that you did not have to work for a living. Respectable people, by the standards of the time, were those who supported themselves on the income from their investments; some men in that category still drew salaries as business executives, politicians, military officers, or a handful of other privileged jobs, but many others did not, and nearly all the women in the respectable classes stayed out of the work force. Nor did they have much to do at home; in those days, remember, every family above the working class had at least a few servants to take care of cooking, cleaning, and child care.
The occult community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was one of many social phenomena that benefited from these arrangements. Well-to-do women in particular provided the backbone of many occult organizations by volunteering time and donating money. Occultism was also one of the few fields where women could take leadership positions; Helena Blavatsky and Mary Baker Eddy, the founders of the Theosophical Society and Christian Science respectively, were only the most successful of a bevy of ambitious women who vaulted out of the spheres assigned them by 19th-century culture to become influential figures.
The economic system that undergirded those arrangements, though, was already in decline by the time the First World War broke out, and came apart completely thereafter. The vast inflows of international wealth that streamed into stocks in the late 1920s were driven there by a desperate effort to shore up a failing system, since most other investments were no longer yielding incomes sufficient to keep the privileged classes in the style to which they had been accustomed. Those inflows proceeded to drive a classic bubble and bust. By the time markets bottomed out in the early 1930s, a very large share of the formerly privileged classes had been financially ruined—and those occult organizations that survived the collapse of their financial and volunteer support were eking things out on a small fraction of their earlier income.
All this was in the background of Yeats’s decision to revise and republish A Vision. Where the first edition was intended to speak to participants in his secret career as an occult adept, the second edition was addressed to the audience of his public career as a literary figure, and was reworked with that in mind. Much of the explicit occultism in the earlier edition was removed, and replaced by a faux-bashful pose of apparent disbelief and an insistence that, after all, it really was just a collection of metaphors for poetry. The second edition, complete with posturing, is the only one that most people who have encountered A Vision know, and it is the one that we will be using to begin with in the posts that follow.
Up until quite recently, that would have been the only viable option, since the 1925 edition of A Vision remained out of print and almost inaccessible for decades. Not until 1978 did it see print again, in a critical edition from an academic press, and not until 2008 did a more widely available edition come out as part of Yeats’s collected works. The 2008 edition is a very solid piece of work, well stocked with relevant footnotes, and I have made considerable use of it in my own studies. It raised only the smallest blip on the radar screens of the modern occult scene, however. Nor have Yeats’s occult writings more generally received anything like the attention they might be expected to get from today’s students and initiates of the Golden Dawn tradition, or the occult community in general.
My attempt to change that will see print later this year. Yeats’s published works went out of copyright a few years ago, clearing the field for writers on the fringe like me. I’ve accordingly assembled and footnoted an anthology of Yeats’s important magical writings, including the 1925 edition of A Vision as well as the long essay Per Amica Silentia Lunae, which we’ll be discussing in quite some detail in the posts to come. The anthology has already been picked up by Aeon Books, I’m glad to say; I’ll keep my readers informed as publication gets nearer.
I should probably suggest here that visitors from the academic community who may be panicking at the thought of a mere occultist leaving muddy bootprints all over the floors of their ivory towers should breathe deeply and calm down. Mine is not a scholarly edition and makes no pretense to be one. It is intended for the use of my fellow students of the occult, and I sincerely doubt that even so much as a single copy will ever cast its ill-omened shadow across the threshold of the hallowed halls of Academe. What professional scholars might encounter if they decide to go slumming in the mean streets of occultism is no business of mine.
To begin with, though, we’ll start with the readily available 1937 edition of A Vision, which can be bought in the current scholarly edition from Scribners for what (as scholarly editions go) is a remarkably restrained price, or picked up for a few bucks in trade paper editions in the used-book market. Yes, you’ll need a copy if you want to follow along.
Two of the four parts of the 1925 edition were titled, in reference to the frame story Yeats created, “What the Caliph Partly Learned” and “What the Caliph Refused to Learn;” in homage to this, and also with reference to the framing story provided by the history of the book, I will be dividing my commentary into two parts, titled “What the Public Partly Learned”—this comprises the material in the 1937 edition—and “What the Public Refused to Learn”—this comprises the material found in the 1925 edition that was not carried over, along with some material from the original communications that Yeats left out of both editions of the book.
Yes, he left things out. One of the issues we’ll be dealing with constantly in the posts to come is the spaces that Yeats constantly and deftly carved out between events as they happened and events as he portrayed them. Richard Ellman’s deservedly famous 1948 biography Yeats: The Man and the Masks captured in its subtitle one of the core themes of Yeats’s life. As we’ll see, the mask represents one of the basic principles of the teachings communicated in A Vision. It’s impossible to make sense either of A Vision or Yeats without remembering that to him, the mask and the one who wears it are always opposed to each other.
The creative writer, after all, is in the business of telling the truth by telling lies, writing poems or plays or stories about people who never existed in order to show people who do exist something about their own lives they might otherwise never see. In much the same way, the operative occultist is in the business of telling lies so that they can become the truth; what is a magical ritual, after all, but a symbolic acting-out of events that haven’t happened, in order to help them happen? Yeats was both creative writer and operative occultist, and he combined the two in ways that the occult community by and large has yet to understand, much less imitate.
In the months and years ahead, we’ll be trying to follow the thread of the occult teachings that George Yeats spun out of the Unseen, and her husband wove into a shimmering fabric or an entangling net. The literary dimensions of A Vision will also occupy us now and then, but those aren’t central to the discussions ahead. Instead, I propose to approach A Vision as one of the great but neglected works of 20th-century occult philosophy, comparable in important ways to Dion Fortune’s The Cosmic Doctrine. I hope to show readers not only how to understand the Yeats’s great and subtle work, but also how to use it.
Assignment: If you’re interested in participating in this journey, you’ll need a copy of the 1937 edition of William Butler Yeats’s book A Vision. (If you’re not sure which edition you’re looking at, and the book itself doesn’t say, check the table of contents; if the first section is titled “A Packet for Ezra Pound,” it’s the 1937 edition, while if it’s divided into four books and the first one is titled “What the Caliph Partly Learned,” that’s the 1925 edition.) Yes, you can get both, and we’ll be studying both of them along with Yeats’s other occult writings, but we’re going to start with “A Packet for Ezra Pound,” and it’s only in the later edition.
You might read that over the next month if you have the chance. It has three parts—“Rapallo,” “Introduction to ‘A Vision,’” and “To Ezra Pound”—and the connections between them are by no means obvious. There is a figure moving through the shadowy background of all three parts, and he wears a mask; one of his names, but only one of them, is William Butler Yeats. See if you can figure out what he’s up to.
I’m delighted to see this series begin! I’ll be searching for a paper copy of the 1937 edition of A Vision, but in the meantime, I found a digital copy at:
https://ia904504.us.archive.org/21/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.187696/2015.187696.A-Vision.pdf
JMG, wonderful to see this. I am very much looking forward to this next series of commentary.
Fascinating!
I have been thinking a great deal about the Moon lately, looking to make a greater study of it. This is timely. I will prepare. Thank you.
Lately I have been writing a monthly post, for the transitions of the Zodiak, and also a study of the Tarot. Much of that stems from your recent series on Eliphas Levi.
I also took up bookbinding, to see about true self-publishing, of that poem about the Octagon Society.
https://williamhunterduncan.substack.com/p/transitions-pisces-to-aries-2025
I’m looking forward to this! I was thinking that might be something I would like to read even before I got your announcement of your Seminar/Class/discussion group.
As a heads up to any who are interested, there is a complete scan of the 1937 version available for free on the Internet Archive.
Also, I do wish I had known all this about Yeats back when I was taking Theater History. It would have made the in-class discussion of “On Baile’s Strand” so much more fun.
I’m excited to follow along. Going to try to find the 1937 edition…
It’s too bad that academia and the public at large shun esoteric ideas. Plenty of scientists, philosophers, and authors were secretly involved in the occult. The occult is something that many, many people are interested in, but few openly admit it. I think it’s tragic that Yeats had to stuff parts of his work in the closet in order to make it marketable.
Congratulations on your edition coming out in the future from Aeon. Looking forward to this journey. The only other person I know who wrote about A Vision from an esoteric perspective was Robert Moss, who is a big Yeats fan. The library has a copy of a three volume set of the Vision Papers, which I’ve looked at in the stacks anymore. I don’t have direct access to the stacks anymore (I work in a different building the past five years)… I was sad to see all the copies of A Vision are either lost, billed, or missing. I ended up splurging on a used copy of the one you mentioned the revised edition, because I figure its a good investment, and I don’t see a financial bubble happening over it any time soon. I will look forward to yours in time.
Ezra Pound was lurking around quite a bit himself, with the various masks he wore.
I was reading H.D. ‘s complete poems for awhile. Got through a couple books and stopped. I may go back. Her and Pound were of course a thing for awhile, but she seems to me another link in the revival of polytheism here in the west. I’m not sure about her direct connection to occultism though.
This is going to be awesome, thank you.
I’m so excited by this- I read the 1925 edition several years ago, and would fall asleep at night visualizing the gyres. I think I’m easy to get more out of it.
I’m looking forward to this discussion. You brought up Yeats’ Vision several years ago, and I’ve been hoping you’d discuss it ever since.
I’m sure your publishers’ lawyers have looked at this, but one of the complicating factors with the copyright status of Yeats’ works is that US copyright law does not include the rule of the shorter term — a work can be in the public domain in the country where it was first published but still under copyright in the US.
That, combined with the rules that apply to works published before the Berne Convention was adopted, seem to imply that while Yeats’ works are firmly in the public domain in the the British Isles, they might still be in copyright here — in particular, the 1937 edition will likely have to wait until 2033 or 2034 to be in the public domain here, by the 95 year rule that applies to works published during that period and subsequently renewed.
The original 1925 edition is even more complicated, because it sounds as if it wasn’t published in the States until the 1978 edition. The private publication in his home country might have been enough to start the 95 year timer ticking here, but it might not. I admit that’s beyond my knowledge of the law.
I bring this up because, if I recall correctly, your publisher for these is in the UK, so this will be fine for them, but your American readers might need to wait a while before being able to get copies of your new books.
(I got interested in this issue when I ran across the debates over the status of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard’s works — most of which are now considered in the public domain due to non-renewal despite some unsubstantiated claims to the contrary in the case of Lovecraft.)
Also, for those who go seeking out used copies of the book, I’ve verified through the images on eBay listings that this edition (I hope these come through):
and this edition:
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are both the 1937 editions. Copies of each can currently be had for substantially less than the current official, annotated publication, though of course that’s subject to change as we all go rushing to get copies.
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May JRuss’s friend David Carruthers quickly find a job of any kind at all that allows him to avoid homelessness, first and foremost; preferably a full time job that makes at least 16 dollars an hour.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Pierre in Minnesota be filled with the health, vitality, and fertility he needs to father a healthy baby with his wife.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May 1 Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties, and may she quickly be able to resume a normal life.
May Ron M’s friend Paul fully recover from the debilitating illness that has rendered him bedridden as well as recover from the spiritual malaise/attack that he believes is manifesting the illness.
May Jennifer’s newborn daughter Eleanor be blessed with optimal growth and development; may her tongue tie revision surgery on Wednesday March 12th have been smooth and successful, and be followed by a full recovery.
May Mike Greco, who had a court date on the 14th of March, enjoy a prompt, just, and equitable settlement of the case.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica be blessed and soothed; may she discover the path out of her postpartum depression, and be supported in any of her efforts to progress along it; may the love between her and her child grow ever more profound, and may each day take her closer to an outlook of glad participation in the world, that she may deeply enjoy parenthood.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Jennifer and Josiah and their daughters Joanna and Eleanor be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
The 1925 version is readily available from the big slimy river site, and presumably all good bookshops, but I can’t see the 1937 version.
I have just ordered a second hand copy from ebay but I will have to see which version it is when it arrives.
Goldenhawk, good. All of Yeats is out of copyright these days; I’m hoping that someone does both versions of A Vision and puts them up on Project Gutenberg or someplace similar.
C.M., delighted to hear it.
William, and delighted to hear this as well.
Dandy, it’s worth your while. I found my first copy at a rundown old used book store in Seattle, and spent months going back over it again and again.
Calliope, well, there’s that! His later plays and poetry are full of imagery and ideas from A Vision. The widening gyre in “The Second Coming”? We’ll be talking about that shortly.
Enjoyer, any edition that’s not explicitly labeled the 1925 edition is the 1937 edition. If it’s not Volume XIII of the collected works or titled A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision (1925), you’re good. As for the prejudice against occultism, granted, but I expect that it’ll take centuries more before that finally trickles away.
Justin, yeah, that’s why I shelled out the money for all four volumes of The Vision Papers myself, and why I have two copies of A Vision, one reading copy and one critical edition. As for Moss, I’m not familiar with his work; can you point me to some titles?
Katsmama, I’ll do my best to help.
Slithy, apparently the copyright was not extended, as every source I have been able to find — including Project Gutenberg, which is always very careful with such things — lists Yeats’s works as public domain in the US. PG has 57 volumes of his work in their collection, so I doubt the Yeats estate managed ot miss them! As for images, I’m the only one who can post them here. The rule is simple: if it’s not Volume XIII of the collected works (with a tower on the cover) or the critical edition I showed up there in the post, it’s the 1937 edition. Easier still: if the cover says A Vision and you don’t see the number 1925 anywhere on it, it’s the right one.
Quin, thank you for this as always.
Christine, if it doesn’t say “1925” on it, it’s the 1937 edition.
Moss writes about Yeats particularly in “A Dreamers Book of the Dead.”
Here is a short bit on A Vision and how it relates to Moss’s book, from his blog:
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2016/03/dreaming-back-yeats-on-how-dead-get.html
And here is another interesting one Moss wrote about Yeats and the illustrator Edmund Dulac.
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2015/12/yeats-secret-working-mind-and.html
Since you like history I would also recommend Moss’s book The Secret History of Dreaming, which shows the influence of dreams in our waking lives across time. He calls them histories secret engine.
A hard-to-find PDF of the 1925 private edition of A Vision can be downloaded here:
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-files/assets/ebooks/ebooks-2011/a-vision/WB-YEATS_A-VISION.pdf
I have uploaded that PDF to archive.org, but it hasn’t shown up there yet.
The 1937 edition is easier to find scanned online.
In looking at my Yeats collection, I made the serendipitous discovery that I have both the 1925 and 1937 editions.
Here are a few more short Robert Moss blog posts on Yeats:
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2010/11/yeats-and-dusky-path-of-dream.html
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2015/10/yeats-on-complementary-images.html
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2016/06/visiting-yeats-in-magic-cottage.html
I’m excited for this, and just ordered my copy. Just looking at the image, gears are turning. 28 moon days first to me is the lunar mansions, but are they also conflating these with what are called “tithis” in Vedic astrology, or is there a separate tradition for days of the waxing and waning Moon in the West? Or is this something different? I guess I’ll see soon anyway. In Vedic astrology we have 15 waxing and 15 waning days (so 30 total) – the 15th waning is the “new Moon” and the 15th waxing is the “full moon” and they’re separate from the Nakshatras (which are mostly now used as a set of 27, the 28th is used only for particular purposes). It’s interesting that yesterday as I was listening to my lectures while stacking wood, that one phrase that really stood out to me is that “if you don’t know the tithis, you don’t really know Vedic astrology”, so tithis are on my mind.
I am looking forward to your take on W. B. Yeats. His poem, The Second Coming, has been bouncing around my head for a few years now and one of the highlights of my only trip to Ireland was a exhibit on Yeats at a museum where I saw the original draft of The Second Coming with his notes and corrections.
Thanks John
“The creative writer, after all, is in the business of telling the truth by telling lies, writing poems or plays or stories about people who never existed in order to show people who do exist something about their own lives they might otherwise never see. ”
How much karma will accrue from being a creative writer?
The 10 yamas and niyamas are my path; truthfulness is a fundamental pillar. Now I see that my path isn’t being a creative writer; my goal would be more of a historian or a philosopher (which isn’t the same as metaphysics), but I digress.
JMG, do you ever plan to write about one of the great titans of the 19th century (William Blake)? Even if it’s just in a Fifth Wednesday post
Wow, I’m surprised how many months have passed since you started with Eliphas Levi.
JMG, your publisher(s) must be endlessly intrigued by what you present to them. Never anything dull for sure.
Well, this is delightful news! I recall borrowing a copy of A Vision (1937) from the public library a few years back and gave it a go. It felt like I was swimming against a strong current: much effort, but little to show for it (I experience this with a fair number of Western occult books – for better or worse, my brain is hard-wired to think in terms of stories). In the end I dropped it before finishing it, figuring that some other time will be more propitious for diving deep into it. Perhaps now is that time!
Justin, thanks for this. I’ll keep an eye out for his work.
Robert M, thank you for this!
Marlena13, good. You’re well prepared.
Justin, and thanks for this also.
Isaac, divination by the age of the Moon is fantastically ancient. There’s a version of it in Hesiod and another in the Coligny calendar, a Gaulish calendar from the time of the ancient Druids. As we’ll be discussing in great detail, though, A Vision is not an astrological system; the lunar phases are symbolic, and the most effective way to turn Yeats’s system into horseradish is to try to interpret it based on the actual position of the Moon in the horoscope. (Inevitably, even though Yeats himself warned against this, there have been attempts to do so.) Stay tuned!
Raymond, it’s a truly great poem. We’ll talk about it and other Vision-themed poetry in due time.
Zarcayce, as Lao Tsu put it, the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Language is always a falsification of reality, and those of us who spin stories using language tend to be acutely aware of that; we use the tools we have. As for Blake, hmm. I’ll consider that in due time.
Michael, I consider myself very fortunate to have found a publisher who can handle my vagaries!
Ron, I’ll take it a step at a time, and you can let me know if it’s making sense.
@ JMG/Zarcayce “as Lao Tsu put it, the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Language is always a falsification of reality”
Thank you! I am always surprise at how many people get confused by this first line of Tao Te Ching. Language can only point to things but is not the thing.
Glad to see that “A Vision” is now a focus! Looking forward to it.
As for copyright, this is a useful resource:
https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/watch/about/
On a tangent, the issue of finances is perhaps the major disconnect I encounter while reading vintage books such as Agatha Christie or P. G. Wodehouse. I’m perfectly prepared for different attitudes toward ethnicity, roles for women, religion, etc., but the idea that “a gentleman does not work for a living” is just so antithetical to my Midwestern American farmer/working class roots, I sometimes have to stop reading to recalibrate. “Alas, we cannot marry because I have no money! It is a reasonable decision for me to murder my helpless old auntie for her fortune, instead of just manning up and getting a job!” 🙄I have to remind myself that it genuinely was unthinkable in those days for that social class (on par, perhaps, with a contemporary middle-class person giving up his car?) The past truly is another country, which of course is what makes the current chronocentric revisions of history in TV and popular fiction so very tiresome…
Ordered a copy of both the 25 and the 37 editions, downloaded the .pdf for the 37 edition. Should be ready for this coming Wednesday. Now that I am no longer in the active workforce (as of 1st of Spring this year an auspicious an not entirely planned turning), I hope I’ll be able to follow along. Started in on the Levi but had to drop out. Uneven energy levels (always, not a new thing) and full-time work not being conducive to study commitments, alas. With one part of that equation taken out, I can probably deal with the first as the swings happen within a more or less cycle of days per week. Thank you for helping unravel this otherwise pretty impenetrable and famous corpus!
I have downloaded both copies of A Vision, and will be following along here with great interest, whether I have anything to contribute or not.
Thank you. 🙂
Dear me, does this mean the series on Levi was finally concluded? I was too much a latecomer to occultism to follow along with that one — jumping in at the middle wouldn’t do. But this time, I do plan to follow along. I’m very excited to see where it leads. I noticed right away there are a few parallels with the recently concluded series on Wagner as well…
This is certainly very interesting and there seem to be a number of easily accessed copies of the ’37 edition available as PDFs online.
Naturally I had a poke around and discovered that some sources claim that Yeats spent his honeymoon in Ashdown Forest Hotel near Forest Row (featured in a Sherlock Holmes story) Sussex. The New Forest is further west. Apparently he spent time in the Ashdown area along with Ezra Pound at an earlier stage of his life, so it’s plausible at least although I’d accept the possibility that he was in both places.
There is a substantial hotel in Forest Row now known as Ashdown Park Hotel that might have been the place. It’s close enough to where I live that I’d be happy to ask them if they have any record of Yeats’ stay.
@JMG
Regarding Mrs. Yeats’ automatic writing, this reminds me of something my grandfather told me. He knew an elderly gentleman who passed away in 2015 (give or take 2-3 years), who had written a translation of the Mahabharata in my native language (no, it’s not Hindi). This gentleman used to hear a voice speak to him, telling him, “Get up, take your pen and paper and start writing as I tell you”, and then dictate the story to him, and he would write ceaselessly till the dictation was done. This happened at really any random time – he could never predict when he would “receive the order” telling him to write the dictated material, and of course, the dictation itself varied in length from one session to another. It took him quite a few years to write it, but once it was done, it was published. I never met him, but my grandpa told me that only “spiritually developed souls” are able to do this as the voice giving the dictation was that of a deity – maybe, the Yeats couple were pretty spiritually developed souls themselves? Fascinating stuff nonetheless.
This looks interesting! It’s far above my pay grade, but I plan to at least read the monthly essay and the comments, as I did with the previous book clubs. I can honestly say that even this low-effort approach is of value. Something for everybody!
OtterGirl
It’s possible my grasp of reality has finally slipped its mortal coil, but this piece does not read properly in the voice of the JMG I’ve been following since the early ArchDruid days. ???
Michael, it astonishes me that more writers don’t talk about this. We of all people know how hard it is to make words come even approximately into a relationship with experience.
LeGrand, thanks for this.
Sister Crow, have you by any chance read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge? He wrote it just as the old system was going to bits, and the thing that tells you that the protagonist has broken away entirely from the old order is that he’s cashed in the last of his investments and plans on working his way across the Atlantic as a sailor. More generally, it casts a fascinating light on the whole system as it was in its last days.
Clarke, congrats on your retirement and I hope all goes well.
Scotlyn, you’re most welcome.
Deneb, er, yes, and I noted as much in the book club post last month.
Andy, thanks for the correction. Please do see what you can find!
Viduraawakened, a very classic example! As for Hindi, well, as I recall, India has hundreds of languages, some of them as different from one another as English is from Vietnamese, so I certainly wasn’t going to assume which of them your grandfather’s friend used.
Ottergirl, my goal in these book clubs is to make the ideas accessible even to those who don’t have an extensive background in occultism, so you can let me know how well I’m ding.
Karalan, well, I certainly didn’t have anyone else write it! All posts on this blog are by me, without help of ghostwriters — or shoddy cyberplagiarism programs, if that’s what you were implying.
Viduraawakened #31:
“… but my grandpa told me that only “spiritually developed souls” are able to do this as the voice giving the dictation was that of a deity – maybe, the Yeats couple were pretty spiritually developed souls themselves? ”
In my case, the telepathic message from the deity would probably assume the transcribed form of an off-color limerick. But its hidden meanings would only be revealed successively, layer-by-layer, through profound discursive meditation.
Speaking of the Celtic Twilight, I suppose I have to read a good biography of Yeats. Do you have one you’d recommend? What I am curious about now is his relationship with Alfred Perceval Graves, who was a president for many years of the Irish Literary Society, founded by Yeats and others.
I was reading some poetry this past March by Samuel Ferguson, and I started digging around in the catalog here at work. I saw his book of poems had an introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves. Apparently Ferguson was a forerunner to the Celtic Twilight. The other book he wrote that caught my eye was “Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland”
On archive here: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/oghaminscription00ferguoft/oghaminscription00ferguoft.pdf
This connection between Ferguson, the Ogham, the elder Graves, must have all been a strong influence on Robert Graves, and his subsequent work on the Ogham.
Then you have Florence Farr (who also palled around with Pound) mentioned in the intro to the 1925 version (Thanks Robert Mathiesen), and all of these other characters from the G.D. years he mentions. What a rich literary & magical milieu it must have been.
I’m rather curious about all these webs of connection linking people and their ideas together.
Thanks, JMG – that sounds like a sweet deal!
Sister Crow, have you by any chance read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge?
I have not, though weirdly enough I was surveyed by a marketer for the movie version with Bill Murray, many and many a year ago. I will add it to the list–the book, not the Bill Murray movie, that is.
Looking forward to it! I have loved Yeats’s poetry for many years.
This *is* going to be an interesting series. I’m greatly looking forward to it.
Can we infer a humorous literary reference at this precise point to a second coming and turning of the gyre, of sorts?
Kindly,
Boy
So look forward to your future posts for our studies, JMG. Thank you.
Oddly?, I’m currently binge watching the PBS old Masterpiece Theater series “Downton Abby” where we’re just at around 1917. For those who do watch dvds/movies/television, this series totally nails how the very upper classes were expected to behave and live, contrasted with their servants and the working classes, Of course, here we are at WW1, with the impending changes afoot.
Hi John Michael,
History is a good guide here, and it is always unwise to rest upon unearned income. A little whisper suggests that the bond vigilantes by acting so, may have over played their hand and just signed their doom. In this instance, the real power lays with the issuer, not the holder / trader. We’ll see. It was going to happen anyway.
Ah, I see, whilst nervously peering through the door you’ve just opened. What lays within is the important question. Which I also note you did not answer, a second reading revealed err, nothing. If I may suggest, that the pivot point between the two is action / acts, or whatever you want to call it.
And if I may say so, the future belongs to those who know how to get by on less. Ventured to a nearby town yesterday to pick up some supplies, and was quite alarmed by the sticker price. Oh well, render unto Caesar and stuff. But still, I was taken aback.
Cheers
Chris
Hi all,
This will be my first journey with the ecosophia book club. I got my grubby hands on a copy of the 1937 edition and look forward to diving in!
A tangent but I was surprised to see that Robert Moss was some sort of esoteric dream philosopher now. I first became aware of him a little over a decade ago because of a thriller novel he wrote called The Spike, which postulated a sort of late 1970’s version of the RussiaGate hullabaloo. It’s always interesting to see people go on to do wildly different things later in their careers.
Cheers,
JZ
JMG, I reckon you have the best blog on the net, even with all the chaos, there’s always JMG’s blogs!
“If all else fails, there’s always books!” 😊
I enjoyed the two previous series although I must admit I haven’t yet read the Parsifal libretto, I’ve got it set up as a pdf to print out, as well as the Wolfram what’s his name one.
I’ve also got a couple of books, Parzival and the Stone from Heaven by Lindsay Clarke and Parzival or a Knight’s Tale by Richard Monaco.
Have you or anyone else read either?
I bought the Revised version of The Vision a number of years ago, I wonder where I got the idea for that? 🤔 So I’m looking forward to diving in.
I’ve downloaded the original version and I’m in the process of cropping all the pages and squashing it on to as few A4 pages as possible, I can get 3 pages of the book per page, so when I’m done I’ll let you know, in case anyone wants to print out a copy for themselves.
It won’t be great quality, the scans aren’t that great and were done in colour instead of black and white, but it should be good enough to read.
One other small detail regarding one of your photos, the picture of the building is I believe Federal Hall with the state of George Washington in front.
I think the NY Stock Exchange is at right angles to it and doesn’t have steps .
Regards, Helen in Oz,
Where summer temperatures continue despite it being Autumn
Re writers’ travails: “Adam’s Curse” (Yeats)
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
I read about half of both editions, and greatly prefer the 1937. I look forward to reading what you make of the revelatory contents, with all the stuff about cones and phases of the moon. I have to admit that my eyes glazed over at this point, but you have a track record of interpreting such things in an illuminating way, and have apparently given this a lot of thought.
“…I sincerely doubt that even so much as a single copy will ever cast its ill-omened shadow across the threshold of the hallowed halls of Academe.”
Setting aside the “hallowed,” I am sure that you do have academic readers, who for the most part would love to see you write in their fields. To my mind, anybody who studies their subject in a critical and systematic way is a scholar.
As I know very little about Yeats, I don’t have much to say about this book club, other than that I will be eagerly following along.
To start with, thank you, everyone, for your enthusiasm!
Justin, every bio of Yeats I’ve read so far has been biased one way or another; very few people seem to be able to deal with the man rather than getting hung up on the masks. (I’m no exception here — what interests me about Yeats is his occult involvements, and so I doubtless overemphasize those compared to those of his interests that don’t catch my fancy.) If someone else knows of a good bio of the man, I’d like to hear of it. Thanks for the pointer to Ferguson!
Sister Crow, to my mind it’s the best of Maugham’s novels. Enjoy!
Boy, you can certainly infer a reference, but it’s not humorous at all. It’s deadly serious. We’ll get to that, too, in due time!
Chris, I expect prices to go up in a lot of places, precisely because they’re beginning to come back down in the US. One way or another, though, frugality will be even more essential in the years ahead.
John, good heavens. I think I may have read that back when it first came out. Hmm!
Helen, thank you! Equally, when other communities fail, there’s still my commentariat — the best commentariat on the internet, full stop, end of sentence. I haven’t read either of those books, though.
LeGrand, thanks for this. I have immense sympathy for poets, and all those who have to labor over words. That’s never been my experience — but then, of course, my writing will never win me a Nobel Prize in literature.
Ambrose, I’ve had repeated interactions with academics in several fields I write in. Did they express delight in my work in those fields? No, Socrates, they did not. Most of them were apoplectic that someone who doesn’t have a paid position in the academic industry would dare to track proletarian mud onto their exalted subject, and told me so in no uncertain terms. Some of them were quite nasty about it. That being the case, I admire your enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, and wish that more academics shared it.
JMG said: “Did they express delight in my work in those fields? No, Socrates, they did not.”
Hah! I’m going to steal this rejoinder. My friends and family are going to love it, the way they love it when I say, “but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” After they recite a litany of complaints.
Pardon my skepticism but that channeled classification of everything into phases of the moon, it struck my cynical jaded eyes to be a little too much like the Timecube Guy. You know, everything is a cube! Time is a cube! Don’t you see it?
I have to ask, if Yeats were alive today, would he declare war on the internet after he started arguing with them or not? Even Elon Musk declared war on the internet and he was arguing about public policy. The Timecube Guy definitely declared war on the internet.
I dunno, maybe I’m the one with blinkers on and am just not Seeing Things Properly, but I remain skeptical and questioning. I think also some of these writers from Beyond, are not exactly the best writers in the world? That they have trouble getting their points across? Is it wrong to hold the Other Side to a higher standard or are they just as mediocre and incompetent as we are? Am I getting to heretical?
>Most of them were apoplectic that someone who doesn’t have a paid position in the academic industry would dare to track proletarian mud onto their exalted subject, and told me so in no uncertain terms.
More about you being uncredentialed, while being more successful. The pettier the person is, the more vicious, in my experience. Something also about how the lower the stakes involved, the more vicious everyone tends to get. Something also about how people tend to spend and prioritize their time based on what they understand, aka Bikeshedding.
If you were talking about a high voltage power line or an airplane or a nuclear reactor, they probably would just ignore you instead of starting a flame war. Or they’d steal your ideas, take credit for them but nevertheless implement them.
I find it deliciously ironic that occult fortunes and the stock market are correlated. That Dow Theory and esotericism could have anything in common. Other than Edgar Cayce, did anyone else call the bubble before it burst? Was even aware there was a bubble at all? Even Cayce didn’t really like predicting the stock market, IIRC, very reluctant when he did so.
What I take away from this is you can not really ever make being an occultist your permanent jerb – if you’re going to do it, you need something else to fall back on.
JMG, you write, “It’s deadly serious. We’ll get to that, too, in due time!” Well, I’m now doubly-interested!
On the topic of academic “disinterest”: surprising if you believe the role of academics is to discover truth. Less surprising if you understand the academic role is to guard and gatekeep “truths” . It’s fascinating how the West has created a Brahmin class, but who are largely trained to deny – or believe – this is the role they serve.
Hello JMG and everyone,
I also bought this book a few years ago after learning of it here, but didn’t get too far on my own. I’m looking forward to reading it with your guidance.
I am still working on Levi as I have been following along since the beginning. Thank you so much for making it accessible. I appreciate you providing your knowledge, ideas and input into the book to help us all along. I’ve been able to get so much more out of Levi than I would have alone. Although I will have to keep at it if I hope to begin to understand it.
I have been quite taken aback by off-hand references in some academic work to contrasting the work of “professional” scholars or historians with the work of other writers in the field — as though there were some sort of legitimacy in having state patronage (the examples I remember were European, so professional positions would largely be state supported). I can see awarding some points for “professional” presentation — good annotations, addressing current interpretive issues, and so on — but I might choose “academic” rather than “professional” as a descriptor. I should say that I have encountered pretty generous attitudes among American academics I have met, most of whom seem amazed and delighted that anyone is paying attention to their work.
Meanwhile, it’s hard not to quite Yeats:
Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
@LeGrand #55: Very tangential, but a small question I have posted here before with different examples. Why does Yeats rhyme “despair” with “ear”? Is that only a visual rhyme, a book-rhyme? Or would they have rhymed in some form of HIberno-English?
Hi John Michael,
It amuses me greatly that serious academics may question an author’s claim that the words were channelled from spirits guided by the phases of the moon. The claim as it stands is impossible to either prove or disprove, and so the lady’s claims are as good as any from my perspective, and stand until disproven. Clearly Mr Yeats required a muse to feed his artistry and arrangement of those ideas and energy. It’s genuinely difficult to know where creativity and intuition derive from, where an idea can bloom into a narrative. Hard to say how, and I prefer not to over think the process as that leads to a blockage of the well spring.
On the other hand, serious academics might want to turn their intellect to the bond market and ask the hard question: If debt continues to grow exponentially, is much of the purported representations in that market real? Of course, it is far easier to fixate upon the realm of spirits.
What should be of deep interest to the scientific community, is that the impact of the Great Depression upon the flourishing occultist scene, will of course apply equally to them in I’m guessing, the near to short term future. Knowledge areas with practical applications like say, engineering or boiler making, might be a safer course they tend to be directly related to economic outcomes. Dunno.
I’d never have guessed that change could happen so fast. Fun times, huh? The sticker shock hurts (but I’d been expecting this outcome), because mostly it suggests to me that the opportunity to expand the infrastructure and systems here become more limited. That was always going to happen though as diminishing returns is a thing.
Cheers
Chris
I forgot to mention Thomas Taylor, whose translations, if I remember correctly, were not widely praised by critics and reviewers, though he also had his patrons. Yet his translations were vastly influential, not least upon Yeats.
From https://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/buddhas-and-initiates/thomas-taylor,-the-english-platonist.pdf
I excerpt Taylor’s own remarks —
I have devoted myself to the study of Ancient Wisdom amidst the pressure of want, the languor and weakness occasioned by continual disease, and severe toil in situations not only uncongenial with my disposition and highly unfavourable to such a pursuit, but oppressed by tyranny and aggravated by insult. Amidst all this, and yet this is but a rude delineation of endurance, what has been my recompense from the critics for having brought to light Truths which have been concealed for ages in oblivion, for having translated and illustrated writings which from their intrinsic merit have been preserved amidst the ravages and revolutions of time, fanatic fury and barbaric devastation? Not the praise due to well-merited endeavours and generous exertion; not the equitable decision of candid criticism; not even the cool, dispassionate and benevolent censure which Pity suggests while Humanity writes, but the savage invective of merciless malevolence, the stupid slander of Ignorance and the imbecile scorn of dull Impertinence. These have been my rewards from the critics. Through the combined efforts of these foes to great and virtuous emulation, my writings have been explored for the purpose of detecting and magnifying faults which in other authors have been consigned to oblivion, and not with any intention (and for this indeed they were inadequate) of combating the doctrines which I have so zealously endeavoured to propagate. Yet it is from a faithful representation of these doctrines that I look forward with ardent, and I trust unpresuming hope, to the approbation of a better age, in which the page of criticism will not be stained by malignant defamation, and in which the labours of the now oppressed champion of Truth and Wisdom shall be appreciated by Equity Herself, and be at least honourably, if not largely, recorded in the Archives of Immortality.
Aldarion (#56) —
I suspect the latter. Yeats’ pronunciation was not “received pronunciation”. There are some recordings of him reading his own poetry at
https://www.openculture.com/2012/06/rare_1930s_audio_wb_yeats_reads_four_of_his_poems.html
Aldarion: ‘Why does Yeats rhyme “despair” with “ear”’
FWIW in NZ English of my generation, they rhyme.
Katsmama, by all means borrow it!
Other Owen, assigning all the vagaries of the cycle to the 28 phases of the Moon is just as arbitrary as assigning all the sounds of English to the 26 letters of the alphabet. Arbitrary or not, you have to do something of the kind if you’re to do anything at all. As for writers from the Beyond, keep in mind that they all have to work through the minds of human beings, and most mediums aren’t the sharpest ritual daggers in the drawer — quite the contrary, people of very mediocre intelligence often make very good mediums because it’s easy for them to make their minds empty and receptive (this being their normal state). It’s fairly rare that you get someone of the intellectual capacity of George Yeats who also has a gift for mediumship.
As for academics, I think a lot of it is precisely the mismatch between social prestige and economic success. Astronomers are so nastily petty toward astrologers because they know that astrology gets the enthusiastic public support and ample paychecks that they think ought to be theirs. In the same way, academics don’t get paid by publishers — those obscenely overinflated prices for academic books are pocketed entirely by the publisher — and so, not unreasonably, they’re jealous of those who get paid for their writing, and don’t have to submit to the humiliating ritual of peer review on the way there.
Finally, with regard to making occultism your full time job, au contraire — it’s quite viable, and in fact the serious occultists got through the crash in good shape. (There’s always a market for horoscopes, for instance, when the economy’s in trouble.) No, it was the wealthy amateurs who lost everything in the stock market and had to stop funding the local Theosophical lodge.
Boy, that’s certainly involved, but I think a lot of it is simply the normal feelings of a formerly privileged class on the way down. Think of the way impoverished aristocratic exiles in the late 19th and early 20th century bristled at upstarts who made their money in (shudder!) business.
Tamar, you’re most welcome! I still find new things in Lévi when I reread his work, so you’re not alone.
LeGrand, Yeats is always worth quoting! My experience doesn’t quite parallel yours; far and away the snottiest academics I’ve dealt with were British, specifically, and I recently had to advise another occult writer whose very good translation of an occult book got savaged by a British academic for straying onto territory she apparently thought she owned. The pun is inescapable: they seem very insular.
Aldarion (if I may), Yeats always rhymed by ear, and it’s an Irish ear, not a standard English one. His poem “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” a fine piece of work even by his standards —
https://poems.com/poem/nineteen-hundred-and-nineteen/
— rhymes “gone,” “moon,” and “stone” in the first stanza, “young” and “wrong” in the second, and “rule” and “hole” in the third — read it aloud with an Irish accent and yes, they all rhyme. Since he may have been the worst speller in the history of English literature — I’ve seen some of his manuscripts and felt profound pity for the poor editors — rhyming by ear was his only option anyway…
Chris, oh, every nation has its imagined spirits who dance in crowds on the heads of pins and yet stride in a single bound from star to star. Ours are mostly in the realm of economics. As for the changes crashing down upon us, I’ll be discussing that next week. It should be fun.
LeGrand, my guess is that it’s precisely that he put the classics into English, so that anybody could read them, that made him such a target for denunciation. Fortunately, he has indeed received the approbation of a better age.
Using rhymes to decode how words were pronounced in the past is quite the academic subject.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/149341/how-do-we-know-how-words-were-pronounced-hundreds-of-years-ago
I found this quote on that page,.”Modern English standard spelling does not represent Modern English pronunciation; rather, it represents Middle English pronunciation.” The spelling got locked in by the printing press. Or mostly locked in, I wouldn’t object if chuse and connexion came back.
There was a Great Vowel Shift, and consonants also slid around. See the letter j. And it just wasn’t English, German had a high German consonant shift. Languages are shifty things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
John Michael, I have both editions (’25 & ’37). This should be interesting!
Johnny B
Hi John Michael,
Oh goodie! 🙂 Look forward to reading your thoughts. It’s a quagmire of unreality out there, and yet, yet, your country has landed a leader who speaks unpalatable thoughts that are in need of thinking. Of course with this there is always some other stuff spoken, probably not necessary. Fun times and trust me in this, things could be worse.
Did you note the alleged sacking of the base commander in Greenland? Like how could anyone not read that room?
Cheers
Chris
Really glad of this new bookclub season JMG.
Being “obsessed” with WB Yeats since my teenage years i have always felt that a proper reading of his opera by a Mage was missing. Collection of his magic writings have been published -also in my mother tongue (italian) and by a main publisher like Adelphi- but always inside the frame of literary criticism. Not enough for a figure for whom magic is not a form of poetry, but poetry is a form of magic
Re: know-it-all, territorial, academics, the Ethical Skeptic’s tweet yesterday provides a malapropism that fits the bill: the “Drueger-Kennung effect https://x.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1910369403838869638
Oops spellcheck woes: Drueger-Kunning
Thanks everybody for comments on the rhymes! I am relieved to be told that Yeats rhymed by ear, since a book-rhyme would go much better with the “bald heads” than the ones in “love’s despair”! I will have to believe you that these words rhyme in Ireland or NZ, since what I have been reading about accent doesn’t make that clear… The recordings are great though, I noticed “fair” rhyming with “prayer”, and Yeats’ chanting is very interesting in itself.
JMG, in the part V of Nineteen-hundred and nineteen, “wind” rhymes with “mind” and “behind”. Yeats doesn’t seem to use such archaic pronunciation in the recordings, so I wonder if this is some kind of “historical” rhyme.
Long live the independent scholar – and the publishers who support them.
Siliconguy, there was a now-forgotten attempt in the early 20th century to reform English spelling, dropping some of the more obvious hangovers from Middle English; there was a Simplified Spelling Board, funded by millionaires, which had its own table of corrections — “thru” in place of “through,” “f” for “ph” throughout (or thruout), and so on. As I recall, it was another of the casualties of the 1929 crash.
Johnny, I hope so.
Chris, it’s hard to read the room if your whole identity is built on being one of the Good People, whose whole job is to resist the Bad Person and be applauded for it by cheering crowds. That the world doesn’t follow the logic of cheap Star Wars knockoffs has never entered their minds.
Denis, delighted to hear it. I plan on getting into the magic in fair depth in this commentary.
TemporaryReality, funny.
Aldarion, yeah, that’s a hangover from centuries past, before our language underwent its Great Vowel Movement. Poets still use it; I’m not sure why.
Justin, hear, hear!