Tag: book club

A Vision: The Second Quarter

John Michael Greer60 Comments

With this post we continue our survey of the Great Wheel of the 28 lunar phases, the central symbolic mandala of Yeats’s A Vision. In last month’s episode we followed the soul through the latter part of the first quarter, ending with the shattering experience of the 8th Phase. There the soul must wrench itself…

A Vision: The First Quarter of the Wheel, Part Two

John Michael Greer87 Comments

The Great Wheel of the symbolic phases of the Moon, as noted already, is the central mandala of Yeats’s Vision. Two months ago, in the last installment of this (usually monthly) book club, we examined phases 2, 3, and 4 of the Wheel, the phases in which the soul makes the first fumbling efforts to…

A Vision: Examination of the Wheel

John Michael Greer73 Comments

The system of metaphors at the heart of Yeats’s system of occult philosophy is not easy to grasp. Those readers who have been following this discussion as best they can will have realized this already, but the part of the text we’re about to contend with might as well be designed to rub the noses…

A Vision: The Principal Symbol

John Michael Greer112 Comments

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, it’s time for us to plunge into the depths of Yeats’s Vision. That’s easy, in a certain sense, because Yeats starts out the main body of our text by tossing the reader straightway into the deep end of the pool, launching at once into the core…

A Vision: Anima Mundi

John Michael Greer272 Comments

As we move from the first to the second half of Yeats’s programmatic essay “Per Amica Silentia Lunae,” we leave the territory of poetry and the arts and plunge headlong into the second of Yeats’s lifelong passions, the realm of occultism. More specifically, he sets out in a single vivid paragraph the central theme of…

A Vision: Anima Hominis

John Michael Greer105 Comments

At this point in our exploration of Yeats’s great occult synthesis A Vision, it will help to step back and glance at an earlier work of his that provided that synthesis with many of its core ideas. That essay is “Per Amica Silentia Lunae,” and we’ll explore the first half of it here, titled “Anima…

A Vision: Preliminaries

John Michael Greer137 Comments

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 Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 22

John Michael Greer79 Comments

With this post we conclude a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival. Here and in the 43 months before this we’ve plunged into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now,…

The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 18

John Michael Greer129 Comments

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend…

The Ritual of High Magic: Chapter 16

John Michael Greer154 Comments

With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival.  Here and in the months ahead we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend…