Yeats and the Occult

31.34 $

Author(s)

George Mills Harper

Format

PDF

Pages

345

Published Date

1976

Category:
Description

This volume of the Yeats Studies Series is devoted to the study of Yeats and the occult. The time has passed when it was necessary, in order to preserve intellectual respectability, to express either astonishment or dismay at the nature of Yeats’s intellectual pursuits. The “occult” means literally the covered, the hidden, the veiled; and during his life Yeats was concerned with the hidden significance underlying the appearances of the universe and of human life. He was, as he said himself, a religious man, and deprived of a comfortable belief in orthodox Christianity by the lively scepticism of his father, he sought in many quarters and opened up many veins in his quest for the jewel of enlightenment which would make intelligible “the burthen of the mystery … Of all this unintelligible world”.

In this volume, which makes use of primary materials as well as the insights of modern scholars but still only scratches the surface of the subject, we can trace something of Yeats’s spiritual Odyssey. He began by attaching himself to the Theosophical Society and then to the rituals and investigations of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded by MacGregor Mathers, W. R. Woodman, and William Wynn Westcott in 1888. Yeats was initiated into the Golden Dawn in March 189o, and remained a member of the Order, and its successor, the Stella Matutina, for thirty-two years, from the age of twenty-four to fifty-six. He hoped, by means of the techniques transmitted in such bodies, to become an Adept, a Mage, capable of supernatural experiences and of creating a channel of supernatural power. In this phase Yeats came to see the world as a symbol, and he learned from Mathers the practical use of symbols to induce visions. He uses age-old metaphors to describe his activities: he must “tread this path, open this gate, seek this light”. MacGregor Mathers, it is clear, made an indelible impression on Yeats, and he appears as Maclagan in The Speckled Bird and as the “fiction”, or “mask”, or “persona” of Michael Robartes, with farreaching implications for Yeats’s poetry and prose.

Contents:

  • Psychic Daughter, Mystic Son, Sceptic Father
  • The Esoteric Flower: Yeats and Jung
  • Yeats as Adept and Artist: The Speckled Bird, The Secret Rose, and The Wind among the Reeds
  • Hades Wrapped in Cloud
  • Yeats, Spiritualism, and Psychical Research
  • Preliminary Examination of the Script of E[lizabeth] R[adcliffe]
  • “A Subject of Investigation”: Miracle at Mire beau
  • “He loved strange thought”: W. B. Yeats and William Thomas Horton
  • Michael Robartes: Two Occult Manuscripts
  • Mr. Yeats, Michael Robartes, and Their Circle
  • “Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind”: Sources for Owen Aherne
  • W. B. Yeats and S. L. MacGregor Mathers
  • Yeats and Mr. Watkins’ Bookshop
  • An Encounter with the Supernatural in Yeats’s “The Spirit Medium”
  • A Preliminary Note on the Text of A Vision ( 1937)
Yeats and the Occult By George Mills Harper pdf
0 reviews
0
0
0
0
0

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “Yeats and the Occult”

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

19 − six =