On Magic & The Occult
by W. B. Yeats
edited by Claudio Rocchetti
Scholars of poetry don’t often follow W.B. Yeats out onto the treacherous ground of his esotericism, and yet doing so is one of the main interpretative keys to the Yeatsian worldview. Images arising from its symbolism are still too often read as personally subjective, while the poet himself constructs a path of knowledge grounded in Kabbalistic and Hermetic tradition, and in particular the Rosicrucian renaissance of alchemy and magic, as practised by Maier in Germany, and Fludd and Ashmole in England.
Those who have approached the magical side of Yeats have often stopped on the threshold of A Vision; here is provided an overview of the work that led to that vision; a small compendium mapping the poet’s thought.
This selection comprises: Wanderings of Oisin (1889), Magic (1901), Rosa Alchemica (1913), The Mountain Tomb (1914), Ego Dominus Tuus (1919) and many more.
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Table of Contents
Preface
1. Roses
2. The Two Trees
3. William Blake and the Imagination
4. Magic
5. Shadowy Waters
6. Rosa Alchemica
7. The Mountain Tomb
8. Per Amica silentia Lunae
9. Solomon and the Witch
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Hardcover Edition
250 pages. Hardcover bound in Yellow Geltex. 120g black endpapers. Printed on 115g wood-free, age-resistant Cream paper. Sewn book block, black ribbon bookmark and headbands.
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About the Author
The late William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory, founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.
Yeats had a lifelong interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology. During 1885, Yeats was involved in the formation of the Dublin Hermetic Order, and he was was admitted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890. His mystical interests—also inspired by a study of Hinduism, under the Theosophist Mohini Chatterjee, and the occult—formed much of the basis of his late poetry. In 1892 he wrote: "If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen ever have come to exist. The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write”.
