Occult poetry, ceremonial magic

William Butler Yeats

1865 – 1939

William Butler Yeats was Ireland's preeminent poet and a lifelong practitioner of occultism, joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890 and remaining an active member for over three decades, reaching the sixth grade of initiation. His mystical system, elaborated in A Vision (1925), drew on astrology, Neoplatonism, and automatic writing to construct a cyclical philosophy of history and the soul that permeated his mature poetry.

Automatic WritingOccult PhilosophySpiritualismCeltic MysticismVisualizationMystical gnosisPhases of the MoonPoetic Mysticismspiritual initiationreincarnationWestern EsotericismHermeticismGolden Dawnesoteric symbolismmystical unionGyres & Historical Cycles

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