On Magic & The Occult by W. B. Yeats

Scholars of poetry don’t often follow 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 the poet have often stopped on the threshold of A Vision; here, we try to provide 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.