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 time well fed, making a name for himself as a poet, playwright, essayist, critic, and one of the leading figures in the renaissance of Irish literary culture that would get its enduring name from one of Yeats’s own books of poetry: the Celtic Twilight. Gone were the days when he was so poor that he had to smear black shoe polish on his white socks to make the holes in his shoes less visible. The income from his writing was ample enough that he could think seriously about getting married and raising a family.
That opened the door to another major change in his life. He had spent decades hopelessly in love with Maud Gonne, who was perfectly willing to accept his adoration but had no further use for him—the modern term “friendzoned” fits his situation quite well. In the years leading up to 1917, however, Gonne found herself pitted against an unlikely rival: Georgianna Hyde-Lees, “George” to Yeats and his friends, a woman much younger than Gonne or Yeats. She wasn’t anyone’s idea of a raging beauty but she had a considerable intellect, shared nearly all of Yeats’s interests, and was also crazy in love with him. She was the obvious solution to Yeats’s romantic troubles, and Yeats finally accepted it.
Then there was his secret career, the hidden life he had as a participant in the burgeoning occult revival of the age. From his teen years on, Yeats had been fascinated by occultism; in 1885 he helped found the Dublin Hermetic Society; in 1887, after moving to London, he joined the London lodge of the Theosophical Society and was quickly advanced to the inner Esoteric Section of the Society; at some point in the three following years—there is some question about the date—he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most influential magical order of the time. It was a good fit; he rose quickly through its ranks, mastered its teachings and practices, and became one of its leading members.
That side of Yeats’s life was also in crisis in 1917. The original Golden Dawn had blown itself to pieces in a series of bitter political quarrels between 1900 and 1903. Yeats, who had been heavily involved in the struggles surrounding the order’s death, played a central role in founding the largest of the successor orders, the Stella Matutina. By 1917, however, that was fading under the pressures of dwindling membership and the increasing mental instabilities of its leader Christine Stoddart, who would soon abandon occultism and (under her pen name Inquire Within) go on to become one of the most strident conspiracy theorists of modern times. George was also a Stella Matutina initiate; she and her fiancé must have made many worried conversations about the future of occultism in Britain as the once-brilliant light of the Golden Dawn guttered out.
All this came to a head in the autumn of 1917. Three days after their marriage, while Yeats and his bride were honeymooning in the New Forest, George started working with automatic writing. That was a standard occult practice at the time, and one with which Yeats in particular was very familiar—as an active member of the Society for Psychical Research, the world’s premier parapsychological research organization in those days, he knew a great deal about its use by spiritualist mediums. It’s done by taking pen in hand, clearing the mind, and allowing the pen to move without conscious interference. It takes practice and a certain amount of skill to do well, but in the hands of a talented medium it can produce astonishing things. Entire novels have been written that way; so have the holy scriptures of numerous sects and faiths.
George was more than adequately prepared for the work ahead of her. Like her husband, she held the grade of Adeptus Major in the Stella Matutina, the highest level of initiation the order worked at that time. Then as now, earning that grade requires roughly as much work as getting a Ph.D. from a reputable university; the initiate who aspired to become an Adeptus Major was expected to master the entire body of magical lore that existed at that time, including astrology, geomancy, tarot card reading, practical clairvoyance, and the design and performance of elaborate rituals for many purposes, along with a thorough grasp of occult philosophy and the complexities of the Cabalistic Tree of Life.
To this substantial training George added her own considerable personal research into Renaissance occultism and the mystical writings of the ancient Greek Neoplatonists. She was in fact an even more learned and capable occultist than her husband, and only her dislike of publicity—in sharp contrast to his thirst for it—kept her from having a reputation in the occult community higher than his. The results of her experiment were of the robust quality that her background would suggest.
“What came in disjointed sentences,” Yeats wrote later, “in almost illegible writing, was so exciting, sometimes so profound, that I persuaded her to give an hour or two day after day to the unknown writer, and after some half-dozen such hours offered to spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together those scattered sentences. ‘No,’ was the answer, ‘we have come to give you metaphors for poetry.’” Metaphors for poetry there certainly were, and many of Yeats’s poems from 1918 on—including some of his most iconic work—drew heavily on the material George brought through.
Yet there was more than this, much more. The unseen communicators detailed a set of 28 basic human personality types symbolically linked with the phases of the Moon. They developed these from first principles, rooted in two essential human conflicts—one between the individual and his circumstances, the other between the individual and himself—and showed how these unfold in turn from the paired relations between the mind and the world it seeks to understand, on the one hand, and on the other the will and the dream it seeks to realize. The communicators applied these same principles to life, death, and reincarnation. Then, in a breathtaking leap, they did the same thing with history, showing that popular fashions, social and political movements, and whole civilizations followed the sequence mapped out on the wheel of the 28 phases.
As the quote given above suggests, the communications very soon settled into a dialogue in which Yeats posed questions and whatever moved George’s hand gave answers. This is an extremely common pattern in magic around the world. Those of my readers who know something of the history of Western occultism will know about Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I’s court astrologer, and his work with the disreputable Edward Kelly; Kelly did not use automatic writing—he had the gift of seeing visions in a crystal—but the interactions followed the same pattern, with Dee posing questions and Kelly passing on answers from the spirits. On the far side of Eurasia, similarly, one very common pattern in Japanese magic is for a male wizard to work with a female medium; he conjures the spirits, and she relays their answers. The Yeatses were thus working in an ancient and widespread tradition.
Their contribution to that tradition is unusually well documented, as a result of the impressive energy of a handful of scholars intrigued by the occult dimensions of Yeats’s work. Every surviving scrap of George’s automatic writings, Yeats’s detailed notes on the later phases of their work together, the hefty card file he created to keep track of the teachings, and the early drafts of the book that would become A Vision have been published in four hefty volumes. I have copies of all four sitting on my bookshelf, as well as quite a bit of academic literature exploring them, and we’ll be discussing the material from those sources as we proceed.
After a few years, the method of communication changed. George developed the ability to enter trance and repeat the words of the spirits while sound asleep. Yeats continued his role as questioner, though he also took on the task of writing everything down. He also began the gargantuan task of assembling the material he and George had received into publishable form. The result was a book titled A Vision. The first edition, dedicated to one of Yeats’s occult teachers, privately printed, and sold only to subscribers—nearly all of them Yeats’s fellow occultists—saw print in 1925.
A dozen years passed. In 1937, after many more sessions talking with the communicators and many more hours wrestling with the ideas they had passed on, Yeats published a second edition, which was released to the ordinary book trade by one of his usual publishers. This second edition is the one that has been widely available ever since. It is a far more polished, more literary version, and it includes some of Yeats’s best prose, including his one venture into comedy—a tour de force with so lively a wit and so perfect a mastery of deadpan humor that I wish he’d written much, much more along the same lines. Yet it also leaves out a significant amount of material the first version had included.
That was anything but an accident. Between 1925 and 1937, the occult community Yeats had hoped to influence with A Vision had all but collapsed. The reason for that collapse was the coming of the Great Depression.
Few people nowadays still remember just how huge a chasm ran through Western society before 1929: the gulf between “the masses and the classes,” to use a term current in those days. The dividing line was whether you had enough invested wealth that you did not have to work for a living. Respectable people, by the standards of the time, were those who supported themselves on the income from their investments; some men in that category still drew salaries as business executives, politicians, military officers, or a handful of other privileged jobs, but many others did not, and nearly all the women in the respectable classes stayed out of the work force. Nor did they have much to do at home; in those days, remember, every family above the working class had at least a few servants to take care of cooking, cleaning, and child care.
The occult community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was one of many social phenomena that benefited from these arrangements. Well-to-do women in particular provided the backbone of many occult organizations by volunteering time and donating money. Occultism was also one of the few fields where women could take leadership positions; Helena Blavatsky and Mary Baker Eddy, the founders of the Theosophical Society and Christian Science respectively, were only the most successful of a bevy of ambitious women who vaulted out of the spheres assigned them by 19th-century culture to become influential figures.
The economic system that undergirded those arrangements, though, was already in decline by the time the First World War broke out, and came apart completely thereafter. The vast inflows of international wealth that streamed into stocks in the late 1920s were driven there by a desperate effort to shore up a failing system, since most other investments were no longer yielding incomes sufficient to keep the privileged classes in the style to which they had been accustomed. Those inflows proceeded to drive a classic bubble and bust. By the time markets bottomed out in the early 1930s, a very large share of the formerly privileged classes had been financially ruined—and those occult organizations that survived the collapse of their financial and volunteer support were eking things out on a small fraction of their earlier income.
All this was in the background of Yeats’s decision to revise and republish A Vision. Where the first edition was intended to speak to participants in his secret career as an occult adept, the second edition was addressed to the audience of his public career as a literary figure, and was reworked with that in mind. Much of the explicit occultism in the earlier edition was removed, and replaced by a faux-bashful pose of apparent disbelief and an insistence that, after all, it really was just a collection of metaphors for poetry. The second edition, complete with posturing, is the only one that most people who have encountered A Vision know, and it is the one that we will be using to begin with in the posts that follow.
Up until quite recently, that would have been the only viable option, since the 1925 edition of A Vision remained out of print and almost inaccessible for decades. Not until 1978 did it see print again, in a critical edition from an academic press, and not until 2008 did a more widely available edition come out as part of Yeats’s collected works. The 2008 edition is a very solid piece of work, well stocked with relevant footnotes, and I have made considerable use of it in my own studies. It raised only the smallest blip on the radar screens of the modern occult scene, however. Nor have Yeats’s occult writings more generally received anything like the attention they might be expected to get from today’s students and initiates of the Golden Dawn tradition, or the occult community in general.
My attempt to change that will see print later this year. Yeats’s published works went out of copyright a few years ago, clearing the field for writers on the fringe like me. I’ve accordingly assembled and footnoted an anthology of Yeats’s important magical writings, including the 1925 edition of A Vision as well as the long essay Per Amica Silentia Lunae, which we’ll be discussing in quite some detail in the posts to come. The anthology has already been picked up by Aeon Books, I’m glad to say; I’ll keep my readers informed as publication gets nearer.
I should probably suggest here that visitors from the academic community who may be panicking at the thought of a mere occultist leaving muddy bootprints all over the floors of their ivory towers should breathe deeply and calm down. Mine is not a scholarly edition and makes no pretense to be one. It is intended for the use of my fellow students of the occult, and I sincerely doubt that even so much as a single copy will ever cast its ill-omened shadow across the threshold of the hallowed halls of Academe. What professional scholars might encounter if they decide to go slumming in the mean streets of occultism is no business of mine.
To begin with, though, we’ll start with the readily available 1937 edition of A Vision, which can be bought in the current scholarly edition from Scribners for what (as scholarly editions go) is a remarkably restrained price, or picked up for a few bucks in trade paper editions in the used-book market. Yes, you’ll need a copy if you want to follow along.
Two of the four parts of the 1925 edition were titled, in reference to the frame story Yeats created, “What the Caliph Partly Learned” and “What the Caliph Refused to Learn;” in homage to this, and also with reference to the framing story provided by the history of the book, I will be dividing my commentary into two parts, titled “What the Public Partly Learned”—this comprises the material in the 1937 edition—and “What the Public Refused to Learn”—this comprises the material found in the 1925 edition that was not carried over, along with some material from the original communications that Yeats left out of both editions of the book.
Yes, he left things out. One of the issues we’ll be dealing with constantly in the posts to come is the spaces that Yeats constantly and deftly carved out between events as they happened and events as he portrayed them. Richard Ellman’s deservedly famous 1948 biography Yeats: The Man and the Masks captured in its subtitle one of the core themes of Yeats’s life. As we’ll see, the mask represents one of the basic principles of the teachings communicated in A Vision. It’s impossible to make sense either of A Vision or Yeats without remembering that to him, the mask and the one who wears it are always opposed to each other.
The creative writer, after all, is in the business of telling the truth by telling lies, writing poems or plays or stories about people who never existed in order to show people who do exist something about their own lives they might otherwise never see. In much the same way, the operative occultist is in the business of telling lies so that they can become the truth; what is a magical ritual, after all, but a symbolic acting-out of events that haven’t happened, in order to help them happen? Yeats was both creative writer and operative occultist, and he combined the two in ways that the occult community by and large has yet to understand, much less imitate.
In the months and years ahead, we’ll be trying to follow the thread of the occult teachings that George Yeats spun out of the Unseen, and her husband wove into a shimmering fabric or an entangling net. The literary dimensions of A Vision will also occupy us now and then, but those aren’t central to the discussions ahead. Instead, I propose to approach A Vision as one of the great but neglected works of 20th-century occult philosophy, comparable in important ways to Dion Fortune’s The Cosmic Doctrine. I hope to show readers not only how to understand the Yeats’s great and subtle work, but also how to use it.
Assignment: If you’re interested in participating in this journey, you’ll need a copy of the 1937 edition of William Butler Yeats’s book A Vision. (If you’re not sure which edition you’re looking at, and the book itself doesn’t say, check the table of contents; if the first section is titled “A Packet for Ezra Pound,” it’s the 1937 edition, while if it’s divided into four books and the first one is titled “What the Caliph Partly Learned,” that’s the 1925 edition.) Yes, you can get both, and we’ll be studying both of them along with Yeats’s other occult writings, but we’re going to start with “A Packet for Ezra Pound,” and it’s only in the later edition.
You might read that over the next month if you have the chance. It has three parts—“Rapallo,” “Introduction to ‘A Vision,’” and “To Ezra Pound”—and the connections between them are by no means obvious. There is a figure moving through the shadowy background of all three parts, and he wears a mask; one of his names, but only one of them, is William Butler Yeats. See if you can figure out what he’s up to.
I’m delighted to see this series begin! I’ll be searching for a paper copy of the 1937 edition of A Vision, but in the meantime, I found a digital copy at:
https://ia904504.us.archive.org/21/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.187696/2015.187696.A-Vision.pdf
JMG, wonderful to see this. I am very much looking forward to this next series of commentary.
Fascinating!
I have been thinking a great deal about the Moon lately, looking to make a greater study of it. This is timely. I will prepare. Thank you.
Lately I have been writing a monthly post, for the transitions of the Zodiak, and also a study of the Tarot. Much of that stems from your recent series on Eliphas Levi.
I also took up bookbinding, to see about true self-publishing, of that poem about the Octagon Society.
https://williamhunterduncan.substack.com/p/transitions-pisces-to-aries-2025
I’m looking forward to this! I was thinking that might be something I would like to read even before I got your announcement of your Seminar/Class/discussion group.
As a heads up to any who are interested, there is a complete scan of the 1937 version available for free on the Internet Archive.
Also, I do wish I had known all this about Yeats back when I was taking Theater History. It would have made the in-class discussion of “On Baile’s Strand” so much more fun.
I’m excited to follow along. Going to try to find the 1937 edition…
It’s too bad that academia and the public at large shun esoteric ideas. Plenty of scientists, philosophers, and authors were secretly involved in the occult. The occult is something that many, many people are interested in, but few openly admit it. I think it’s tragic that Yeats had to stuff parts of his work in the closet in order to make it marketable.
Congratulations on your edition coming out in the future from Aeon. Looking forward to this journey. The only other person I know who wrote about A Vision from an esoteric perspective was Robert Moss, who is a big Yeats fan. The library has a copy of a three volume set of the Vision Papers, which I’ve looked at in the stacks anymore. I don’t have direct access to the stacks anymore (I work in a different building the past five years)… I was sad to see all the copies of A Vision are either lost, billed, or missing. I ended up splurging on a used copy of the one you mentioned the revised edition, because I figure its a good investment, and I don’t see a financial bubble happening over it any time soon. I will look forward to yours in time.
Ezra Pound was lurking around quite a bit himself, with the various masks he wore.
I was reading H.D. ‘s complete poems for awhile. Got through a couple books and stopped. I may go back. Her and Pound were of course a thing for awhile, but she seems to me another link in the revival of polytheism here in the west. I’m not sure about her direct connection to occultism though.
This is going to be awesome, thank you.
I’m so excited by this- I read the 1925 edition several years ago, and would fall asleep at night visualizing the gyres. I think I’m easy to get more out of it.
I’m looking forward to this discussion. You brought up Yeats’ Vision several years ago, and I’ve been hoping you’d discuss it ever since.
I’m sure your publishers’ lawyers have looked at this, but one of the complicating factors with the copyright status of Yeats’ works is that US copyright law does not include the rule of the shorter term — a work can be in the public domain in the country where it was first published but still under copyright in the US.
That, combined with the rules that apply to works published before the Berne Convention was adopted, seem to imply that while Yeats’ works are firmly in the public domain in the the British Isles, they might still be in copyright here — in particular, the 1937 edition will likely have to wait until 2033 or 2034 to be in the public domain here, by the 95 year rule that applies to works published during that period and subsequently renewed.
The original 1925 edition is even more complicated, because it sounds as if it wasn’t published in the States until the 1978 edition. The private publication in his home country might have been enough to start the 95 year timer ticking here, but it might not. I admit that’s beyond my knowledge of the law.
I bring this up because, if I recall correctly, your publisher for these is in the UK, so this will be fine for them, but your American readers might need to wait a while before being able to get copies of your new books.
(I got interested in this issue when I ran across the debates over the status of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard’s works — most of which are now considered in the public domain due to non-renewal despite some unsubstantiated claims to the contrary in the case of Lovecraft.)
Also, for those who go seeking out used copies of the book, I’ve verified through the images on eBay listings that this edition (I hope these come through):
and this edition:
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are both the 1937 editions. Copies of each can currently be had for substantially less than the current official, annotated publication, though of course that’s subject to change as we all go rushing to get copies.
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May JRuss’s friend David Carruthers quickly find a job of any kind at all that allows him to avoid homelessness, first and foremost; preferably a full time job that makes at least 16 dollars an hour.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Pierre in Minnesota be filled with the health, vitality, and fertility he needs to father a healthy baby with his wife.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May 1 Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties, and may she quickly be able to resume a normal life.
May Ron M’s friend Paul fully recover from the debilitating illness that has rendered him bedridden as well as recover from the spiritual malaise/attack that he believes is manifesting the illness.
May Jennifer’s newborn daughter Eleanor be blessed with optimal growth and development; may her tongue tie revision surgery on Wednesday March 12th have been smooth and successful, and be followed by a full recovery.
May Mike Greco, who had a court date on the 14th of March, enjoy a prompt, just, and equitable settlement of the case.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica be blessed and soothed; may she discover the path out of her postpartum depression, and be supported in any of her efforts to progress along it; may the love between her and her child grow ever more profound, and may each day take her closer to an outlook of glad participation in the world, that she may deeply enjoy parenthood.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Jennifer and Josiah and their daughters Joanna and Eleanor be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
The 1925 version is readily available from the big slimy river site, and presumably all good bookshops, but I can’t see the 1937 version.
I have just ordered a second hand copy from ebay but I will have to see which version it is when it arrives.
Goldenhawk, good. All of Yeats is out of copyright these days; I’m hoping that someone does both versions of A Vision and puts them up on Project Gutenberg or someplace similar.
C.M., delighted to hear it.
William, and delighted to hear this as well.
Dandy, it’s worth your while. I found my first copy at a rundown old used book store in Seattle, and spent months going back over it again and again.
Calliope, well, there’s that! His later plays and poetry are full of imagery and ideas from A Vision. The widening gyre in “The Second Coming”? We’ll be talking about that shortly.
Enjoyer, any edition that’s not explicitly labeled the 1925 edition is the 1937 edition. If it’s not Volume XIII of the collected works or titled A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision (1925), you’re good. As for the prejudice against occultism, granted, but I expect that it’ll take centuries more before that finally trickles away.
Justin, yeah, that’s why I shelled out the money for all four volumes of The Vision Papers myself, and why I have two copies of A Vision, one reading copy and one critical edition. As for Moss, I’m not familiar with his work; can you point me to some titles?
Katsmama, I’ll do my best to help.
Slithy, apparently the copyright was not extended, as every source I have been able to find — including Project Gutenberg, which is always very careful with such things — lists Yeats’s works as public domain in the US. PG has 57 volumes of his work in their collection, so I doubt the Yeats estate managed ot miss them! As for images, I’m the only one who can post them here. The rule is simple: if it’s not Volume XIII of the collected works (with a tower on the cover) or the critical edition I showed up there in the post, it’s the 1937 edition. Easier still: if the cover says A Vision and you don’t see the number 1925 anywhere on it, it’s the right one.
Quin, thank you for this as always.
Christine, if it doesn’t say “1925” on it, it’s the 1937 edition.
Moss writes about Yeats particularly in “A Dreamers Book of the Dead.”
Here is a short bit on A Vision and how it relates to Moss’s book, from his blog:
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2016/03/dreaming-back-yeats-on-how-dead-get.html
And here is another interesting one Moss wrote about Yeats and the illustrator Edmund Dulac.
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2015/12/yeats-secret-working-mind-and.html
Since you like history I would also recommend Moss’s book The Secret History of Dreaming, which shows the influence of dreams in our waking lives across time. He calls them histories secret engine.
A hard-to-find PDF of the 1925 private edition of A Vision can be downloaded here:
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-files/assets/ebooks/ebooks-2011/a-vision/WB-YEATS_A-VISION.pdf
I have uploaded that PDF to archive.org, but it hasn’t shown up there yet.
The 1937 edition is easier to find scanned online.
In looking at my Yeats collection, I made the serendipitous discovery that I have both the 1925 and 1937 editions.
Here are a few more short Robert Moss blog posts on Yeats:
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2010/11/yeats-and-dusky-path-of-dream.html
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2015/10/yeats-on-complementary-images.html
https://mossdreams.blogspot.com/2016/06/visiting-yeats-in-magic-cottage.html
I’m excited for this, and just ordered my copy. Just looking at the image, gears are turning. 28 moon days first to me is the lunar mansions, but are they also conflating these with what are called “tithis” in Vedic astrology, or is there a separate tradition for days of the waxing and waning Moon in the West? Or is this something different? I guess I’ll see soon anyway. In Vedic astrology we have 15 waxing and 15 waning days (so 30 total) – the 15th waning is the “new Moon” and the 15th waxing is the “full moon” and they’re separate from the Nakshatras (which are mostly now used as a set of 27, the 28th is used only for particular purposes). It’s interesting that yesterday as I was listening to my lectures while stacking wood, that one phrase that really stood out to me is that “if you don’t know the tithis, you don’t really know Vedic astrology”, so tithis are on my mind.
I am looking forward to your take on W. B. Yeats. His poem, The Second Coming, has been bouncing around my head for a few years now and one of the highlights of my only trip to Ireland was a exhibit on Yeats at a museum where I saw the original draft of The Second Coming with his notes and corrections.
Thanks John
“The creative writer, after all, is in the business of telling the truth by telling lies, writing poems or plays or stories about people who never existed in order to show people who do exist something about their own lives they might otherwise never see. ”
How much karma will accrue from being a creative writer?
The 10 yamas and niyamas are my path; truthfulness is a fundamental pillar. Now I see that my path isn’t being a creative writer; my goal would be more of a historian or a philosopher (which isn’t the same as metaphysics), but I digress.
JMG, do you ever plan to write about one of the great titans of the 19th century (William Blake)? Even if it’s just in a Fifth Wednesday post
Wow, I’m surprised how many months have passed since you started with Eliphas Levi.
JMG, your publisher(s) must be endlessly intrigued by what you present to them. Never anything dull for sure.
Well, this is delightful news! I recall borrowing a copy of A Vision (1937) from the public library a few years back and gave it a go. It felt like I was swimming against a strong current: much effort, but little to show for it (I experience this with a fair number of Western occult books – for better or worse, my brain is hard-wired to think in terms of stories). In the end I dropped it before finishing it, figuring that some other time will be more propitious for diving deep into it. Perhaps now is that time!
Justin, thanks for this. I’ll keep an eye out for his work.
Robert M, thank you for this!
Marlena13, good. You’re well prepared.
Justin, and thanks for this also.
Isaac, divination by the age of the Moon is fantastically ancient. There’s a version of it in Hesiod and another in the Coligny calendar, a Gaulish calendar from the time of the ancient Druids. As we’ll be discussing in great detail, though, A Vision is not an astrological system; the lunar phases are symbolic, and the most effective way to turn Yeats’s system into horseradish is to try to interpret it based on the actual position of the Moon in the horoscope. (Inevitably, even though Yeats himself warned against this, there have been attempts to do so.) Stay tuned!
Raymond, it’s a truly great poem. We’ll talk about it and other Vision-themed poetry in due time.
Zarcayce, as Lao Tsu put it, the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Language is always a falsification of reality, and those of us who spin stories using language tend to be acutely aware of that; we use the tools we have. As for Blake, hmm. I’ll consider that in due time.
Michael, I consider myself very fortunate to have found a publisher who can handle my vagaries!
Ron, I’ll take it a step at a time, and you can let me know if it’s making sense.
@ JMG/Zarcayce “as Lao Tsu put it, the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Language is always a falsification of reality”
Thank you! I am always surprise at how many people get confused by this first line of Tao Te Ching. Language can only point to things but is not the thing.
Glad to see that “A Vision” is now a focus! Looking forward to it.
As for copyright, this is a useful resource:
https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/watch/about/
On a tangent, the issue of finances is perhaps the major disconnect I encounter while reading vintage books such as Agatha Christie or P. G. Wodehouse. I’m perfectly prepared for different attitudes toward ethnicity, roles for women, religion, etc., but the idea that “a gentleman does not work for a living” is just so antithetical to my Midwestern American farmer/working class roots, I sometimes have to stop reading to recalibrate. “Alas, we cannot marry because I have no money! It is a reasonable decision for me to murder my helpless old auntie for her fortune, instead of just manning up and getting a job!” 🙄I have to remind myself that it genuinely was unthinkable in those days for that social class (on par, perhaps, with a contemporary middle-class person giving up his car?) The past truly is another country, which of course is what makes the current chronocentric revisions of history in TV and popular fiction so very tiresome…
Ordered a copy of both the 25 and the 37 editions, downloaded the .pdf for the 37 edition. Should be ready for this coming Wednesday. Now that I am no longer in the active workforce (as of 1st of Spring this year an auspicious an not entirely planned turning), I hope I’ll be able to follow along. Started in on the Levi but had to drop out. Uneven energy levels (always, not a new thing) and full-time work not being conducive to study commitments, alas. With one part of that equation taken out, I can probably deal with the first as the swings happen within a more or less cycle of days per week. Thank you for helping unravel this otherwise pretty impenetrable and famous corpus!
I have downloaded both copies of A Vision, and will be following along here with great interest, whether I have anything to contribute or not.
Thank you. 🙂
Dear me, does this mean the series on Levi was finally concluded? I was too much a latecomer to occultism to follow along with that one — jumping in at the middle wouldn’t do. But this time, I do plan to follow along. I’m very excited to see where it leads. I noticed right away there are a few parallels with the recently concluded series on Wagner as well…
This is certainly very interesting and there seem to be a number of easily accessed copies of the ’37 edition available as PDFs online.
Naturally I had a poke around and discovered that some sources claim that Yeats spent his honeymoon in Ashdown Forest Hotel near Forest Row (featured in a Sherlock Holmes story) Sussex. The New Forest is further west. Apparently he spent time in the Ashdown area along with Ezra Pound at an earlier stage of his life, so it’s plausible at least although I’d accept the possibility that he was in both places.
There is a substantial hotel in Forest Row now known as Ashdown Park Hotel that might have been the place. It’s close enough to where I live that I’d be happy to ask them if they have any record of Yeats’ stay.
@JMG
Regarding Mrs. Yeats’ automatic writing, this reminds me of something my grandfather told me. He knew an elderly gentleman who passed away in 2015 (give or take 2-3 years), who had written a translation of the Mahabharata in my native language (no, it’s not Hindi). This gentleman used to hear a voice speak to him, telling him, “Get up, take your pen and paper and start writing as I tell you”, and then dictate the story to him, and he would write ceaselessly till the dictation was done. This happened at really any random time – he could never predict when he would “receive the order” telling him to write the dictated material, and of course, the dictation itself varied in length from one session to another. It took him quite a few years to write it, but once it was done, it was published. I never met him, but my grandpa told me that only “spiritually developed souls” are able to do this as the voice giving the dictation was that of a deity – maybe, the Yeats couple were pretty spiritually developed souls themselves? Fascinating stuff nonetheless.
This looks interesting! It’s far above my pay grade, but I plan to at least read the monthly essay and the comments, as I did with the previous book clubs. I can honestly say that even this low-effort approach is of value. Something for everybody!
OtterGirl
It’s possible my grasp of reality has finally slipped its mortal coil, but this piece does not read properly in the voice of the JMG I’ve been following since the early ArchDruid days. ???
Michael, it astonishes me that more writers don’t talk about this. We of all people know how hard it is to make words come even approximately into a relationship with experience.
LeGrand, thanks for this.
Sister Crow, have you by any chance read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge? He wrote it just as the old system was going to bits, and the thing that tells you that the protagonist has broken away entirely from the old order is that he’s cashed in the last of his investments and plans on working his way across the Atlantic as a sailor. More generally, it casts a fascinating light on the whole system as it was in its last days.
Clarke, congrats on your retirement and I hope all goes well.
Scotlyn, you’re most welcome.
Deneb, er, yes, and I noted as much in the book club post last month.
Andy, thanks for the correction. Please do see what you can find!
Viduraawakened, a very classic example! As for Hindi, well, as I recall, India has hundreds of languages, some of them as different from one another as English is from Vietnamese, so I certainly wasn’t going to assume which of them your grandfather’s friend used.
Ottergirl, my goal in these book clubs is to make the ideas accessible even to those who don’t have an extensive background in occultism, so you can let me know how well I’m ding.
Karalan, well, I certainly didn’t have anyone else write it! All posts on this blog are by me, without help of ghostwriters — or shoddy cyberplagiarism programs, if that’s what you were implying.
Viduraawakened #31:
“… but my grandpa told me that only “spiritually developed souls” are able to do this as the voice giving the dictation was that of a deity – maybe, the Yeats couple were pretty spiritually developed souls themselves? ”
In my case, the telepathic message from the deity would probably assume the transcribed form of an off-color limerick. But its hidden meanings would only be revealed successively, layer-by-layer, through profound discursive meditation.
Speaking of the Celtic Twilight, I suppose I have to read a good biography of Yeats. Do you have one you’d recommend? What I am curious about now is his relationship with Alfred Perceval Graves, who was a president for many years of the Irish Literary Society, founded by Yeats and others.
I was reading some poetry this past March by Samuel Ferguson, and I started digging around in the catalog here at work. I saw his book of poems had an introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves. Apparently Ferguson was a forerunner to the Celtic Twilight. The other book he wrote that caught my eye was “Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland”
On archive here: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/oghaminscription00ferguoft/oghaminscription00ferguoft.pdf
This connection between Ferguson, the Ogham, the elder Graves, must have all been a strong influence on Robert Graves, and his subsequent work on the Ogham.
Then you have Florence Farr (who also palled around with Pound) mentioned in the intro to the 1925 version (Thanks Robert Mathiesen), and all of these other characters from the G.D. years he mentions. What a rich literary & magical milieu it must have been.
I’m rather curious about all these webs of connection linking people and their ideas together.
Thanks, JMG – that sounds like a sweet deal!
Sister Crow, have you by any chance read Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge?
I have not, though weirdly enough I was surveyed by a marketer for the movie version with Bill Murray, many and many a year ago. I will add it to the list–the book, not the Bill Murray movie, that is.
Looking forward to it! I have loved Yeats’s poetry for many years.
This *is* going to be an interesting series. I’m greatly looking forward to it.
Can we infer a humorous literary reference at this precise point to a second coming and turning of the gyre, of sorts?
Kindly,
Boy
So look forward to your future posts for our studies, JMG. Thank you.
Oddly?, I’m currently binge watching the PBS old Masterpiece Theater series “Downton Abby” where we’re just at around 1917. For those who do watch dvds/movies/television, this series totally nails how the very upper classes were expected to behave and live, contrasted with their servants and the working classes, Of course, here we are at WW1, with the impending changes afoot.
Hi John Michael,
History is a good guide here, and it is always unwise to rest upon unearned income. A little whisper suggests that the bond vigilantes by acting so, may have over played their hand and just signed their doom. In this instance, the real power lays with the issuer, not the holder / trader. We’ll see. It was going to happen anyway.
Ah, I see, whilst nervously peering through the door you’ve just opened. What lays within is the important question. Which I also note you did not answer, a second reading revealed err, nothing. If I may suggest, that the pivot point between the two is action / acts, or whatever you want to call it.
And if I may say so, the future belongs to those who know how to get by on less. Ventured to a nearby town yesterday to pick up some supplies, and was quite alarmed by the sticker price. Oh well, render unto Caesar and stuff. But still, I was taken aback.
Cheers
Chris
Hi all,
This will be my first journey with the ecosophia book club. I got my grubby hands on a copy of the 1937 edition and look forward to diving in!
A tangent but I was surprised to see that Robert Moss was some sort of esoteric dream philosopher now. I first became aware of him a little over a decade ago because of a thriller novel he wrote called The Spike, which postulated a sort of late 1970’s version of the RussiaGate hullabaloo. It’s always interesting to see people go on to do wildly different things later in their careers.
Cheers,
JZ
JMG, I reckon you have the best blog on the net, even with all the chaos, there’s always JMG’s blogs!
“If all else fails, there’s always books!” 😊
I enjoyed the two previous series although I must admit I haven’t yet read the Parsifal libretto, I’ve got it set up as a pdf to print out, as well as the Wolfram what’s his name one.
I’ve also got a couple of books, Parzival and the Stone from Heaven by Lindsay Clarke and Parzival or a Knight’s Tale by Richard Monaco.
Have you or anyone else read either?
I bought the Revised version of The Vision a number of years ago, I wonder where I got the idea for that? 🤔 So I’m looking forward to diving in.
I’ve downloaded the original version and I’m in the process of cropping all the pages and squashing it on to as few A4 pages as possible, I can get 3 pages of the book per page, so when I’m done I’ll let you know, in case anyone wants to print out a copy for themselves.
It won’t be great quality, the scans aren’t that great and were done in colour instead of black and white, but it should be good enough to read.
One other small detail regarding one of your photos, the picture of the building is I believe Federal Hall with the state of George Washington in front.
I think the NY Stock Exchange is at right angles to it and doesn’t have steps .
Regards, Helen in Oz,
Where summer temperatures continue despite it being Autumn
Re writers’ travails: “Adam’s Curse” (Yeats)
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
I read about half of both editions, and greatly prefer the 1937. I look forward to reading what you make of the revelatory contents, with all the stuff about cones and phases of the moon. I have to admit that my eyes glazed over at this point, but you have a track record of interpreting such things in an illuminating way, and have apparently given this a lot of thought.
“…I sincerely doubt that even so much as a single copy will ever cast its ill-omened shadow across the threshold of the hallowed halls of Academe.”
Setting aside the “hallowed,” I am sure that you do have academic readers, who for the most part would love to see you write in their fields. To my mind, anybody who studies their subject in a critical and systematic way is a scholar.
As I know very little about Yeats, I don’t have much to say about this book club, other than that I will be eagerly following along.
To start with, thank you, everyone, for your enthusiasm!
Justin, every bio of Yeats I’ve read so far has been biased one way or another; very few people seem to be able to deal with the man rather than getting hung up on the masks. (I’m no exception here — what interests me about Yeats is his occult involvements, and so I doubtless overemphasize those compared to those of his interests that don’t catch my fancy.) If someone else knows of a good bio of the man, I’d like to hear of it. Thanks for the pointer to Ferguson!
Sister Crow, to my mind it’s the best of Maugham’s novels. Enjoy!
Boy, you can certainly infer a reference, but it’s not humorous at all. It’s deadly serious. We’ll get to that, too, in due time!
Chris, I expect prices to go up in a lot of places, precisely because they’re beginning to come back down in the US. One way or another, though, frugality will be even more essential in the years ahead.
John, good heavens. I think I may have read that back when it first came out. Hmm!
Helen, thank you! Equally, when other communities fail, there’s still my commentariat — the best commentariat on the internet, full stop, end of sentence. I haven’t read either of those books, though.
LeGrand, thanks for this. I have immense sympathy for poets, and all those who have to labor over words. That’s never been my experience — but then, of course, my writing will never win me a Nobel Prize in literature.
Ambrose, I’ve had repeated interactions with academics in several fields I write in. Did they express delight in my work in those fields? No, Socrates, they did not. Most of them were apoplectic that someone who doesn’t have a paid position in the academic industry would dare to track proletarian mud onto their exalted subject, and told me so in no uncertain terms. Some of them were quite nasty about it. That being the case, I admire your enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, and wish that more academics shared it.
JMG said: “Did they express delight in my work in those fields? No, Socrates, they did not.”
Hah! I’m going to steal this rejoinder. My friends and family are going to love it, the way they love it when I say, “but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” After they recite a litany of complaints.
Pardon my skepticism but that channeled classification of everything into phases of the moon, it struck my cynical jaded eyes to be a little too much like the Timecube Guy. You know, everything is a cube! Time is a cube! Don’t you see it?
I have to ask, if Yeats were alive today, would he declare war on the internet after he started arguing with them or not? Even Elon Musk declared war on the internet and he was arguing about public policy. The Timecube Guy definitely declared war on the internet.
I dunno, maybe I’m the one with blinkers on and am just not Seeing Things Properly, but I remain skeptical and questioning. I think also some of these writers from Beyond, are not exactly the best writers in the world? That they have trouble getting their points across? Is it wrong to hold the Other Side to a higher standard or are they just as mediocre and incompetent as we are? Am I getting to heretical?
>Most of them were apoplectic that someone who doesn’t have a paid position in the academic industry would dare to track proletarian mud onto their exalted subject, and told me so in no uncertain terms.
More about you being uncredentialed, while being more successful. The pettier the person is, the more vicious, in my experience. Something also about how the lower the stakes involved, the more vicious everyone tends to get. Something also about how people tend to spend and prioritize their time based on what they understand, aka Bikeshedding.
If you were talking about a high voltage power line or an airplane or a nuclear reactor, they probably would just ignore you instead of starting a flame war. Or they’d steal your ideas, take credit for them but nevertheless implement them.
I find it deliciously ironic that occult fortunes and the stock market are correlated. That Dow Theory and esotericism could have anything in common. Other than Edgar Cayce, did anyone else call the bubble before it burst? Was even aware there was a bubble at all? Even Cayce didn’t really like predicting the stock market, IIRC, very reluctant when he did so.
What I take away from this is you can not really ever make being an occultist your permanent jerb – if you’re going to do it, you need something else to fall back on.
JMG, you write, “It’s deadly serious. We’ll get to that, too, in due time!” Well, I’m now doubly-interested!
On the topic of academic “disinterest”: surprising if you believe the role of academics is to discover truth. Less surprising if you understand the academic role is to guard and gatekeep “truths” . It’s fascinating how the West has created a Brahmin class, but who are largely trained to deny – or believe – this is the role they serve.
Hello JMG and everyone,
I also bought this book a few years ago after learning of it here, but didn’t get too far on my own. I’m looking forward to reading it with your guidance.
I am still working on Levi as I have been following along since the beginning. Thank you so much for making it accessible. I appreciate you providing your knowledge, ideas and input into the book to help us all along. I’ve been able to get so much more out of Levi than I would have alone. Although I will have to keep at it if I hope to begin to understand it.
I have been quite taken aback by off-hand references in some academic work to contrasting the work of “professional” scholars or historians with the work of other writers in the field — as though there were some sort of legitimacy in having state patronage (the examples I remember were European, so professional positions would largely be state supported). I can see awarding some points for “professional” presentation — good annotations, addressing current interpretive issues, and so on — but I might choose “academic” rather than “professional” as a descriptor. I should say that I have encountered pretty generous attitudes among American academics I have met, most of whom seem amazed and delighted that anyone is paying attention to their work.
Meanwhile, it’s hard not to quite Yeats:
Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
@LeGrand #55: Very tangential, but a small question I have posted here before with different examples. Why does Yeats rhyme “despair” with “ear”? Is that only a visual rhyme, a book-rhyme? Or would they have rhymed in some form of HIberno-English?
Hi John Michael,
It amuses me greatly that serious academics may question an author’s claim that the words were channelled from spirits guided by the phases of the moon. The claim as it stands is impossible to either prove or disprove, and so the lady’s claims are as good as any from my perspective, and stand until disproven. Clearly Mr Yeats required a muse to feed his artistry and arrangement of those ideas and energy. It’s genuinely difficult to know where creativity and intuition derive from, where an idea can bloom into a narrative. Hard to say how, and I prefer not to over think the process as that leads to a blockage of the well spring.
On the other hand, serious academics might want to turn their intellect to the bond market and ask the hard question: If debt continues to grow exponentially, is much of the purported representations in that market real? Of course, it is far easier to fixate upon the realm of spirits.
What should be of deep interest to the scientific community, is that the impact of the Great Depression upon the flourishing occultist scene, will of course apply equally to them in I’m guessing, the near to short term future. Knowledge areas with practical applications like say, engineering or boiler making, might be a safer course they tend to be directly related to economic outcomes. Dunno.
I’d never have guessed that change could happen so fast. Fun times, huh? The sticker shock hurts (but I’d been expecting this outcome), because mostly it suggests to me that the opportunity to expand the infrastructure and systems here become more limited. That was always going to happen though as diminishing returns is a thing.
Cheers
Chris
I forgot to mention Thomas Taylor, whose translations, if I remember correctly, were not widely praised by critics and reviewers, though he also had his patrons. Yet his translations were vastly influential, not least upon Yeats.
From https://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/buddhas-and-initiates/thomas-taylor,-the-english-platonist.pdf
I excerpt Taylor’s own remarks —
I have devoted myself to the study of Ancient Wisdom amidst the pressure of want, the languor and weakness occasioned by continual disease, and severe toil in situations not only uncongenial with my disposition and highly unfavourable to such a pursuit, but oppressed by tyranny and aggravated by insult. Amidst all this, and yet this is but a rude delineation of endurance, what has been my recompense from the critics for having brought to light Truths which have been concealed for ages in oblivion, for having translated and illustrated writings which from their intrinsic merit have been preserved amidst the ravages and revolutions of time, fanatic fury and barbaric devastation? Not the praise due to well-merited endeavours and generous exertion; not the equitable decision of candid criticism; not even the cool, dispassionate and benevolent censure which Pity suggests while Humanity writes, but the savage invective of merciless malevolence, the stupid slander of Ignorance and the imbecile scorn of dull Impertinence. These have been my rewards from the critics. Through the combined efforts of these foes to great and virtuous emulation, my writings have been explored for the purpose of detecting and magnifying faults which in other authors have been consigned to oblivion, and not with any intention (and for this indeed they were inadequate) of combating the doctrines which I have so zealously endeavoured to propagate. Yet it is from a faithful representation of these doctrines that I look forward with ardent, and I trust unpresuming hope, to the approbation of a better age, in which the page of criticism will not be stained by malignant defamation, and in which the labours of the now oppressed champion of Truth and Wisdom shall be appreciated by Equity Herself, and be at least honourably, if not largely, recorded in the Archives of Immortality.
Aldarion (#56) —
I suspect the latter. Yeats’ pronunciation was not “received pronunciation”. There are some recordings of him reading his own poetry at
https://www.openculture.com/2012/06/rare_1930s_audio_wb_yeats_reads_four_of_his_poems.html
Aldarion: ‘Why does Yeats rhyme “despair” with “ear”’
FWIW in NZ English of my generation, they rhyme.
Katsmama, by all means borrow it!
Other Owen, assigning all the vagaries of the cycle to the 28 phases of the Moon is just as arbitrary as assigning all the sounds of English to the 26 letters of the alphabet. Arbitrary or not, you have to do something of the kind if you’re to do anything at all. As for writers from the Beyond, keep in mind that they all have to work through the minds of human beings, and most mediums aren’t the sharpest ritual daggers in the drawer — quite the contrary, people of very mediocre intelligence often make very good mediums because it’s easy for them to make their minds empty and receptive (this being their normal state). It’s fairly rare that you get someone of the intellectual capacity of George Yeats who also has a gift for mediumship.
As for academics, I think a lot of it is precisely the mismatch between social prestige and economic success. Astronomers are so nastily petty toward astrologers because they know that astrology gets the enthusiastic public support and ample paychecks that they think ought to be theirs. In the same way, academics don’t get paid by publishers — those obscenely overinflated prices for academic books are pocketed entirely by the publisher — and so, not unreasonably, they’re jealous of those who get paid for their writing, and don’t have to submit to the humiliating ritual of peer review on the way there.
Finally, with regard to making occultism your full time job, au contraire — it’s quite viable, and in fact the serious occultists got through the crash in good shape. (There’s always a market for horoscopes, for instance, when the economy’s in trouble.) No, it was the wealthy amateurs who lost everything in the stock market and had to stop funding the local Theosophical lodge.
Boy, that’s certainly involved, but I think a lot of it is simply the normal feelings of a formerly privileged class on the way down. Think of the way impoverished aristocratic exiles in the late 19th and early 20th century bristled at upstarts who made their money in (shudder!) business.
Tamar, you’re most welcome! I still find new things in Lévi when I reread his work, so you’re not alone.
LeGrand, Yeats is always worth quoting! My experience doesn’t quite parallel yours; far and away the snottiest academics I’ve dealt with were British, specifically, and I recently had to advise another occult writer whose very good translation of an occult book got savaged by a British academic for straying onto territory she apparently thought she owned. The pun is inescapable: they seem very insular.
Aldarion (if I may), Yeats always rhymed by ear, and it’s an Irish ear, not a standard English one. His poem “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” a fine piece of work even by his standards —
https://poems.com/poem/nineteen-hundred-and-nineteen/
— rhymes “gone,” “moon,” and “stone” in the first stanza, “young” and “wrong” in the second, and “rule” and “hole” in the third — read it aloud with an Irish accent and yes, they all rhyme. Since he may have been the worst speller in the history of English literature — I’ve seen some of his manuscripts and felt profound pity for the poor editors — rhyming by ear was his only option anyway…
Chris, oh, every nation has its imagined spirits who dance in crowds on the heads of pins and yet stride in a single bound from star to star. Ours are mostly in the realm of economics. As for the changes crashing down upon us, I’ll be discussing that next week. It should be fun.
LeGrand, my guess is that it’s precisely that he put the classics into English, so that anybody could read them, that made him such a target for denunciation. Fortunately, he has indeed received the approbation of a better age.
Using rhymes to decode how words were pronounced in the past is quite the academic subject.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/149341/how-do-we-know-how-words-were-pronounced-hundreds-of-years-ago
I found this quote on that page,.”Modern English standard spelling does not represent Modern English pronunciation; rather, it represents Middle English pronunciation.” The spelling got locked in by the printing press. Or mostly locked in, I wouldn’t object if chuse and connexion came back.
There was a Great Vowel Shift, and consonants also slid around. See the letter j. And it just wasn’t English, German had a high German consonant shift. Languages are shifty things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
John Michael, I have both editions (’25 & ’37). This should be interesting!
Johnny B
Hi John Michael,
Oh goodie! 🙂 Look forward to reading your thoughts. It’s a quagmire of unreality out there, and yet, yet, your country has landed a leader who speaks unpalatable thoughts that are in need of thinking. Of course with this there is always some other stuff spoken, probably not necessary. Fun times and trust me in this, things could be worse.
Did you note the alleged sacking of the base commander in Greenland? Like how could anyone not read that room?
Cheers
Chris
Really glad of this new bookclub season JMG.
Being “obsessed” with WB Yeats since my teenage years i have always felt that a proper reading of his opera by a Mage was missing. Collection of his magic writings have been published -also in my mother tongue (italian) and by a main publisher like Adelphi- but always inside the frame of literary criticism. Not enough for a figure for whom magic is not a form of poetry, but poetry is a form of magic
Re: know-it-all, territorial, academics, the Ethical Skeptic’s tweet yesterday provides a malapropism that fits the bill: the “Drueger-Kennung effect https://x.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1910369403838869638
Oops spellcheck woes: Drueger-Kunning
Thanks everybody for comments on the rhymes! I am relieved to be told that Yeats rhymed by ear, since a book-rhyme would go much better with the “bald heads” than the ones in “love’s despair”! I will have to believe you that these words rhyme in Ireland or NZ, since what I have been reading about accent doesn’t make that clear… The recordings are great though, I noticed “fair” rhyming with “prayer”, and Yeats’ chanting is very interesting in itself.
JMG, in the part V of Nineteen-hundred and nineteen, “wind” rhymes with “mind” and “behind”. Yeats doesn’t seem to use such archaic pronunciation in the recordings, so I wonder if this is some kind of “historical” rhyme.
Long live the independent scholar – and the publishers who support them.
Siliconguy, there was a now-forgotten attempt in the early 20th century to reform English spelling, dropping some of the more obvious hangovers from Middle English; there was a Simplified Spelling Board, funded by millionaires, which had its own table of corrections — “thru” in place of “through,” “f” for “ph” throughout (or thruout), and so on. As I recall, it was another of the casualties of the 1929 crash.
Johnny, I hope so.
Chris, it’s hard to read the room if your whole identity is built on being one of the Good People, whose whole job is to resist the Bad Person and be applauded for it by cheering crowds. That the world doesn’t follow the logic of cheap Star Wars knockoffs has never entered their minds.
Denis, delighted to hear it. I plan on getting into the magic in fair depth in this commentary.
TemporaryReality, funny.
Aldarion, yeah, that’s a hangover from centuries past, before our language underwent its Great Vowel Movement. Poets still use it; I’m not sure why.
Justin, hear, hear!
Ordered my book. This is fun. I’ve never done one of the book club collective read throughs before. I feel like I need to get my back to school clothes and supplies too.
Really looking forward to an occult explanation of the craziness that is the stock/bond market in response to the US putting “reciprocal” tariffs on the penguins of Heard Island.
I’m reading “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, which covers the metamorphosis of the Democrats from the 1930’s through the 2022 midterms from labor friendly into what it is today. I’m trying to keep track of the the Jupiter/Saturn cycles in my head. My plan, if I follow through, is to use your book on mundane astrology and see what I can see about the dissolution of the U.S.
Aldarion #68, in the US we have regional accents in which some words that rhyme in one region don’t rhyme in another. For instance, my own accent is mostly that of Michigan where I was born and lived till my mid teens, and I pronounce “fair” and “prayer” the same. In some other regional accents people pronounce them differently. Likewise, I pronounce “merry” and “marry” the same, but they are pronounced differently in other parts of the US.
I accept words as rhyming in English poetry if they look as if they could rhyme in English by someone whose accent is different from mine, even if they don’t rhyme when I pronounce them.
I too am looking forward to this book club! I’ve downloaded pdfs of both editions and will obtain paper copies eventually. I’m also looking forward to next week’s post and to comparing notes with all of you. It should be helpful in navigating the coming days, weeks, and months.
Got my well-used copy in the mail today, leafed through the pages… someone worked hard on this text – it’s full of underlined sentences and notes. Now it’s going to be my turn. Thank you for the next leg of the journey, JMG, A Vision it is!
I have just been through the introduction Yeats prepared for A Vision, and I am positively spooked. I expected the visitations of the spectral author to be something solemn or wondrous, maybe even familiar and perfunctory from the vantage of operative magecraft, but not this. Not sudden eruptions of smells and sounds and flashes and movements of objects, ghostly apparitions and abrupt possessions.
The accounts are scary. Unless Yeats has been exaggerating (or these accounts are as fictitious as the subsequent ones of Huddson, Duddson, and Denise), they were in contact with something potent. I frankly did not expect this.
I’m a latecomer to your blogs, so this is the first time I catch a bookclub reading right at the beginning. I doubt I’ll have anything worthwhile to comment 😀 but I’ve downloaded both versions (thanks a lot to #15 Robert Mathiesen) and will try to follow along.
I’ve been reading through your Retrotopia posts on the mirorred Archdruid Report blog, and also discovered the Christmas cycle and Adam’s story there; the last one is particularly haunting. No, scratch that, they both are. The Retrotopia posts were positively uplifting by contrast! I hope you’ll get back to that topic in between your other essays – I’d be very interested in your assessment of how things have developed in the past ten years, and maybe even on some more guidance on how to navigate the next decade… I have the feeling it’ll be a wild one…
@Rajarshi (#74):
Spooky indeed! Also very common.
I rather think J B S Haldane hit the mark when he once wrote:
““My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. ….. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.”
For Hadane’s “queerer” read “spookier” or even “more terrifying,” and you’ll be closer to the truth. H P Lovecraft, too, made much the same point:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
This is what competent occultists have to live with every day of their lives. Welcome to the club!
Well this *is* a fortuitous occurence. I’ve had the 1925 edition on my bookshelf since 2008 (I did have a reprint of the 1937, but lost it to house-cleaning when our first child arrived) and have long promised I would turn to it someday. As I had to spend last week in Vancouver, I felt a strange pull to grab it off the shelf and pop it (and a collection of Irish language passages from the early modern period) in my carry on. Then, while sitting in the airport waiting to start boarding, your email arrives and I think to myself, “Huh. I guess someday really is today.” It’s been my companion ever since. Looking forward to your exploration of it, John. I’ll be following along, eager to discover if you’re a hunchback, a saint or a fool.
@JMG
I want to ask you something about visualisation; if it’s off-topic, I’ll ask in the open post, but since this post is about occultism, which, as you’ve repeatedly stressed, is about causing changes in consciousness (including that of one’s own self) to achieve results which may seem remarkable, I am asking. So here goes: you said that one can train his/her mind to achieve surprising, even unbelievable results, provided the objectives are not only physically realistic, but also within a reasonable range of possibilities contingent upon one’s personal abilities and limitations. Often, New Age fraudsters like Rhonda Byrne claim that if you visualise something hard enough, you’ll get it, because of the nonsense called the “Law of Attraction”. While I obviously don’t buy this claim, I’m curious to know if visualising the results I want, coupled with affirmations regarding the same, can help me achieve the results I want, with the caveat being the realistic limitations and physical realities I mentioned earlier, coupled with the necessary physical and mental effort on my part. Case in point: I’m currently working my way through a book pitched at applied mathematicians entirely on my own, and I’d like to be able to do it quicker than I currently am. No, I don’t harbour delusions about my abilities being comparable to child prodigies like Kolmogorov or Akshay Venkatesh (Fields Medal winner), nor do I even bother with pure mathematics beyond the kind of expertise needed by an applied mathematician, or even the kind of mathematical analysis needed to work in string theory or other such esoteric topics in theoretical physics – I’m very clear about the fact that I’m ultimately nothing more than a mathematical engineer/applied scientist, with the kind of ability and expertise needed to solve practical problems using mathematical modelling and analysis that doesn’t get abstract enough to become a purely theoretical exercise. So, can visualisation and affirmations help me here? If yes, how do I go about doing them? I’ve worked on commercial research projects before, and while this book is a notch higher in difficulty than those on some aspects, it’s also a notch less than they were on some others, so I do think it’s achievable. More broadly, I would love to know how visualisation and affirmations can be used to achieve realistic and feasible objectives, assuming they can be used at all.
About vowel shifts: Perhaps the Cockney accent featured so prominently in Pygmalion/ “My Fair Lady” was actually another vowel shift in the making, squashed dead because to speak it was social suicide. Trying to remember – did McWhorter suggest this?
@SLClaire: I who have lived in several different regions over my life, pronounce “Fair” and “Prayer” similarly, but not “merry” and “marry.” One it “eh’ and the other is “aa” as in “cat,” and I didn’t even notice Yeats’ strange rhymes at all, being carried away by the content and rhythm.
To all: am looking forward to this discussion.
Elizabeth, I’m glad you’ve joined the fun! As far as the penguins, those islands are Australian territory; I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but it’s quite common for shippers to use notional ports on little islands not referenced by regulations to do end runs around trade agreements and the like. The inclusion of Heard Island et al. is one way you can tell that the new administration is serious about its trade policy.
Inna, delighted to hear it.
Rajarshi, as Robert M. pointed out, such things are fairly common. They were especially common in the heyday of the Spiritualist movement, for reasons I’m not sure anybody understands, but I’ve had such things happen in my own experience. I recall one Druid ceremony where everyone got a bit of gluten free bread dipped in red wine, and got wide-eyed in a hurry; we’d invoked the Grail, and sure enough, the bread and wine tasted like the food or drink each person liked best. Mine, and I swear I’m not making this up, tasted exactly like a really dark, full-bodied stout with a hint of chocolate in the malt. Sara told me that hers tasted distinctly of wildflower honey. Make of that what you will!
Athaia, thank you! Those are still among my favorite fictional works. I think you’ll be pleased by the next cycle of posts; starting with this coming week’s post, which is already written, we’ll go back to the roots of my blogging and talk in detail about the decline and fall of industrial society, beginning with an overview of the basics.
Duncan, welcome to the wonderful world of occult synchronicity! As for me, nah, my phase is the 18th; like a lot of fringe intellectuals these days, I’m an antithetical thinker in a late primary age.
Viduraawakened, yes, this is off topic, but I’ll respond briefly. Yes, visualizations and affirmations can help you here, to a certain extent. They’re not omnipotent but they can certainly help. Use them regularly and enthusiastically for best results.
Patricia M, oh, the Cockney accent and equivalents still survive; the vowel shift hasn’t happened yet, but it routinely takes a couple of centuries. With my northwestern accent, btw, I pronounce “merry” and “marry” the same, also “poor,” “pour,” and “pore.” I also don’t think I’ve heard anyone in my life pronounce “temperature,” “Wednesday,” or “February” properly — it’s always “tempature,” “Wensday,” and “Febyuary.”
This will be another good ride.! Themes and concepts explored in ‘the Cosmic Doctrine’ and ‘the Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic’ have been helpful in work and study, and a great distraction, so I will be along for Yeats as well.
My comments may be erring towards boneheadedness lately, but I must stick around for some reason.. perhaos there is a healing theory and modality somewhere within all this knowledge that can be drawn up to inspire unmotivated young people. Thanks for all this continuing work – providing the community these deeply fun and insightful commentaries!
I pronounce the e in merry a bit shorter than the a in marry. The poor, pour, and pore are all the same though. I do pronounce temperature as tempachur, Wednesday is indeed wensday although the s may be a bit extended. Febyuary is correct, trying to get from b to r to u that quickly would be a trick. Odd, because brew is easy enough. But Febrewary doesn’t quite work.
I still hammer the r sound in keeping with Wisconsin tradition, but after so long in the Northwest I doubt I fit anywhere exactly.
“For Hadane’s “queerer” read “spookier” or even “more terrifying,” and you’ll be closer to the truth. H P Lovecraft, too, made much the same point:”
In this sense,
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun,
by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
I’m not much for poetry, but that one I like, along with The Raven and Annabel Lee.
Hi John Michael,
It seems all very strange to me that a high ranking military officer in what I’d describe as an ‘area of national interest’ would even say allegedly such a thing, and then maybe put it in writing. Guess you and I aren’t the ‘good people’, are we?
Oh, and the Norfolk Islanders were likewise apparently mystified at their inclusion. Oh yeah, I’d take your current administration seriously. Our current lot which are facing the polls early next month, seem to be courting the Europeans, which seems like a dud idea to me. Our military recently buried, and I mean that literally, its entire fleet of European made Taipan helicopters, and replaced them with US made Blackhawks instead. Ever pragmatic.
To be honest, it’s hard to know which way the election will go next month. I’m uncertain that either of the major parties are addressing the issues which matter to the public. They may be addressing the issues which matter to them instead. Interesting times, and I look forward to your essay this week. At a guess 500 comments? Have you ever broken the 1,000 comment mark?
Cheers
Chris
@Siliconguy (#83):
Oh, another Robert Service fan! Great to meet you! I love his poetry.
JMG
This may be more relevant to next weeks post, but the honest sorcerer’s latest post: Why bug out states are not a good idea to move into, ended with a quote from you.
Knowing many stories is wisdom
Knowing no stories is ignorance
Knowing only one story is death
Stephen
JMG,
Northwest accent! Heresy I say. I grew up with the firm belief that those of us in the Northwest had the closest thing possible to pure unaccented American English ( foolish I know). Only those folks from those other places have accents. Many years ago my freshman roommate ( from Omaha) and I would debate who’s speech was the closest to standard American English. As I have become wiser I realize that debate was foolish as all language and accents are continually evolving and there is no such thing as standard.
@Siliconguy 183: We read that in junior high; I remember it; one of the few things I remember from back then.
I have always pronounced February with the br, temperature pretty much as written, Wednesday as Wensdy, pour and pore the same, but poor differently, marry and merry a bit differently but close.
Interesting: I guess it all depends on where and when we grew up and learned and where we have lived and traveled since.
Stephen
What a delightful conversation about English pronunciation triggered by that innocent question about rhymes! I would just like to make it clear that my question wasn’t about “accepting words as rhyming”. Yes, I can accept anything that a poet tells me should rhyme, but I need to pronounce it loud. And if I know that the poem requires a certain sound structure (of metre or end-rhyme or stave or assonance) and I can’t hear it, it makes me stumble. As an extreme case, it seems impossible to me to read Chaucer with any modern pronunciation and actually enjoy the poetry. How can one read “gar-dena in gear-dagum” without the stave? Reading Virgil with soft “c” and monophthongized “ae” kills half the pleasure. Pronouncing YHWH as Adonai in Isaiah’s most rhythmical passages sounds like a travesty of the original.
The wind / mind pair is apparently called a conventional historic rhyme. I can accept it (barely) as a deliberate auditive stumbling-block (like certain missing rhymes in comical poems that evoke the word that should have been said). I suppose Yeats inserted it to force the reader to pay homage to poets from times gone by.
Ian, boneheadedness is an essential human characteristic, and may just be one of the four primary forces of nature. Ergo, don’t worry about it. 😉
Siliconguy, I can pronounced Febrewary easily enough if I do so deliberately, but it’s not the way I say it normally! As for Service, there’s a fine addition to the roster; thank you.
Chris, it really is odd. I’ve noticed, though, that most of the military officers I know of who have behaved like that — as though they don’t have to worry about the consequences of their actions — are women. That makes me wonder just how far the military went in terms of putting affirmative action ahead of functional military discipline — and that, in turn, is a critical detail when it comes to this nation’s capacity to fight wars.
Stephen, good heavens. He’s been reading me from way back.
Clay, rural Washington’s a good antidote for that. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in the Grays Harbor area, where my father was from and my grandparents still lived, and got to hear the state called Warshington, among other things. That plus exposure to spoken word records early on — think Vachel Lindsay and Vincent Price — got me noticing my own accent.
Aldarion, I much prefer Chaucer in his own Middle English, too. It has such a lovely music!
“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,”
and forthe we goon!
>Wednesday is indeed wensday
I’ve yet to find anyone who pronounces it otherwise. Strictly speaking it’s Wed-n-es-day (Woden’s Day or Wed’n’es Day), but that’s work to say and let’s face it, work sucks. So let’s not do that, shall we? Let’s just smoove everything over, call it a Wensday and go home.
I’m sure it drives furriners who have to learn this language batty when things are spelled one way and then pronounced another. Actually, it drives natives batty too – native English students require and spend significantly more time training in English than comparable students do in other languages. And even then native English speakers don’t really get it right all the time either.
There seems to be a modern printing of the 1937 edition of “A Vision” available for €45 from Black Letter Press:
https://www.blackletter-press.com/product-page/w-b-yeats-a-vision
And the small German publisher seems to have many other interesting books also:
https://www.blackletter-press.com/category/all-books?page=8
NB: I’m in no way affiliated with that company. I just bumped into it when searching for Kepler’s Somnium.
Wednesday/Wensday….. “English is tough stuff,” is a clever poem on this off-topic topic: https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/netsam/englishIsToughStuff.html
Update on that honeymoon location:
Prof. Roy Foster who did a two volume biography of Yeats assures me that the honeymoon took place at Ashdown Forest Hotel, in the village of Forest Row, just outside of Ashdown Forest. He tells me that was pointed out to him last time he was in the area. It’s certainly not the business that is currently calling itself Ashdown Forest Hotel – that was a hospital for Belgian Officers in 1917.
I don’t have access to the database of Yeats’ letters but apparently there is at least one on hotel headed notepaper known. I’ve ordered a used copy of Vol II of the biography that covers the period in question, there may be a reproduction there which would clear up this minor mystery (to me) completely. It covers the period of his life that is of interest in any case.
John and Robert M, does it ever reach a point where it gets normal? Is it always scary, or do you eventually get a grip on it? Does the occult become “interesting” from “spooky”, or is there always a tingling fear at the back in of your mind?
I was at Goodwill this weekend and found a lovely hardcover copy of Yeats Irish Fairytales and Folklore in their book section. Synchronicity in action.
I assume there will be a part later where we talk about the Battle of Blythe Road? Reading a bit about that bit of occult history was my first indication that Yeats had occult training. Before learning that, I simply thought him a famous poet.
Finally, this is a treat that has always been missing. It’s a hard book to get through alone, tried many times and always stopped.
Speaking of books, Susan Johnston Graf’s works have been helpful, and Foster’s two-volume biography seems promising (I only have the first volume). Ann Saddlemyer’s “Becoming George” has also been insightful.
But overall, Yeats, at least here in Estonia, where I live, is still seen mainly as a master poet with strange and perverse hobbies that aren’t really worth mentioning. I recently gave a book presentation where I discussed his poems and essays with the translator who repeated the same kind of remarks Yeats’s contemporaries made. Similar in the lines what Auden said – a good poet, but the magic part is an embarrassment.
As a big fan of Colin Wilson, I’ve always been disappointed that even he seems to downplay Yeats’s occult interests as just a way to fulfill his romantic longings.
Looking forward to being part of this blog journey!
Other Owen, I thought of Time Cube too!
For those who aren’t aware of
Dr. Gene Ray, Cubic,
the man who was Wiser Than ALL Gods and Scientists,
well now,
You Were Educated Stupid.
Seek Time Cube Truth:
(JMG, can you center the above text, and put it in a 20-point font with red and green ink?)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160112193916/http://timecube.com/
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Time_Cube
https://web.archive.org/web/20141108172553/http://www.lib.hcu.edu.tw/journal/files/CAS/CAS0206.pdf
One day at a time…
Other Owen, English badly needs the kind of housecleaning that some other languages have had. Wensday would be a good start, but getting rid of those deceptive -ugh- elements that can sound like anything or nothing would be even better: consider “tough,” “through,” “caught,” “draught” — that latter’s become “draft” in American Engish, which shows the way forward.
A. Karhukainen, thanks for this.
Phutatorius, funny. I recall a poem from my childhood:
“If an S and an I and an O and a U
And an X put together spell SU;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
If an S and an I and a G and an H
And an E and a D can spell CIDE,
There isn’t much left for a speller to do,
But to go and commit siouxeyesighed.”
Andy, thanks for this.
Rajarshi, oh, it becomes quite normal. At least it did so a long time ago for me!
Trubrujah, I wasn’t planning on getting into the Golden Dawn Wars, as those have very little to do with A Vision; still, we’ll see.
Siim, I have no idea why Wilson did that — he of all people should have known better. Welcome to the journay!
Ambrose, nope — the comments page has very limited options for typesetting. I somehow missed out on the whole Time Cube business, which is unfortunate — it strikes me as delectably weird.
Ambrose (further), what a fine rabbit hole! I think I’ve figured out the basic principles of Time Cube theory. Now to play the roleplaying game…
That’s great! (The Time Cube roleplaying game.)
Somewhere out there is a video of Ray’s speech at MIT (for a student club–he may not have appreciated the, ah, spirit in which the invitation was extended) where he answers questions like, “How can I use Time Cube to get a date?”
I wish I could remember where I saw this, but somebody wrote about a Bizarro-type alternate timeline where Ray won the Nobel physics prize.
Next we have to get you into Sonichu / Chris Chan lore.
American English went through a wave of spelling reform (see Noah Webster), but these never got all that far. The problem, I think, is that really radical spelling reform would isolate American English — and even fragment it, to the extent that “spell it as it sounds” became the rule. The current state of English spelling is a kind of equilibrium, or compromise, between the pressures of phoneticality and breadth of reach.
Despite its endearing eccentricities, English is not all that bad. There are many ostensibly alphabetic/phonetic languages that have spelling systems that are real head-scratchers. (Imagine spelling for French using the rules of Haitian Creole.) I recommend studying Tibetan.
One unsuccessful project at American spelling reform was floated by Melvil Dui (otherwise Melville Dewey), one of the founding figures of American librarianship. For a while, at least, even some updated editions of his Decimal System spelled his name “Melvil Dui”, as a kind of fraternal gesture from later librarians. (I don’t know of this continues, since Dewey has been out of favor for a while.)
I think of spelling reform as being a project of people like the “The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson”, exponent of the Age of Reason in Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen.” But that’s just me.
In defense of Timecube Guy, I think he was channeling and probably didn’t know it. I don’t know who to feel more sorry for – whoever it was on the Other Side trying to get their message across or the Timecube Guy receiving the garbled message and then proceeding to amplify it and post it to the internet.
I mean, supposedly, that’s how Joe Smith got his Book of Mormon – he was channeling something. And managed to receive something more – coherent. Well, then there’s his hat that got involved but we’ll just gloss right over that. Can you imagine someone starting a new religion by looking into a MAGA cap? Forget I said that.
The rest of us are scritching our heads going “Wut in tarnation?” And then I start questioning the competence of the entities and critters on the Other Side of things. Other people on the internet take the opportunity to turn it into a clownshow, but that’s the internet for you. I do wonder if Yeats was alive today, what treatment the internet would give him?
@Patricia M. #79: Regarding the vowel shift, please listen to any Australian news channel on the Youtube. Sounds quite Cockney, at least to my non-English-speaker ears. Then compare how some Maori in New Zealand speak English, it feels almost like received pronunciation sometimes.
@Viduraawakened: #78: As a sort of an amateur mathematician myself, I strongly recommend visualization, but not in that “law of attraction” sense of imagining oneself to be a successful mathematician, but just by visualizing the mathematical concepts themselves. For me, just looking at the printed formulas often doesn’t help, but when I decide to have had enough for one day, and go to bed, then in the darkened room, with my eyes closed, the answer often comes to my mind after a few minutes, as it’s only then I start to “see” the structures and their correspondences properly, without any noise inputs. (Yes, a kind of sensory deprivation).
But of course people are at different points in the visualization skills spectrum. Gustav Meyrink tells in his autobiographical essay how he had almost completely aphantasia (couldn’t picture things in his mind), but later, when having done a lots of meditation, the ability suddenly came to him (that certainly made the story-telling easier to him then after), but surprisingly, it also came with some extra psi-abilities.
>those deceptive -ugh- elements that can sound like anything or nothing would be even better: consider “tough,” “through,” “caught,” “draught”
I agree, although at this point in time you’d get so many crazies with their pet agendas streaming out of the woodwork to cause immense chaos. It would turn into a first order clownshow and in the first hour. I wouldn’t go anywhere near an attempt like that right now.
BTW this is another case (like with wed-n-es-day) where things have gotten smooved over because people are lazy. That “gh” sound isn’t supposed to be silent, it was supposed to denote a sound similar to the Russian “X”. Needless to say, things have drifted since then but the spelling hasn’t.
It certainly is jerb security for English teachers.
@rajarshi (#96):
What our host said. You eventually get used to being badly spooked, being weirded out, and everyone else’s
“normal” comes to feel odd and disconcerting. You learn how to fake being “normal” to get through your own life among all the “normies.”
For me, I grew up with weird stuff in my family, including an old human skull in a closet in our house that my maternal great-grandmother used to use to get in touch with her ancestors on Hallowe’en., My mother and her mother were Christian Scientists, which means that they firmly believed the physical world was simply a vast illusion, a toxic fiction, from the lethal clutches of which one should try as hard as one could to escape. In high school, our physics teacher, Clesson Hopkins Harvey, had grown up in the Point Loma compound of the Theosophical Society, and ran an after-school club on learning to read Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, using the Pyramid Texts as our reading material. He was also on a life-long quest to open his “third eye” (his pineal gland) so as to see the reality that we all always live in without perceiving it. (He said he eventually succeeded, well after his retirement from teaching.)
So “consensus reality” and “conformity” were never a thing with me or my family. All our family stories were about ancestors who could not manage to conform to society’s demands, or flat-out refused to do so.
Works for me …
@100: “Other Owen, English badly needs the kind of housecleaning that some other languages have had. ”
I hope it doesn’t turn into Newspeak with “impactful” as Drum Major, followed by “They” and “Them” as majorettes.
Comments #71 and #80: I did not know about going to remote islands to avoid international trade agreements. How do you? I read “How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain” but I don’t remember it addressing tariffs. I may have to re-read.
OR, I could just ask you to recommend a book/author that covers the relevant points about international trade and economic history. In fact, you could probably recommend a book on the occult view of economic history. : )
The subjects you’re familiar with is astounding.
Ambrose, nah, one piece of weirdly majestic schizophrenic samizdat at a time. It fascinates me that Ray’s work makes perfect sense if you interpret it as a dream; maybe it’s just that I’m reading a lot of Jung and Jungian psych these days (currently most of the way through Edward Edlinger’s Mysterium Lectures), but cubic time unfolds very neatly into a mandala vision mapped out in time, expressed by someone who didn’t have the necessary vocabulary and knew it — Ray’s rants about words are a kind of bargain-basement version of Lao Tsu’s famous opening line. It’s a pity he never seems to have read Blake:
“Now I a fourfold vision see
And a fourfold vision is given to me
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And three fold in soft Beulahs night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newtons sleep.”
LeGrand, I happened to have stumbled across another, the Simplified Spelling Board, because Rosicrucian occultist George Winslow Plummer was a fan and used their spellings in some of his writings. (I have his order’s “Anthroposofic Chart” on the wall, for example.) I note that Melvil Dui was a member.
Other Owen, Yeats would have given as good as he got on the internet. He was quite the lively polemical author — as you’d expect from the man who shoved Aleister Crowley down a flight of stairs. As for the MAGA cap, I think that already happened, and gave birth to the worship of Kek the Frog God. (Talk about “Reformed Egyptian”…)
Phutatorius, of course it will. Languages always do.
Elizabeth, I didn’t get that piece of data from a book. I got it from sidelong comments in articles about odd corners of global trade. These days, the gap between the world as chronicled in nice neat form in books and other reference material, and the world as it actually functions, has gotten very wide indeed.
@ Robert M., that sounds amazing. Your family seems to be blessed with spiritual sensitivity.
There is something I have always had a hard time understanding about spiritual systems that assert the world around us to be an illusion. Wouldn’t that make the sacred or mystical artifacts in the world illusory as well? For instance, if the world is an illusion, doesn’t that make the skulls of our ancestors just as much a bunch of illusions? How does one see a connection to the real in these illusory devices?
I know this is a little strange coming from me, since I am a Hindu and Hindus have been insisting the world-is-an-illusion position for millennia now while insisting nonetheless on the sanctity of places, flowers, animals, and people. But I have personally found it contradictory.
On pronunciation: George W. Bush was often ridiculed for pronouncing “nuclear” as “noo-cyuh-ler,” but I’ve spent most of my career working with scientists (including physicists), and they often pronounce it that way!
@Rajarshi (#111):
I’m not sure that we were spiritually sensitive to any high degree. Rather, none of us were in any way “normal” people, and we were quite comfortable with not being “normal.”
As to your excellent question about sacred artifacts, you might start with a distinction made by the late Henri Corbin between “imaginary” and “imaginal.” Neither has any physical existence; neither is “real” in the sense that materialists use that term. But they are not the same thing: what is “imaginary” cannot bring about change in the “real” world, whereas what is “imaginal” can bring about change in the “real.” See Corbin’s essay “Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal,” which you can read online as part of his book Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam at:
https://logoilibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Copy-of-Swedenborg-Esoteric-Islam-Swedenborg-Studies-.pdf
The most accessible example of something that is imaginal rather than imaginary, I suppose, is “being in love”: it cannot, IMHO, easily be defined in material terms — it is far more than mere changes in one’s physiology –, but it does have real effects on people.
Given that distinction, even if the material world might be an illusion, yet in that illusory material world, some things are imaginal rather than imaginary, including sacred artifacts. The power is there even though the sacredness is not physical. (Or course, if one believes that there is nothing beyond the world of matter and energy in time and space, then this makes no sense. But that, for me, is a false belief, contradicted for me by my own direct experience.)
Does this help with the difficulty?
The Battle of Blythe Road? – Had to Google that one.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/william-butler-yeats-aleister-crowley-magic-duel
https://www.holythornpress.com/post/the-battle-of-blythe-road
Brought to mind Puck’s observation in Midsummer Night’s Dream “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Applicable at times to any followers of any faith or system or philosophy including myself.
>He was quite the lively polemical author — as you’d expect from the man who shoved Aleister Crowley down a flight of stairs
Yeah. That sounds like the kind of hothead that would declare war on the internet, given the “right” sort of encouragement. There’s a word for people the internet can spin up and keep spun up. Yeah. I could see him broadcasting himself challenging other people to boxing matches. This has happened. More than once.
One must meter their internet time. The more you internet, the crazier you get. Also see: Screaming Bluehair. And with that thought, it is time to go out and do things in the real world.
>Next we have to get you into Sonichu / Chris Chan lore
No. Do not go there. I guarantee, you’ll regret it.
I just got the book in the mail and read the first few pages of “A Packet for Ezra Pound” and it’s like sitting back into a favorite chair after a long time travelling, though I haven’t read it before. I’ve been reading mostly texts on esoteric Hinduism, along with some Renaissance, over the last couple years, and while it’s been fantastic, they’re both actually foreign to me and my cultural context (Heathenry too, in the years prior). I studied a lot of modernist lit in college, and Pound, H.D., Yeats – that whole milieu, and style – is familiar to me. It feels nice, and somewhat nostalgic. I’m looking forward to how it develops.
@JMG,
“Now to play the roleplaying game…”
I don’t know if you have ever encountered this, but RPGs already had their own Time Cube before the Time Cube RPG came out. It was called HYBRID and like Time Cube was the work of a very disturbed mind:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071014102242/http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/hybrid.htm
A fun game is to try to decipher even a single rule (well, one that isn’t just a rant about politics or the like). As far as I know, no one has yet achieved that in the 25+ years the game has existed.
Rajarshi, regarding Buddhism and “seeing the world as illusion”. I think there are many schools of thought, but as far as I understand, the basic idea is that:
Let’s say you have a square wooden table. It has a tabletop and four legs. The table is the sum of all these parts. If you take away one individual part, there is no “table” hidden inside a leg, or the piece of flat wood at the top. So “table” is simply the label we give to the general range of objects. There is no “tableness”. This is what Buddhists mean when they say everything is “illusion”. The same analysis is applied to the mind and consciousness in Buddhist thought.
However, just because there is no such thing as a “tableness”, just various things that we call tables, doesn’t mean tables are illusion in the sense of a magic trick, or fiction, Buddhist philosophy takes some pains to emphasise this. They still have various effects, like holding things up and whatever.
In the same way, Buddhists consider humans and sentient beings in general to consist of agglomerates of various psycho-spiritual components, they can still create karmic causes and effects.
That’s the general gist of it, and there are centuries worth of debates about finer points of it. I am not sure in detail about how the Hindu schools view it. I think from what I generally understand, the Astika schools generally posit one or more “real” substances underneath the Maya that exist eternally, while Buddhism generally posits none.
Here’s an amusing anecdote about a Tibetan lama and a Zen monk about an orange:
https://sillysutras.com/kalu-rinpoche-the-zen-master-and-the-orange/
It illustrates the difference in how these very different schools teach the same idea, and how they took it in different directions.
Rajarshi (if I may), do you recall the metaphor from the Upanishads about the guy who sees a rope lying in the grass, and thinks it’s a snake? The snake is an illusion but the rope is real. There’s something real there — it’s just misinterpreted. In the same way, those sacred objects are not what they appear to be, but there’s something genuinely there — a rope hidden beneath the illusion of the snake.
Yavanna, a good point! I do tend to say “nuke-lee-ar,” but that may be the Pacific Northwest accent cutting in.
BeardTree, oh, granted! One of the things that makes occultism so fun is the constant contrast between grand visions of cosmic meaning and absurd little incidents like this.
Other Owen, nah, he was smarter than that. He’d stir up the internet in a tizzy and then go off to spend time with Lady Gregory or some other friend of his, and never check his email for three weeks. Then he’d post something unbearably snotty on his blog. As for Sonichu and Chris Chan, okay, now you’ve got me curious.
Isaac, and Yeats is very interested in giving you that sense of comfort. By that point in his career, he knew exactly what he was doing.
Slithy, I’m sorry to say that the site you linked leaves out the first 311 rules. Still, it looks good and giddy.
Yavanna @112: “On pronunciation: George W. Bush was often ridiculed for pronouncing “nuclear” as “noo-cyuh-ler,” but I’ve spent most of my career working with scientists (including physicists), and they often pronounce it that way!” Yeah, Herman Melville could write but he couldn’t spell. His wife helped him with spelling. And he had an annoying habit of turning gerunds into adverbs.
But with Dubya it went further than “newculeur”: His malapropisms (ones that I actually heard him make) included “disassemble” for “dissemble” and “commiserate” for “commensurate.” He even went on in his speech to explain to those of his listeners who weren’t familiar with the big word he’d used that “disassemble” meant to not tell the truth. These mistakes, involving words that sound alike but look quite different on paper, led me to question his ability to read. And that’s ironic, because was he not “reading” to some Florida school children on that fateful day in 2001? He is said to have a fine memory: That is typical of people who are illiterate.
@ Alvin #119 “Buddhists consider humans and sentient beings in general to consist of agglomerates of various psycho-spiritual components” In Buddhist eyes one of the absurdities of Christianity is that Jesus permanentized his human agglomerate self and offers the same state of individual being he eternally has to his followers. He remains Jesus of Nazareth (he identified himself as such after his resurrection and ascension when queried as who he was, Acts 22::8) I will remain BeardTree of ….? To some spiritual types hoping to merge with the eternal transcendent pudding this is low class and shallow. Well good enough for Jesus good enough for me.
JMG –
I think that the complexity of the English/American language is a feature, not a bug. The basics are easy enough to get business done, but the nuances allow us to get to know each other (in geography and education) within just a few sentences of small-talk. I won’t assert, though, that this is a property unique to the English language, except that it is spoken by people from so many different places around the world.
When traveling in Norway, I picked up enough of the language to get by, to be respectful of their culture, and they always preferred to continue in English. Several times, it went like this: “Oh, you speak Norwegian?” “I try, a little, but your English is so much better.” “That’s because we start studying English in the early years of school.” “Ah. Most Americans don’t start studying Norwegian until college.” That always got a good laugh! They KNOW that almost no one in the US speaks any Norwegian at all.
Rajarshi wrote, “Does the occult become “interesting” from “spooky”, or is there always a tingling fear at the back in of your mind?”
Yes, it certainly does, but that’s still relatively a starting point along the journey. From merely “interesting” it can go on to become utterly fascinating and wildly entertaining — what an extraordinary adventure!
Of course, there are all kinds of dangers along the way, but the same is true of rock climbing or scuba diving or falling in love or any other exhilarating undertaking. To put it in perspective, walking was once a truly scary and unpredictable hazard when all we had mastered was crawling. Nonetheless, we took that daunting first step, which led to stumbling and falling and then running and dancing and adventures unimaginable.
“As for Sonichu and Chris Chan, okay, now you’ve got me curious.”
Well, you’ll have to make an exception and (snort!) watch a few videos!
(The joke is that Geno Samuel’s definitive treatment, “Chris Chan: A Comprehensive History,” is 85 episodes long. One wit wrote that it is more like Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” than “Tiger King.”)
But okay, as briefly as I can: Chris Chan (Christine Weston Chandler, formerly Christopher or Christian) is an autistic transgender lolcow–i.e. an unfortunate person “milked for laughs” on the internet,” in fact he is the prototypical lolcow–who first came to the attention of the internet around 2007 for a hilariously amateurish comic he self-published (called “Sonichu,” after his mashup of Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog), AND for his “love quest” in which he walked around Virginia with a sign advertising his need for a “boyfriend-free girl.” Internet trolls began contacting Chris pretending to be women interested in him, and tricked him into various funny or cruel pranks. Since Chris has a poor grasp of reality, this was easy to do. Eventually a troll group convinced him that his cartoon world actually exists (albeit in another dimension), and encouraged Chris in his tragic slide into delusion. His transitioning into female may be part of this, since trolls may have convinced him that he could attract lesbians by becoming a lesbian. (I’ll switch pronouns now.)
The cherry on top came a few years ago, when she allegedly began having sex with her elderly mother. It’s hard to know who to blame–they are both impaired, in my opinion–and it bears mentioning that Chris now denies this ever happened. It also bears mentioning that some of the trolls are even more disturbed that Chris. While in jail awaiting trial, she announced that she was the reincarnation of Jesus, apparently inspired by the Bible that was the only reading material provided. She spent more than a year in jail, and under psychiatric observation, but was either released without charge, or given an autistic deferment with sealed records. I have to say that the state of Virginia handled the case rather well. Chris now lives on SSI, donations from fans, and profits from sales of various junk items, with the help of a troll group that supervises her interactions with the public. Not an ideal arrangement, but about the best outcome that could be hoped for. Also, she seems to have a girlfriend (who is possibly Finnish), and has been spotted in Finland.
Chris has always identified as “high-functioning autistic,” and may have been diagnosed to that effect as a child. (“High-functioning” here just means one can do things like talk, feed oneself, etc.) It should go without saying that little of the above could be called normal autistic behavior. A YouTube channel called “Sonichu Psychology” explores other issues Chris likely has, including narcissism, psychosis, delusional thinking, etc. (A complication arises from the fact that his paranoia is justified–a vast conspiracy dedicated to mocking him, if not ruining his life, demonstrably exists.) Unfortunately, his parents insisted on “mainstreaming” him–they refused to send him to special education–with the result that he lacks key life skills such as the ability to hold a simple job or follow a budget.
I first heard of Chris when he was mentioned in passing in some comment section. Further inquiry sent me to some amusing YouTube compilations of Chris doing bizarre things like run around naked, slap himself, make funny noises, etc. One thing led to another, and now I probably know more about Chris than I do about my own brother. I’ve even dreamed about him/her. If demons live on the internet, then this is how they degrade us. So…beware indeed.
Hi John Michael,
I must say, things are moving pretty fast indeed. Did you see this latest?: Trump slashes $US2.2 billion grant to Harvard after university defies White House demands. Is this another case of not reading the room?
Unless you can afford to but cut off, it’s probably not all that smart to be cut off.
Back in the early 1990’s if I recall correctly, the local head of IBM said something along the lines of: “We refuse to participate in the recession”. It’s a remarkable statement, and you’d note the underlying currents. However, the later facts on the ground suggested that the gentleman was indeed proven to be incorrect.
What strange times we are living in! And as an act of magic, it has much energy, but produces little effect.
Cheers
Chris
Lathechuck, maybe so, but it annoys me. Not that I expect to do anything about it!
Ambrose, nope. I found some print sites and got a basic rundown. That poor bastard! His behavior may not be typically autistic, but reading about him gave me that unpleasant chill that comes from realizing I could have ended up in something like the same place, if I’d made a few really stupid mistakes and missed a few really important positive influences. I don’t see any way he can get himself out of the pit he’s in, at least in this incarnation, so for me it’s a matter of shaking my head and walking away.
Chris, yes, and Harvard is suing. I expect a lot more of this as we proceed. Our Orange Julius is going up against the whole structure of American elite governance, and so far he’s doing better than I’d expected.
Rajarshi wrote, “There is something I have always had a hard time understanding about spiritual systems that assert the world around us to be an illusion. Wouldn’t that make the sacred or mystical artifacts in the world illusory as well?”
Indeed it would! An illusion is simply an erroneous perception or understanding. The world around us gets erroneously perceived and understood by all of us all the time, mystical artifacts very much included. That claim presupposes that there must exist something to be misperceived or misunderstood in the first place. That something could very well be absolutely nothing with an accreted film of misperception smeared all over it, or that theory itself could be the misperception. No one is actually sure, though we all seem to be quite happy to throw our favorite misperceptions around with abandon.
On occasion we might even get a slightly clearer glimpse of the subtle realms behind all the phenomena we’re so reliably misperceiving. Alas, we will misperceive and misunderstand those subtle realms just as reliably. Even were we to dimly perceive the pure energy of the life force underlying all of the complex realms that interpenetrate our being, we would most assuredly misperceive and misunderstand it as well.
Our extraordinary skills at misperception and misunderstanding are ample evidence of our deep connection to reality. Our interest in reality, our vested interest in misinterpreting reality, our affinity for relating to our misperceptions of reality as reality all point to how thoroughly entangled with reality we actually are. The world around us with all of its artifacts, sacred and profane, is our illusory and erroneous perception of reality. Our illusions are the ornate patterns we’re tracing out in our magically intimate dance with reality.
The Harvard thing has me puzzled. Why does a private university think it deserves free public money?
Given the size of their endowment they should be embarrassed to take tax money.
>so for me it’s a matter of shaking my head and walking away
I did warn you. People talk about the “global village” but those same wide-eyed people never do talk about the “global village idiot”. Anyways, that’s what Chris-chan is, or whatever he’s calling himself these days. Yeah, you heard me, I deadnamed him. Hopefully, this is the last I’ll reference him for the next 10 years. Leave him where you found him.
>The basics are easy enough to get business done, but the nuances
English does have some features that make it easy to pick up. No cases, no genders. No memorizing 500 different ways to say “a”. Ein, eine, einer, einen, einem, for instance. However, English really should be called Verbish – the compound verbs are something only a native can truly master, IMHO. “Should have been going to be running”, for instance. Many other languages limp by with simpler, cruder verbs. You don’t have to master all the verbs to limp by in English, but it does permanently mark you as a furriner. You call it nuance? I suppose so. You could use less charitable words for it as well.
>she announced that she was the reincarnation of Jesus, apparently inspired by the Bible that was the only reading material provided. She spent more than a year in jail, and under psychiatric observation
This why Jesus ain’t coming back anytime soon. The minute anyone says “Hi, I’m Jesus”, they get whisked off to a padded room where the nice men in white coats have cups full of pills they want you to take. Nom nom nom.
Put yourself in Jesus’ sandals. Would you want that to happen to you?
@Ambrose and JMG, Chris Chan’s story gave me chills as well. If not for a few lucky breaks I might have ended up just as badly. Poor guy/gal.
BeardTree, “To some spiritual types hoping to merge with the eternal transcendent pudding this is low class and shallow. ”
Buddhism generally denies any kind of eternal transcendent entity existing outside of time, actually there are many polemics against “merging” with some transcendental entity in Buddhist texts both with regard to the rival Astika sects and regarding Buddhists who interpret some ideas in this sense. From the Buddhist PoV, union with Christ sounds pretty close to merging with Brahman/Ishvara etc in that both posit the existence of an eternal entity.
From a Buddhist PoV, the fruits of Brahmanic religion are rebirth in different heavens, many Buddhists also would consider the same of Abrahamic or other religious practices insofar as they are conducive of compassion, loving-kindness and not human sacrifice and such; i.e., they are positive goals in themselves but not what Buddhism aims towards.
Anyway, no disrespect meant on my side, I don’t consider people who believe in some transcendental entity or not “low class”. I just wanted to share one perspective on “illusion” in an Indic religion as far as I understand it. For my part, I simply find it impossible to accept that some kind of transcendental entity exists.
About pronouncing and spelling “Sioux…”
I wouldn’t worry if I were you.
They’d rather you called them “Lakota.”
At least the ones in
North and South Dakota.
@JMG
“Slithy, I’m sorry to say that the site you linked leaves out the first 311 rules. Still, it looks good and giddy.”
Au contraire! The rules are just organized out of order. If you go most of the way through the document you’ll reach “Part II of my rpg HYBRID” which contains the header “CORE RULES (# OF CORE RULES = SQUARE ROOT OF TOTAL # OF RULES):” then proceeds to Rule #0.
You might also note the disclaimer about 2/3 of the way through the document:
“DISCLAIMER : WARNING: RULE # 196 is X-rated in that to calculate L, use X = [(C2/10)^2], and RULE # 193 which is NOT meant to be read by kids, since RULE # 187 EXPLAINS homosexuality mathematically, using modifier G @ 11.”
However, it is with great relief we later read another disclaimer: “DISCLAIMER: Don’t take my rule & my equations too seriously: it’s just a RPG for the imagination.”
Christophe #128
It is hard not to conclude that that is actually a feature and not a bug… training in discernment but with the humourous irony that what we think we discern can only ever be ‘best guess’ and not close to actuality.
“I wondered why the frisbee was getting bigger; and then it hit me.”
***
“We’re cattle,” Ridley told Dr. Sarah Klein during his initial evaluation. “This… everything… it’s just a feeding pen. There’s something out there, bigger than galaxies, keeping us distracted while it feeds.” He described a vast, ancient entity that maintains our perceived reality as a form of “cosmic anesthesia.”
https://medium.com/@EMPTYVESSELS/the-mouth-in-the-void-1fdf2293a00e
***
Guess it all could depend on how what is perceived is processed down to mental image, form and idea etc
If the manifest is the absolute experiencing itself and that guy just found himself feeling that, well…
“I couldn’t bear it,” he repeated. “The scope of it. The horror of knowing.”
Like something out of Lovecraft?
@Goldenhawk Thank you for finding the ebook. The paper versions of the 1937 text are pricey.