Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, it’s time for us to plunge into the depths of Yeats’s Vision. That’s easy, in a certain sense, because Yeats starts out the main body of our text by tossing the reader straightway into the deep end of the pool, launching at once into the core images that undergird his magical philosophy. In another sense, of course, that’s exactly the difficulty, because it’s all too easy to land with a splash in these waters and sink without a trace. My goal here is to hand out life jackets and so make that initial plunge a little less risky.
“A little less risky” is the crucial point, though. We are going to cover a great deal of ground in this essay. Most of it will be much clearer when we’ve gone further and sorted things out in more specific detail. For now, do your best to follow along, read every paragraph here at least twice, and give the relevant section of A Vision—the first section of Book I, titled “The Principal Symbol”—several close readings. Yeats was not in the business of coming up with a little light reading for the clueless. He was trying to explain a profound and important way of looking at the world, with deep roots in occult philosophy.
Notice, to begin with, that I mentioned the core images that provide A Vision with its foundation, not core ideas. It’s crucial to grasp this, and not just for our present purposes. One of the primary differences between occult philosophy and the more respectable branches of philosophy is precisely the distinction between image and abstraction. A quote from Dion Fortune’s The Cosmic Doctrine is apposite: “In these occult teachings you will be given certain images, under which you are instructed to think of certain things. These images are not descriptive but symbolic, and are designed to train the mind, not to inform it.”
That quote applies with equal force to A Vision, and there’s good reason for the similarity. Fortune penned The Cosmic Doctrine in 1923 and 1924, while Yeats was writing the first version of A Vision; like Yeats, she was working from material received in trance via a magical partnership—her relationship with her longtime friend and fellow occultist Charles Loveday apparently didn’t extend to sex, but the two were very close and were buried side by side in a Glastonbury graveyard. Of course Yeats and Fortune also shared the same occult background: both had traveled, like so many other occultists of their day, from Theosophy to the Golden Dawn and then to an enduring fascination with Celtic traditions. Working within a common tradition as they were, it comes as no surprise that they used the same method to communicate their insights.
Yeats begins, therefore, with the image of a vortex or gyre. Think of a tornado or a waterspout, with one end contracted to a point and the other at full expansion. Now imagine a triangle, to serve as a schematic image of such a vortex. Lay it on its side, as shown below on the right. Get used to this image—you’ll be seeing it a lot. Remember that it’s a vortex, not simply a triangle.
As our text points out, a single vortex is one way to diagram the relationship between the two opposing principles Yeats has in mind, which are the subjective life—meaning here a person’s experience of himself or herself—and the objective life—meaning here a person’s experience of everything that is not the self. The subjective life extends in time: if you watch your inner experiences you’ll encounter a constant flow of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, forming a sequence along the one dimension of time. If you pay attention to the world around you, you’ll encounter a great many things simultaneously present in the three dimensions of space. Thus the point at one end of the vortex represents time and subjective experience, and the whirl at the other end represents space and objective experience.
Yet people differ in their relationship to these two kinds of experience. Some face outward toward the world of objective things in space, some face inward toward the world of subjective things in time, and some—a smaller number—are torn between these two. The people who face outward Yeats considers representative of what he calls the primary tincture, and those who face inward similarly represent the antithetical tincture. In our text, rather than a single cone, these two options are symbolized most often by two vortices or cones, each with its point in the center of the other’s wide end.
This is the most basic symbol of the system: two cones or vortices facing in opposite directions, each growing as the other shrinks and shrinking as the other grows, “each living the other’s death and dying the other’s life.” Imagine a vertical line slicing through the paired triangles, moving first from left to right and then back from right to left. When all the way over to the right, the primary cone will have dwindled away to nothing and the vertical line will be for all practical purposes pure antithetical; when all the way over to the left, the antithetical cone will have dwindled accordingly and the line will be essentially all primary. At any point in between, there will be some different proportion of primary to antithetical orientation, more antithetical on the right side of the diagram, more primary on the left side, exactly balanced in the middle.
(Take a moment to go over the previous paragraph an extra time or two and make sure you have the image in mind: the two triangles, and the vertical line sliding back and forth from one side to the other. That will help you understand what follows.)
The two basic faculties of human consciousness, in Yeats’s system, are Will and Creative Mind. Will could as well have been called Desire or Energy—it is the faculty in each of us that seeks to express our own sense of what should be. Creative Mind could as well been called Perception or Consciousness—it is the faculty in each of us that seeks to experience the world exactly as it is. The Will is antithetical, while the Creative Mind is primary.
Now think of that vertical line sliding from one end of the two-cone diagram to the other, and back again. One end of that line is the Will, the other is the Creative Mind. When the line slides most of the way over to the antithetical side of the diagram, the Will is strong and the Creative Mind is weak; a person in this condition pays little attention to what is, and throws all his or her energy into creating what he or she thinks should be, whether this takes the form of art, politics, or what have you. When the line slides most of the way back the other direction, the Creative Mind is strong and the Will is weak; a person in this condition focuses intently on what is and ignores thoughts of what he or she thinks should be. When the line is in the middle, the person is torn between these two alternatives.
(Again, take a moment to reread this and think through it.)
Each of the two faculties we’ve discussed has an object, another faculty on which it focuses. The Will’s object is the Mask. It has this name because, as we discussed in relation to the essay “Per Amica Silentia Lunae,” the Will always seeks its opposite: in order to create, it puts on a Mask that is as far from its natural habits as possible. The Creative Mind’s object, in turn, is the Body of Fate, which can be thought of as the sum total of the circumstances that make up life. In Yeats’s system, just as the Will and Creative Mind can be seen as the two ends of a vertical line sliding right and left across the diagram, Mask and Body of Fate are represented by another vertical line that moves together with the first line, but in the other direction.
So the basic diagram of one type of individual is as shown here. The line representing Will and Creative Mind is exactly as close to the antithetical end of the diagram as the line representing Mask and Body of Fate is from the primary end. As the two lines slide back and forth, moving further away from each other and then back together, each going all the way to one side and then all the way to the other, they define certain typical human characters and situations. Each person is at one or another point in this cycle, and that point, for convenience, is defined by the placement of the Will.
There’s one other wrinkle that has to be understood to make sense of all this. When the line indicating the position of Will and Creative Mind is sliding from right to left (and the other line, indicating the positions of Mask and Body of Fate, is sliding from left to right), that’s one kind of experience of life. When the two lines are sliding in the other directions, that’s another kind. If the Will is growing stronger and the Creative Mind fading out, that leads to a very different kind of life than when the Will has achieved its goal and is weakening as the Creative Mind strengthens.
This is shown in the diagram by the placement of the faculties on the line. For reasons that will become clear shortly, the faculty on the bottom end of the line is the one getting stronger. Thus the diagram on the left shows the Will approaching maximum strength and the Creative Mind nearly overwhelmed, while the diagram below on the right shows the Will beginning to weaken while the Creative Mind is resurgent.
Now we can draw all these considerations together. Each of the typical positions, with Will, Creative Mind, Mask, and Body of Fate in a specified place, is identified symbolically with one of the 28 phases of the Moon, and represents one human incarnation. Why the Moon? Because in occult philosophy, being incarnate in a material body is the night of the soul, when it sleeps and dreams the dream we call life. That dream is ruled by the Moon, the traditional ruler of dreams, according to its phase. At death we awaken and enter the sunlight—and this, too, will be explored in detail later on in our text.
It’s probably necessary here to insert, for the first but not the last time, an essential warning about these lunar phases: they are not determined by the placement of the Moon in your natal horoscope. Yeats makes this point explicitly in the 1925 version of A Vision, and it follows from the whole structure of the system, yet there’s been a steady stream of authors and astrologers who have ignored this and garbled the system as a result. We’ll discuss this further a little later on. The phase that the Moon was in on the day that you were born does not determine the phase of your present incarnation. Keep this in mind and it will spare you a great deal of confusion.
The 28 phases—again, each one labeled according to the placement of the Will—can be mapped out onto the diagram of two cones, as shown on the left. For convenience, though, these phases are more often mapped onto a circle or wheel, as shown on the right.
The result is the fundamental mandala of the system, the Great Wheel. In the 1925 edition of A Vision, this was portrayed as follows:
In the 1937 and later editions, that was reworked by Yeats’s artist friend Edmund Dulac into the diagram below:
(In comparing these, notice that south is straight up in the first diagram, but on the right in the second.)
Once the phases are mapped on the Great Wheel, one of the essential symmetries of the system becomes visible. If the Will is at the point marked 17 on the wheel, the Mask will be at the point marked 3, exactly opposite the placement of Will. The Creative Mind, meanwhile, will be at 13, and the Body of Fate at 27, exactly opposite the placement of Creative Mind. As the phases proceed, Will and Mask move counterclockwise around the Wheel, while Creative Mind and Body of Fate move clockwise. At the 8th and 22nd phases (at the bottom and top of the wheel), Will is in the same place as Body of Fate, and Creative Mind is in the same place as Mask; at the 1st and 15th phases (at the left and right of the wheel), Will and Creative Mind are in the same place, and Mask and Body of Fate are in the same place.
Got all that? Make sure you have at least a general grasp of it before we proceed.
So far, all this has been a matter of abstract geometries, and tolerably dry. It’s at this point that it becomes a bearer of meaning. Each of the 28 points along the wheel has its own distinctive character, and this character can be expressed through Will, Creative Mind, Mask, or Body of Fate, depending on which of these occupies that point. Let’s take the example just given, a person of the 17th phase, and work through it.
The 17th phase has the title of “the Daimonic man”—in other words, the Daimon or higher self of the person is expressed more completely in this phase than in any other. It is nonetheless a difficult phase, because the Will is moving away from its complete fulfillment at the 15th phase, trying to hold onto a vision of beauty that slips through its fingers. Its Mask, the form that it gives to that vision of beauty, derives from the 3rd phase, which (as we’ll see in a later essay) belongs to the first fresh springtime of the soul, as it learns to delight in the body, its senses, and its passions; to a person of the 17th phase, whose Will strives toward this Mask, sexual passion and the beauties of nature are therefore profoundly important, as they give the Will a semblance of the unity and power that is slipping away from it.
That Mask can take one of two forms, for there is a False Mask as well as a True Mask. The False Mask of this phase is titled “Dispersal;” under the sway of the False Mask, or “out of phase” as Yeats terms that condition, the person flails uselessly and throws away his energy in a frenzy of temporary and discordant desires. The True Mask, by contrast, is titled “Simplification through intensity;” guided by the True Mask, the person focuses his or her Will on a handful of images or just one, achieving greatness through sheer intensity of focus.
The Creative Mind of this phase derives from the 13th phase, which is a phase of sensuous delight: the soul in its development has come to a complete mastery of matter and its delights and approaches the vision of beauty through sensual experiences. This strengthens the role of sexual passion in the personality of the 17th phase, but it can do so in two ways: there is a False Creative Mind as well as a true one. The title of the False Creative Mind is “Enforced self-realization”—a person out of phase turns inward where he or she should turn outward, broods and sulks and nourishes wildly disproportionate hatreds and jealousies, all of them engendered by a growing awareness of his or her own increasing incoherence. True to phase, by contrast, the Creative Mind becomes “Creative imagination through antithetical emotion.” The person in phase turns outward and expresses his or her Daimon in a torrent of creative work of some kind.
Then there’s the Body of Fate. This comes from the 27th Phase, a late primary phase. Just as the early primary phases have to do with the discovery of the body and its natural delights, the late primary phases have to do with the renunciation of these things. Reflected in the Body of Fate, the 27th phase expresses itself as “Enforced loss.” This means exactly what it sounds like: whatever the person of this phase most deeply desires will be taken away.
Thus we have a picture of a personality as detailed as you’d get from the simpler forms of astrology, and in some ways more exactly focused. One of the things that makes this picture especially poignant is that it’s a portrait of William Butler Yeats, who identified himself as being of the 17th phase. Look through his biography and you’ll find all the details present and accounted for: the struggle against dispersal and morbid self-absorption, the extraordinary torrent of creative genius when he was in phase, and of course the enforced loss, with his doomed love for Maud Gonne the most significant of these. The phase is also a portrait of certain other great creative minds, including Dante Alighieri and P.B. Shelley, and the same themes can be found in their lives.
There are twenty-five other portraits of equal clarity in A Vision. (The 1st and 15th phases, being pure primary on the one hand and pure antithetical on the other, are never found in incarnate people, who are always a mix of both tinctures.) As we’ll see, these are rooted with equal exactness in biography. All these phases, in turn, reach beyond biography and beyond the human individual, reaching their fulfillment in a vivid and precise theory of historical cycles. This, too, will be discussed in its proper turn.
Assignment: Before next month’s post goes up, read the second section of “The Great Wheel,” titled “Examination of the Wheel.” You’ll probably want to reread the whole text up to that point at least once, too, because much of it will make more sense to you now that you’ve been exposed to the underlying ideas and images.
Playing catch up this morning as I finish up the last reading before plunging on…
This has to do more with the last reading of Anima Mundi, and on the nature of the afterlife, ancestors and metempsychosis/reincarnation. Yeats wrote, quoting Spenser: “Henry More thought that those who, after centuries of life, failed to find the rhythmic body and to pass into the Condition of Fire, were born again. Edmund Spenser, who was among More’s masters, affirmed that nativity without giving it a cause :
‘”After that they againe retourned beene.
They in that garden planted be agayne.
And grow afresh, as they had never scene
Fleshy corruption, nor mortal payne.
Some thousand years so doen they ther remayne,
And then of him are clad with other hew.
Or sent into the chaungeful world agayne.
Till thither they retourn where first they grew:
So like a wheele, around they roam from old to new.’
The dead who speak to us deny metempsychosis, perhaps because they but know a little better what they knew alive; while the dead in Asia, for perhaps no better reason, affirm it, and so we are left amid plausibilities and uncertainties.”
I thought this passage (XIX) was interesting, in that I had been reading part of Benebell Wen’s I Ching book about how in some Asian traditions, there is considered to be two parts of the soul. One is sort of like a recording of the memories of the life that was lived, and this stays active in the afterlife and is what gets communicated with in traditions that incorporate ancestor veneration. The second goes on and reincarnates… I just thought that was a useful way of looking at it, and would make sense from dreams I’ve had of the departed, and also the sense that they have still moved on.
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In the meantime, thanks for parsing out the images and giving us a life jacket.
This section of Yeats’ book in particular has been instrumental in figuring out what the heck is going on in my life. The addictions, depression, nihilism, loss of purpose, loss of worldview, loss of hope in the external world, lack of self-knowledge, et cetera. Variations of “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” was a frequent refrain for me during that time.
I’m now fairly certain I’ve been in phase 8 in the past seven years with a false mask and a false creative mind.
The vortices diagram makes me think of the french parable “si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait” (if youth knew, if old age could). As in the vortices work as well for wisdom vs power and not only creativity vs will.
The circle diagram suggests a cycle but the vortices feel like a unidirectional process. Does Yeats suggest can the circle can be traveled more than once?
Thank you for your renaming of Creative Mind as Perception.
I suspected that the phases of the soul did not literally map onto what mansion the Moon was in in one’s natal chart, because if so the position of the Moon relative to the Sun would only be a minor factor in one’s personality, often swamped by one’s other placements.
A month or two ago, I read a book by a neopagan psychological astrologer (Stephen Forrest) who criticized Yeats’ system as inaccurate, and created his own simplified eight-phase system. His system might work for all I know, but I would have to read and analyze a number of celebrity and famous person biographies to find out (and I don’t want to do that).
A quick question: you mention the Mask twice (in position 3rd phase with True/False masks, and also in the 27th phase: “Then there’s the Mask. […]”) – did you mean the Body of Fate in the 27th phase (opposed to Creative Mind in 13th)?
For a bit of humor, does it mean though, if I was born on a full moon, that I might have a latent talent for lycanthropy? Sometimes I feel the need to wolf out, especially when rock ‘n roll is blasting on the radio.
These lunar mansions seem to me to be correlated with age: children enjoy the world-as-is and attempt to change it during late teenage/young adulthood. They peak in the middle years of their life, even if what they achirved in life was not what they originally set out to achieve. In old age, they have to surrender (one way or another) what they have built to the ravages of time or to younger people, before or when they pass away.
Justin, interesting. I tend to take that kind of evidence from spiritualism as a warning that whatever messages come from the Beyond are filtered, sometimes drastically, through the consciousness of the medium, but I suppose there are other options.
Mark, ouch! That’s a very rough road to walk. I hope the knowledge helps.
Rashakor, yes, you can apply the vortices to any binary relationship — and yes, Yeats says explicitly that the wheel is traveled rather more than once.
Patrick, I bet Forrest thought Yeats was giving a system for interpreting moon phase in natal charts. That’s quite common, if silly. The eight-phase system isn’t unique to him — it was invented most of a century ago by Dane Rudhyar, and used (mostly without credit) by various astrologers since his time.
V.O.G., thanks for catching that! I’ve corrected it; yes, it should have been Body of Fate.
Justin, well, do you have hair growing between your eyebrows, and are your index and middle fingers the same length?
Patrick, yes, the wheel also sets out the structure of a single life, and of many other things as well. We’ll get to that!
(Off topic or maybe not so off topic) Hello, JMG and commentariat. Well, there’s been recent personal changes in my life: I’m moving to another house and, though it’s only a change in the same town, it’s always like a little death in our lives. I think every change in life is like a small form of death. I wonder if dying is in a certain mode, like going to live to another home…I hope not to have bored you all with my cheap philosophy about this topic. Thank you for your article about Yeats and the previous comments on that topic.
” I tend to take that kind of evidence from spiritualism as a warning that whatever messages come from the Beyond are filtered, sometimes drastically, through the consciousness of the medium.”
…I can understand that… I’m often of multiple minds about things.
No actual evidence of lycanthropic ability… but the voice of Wolfman Jack has been in the back of my mind this week with regards to an essay I’ve been writing. I’ll leave that to your characters in Carnelian Moon.
On another note, I’m starting to wonder if someone could make a slide rule for these images?
Also, the last bit about Yeats himself, and Shelley and Dante rings very true of other poet biographies as well. A bit of solace there in that… It makes me wonder about the phases young Rimbaud was in, and then where he might have been as the gun runner and explorer of Africa… fascinating.
This model reminded me immediately of the MBST, which is of course based on Jung’s typology, who you said (with good reason) was also an occultist. Primary tincture = extraversion, antithetical tincture = introversion. The people who approach life and the world via their will would be called the Judging types in the MBTI, the people who approach it via the creative mind would be the Perceivers in the MBTI system.
Of course the two systems don’t match exactly; for example, in the MBTI you can be introverted and judging (i.e. trying to impose your will on your surroundings, based on your internal ideas of how things should be, without being overly concerned by external considerations), or you can be extraverted and judging (in which case you become a sort of enforcer of the group consenus). The same goes for the perceiving types. The similarities make it both easier and harder for me to grasp Yeat’s model. Harder, because I need to be careful not to try to ‘fit’ his vision into the MBTI mold.
Wow. I must admit to seeing much of myself in the portrait of the man of the seventeenth phase. It’s taken a lot of work to begin to dig myself out of my scattershot creative efforts and brooding self pity and accept loss. I only hope it’s not too late. Your writings have been a tremendous help to me in this effort and for that I thank you.
Hi that was an enjoyable, knowledge expanding essay on a paradigm of which I knew nothing about. I even read a Keats poem on mask and kind of liked it even though I’m not a big fan of poetry.
Here’s an off topic question: have you read Swedenborg? I hear about him yesterday on a podcast and he has a physical/metaphysical take on things that might align with your philosophical interests. Also, what do you think about “psychic” powers and “remote viewing”? That was part of the podcast as well.
This book is a feast. I sit down to it each time with a large and patient appetite.
I’ve always loved personality typing systems, especially but not only because the incommensurable numbers of types across systems (Big Five, Enneagram 9, Myers-Briggs 16) just go to show that when we talk about human character, we’re talking about something that has more dimensions than can be grasped in a single chart. In honour of certain family members of mine who like to make this point, sometimes while rolling their eyes, I always include in my personal charts an extra category called something like, ‘Type [N]: Someone who doesn’t like to be typed’.
The oppositions between Will and Mask, Creative Mind and Body of Fate, remind me strongly of the dominant and inferior functions in Myers-Briggs. In that system, each personality type has a dominant function, or primary way of interacting with the world, as well as an inferior function, the least developed aspect of the personality, which acts as a lure to the dominant function and unconsciously drives a person’s desires and direction in life. (There are secondary and tertiary functions occupying the ground in between; the overall fourfold symmetry is another striking similarity between MB and Yeats). Dominant and inferior functions are always each other’s exact opposite, and it is quite common to be attracted to someone whose dominant function corresponds to one’s own inferior. The phrases ‘opposites attract’ and ‘she completes me’ are not only relevant here but typologically precise.
Myers and Briggs drew their basic ideas from Jung; I noticed a few chapters ago that the primary tincture corresponds well to Jung’s Sensing function, while the antithetical corresponds to Jung’s Intuition. I think now that I would match Yeats’ Will to Jung’s Judging functions (‘This is how it should be!’) and Yeats’ Creative Mind to Jung’s Perceiving functions (‘But this is how it is.’) Other similarities come to mind, but again, there are incommensurabilities between the systems, and I would have to spend some long, enjoyable hours making charts before I could say more.
Speaking of fourfold symmetries… Yeats, Fortune, Jung, Steiner.
All were contemporaries, all were occultists. Two wrote in English, two wrote in German. Two had respectable public careers and mainstream legacies, two ditched respectability and became all-out alternative.
Yeats died just before the Second World War, Fortune died just after it. Steiner died fourteen years before Yeats, Jung died fifteen years after Fortune.
Steiner wrote extensively about how human souls work in teams, with some members of a team working together on earth simultaneous to other team members working toward the same goals but from the discarnate spiritual world. Of course, those on earth at any given time are working in the ‘dream state’ we call incarnation, while those in the spiritual world are working ‘wide awake’ but with far less capacity to shape events on earth.
Just food for thought- I don’t yet know quite how to piece together the pieces of this puzzle.
While there are certainly a lot of things gyrating in Yeats’ system, it was surprisingly easy to grasp, at least in the basics of the positions and movements. I do have a few questions, which might be answered later in the book.
1. Does one phase correspond to an entire life, or might someone pass through multiple in one life, for example undergoing a significant transformation?
2. What’s the best way of determining which of the phases I’m on? Is there any neat trick other than just mastering the concepts and images in A Vision? Perhaps not so coincidentally, I did a daily one-card tarot reading today in which I ask “What will surprise me most today?” Since that question is usually makes it easier to pair the card with the event in retrospect. I got inverted Strength. Now I notice that phases 22-28 are in the quarter called Breaking of Strength. Maybe that’s a clue telling me to look for myself somewhere in one of those phases. That is, unless something else surprising involving a lack of strength shows up this afternoon!
I’m sure you’ll be publishing a book once this is all said and done. May I suggest a section including something like a “little white book” of the definitions of each of the four terms in each of the 28 phases in your own words? I’ll bet that would more useful for most of us to grasp than Yeats’ version, if he even ends up giving one. It would be a lot of work, I know, but then the book would also appeal to the audience who likes to buy books explaining their personality types, the meanings of their signs, etc. in addition to serious occult philosophers.
Curious how this cycle intersects with masculine & feminine duality.
Upon further reflection on my tarot reading, phases 22-28 don’t seem quite right because I’m strongly antithetical/willing, though working hard to become less lost in my own world and more aware of the objective one, so 16-22 seems like a safer toss of the dart.
Are phases 8 & 22 the ones where the Initiation of the Nadir in Fortune’s system can happen, since they’re points of balance that can take multiple incarnations to definitively cross? Or are they entirely different systems?
“One of the primary differences between occult philosophy and the more respectable branches of philosophy is precisely the distinction between image and abstraction. A quote from Dion Fortune’s The Cosmic Doctrine is apposite: “In these occult teachings you will be given certain images, under which you are instructed to think of certain things. These images are not descriptive but symbolic, and are designed to train the mind, not to inform it.””
I’ve read some philosophy books, but not much books about occultism, and I had suspected there was a subtile difference between “official” philosophy” and the other one, but I hadn´t managed to catch in detail that difference. Now, it’s more clear to me, thanks John.
Chuaquin, every change is a little death, but change is also an inseparable part of life — a reminder that life and death aren’t so different. I hope things work out well for you!
Justin, it would have to be a circular slide rule, but those exist:
Athaia, interesting! Thanks for this.
Tyrell, it’s never too late. Remember that you have an infinite amount of time ahead of you — life after life after life. You might as well get things sorted out now!
Candy, yes, I’ve read a fair amount of Swedenborg, and so did Yeats; Yeats was a big William Blake fan, and Blake was very strongly influenced by Swedenborg. As for psychism — that’s the common occult label for that — it’s real but not always accurate, and yes, that applies very much to remote viewing. Those are useful, and I can recommend a good book for developing your capacities for psychism, but it’s also important not to overstress it or to lose track of the fact that it can be very, very fallible.
Dylan, glad to hear it. By all means spend those enjoyable hours if you feel moved to do so. As for your tetrad, hmm! Interesting.
Kyle, (1) depends on context. Each life embodies one phase, but each life also goes through the entire wheel of phases, and there are also complexities and subdivisions; We’ll get to those. (2) If there’s any such way, Yeats doesn’t give it. (3) We’ll get to that.
Bart, that’s a less important duality in Yeats’s system than it is in modern culture.
Chuaquin, you’re most welcome.
I will need to read all of this again… I felt like I was on a roller coaster trying to envision what Yeats was writing about!
One thing that helped me was a passage from a previous part of the book, imagining the universe as an egg constantly turning itself inside out.
Another thing that jumped right out to me as central to this metaphor was in Yeats’ discussion of the history of this metaphor:
“Alcmaeon, a pupil of Pythagoras, thought that men die because they cannot join their beginning and their end. Their serpent has not its tail in its mouth.”
I’ll need to reread and meditate on it to really process it, but the key to the metaphor I see is this is a complete wavelength. If you’re not seeing the complete wavelength, that only means its being completed out of sight.
One more interesting thing that came to mind was from meditating my way through the sacred geometry oracle. I don’t remember if this came from you or my own meditation, but I had an image of myself as “creator, creation, and canvas” when considering the human canon. I might need to meditate more on this, but at the moment this threefold pattern seems to not mesh well with the dualistic patterns Yeats is explaining.
“When the line slides most of the way over to the antithetical side of the diagram, the Will is strong and the Creative Mind is weak […] When the line slides most of the way back the other direction, the Creative Mind is strong and the Will is weak;”
It is difficult to grasp where this is indicated on the illustration–e.g. the line segment from CM to the shaded triangle is always the same as the segment from Will to the shaded triangle. Does it matter which (CM or Will) is written on top? Or are you perhaps measuring (horizontally) from the whole CM-Will vertical line to the “antithetical” axis, so that when they are close together, “will” is stronger because it identifies with the “antithetical” perspective?
The double triangle has 8 nodes, not 28., so Yeats cannot be mapping the phases of the moon onto these.
Reading your description of the 17th phase, I experienced a shift from “geez, poor shmucks” to “…oh no” as I realized you were talking about me. I feel like you’ve answered a question I didn’t even know how to ask, so thank you.
It’s interesting to me that there are two true/false alternatives — two choice points — with one of them is on the object of the Will while the other is in the Creative Mind itself, not its object. That seems… odd.
I assume there’s no alternative in the Body of Fate because it’s external to your choices; it’s what is regardless of how you feel about it. And I suppose there is no false Will because the Will per se is completely under your control — there is no true Will vs. false Will (but don’t tell Crowley that). Pure objectivity and pure subjectivity have no true/false distinction, only things where are at least a little of both can.
Thank you for the digest. I was wasting time over-thinking material I already grasp. (I didn’t say grip.) Funny that this section makes sense to me while so many find it difficult – including some of my university profs who hated Yeats. My first thought was that I must be doing something wrong, but – no. Seems that Yeats has been so influential and so in step with contemporaries like Jung and Fortune that I’m actually able to read his ideas without throwing the book across the room the way I did with the previous section. (Between the Irish Masterpiece air and me having to scramble to look up formerly common references outside my “modern” education, I didn’t enjoy it.) However, I find it very interesting how influential Yeats has been even on a college success program that I’ve taught.
Hi John Michael,
Dunno about your perspective, but perhaps it’s best if neither the Creative Mind, nor the Will dominate, but rather work in harmony. This of course may be an admittedly unpopular perspective. Presumably Mr Yeats is referring to living consciously, or am I off the mark there?
Ah, the Creative Mind
How the dancers jump and twirl
Energy released
Wanton abandon
Arms held high, then low
Discordant bass notes
Altered states
Smoky dark, abruptly lit
Odd harmonics
Sweet release, the drop
The forgetting
Lost in the moment.
Oh, The Will
Uniform of appearance
Brightly lit
The directing familiar melody
Bodies moving in unison
Heads turned one way
Then the other
All kicking, bowing in time
Observing the form
Becomes the All
Yeah, that’s how I see it: Clubbing versus Line Dancing – and I hate dancing.
Cheers
Chris
Jack, excellent! The wavelength metaphor is particularly good.
Ambrose, I think you might benefit from rereading the essay, because I explained every one of the points that baffle you, in a fair amount of detail. Give it another try.
Slithy, I suspect a lot of people will have that experience as we proceed. As for Will and Body of Fate, exactly. The Will can’t be false, or for that matter true — what’s false or true is what it aims at, which is the Mask, The Body of Fate, similarly, is what it is — but it can be interpreted well or badly.
Rhydlyd, glad to hear it! No question, if you’re attuned to certain currents of early 20th century thought, A Vision makes much more immediate sense.
Chris, maybe so, but that’s not how Yeats saw things!
I stumbled on this last night:
https://yeatsvision.com/Yeats.html
Some great gyre visualizations here:
https://www.yeatsvision.com/Geometry.html
I have yet to look ahead and try to find where my will lands on the Phases of the Moon but I’m getting the sense there is no respite, there is always struggle. This is baked into the dual gyres & restless back and forth movement of the tinctures, always seeking what is not. Good bet there is no respite in the spiritual realm at full Primary in Phase 1 and full Antithetical at Phase 15.
Seems we are in a continuous cycle of churn for many lives with no eventual pay off. Wondering if there is another factor or view from a different (or cleaner or more positive) viewing lens than Yeats was looking through?
If not, then then the Floyd lyrics by the prophet Roger Waters may be pertinent:
“I want to go home, take off this uniform and leave the show……”
Would love for someone to give a more optimistic view concentering A Vision.
Also, I think Yeats’ Vision aligns more with ancient concepts of cycles and I’ll say again, this may have been a big reason that Christianity, Islam, etc., took off. Instead of toiling through long cycles may as well bet it all on one throw of the dice……..
JMG, can the loss – the body of fate’s loss – be productive somehow? By letting go of something you can focus on something else, after all.
And a thought has just come to me in that if our material experience is lunar and the night of the soul then maybe unsaid in Yeats’ system is that we are living a simultaneous existence is solar and in the day of the soul? Not only do we have two opposing gyres on the material but the same on the spiritual and hopefully more positive?
Something that just hit me: astrologers who read Yeats, misunderstood what he was doing, and tried to apply the system in actual astrology all realized it doesn’t work.
Let me say that again: They realized it doesn’t work.
I’m pretty sure that flies in the face of the orthodox picture of astrologers as all frauds (who can make any system seem to work) and gullible morons (who will believe anything regardless of evidence).
JMG @ 21:
“every change is a little death, but change is also an inseparable part of life — a reminder that life and death aren’t so different. I hope things work out well for you!”
Thank you John; me and my family are in the way to the complete change now…Life and death of course aren’t divisible but connected each other. Sometimes is funny, sometimes painful (you know and experience new things, but you need to leave anothers during the changes…).
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“Tyrell, it’s never too late. Remember that you have an infinite amount of time ahead of you — life after life after life. You might as well get things sorted out now!”
It’s an optimist view, may be true, it can be said we have all the time of the world to be better in our lives…
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Jack # 22:
“One thing that helped me was a passage from a previous part of the book, imagining the universe as an egg constantly turning itself inside out.”
Indeed, an interesting and suggestive metaphor IMHO.
Sigh. I meant to wrote MBTI, and didn’t catch the autocorrect shenanigans…
Hi John Michael,
I have an unfortunate natural tendency towards the mystic, and so please accept my apologies for the difference of opinion. Harmony, dude, is one of my goals, and that plays out here in the land itself which is being shaped. Of course there are always those unfortunate boundary pushers, who take things a step too far, like the now deceased chickens of a fortnight ago. Was Tom Bombadil a mystic or an elemental, or something else altogether?
The mage leans in to other ways and views, and I can respect that. And seriously, dunno about you though, but I’ve always hated dancing. Hope you can avoid that activity on your dating journey. 🙂 There was a rather amusing sub plot in Jack Vance’s book ‘The Face’, with the protagonist Kirth getting roped into a date with a young lady who just wanted to dance… Very funny indeed.
Sorry, but I’m trying to figure out what motivates Mr Yeats, and for once, this is obscure and cloudy. Why ever would he go that path? 😉
Cheers and hope you are doing well.
Chris
In the book, The Solar Way by Nina Roudnikova, part of the Russian circle of occultists around Mebes – in the chapter on number six and the hexagram, she speaks of the figure as a pair of tourbillons or vortexes, one of involution and one of evolution, and talks of the energy interaction between the two. I’ haven’t meditated enough on Yeats’ system here to digest it, but I suspect that Roudnikova’s model is at least parallel to Yeats, and it seems worth mentioning here.
Before we begin, does anyone know what it is with German spammers? Over the past couple of days I’ve gotten well over 300 copies of the same spam message from the same couple of German URLs. Being so mindlessly unimaginative, they’ve all gone straight to my spam folder, where a single click of the delete button sends them to their destiny, but somehow the spammer never seems to notice that all that effort is gurgling down the drain.
This is the second barrage of German spam I’ve gotten, too. This stuff comes in waves; for a while it was escort services in Turkey, and then for a while I got oceans of stuff in Russian and Korean. Now it’s English-language spam from Germany.
Ahem. Anyhow…
Scotty, it’s a useful site; the guy who runs it has also published an equally useful book on A Vision. As for the “churn,” yes, there’s a payoff and a way out, and we’ll get to that. There are also respites from the struggle, at the discarnate phases 1 and 15. More on this as we proceed!
Bruno, it’s a necessary experience, surely. How each person deals with the experience is really up to the individual.
Scotty, in a certain sense, yes.
Slithy, exactly. Astrology is an empirical science. Astrologers — at least those who are any good — adjust their understanding of planetary influences based on experience, and discard things that don’t work.
Chuaquin, well, best wishes on maneuvering through the changes.
Chris, I dislike dancing also, largely because I’m very bad at it — a dancer needs to be able to sense the nonverbal cues that his partner gives and move accordingly, and my nervous system won’t do either of those things. As for Tom Bombadil, he was pretty clearly one of the Maiar, the angelic beings of Tolkien’s theology.
Charlie, an excellent point. Yes, and it’s quite possible that she and Yeats were drawing on common sources.
People as harmonic oscillators cycling between two end states.
The wheel version reminded me of the end view of an electrical generator which produces a sine wave output. Even DC generators want to produce the alternating output but trickery with the commutator gives a pulsing DC output instead.
Add in forcing functions and dampening and you get a very adjustable system. Those mathematically inclined can dig out their physics books or visit the Wikipedia page.. Note that trigonometry and calculus are required.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_oscillator
You never know where this blog is going to wander off to.
@JMG
From what I’ve read, Tolkien’s children had a toy named Tom Bombadil, and he made up stories about Tom Bombadil to entertain them. That is why he doesn’t really fit in Tolkien’s theogony.
Also, yesterday I pulled a tarot card to get a hint about which phase I am in, and pulled the Two of Swords. (Most likely: If my daimon knows, he’s not telling. Alternatively, I’m stuck at one of the two balanced phases.) These phases are hard to determine since I don’t really know what I truly desire yet.
Chris at Fernglade # 35:
You’ve said your tendence to mystic is unfortunate. I guess maybe you’re uncomfortable with our high tech world, it may seem to you flat and dull…Well, I’m not very mystic, but I’m spiritual in my way, and to me this technological world seems apathic and demoralizing. I don’t know if you all share this feeling.
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Charlie Obert # 36:
I think your brief depiction of those Russian occultists ideas is very interesting, because sometimes I think there are in the Universe involution and evolution forces interconnected. I don’t think every in the world goes fatally towards an evolution, like New Age gurus like to think.
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JMG # 37:
Thank you! Now I’m between two homes, ha ha…
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Chris and John:
I don’t like to dance indeed, but since I started to date with a woman who now is my actual girlfriend, I’ve started to learn dancing like never before. I dance sometimes with her when we go to music bars, to be honest I do that for his pleasure. Men usually do things like that for reaching women hearts…cough cough. I love her very much, which is always a good subterfuge to do things you don’t like very much…By the way, I’m a mediocre dancer yet, but I’ve bettered since the first dates with her. 🙂
While I am reading re-reading the Yeats chapter along your most-welcome guiding notes I came to ponder if the Heisenberg uncertainty principle doesn’t also apply in this cycle.
As one observes the phenomenon in their own animus/shadow/mind/soul, one creates uncertainty that moves the yardsticks within the twin-vortices.
It feels like the observation only move the yardstick forward though.
Can several cycles be completed in a lifetime? To employ Chuaquin’s metaphor above, can every “little death”(life major changes) be a new starting point at another point in the cycle no matter one’s age?
Last sentence of the paragraph introducing mask and body of fate: “In Yeats’s system, just as the Mask and Creative Mind can be seen as the two ends of a vertical line sliding right and left across the diagram, Mask and Body of Fate are represented by another vertical line that moves together with the first line, but in the other direction.” Probably that first Mask is meant to be Will, as it seems to be in the subsequent illustration.
Hey JMG
Yeat’s system does seem brilliant, but as I contemplate it I do recognise one difficulty.
In astrology, there is no way to be confused about what your horoscope is since there is an irrefutable and objective phenomenon called the celestial objects that unambiguously mark what your horoscope is meant to be. But with the 28 phases of yeats there doesn’t appear to be any equally clear and objective phenomena that marks what phase your life expresses. Instead, it appears that you must have enough self-knowledge and honesty to be able to recognise which phase best describes you, which makes it easy to mistakenly identify with the wrong phase if that is not the case.
Also, completely unrelated, I have finally published my review of that book I talked about a month or so ago, “An Ottoman Traveler”. I tried my best, but it was hard to write a review that did the book justice due to its overwhelming diversity.
https://jlmc12.substack.com/p/an-ottoman-traveler
Siliconguy, one of the things that keeps me blogging is precisely that unpredictability!
Patrick, I don’t find Bombadil a mismatch at all. We know there are Maiar in various corners of Middle-earth, from the Wizards to the balrogs to Melian back in the First Age. They’re idiosyncratic being, but one thing they seem to have in common is that the Ring doesn’t affect them much (consider Gandalf tossing it in the fire without a second thought).
Chuaquin, I admire people who can dance. My nervous system has its problems, and that kind of coordination is one of them.
Rashakor, again, it depends on which cycle is under discussion. In one sense, it’s one phase per life. In another, you go through all the phases in one life. In still others, you might move through a portion of the wheel. We’ll get to that.
Christophe, yes, it was, and I’ve corrected it. Thank you!
J.L.Mc12, I’m pretty sure that’s deliberate. Yeats didn’t intend this for the masses. In its original form, it was available only to subscribers on a private list, so would have gone to people who at least had a good shot at figuring out their own phases.
I feel like I’m following the description of the vortices, except that there’s a twist in the assignment of qualities that I’m not following. The left side is described as maximizing time and subjectivity, the right side space and objectivity. The primary tincture is associated with space and objectivity (outward focused) and the antithetical tincture is associated with time and subjectivity (inwardly focused). Yet, the primary tincture is associated with the left hand side of the diagram – where time and subjectivity are maximum (and space/objectivity is reduced to the tip of the vortex), and and the antithetical tincture is associated with the right side, where space and objectivity are maximized (and time/subjectivity is reduced to the tip of the vortex). I’m catching that there is an orientation aspect, (which way the individual is facing, towards space or time) – so perhaps my error is thinking the length of overlap between the vertical line and vortex is significant?
Hey JMG
If that is the case, I wonder how you would “idiot-proof” Yeat’s system so more people could use it effectively without making mistakes?
Thanks JMG. I am really plodding with this text, and need to read everything again. But your explanation here helps me.
Just mainly wanted to report a synchronicity: I did a reading with the Sacred Geometry Oracle to ask “what do I need to know about living life as an introvert / antithetical tincture kind of person”
So first card, representing myself, is card 8, the hexagram. Now, all the meanings of that might have escaped me, but I had just read Charlie Obert’s comment at #36 which points to some commentary on the hexagram, and its possible connection to Yeats’ system. Thanks, Charlie!
I read the card as saying that I am made up of both the tinctures, and balance can be achieved. (Mmm, in theory at least)
In case you are interested the rest of the reading was equally apropos, and I do thank you so much, JMG, for this Oracle. Always good answers and insights.
[ rest of reading:
2nd card (situation) = card 6 vesica piscis
3rd card (outcome) = card 28 pentagram
Those who have the SGO can look it up in the NSLBB*
* Not So Little Brown Book]
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Thanks to Athaia #11 and Dylan #14 for the correlation with the MBTI. I know enough about that system to be able to see the parallels, and this is helping me in my struggles to understand Yeats’ system.
JlmC 12 #43:
(Well we are a bit off topic now). I’ve seen your link to “A Ottoman traveller”, and I find the comments very interesting. It seems a very bizarre book…I don’t know if there’s a Spanish translation, I’ll seek it but if I don’t find it, I’ll try the English version
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JMG # 44:
I understand why you can’t dance. One thing is not liking to dance and another one’s when indeed you can’t do it. Yes, I don’t like very much to dance because I’m shy, but I can do it…not very well but I do it.
@JMG
Please feel free to delete this comment if it’s too off-topic. That said, here goes:
Regarding your answer to fellow Ecosophian Slithy Toves, it just reminded me of the shrill meltdowns of mainstream scientists and their fan base in the “science writers” and “my religion is Science” community about astrology. That said, I disagree with your comment about astrology being an empirical science – while I do not think astrology is bogus or quackery (or any of the colourful adjectives thrown at the field by clueless materialists), I do certainly think it’s strictly speaking, not a science; in fact, any attempt to prove that astrology is “scientific” is in itself an example of pseudoscience, IMO.
However, that does not automatically mean that astrology is bogus – that would be basically tantamount to saying that anything that is not strictly scientific is bogus – but then we all know better than to fall for such crap. The funny thing is that we already have another example of a non-scientific field doing one of the main jobs of scientific theories: prediction. To avoid going far too off-topic into Covid territory, I’ll just say that the thousands of mathematical, “scientifically valid” models developed during Covid to predict the spread of the pandemic failed miserably to give predictions of any significant accuracy; interestingly, historians of epidemics and environmental history (one of whom is you) used their knowledge of history and understanding of historical dynamics of epidemics to predict the timeline of Covid spread far more accurately than any of the mathematical modellers by “scientific experts” did. This is instructive in itself: if a non-scientific field like history proved its mettle at prediction by beating science hands down, then what’s to say that astrology can’t, given that it is also non-scientific, and that this example of Covid alone suffices to prove that just because something isn’t scientific, it isn’t necessarily bogus? Something to ponder over and meditate on, I guess…
Hi Chuaquin and greetings!
Respect for your developing prowess on the dance floor, and well, none of us can ever know where this current journey we’re all on will lead. 🙂 As a personal note, as something of a tragic music nerd, you left out the most important of details: Like what kind of movement to which musical form are we talking about here? Wild guess time: Ballroom dancing, but it could be tango? Truly I have no idea, or vibe, so apologies if my guess was wildly off the mark.
In many ways, more formal modes of dancing remind me of the many and varied kata’s drilled and practised in martial arts. There is both grace and fluidity in the learned movements, plus you’re responding to the inputs from the other people. With some complicated kata’s, up to four opponents can advance upon your position, which would be kind of strange if translated to some dance floor burner… 🙂
Far out though! I chose my wife very carefully. Way, way, way, back in the day, and we’re now talking late 1980’s, early 1990’s, my girlfriend of the time used to want to head out clubbing. I tell ya truly, having derived from a mildly economically disadvantaged household, that meant working a full time job, whilst living in share houses, and studying for a degree at University at night. Tired and over worked, I know about such things. Anywhoo, having a girlfriend had many other advantages, and so the compromise was bouncing around in clubs to thumpingly loud music at 1am on a Friday morning. Then being at work at 9am. Truthfully, productivity was not all that great on those days… My dislike for dancing stemmed from that time, and now I’d rather get a proper nights sleep. As you can imagine, eventually club girl had to go. A sad tale of sheer pragmatism, no? 😉
Exactly too! There is a reason I live in a remote spot surrounded by tall forest like a hermit of yore.
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for that. Interesting regarding the Maiar, and if I recall correctly, you also know much upon the subject of moss. 😉 I read your Dreamwidth words of alarm, and agree. Sadly the soft tech folks have not had to incur the very serious capital and recurring costs of their newest creations, and may soon learn a harsh lesson there that a business case must be founded upon realities other than debt. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth will possibly ensue. It is one thing to host a creation on another’s established server, to offering free services whilst also constructing monstrous installations which consume huge ongoing resources. None of that makes any sense to me other than a possible case of over reach.
Of course, it may well be possible that we are forced to subsidise these things. But then! The choice will come down to walking away from all of it, don’t you reckon? It’s such an odd gamble to play, but I don’t know their minds.
And I believe that the principal symbol Mr Yeats is alluding to is the journey itself. A circle which is both a map and a guide where any direction becomes possible if we fail to tread with care.
Cheers
Chris
JMG, about the German spam I don’t know anything; in my own spam folder, there isn’t more spam than usual, and nothing Korean or Russian. Only the usual things. As far as I know, Germany isn’t known as a haven for spammers, in contrast to, for example, Myanmar.
@J.L.Mc12
The occult seems to have a lot of idiot proofing just built into it… I know from plenty of first hand experiences… memory of fingers burned…
@49 Viduraawakened
Astrology is a body of knowledge (hence a “science”) modified or refined by real-world observations (hence it is “empirical”). It even fits the broad definitions of science given in textbooks: good astrologers make and test hypotheses, and eventually* discard what fails to make accurate predictions.
*Despite modern science’s PR, scientists and institutions are generally reluctant to discard cherished theories past their expiration dates, as we’re seeing today with the worsening “Crisis in Cosmology.”
@J.L.Mc12 #46
> I wonder how you would “idiot-proof” Yeat’s system
Two notes from decades of working with computers:
1. An idiot-proofed system is not the same as the original system. Remember when Microsoft tried to idiot-proof Windows and the result was Windows 8?
2. Any time you idiot-proof anything, the universe makes bigger idiots. Smartphones and tablets try to abstract out file management as much as possible because it’s one of the biggest hurdles for non-tech-savvy people in using a computer. The result as been an entire generation who struggle to find a file they just downloaded to their Downloads folder.
Viduraawakened # 49:
” if a non-scientific field like history proved its mettle at prediction by beating science hands down, then what’s to say that astrology can’t, given that it is also non-scientific, and that this example of Covid alone suffices to prove that just because something isn’t scientific, it isn’t necessarily bogus? Something to ponder over and meditate on, I guess…”
I understand you’re upset with the usual scorn against astrology by “Real Believers in Science”, and I see your point of view, but I don’t share it fully. I think History is a real science, because historians use scientific method to validate the better they can their research of past events, including of course the veracity of their sources. OK, is History an exact science? Of course not, but that doesn’t invalidate its researchings. Metheorology isn’t an exact science neither, and is considered a science by majority of pundits. Only a hard-sciences zealot can deny History as science, me think. The case of Sociology is another example of non-exact science, IMHO.
So I think you’re right defending there’s some truth in Astrology, but I think too you’ve chosen the wrong example of non-science.
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Chris # 50:
“Respect for your developing prowess on the dance floor, and well, none of us can ever know where this current journey we’re all on will lead. 🙂 As a personal note, as something of a tragic music nerd, you left out the most important of details: Like what kind of movement to which musical form are we talking about here? Wild guess time: Ballroom dancing, but it could be tango? ”
Ballroom dancing of course, I’m too clumsy yet for dancing tango. In addition to this, my girlfriend dances better than I do, but she’ isn’t a real expert in that art…
Thank you for sharing your unfortunate experience clubbing with that girl years ago. Well, I think there are several stages in personal life, and each person life’s different too.
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“And I believe that the principal symbol Mr Yeats is alluding to is the journey itself. A circle which is both a map and a guide where any direction becomes possible if we fail to tread with care.”
Maybe often that what’s really important is the journey, not the arrival…A well known poet from my country said a long time ago somewhat like this (badly makeshift translation): Walker, there’s not a road, it’s made a road when you walk…
Thank you for this summary, it does help make a lot of sense. As someone born and residing outside the Anglophone world, Yeats is remote to me in both time and space. I was deeply confused by many of the expressions he uses. Its clearer to me now.
I am a little curious about the term “Creative Mind”. What is it creating? Is this about how perception of reality is an active process rather than a passive one, as you mentioned in last week’s post? The creation here is the creation of the world based on our senses, is it? Or is it some other reason specific to Yeats, and unrelated to Maya and all that?
Grove, don’t get hung up on left and right. Yeats uses it one way in some diagrams and the other way in others. Primary corresponds to space and objectivity, antithetical to time and subjectivity; in the finished diagram the former is on the left and the latter on the right.
J.L.Mc12, I wouldn’t. I see no point in catering to idiots.
Helen, hmm! Interesting.
Viduraawakened, astrology didn’t come into being because somebody had a theory and set out to make the data conform to it, as many materialists claim. It came into being because astrologer-priests in Mesopotamia spent thousands of years (before 5000 BC-335 BC) tracking the movements of the planets and correlating them to events on earth in a strictly empirical fashion. This isn’t speculation — many of their clay tablet records have been found and translated. Astrology thus emerged as an empirical system of interpretation derived directly from the data; if you don’t want to call that a science, well, what would you call it?
Chris, one of the many interesting things about Yeats’s system is that it can be used to make sense of the business cycle. Yes, we’ll get to that!
Booklover, interesting. Yeah, for some reason I’ve got an insanely persistent but incompetent spammer or two in Germany churning out identical comments that go straight to my spam folder. There were another 40 or so today.
Rajarshi, good! Yeats doesn’t explain, but I read it as a reference to the mind’s active role in creating the universe each of us experiences.
Hey JMG, Slithy Troves, JPM
Ok, maybe “idiot-proofing” was not the right word for what I meant. I was thinking more along the lines of making the determination of you or another person’s phase less ambiguous by correlating it with something relatively objective.
On the top of my head, the best way I could think of to do this would be to figure out if the 28 phases correspond to certain horoscope arrangements, or certain physical characteristics that occult sciences such as palmistry can detect. But that would be a lot of work requiring a lot of research which I doubt would be devoted to something as niche as Yeat’s system.
Hey Chuaquin
As far as I know, there is no Spanish translation. But the book does mention some French, Russian and German translations of Evliya’s book.
Thank you JMG for the “life-jacket” and fellow Ecosophians for your insightful and stimulating comments. I feel like I’ve moved into a new phase of making sense of Yeats’ system. Still slowly re-reading, meditating, laying ground for a better undertanding. Feeling much more attuned and hopeful.
Since the subject of dancing has come up, it’s interesting that dancing is a recurring image in A Vision (the Judwali dancers; the ballet dancer) and in quite a few of Yeats’ poems (“Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,
A Druid land, a Druid tune!” and “how can we know the dancer from the dance?” are two beautiful examples).
Hi John Michael,
Will reply later this evening, but thought you might be interested in this unrelated item. The story playing out matches what you were saying about heat heading to the poles, except this is the situation in the southern hemisphere: Chaotic weather outlook raises prospects of summer bushfires across eastern states
Cheers
Chris
J.L.Mc12,
I wondered the same. My instinct is that it won’t correspond well to other systems, just as you can’t use Myers-Briggs to figure out your enneagram placement. But it does seem like it should be possible to narrow it down, first by asking myself whether I’m more primary or antithetical (or a mix). In my case, I feel quite antithetical. That eliminates half of the diagram.
The next thing to decide would be whether I’m turning away from the world and inward, or away from my inward self and toward the world. That’s tougher since we go through all or most phases in one life and it could color my judgment. But in my case, it feels like I am turning from a very subjective and dreamy self toward someone who is more aware of the outer world and how it perceives me. So that might allow me to place things between 16-22. As for how to get any closer, I haven’t decided, but I’m reading those types and trying to figure out which one rings true, without falling victim to flattery. It still feels like I need more clarity to accomplish that last step. and I’m sure folks who are 8 or 22 will have an especially hard time narrowing it down, except that those phases probably have very specific characteristics that would help to make them stick out.
Rajarshi # 57:
“As someone born and residing outside the Anglophone world, Yeats is remote to me in both time and space. I was deeply confused by many of the expressions he uses. Its clearer to me now.”
I’m in the same situation of not-Anglophone like you, so I feel exactly the same. Thanks John to be clear explaining Yeats deep thoughts…
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JMG # 58:
“Astrology thus emerged as an empirical system of interpretation derived directly from the data; if you don’t want to call that a science, well, what would you call it?”
Indeed, Astrology is the mother of modern Astronomy, and this “dirty” fact is something that some modern astronomers admit reluctanctly, of course grumbling about this uncomfortable origin of their science. However, as you’ve written, there are a lot of records found and translated with lots of hard data made by..astrologers from the past.
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JLlmC12 # 60:
OK, thanks for your comment. Of course, with my knowledge I’d read “only” an English or French translation, German and Russian are outside my reading languages…
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Goldenhawk # 61:
“how can we know the dancer from the dance?”
A good question for answering, after having meditate it well. I think it hasn’t an easy answer, maybe it’s a paradoxe, because I understand by now the dancer is inside the dance.
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Kyle # 63:
“The next thing to decide would be whether I’m turning away from the world and inward, or away from my inward self and toward the world.”
In this aspect I’d like to tell you all I’m clearly more turning away from the world and inward, because I’ve been always trending to introspection…
@ JMG # 58
I am reading the chapter in A Vision, and Yeats uses the analogy of an ex-tempore theater. He says that the Creative Mind is the skill of the actor in blending in with the role he is assigned, while the role itself is his Mask. The actor’s identity and situation constitute the Body of Fate.
Would it be correct to use this analogy here – that the soul is like a traveller who has to make a journey from point A – the B.F. – to point B – the Mask. Their own efforts in the journey constitute the Will. The vehicle they drive with these efforts is the C.M. – is this about right?
@JMG re:German spammers – a friend of mine (an autistic DJ, hello, Erika!) recently told me he has suddenly had an uptick of views on his website….from Germany. So it isn’t just you….
@Siliconguy re: harmonic oscillators. Thank you, thank you, thank you! When I read that phrase, a light went on in my semi-retired engineer brain. I must meditate on this (and probably dust off some old textbooks)
@chris of fernglade re:mystic/dancing. Don’t apologize. Dance is an excellent metaphor. Line dance (all scripted in sync) vs club dance (synchronized chaos) especially
I am a little confused by this part:
> By being is understood that which divides into Four Faculties, by individuality the Will analysed in relation to itself, by personality the Will analysed in relation to the free Mask, and by character Will analysed in relation to the enforced Mask.
This is right after Yeats quotes his instructors mentioning that the soul has at most four circuits around the wheel. I am confused by this paragraph because there are only three here – the Will, the free Mask, and the enforced Mask. What is the fourth element? Is it either the Creative Mind or the Body of Fate?
“Indeed, Astrology is the mother of modern Astronomy, and this “dirty” fact is something that some modern astronomers admit reluctanctly, of course grumbling about this uncomfortable origin of their science.”
I mean, it’s not the only science that had origins in the occult. There’s also the better known example of chemistry originating from alchemy. It’s just that few people practice alchemy these days, while astrology is pervasive in modern pop culture. So chemists feel safe to acknowledge their roots in alchemy because they can paint alchemy as something that superstitious people did in the past and society has progressed from alchemy. On the other hand, astronomers fear that if they acknowledge their roots in astrology it will give credance to the pop culture occult that they are too busy trying to avoid, because too many people still practice astrology.
@ Chuaquin # 64
If I may, which part of the world are you from? I grew up in a relatively privileged family in India, which gave me access to the English language. I wasn’t exactly born with a silver or golden spoon in my mouth, but I had enough opportunities to learn foreign cultures and read loads of books, so I siezed them.
At some point I got on DIscord and engaged with native speakers of English on voice chats. It was hard at first – Discord was wild back in those days and everyone was young, so nobody had any qualms about laughing at my face over my Indian accent. But I adjusted my accent over time, so it is quite passable these days.
Rajarshi # 65:
“Yeats uses the analogy of an ex-tempore theater. He says that the Creative Mind is the skill of the actor in blending in with the role he is assigned, while the role itself is his Mask. The actor’s identity and situation constitute the Body of Fate.”
It’s a good analogy, though I think it isn’t new. If I’m not wrong, I can remember that idea of human life like a theater comes from the European Baroque mindset, at least two centuries before Yeats. However, I admit Yeats analogy use is bright.
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Anonymous # 68:
Yeah, you’re right. I had forgotten the also “dirty” origin of modern Chemistry from…Alchemy. Of course, chemists don’t have the cold sweating which have astronomers about their science “mother” because of you’ve said about the nowadays irrelevance of Alchemy compared with today Astrology.
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Rajarshi # 69:
I’m from Spain. Thank you for telling us about your origins and experience learning English!
Vortex of a different type;
“”Nvidia is investing billions in and selling chips to OpenAI, which is also buying chips from and earning stock in AMD,” writes SFGate. “AMD sells processors to Oracle, which is building data centers with OpenAI — which also gets data center work from CoreWeave. And that company is partially owned by, yes, Nvidia.
“Taken together, it’s a doozy.””
A balloon in search of a pin. 😂
By the way, https://feargreedmeter.com/
Harmonic oscillators are a fundamental part of the universe.
The oscillations between Will and Creativity are consistent with the creativity attributed to manic-depressives. If they can hold the creative notions long enough to get Will to write them down good things can result.
There is no substitute for study, contemplation, action, reflection.
Ora et labora, rinse and repeat.
Hi John Michael,
Forgot to mention it, but for some reason an Irish interweb miscreant has it in for me. All it does is make me want to write an essay about potatoes, of which, did you know, that there is a shortage down here this year? We doubled the area for growing those tasty, but possibly unreliable, tubers. The interweb stuff is more nuisance factor at this stage, than any great threat. It’s also worth mentioning, that such acts are not free, and so those folks incur an economic cost which they have to bear. Hope your lot get bored, as they will, sooner or later.
Are you intending to discuss how Mr Yeats guide can be used to track business cycles? Also, thanks for the confirmation, because so far I don’t recall any discussions (although I may have erred there, and apologies if that is the case) as to the raison d’être for core theme of the book. Mr Yeats may however delight in being deliberately mysterious though. 😉
Tell ya a funny story about business cycles. Years ago a farmer around these parts made the amusing observation that farming is akin to throwing a handful of cash up into the air. Very funny, but also true. I do wonder if the big land consolidations taking place have more to do with seeking capital growth on the value of the land itself, rather than producing stuff that people want to buy? Dunno, really. Spotted this article, which shows how such activities play out, and thought you might be interested: In one of Australia’s fastest-shrinking regions, towns are fighting to remain.
It’s hard avoid to noticing how old the population in this little hamlet is getting.
Cheers
Chris
A great deal of my struggle with this book, is the level of abstraction joined with unfamiliar and unintuitive (to me) terms – thanks for your glosses on those. It’s difficult to grasp what he – and indeed people writing about his ideas – are pointing at, because I’m juggling balls of smoke it sometimes feels like. For example, you say:
“Once the phases are mapped on the Great Wheel, one of the essential symmetries of the system becomes visible. If the Will is at the point marked 17 on the wheel, the Mask will be at the point marked 3, exactly opposite the placement of Will.”
I get can that – I can see the symmetry on the diagram immediately above; but then you continue:
“The Creative Mind, meanwhile, will be at 13, and the Body of Fate at 27, exactly opposite the placement of Creative Mind.”
And here’s where I first came off the rails, because that’s clearly not a satisfying symmetrical X or + with right-angles I was expecting: these angles seem more obtuse; but then:
“As the phases proceed, Will and Mask move counterclockwise around the Wheel, while Creative Mind and Body of Fate move clockwise.”
So if I’m following: firstly are each of these pairs each like an extended double-span, diameter-wide, clock-hand? That is, they extend no just like a typical clock-hand as one pointer, put are pointing from both sides of the centre (to say the 3-and-9, or the 12 and 6) simultaneously? (Like a dial-handle) And there are two of these double-extension hands – and while the interior relationship of each pair (Will and Mask e.g.) are fixed and to opposite sides of the clock face (in this case with 28 positions instead of 12), each double-hand is moving in opposite directions? Is this also simultaneously and proportionally (not at varying rates ever)?
(I was previously getting caught up in thinking that clockwise or anticlockwise would amount to the same thing if it is a double-extended hand: so I had to lay a pen flat on my desk and revolve it both ways from its centre-point – to prove to me that this ain’t so…)
“At the 8th and 22nd phases (at the bottom and top of the wheel), Will is in the same place as Body of Fate, and Creative Mind is in the same place as Mask; at the 1st and 15th phases (at the left and right of the wheel), Will and Creative Mind are in the same place, and Mask and Body of Fate are in the same place.”
This seems like the double-hands coincide on their reverse-revolutions – a the 6-and-12 o’clock pair, and the 3-and-9 o’clock pair.
Just typing this out and thinking through the query may be shedding light – but I would like to double check, please.
J.L.Mc12, I figure Yeats could have done that easily enough if he’d wanted to — but clearly he didn’t. His idea seems to have been that students of the system will eventually recognize themselves in one of the 26 incarnate phases. For what it’s worth, I had no trouble figuring out my phase once I understood how the wheel works; we’ll see if you have the same experience.
Goldenhawk, glad to hear it! Yeah, dancing is one of his core metaphors.
Chris, it really does look as though we’re moving to a two-belt system in both hemispheres.
Chuaquin, exactly. The working hypothesis pursued by those ancient astrologer-priests was really quite sensible: given that there are lights in the sky that move against the background of the stars, and that some of their movements have obvious implications here on earth (the sun’s movements and the seasons, the moon,s movements and the tides), do their other movements correlate with anything else we experience? If today’s astronomers weren’t fixated on rejecting astrology, they’d be able to contribute quite a bit — and what’s more, they wouldn’t have the financial problems they have now.
Rajarshi, that’s one way to look at it, certainly.
OEP, interesting. Thanks for this.
Rajarshi, the four faculties are Will, Creative Mind, Mask, and Body of Fate. The other factors — individuality, personality, etc. — will be covered a little later.
Siliconguy, I’d prefer not to have too many discussions of the business cycle here. I think we’ll be hearing all too much about it shortly.
Chris, I figure it’s a boiler room that’s badly managed and doesn’t check up on posting success rates. As for the point of Yeats’s system, it’s a general theory of cycles worked out to the nearest approximate image. More on this as we proceed!
Oisín, exactly — it’s as though Yeats built us a clock with two two-ended hands, each pointing equally far in both directions from the center, and both moving at the same speed but in opposite directions. Yes, the points you specify are the ones where the hands coincide.
“If today’s astronomers weren’t fixated on rejecting astrology, they’d be able to contribute quite a bit — and what’s more, they wouldn’t have the financial problems they have now.”
That would require them to reject materialism and accept that there are etheric and astral forces which the planets exert on us humans on earth.
Anon, they could finesse that easily enough by blaming the effects on “dark matter” and “dark energy,” since those terms can be translated quite exactly as “we have no idea what’s going on.”
@JMG, Patrick, Chuaquin
Thank you for your replies. I think I should have been a bit more specific when I used the word “science”; while it is true that the practice of astrology in both its historical as well as current form by traditional competent practitioners does indeed fit the definition of “science” in the original sense of the word, I’d like to add that in today’s era, a field is considered “Scientific” only if it is not just an empirically valid body of knowledge, but can also be modelled mathematically. That is why, according to the current definition of Science, History is strictly speaking not a Science, as there is almost no modelling work done in the field save that of Peter Turchin’s work (which I’m very skeptical about TBH). I’m obviously not a True Believer or a hard sciences zealot, which is why I agree with your point that as per the older definition of the word Science, astrology/history/sociology are all sciences, albeit not “exact” and “hard” sciences; however, as the definition of the word Science has changed over the centuries to give us the current one, I just used that as the yardstick to make this observation (as an aside, I’d like to note that string theory is considered Science because of the insanely complex mathematical modelling that is central to it despite there being little to no empirical evidence to it; this just goes to show that even the current definition is not as ironclad as True Believers in Science would like to think). Then, as Chuaquin pointed out, astrology is in a sense, the mother of modern astronomy, so astrology is a science after all…
FWIW I found it easier to think of the creative mind and body of fate as mirrored images of the will and mask.
From the point of view of geometric transformations, the mask (body of fate) is a 180 degree rotation of the will (creative mind), and the creative mind (body of fate) is a mirror of the will (mask) through the horizontal line 1 – 15 of the great wheel.
JMG # 75:
“The working hypothesis pursued by those ancient astrologer-priests was really quite sensible: given that there are lights in the sky that move against the background of the stars, and that some of their movements have obvious implications here on earth (the sun’s movements and the seasons, the moon,s movements and the tides), do their other movements correlate with anything else we experience? If today’s astronomers weren’t fixated on rejecting astrology, they’d be able to contribute quite a bit — and what’s more, they wouldn’t have the financial problems they have now.”
Of course, they could leave their materialistic philosophy and embrace the planetary movements correlating with human life…Too much for them. By the way, I had no idea of these financial problems for them. Well, maybe Big Science without no immediate economic benefits it’s going to have Big Problems. thank you for the link.
Well, John, your link to yourself is from some years ago, so I suppose the economic crisis for the astronomical scientists has been going on since then without apparent solution. Maybe their expenses are being astronomical, if you don’t mind my bad joke.
As I was reading this, it brought to my mind one of Franklin Merrell-Wolff’s aphorisms: “Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability.”
And while it wasn’t too difficult to understand, it reminds me of the structure of “The Cosmic Doctrine”, after a short bit of foreplay, we start with an abstract image that stretches the mind’s capabilities just a little, and then allows us to begin to understand what follows.
In the same way, when studying a new Jyotish technique, my teacher has us start with the ganita (the math), so we get that part of the brain fire up, before we start learning the rules of interpretation. Often, those rules naturally unfold from the math.
Justin Patrick Moore @ 6
Remember to ALWAYS have a carton of beef lo mein at your ready, should the urge for flesh arise.
Occult philosophy related:
Just finishing up with the OPW …where can I read more about ergon and parergon?
Thank you.
(P.S.: My I Ching reading today suggested tightening purse strings for an economic downturn ahead: Hex 22 line 5)
I was considering the vertical line between Will and Creative Mind.
The Will desires ‘what should be’ – would another term for this be ‘beauty’? The Creative Mind desires the world as it is – or truth. If I reframe things this way, it makes an intuitive sense that the two faculties would be opposed but connected.
But here’s a question: By moving to the wheel symbol, the gyre aspect gets de-emphasized. It seems like Yeats starts with the interlocking gyres without explaining them. What is it that the gyres actually represent? How does the Wheel incorporate their spiraling motion, if it does at all?
Also, what role does magic have to play in the system? For instance, before I took up magic, I was obsessed by matters of the inner life. Since then, my focus has shifted a little, to incorporate matters of the outer life in a more balanced fashion. Does Yeats discuss this at all?
I noticed Yeats describes the Four Faculties as contaminating the gyres or cones. Pg. 55 “The shaded, or primary part, is a contamination of Will the unshaded, or antithetical part, a contamination of Creative Mind. ”
He doesn’t expand on why it is a contamination of the two cones. Other descriptive options were available such as “colored by the Will” or “infused by the Creative Mind”. I don’t think Yeats or his instructors spent much thought in choosing contamination, but it was the first word that popped in Yeats mind and may reveal something about his mind state.
Yeats identified himself as being in the 17th Phase, so if the use of the word “contamination” was indicative of some underlying pessimism maybe it is because with Yeats’ Will in the 17th Phase his Mask was in the 3rd ( Incapable of consecutive thought and of moral purpose, he lives miserably seeking to hold together some consistent plan of life…”).
We have still to get to the Mask and Creative Mind being both True and False so maybe it is still too early to try and analyze Yeats state of mind as it relates to the 17th Phase and his choice of words
@Viduraawakened #78 – It strikes me that modelling is what will turn out to be the Achilles heel of science, bringing the whole body down, precisely because it is exactly the procedure wherein the Spectacle can intermediate between the scientist (whose modelling assumptions and biasses will be “truthily”, but deniably, quantified in mathematical language), the world as “seen” (qualitative evidence), and the general public trying to find knowledge upon which to rely in making decisions.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for your words, and I now sort of appreciate the direction we are going in. I have an unfortunate tendency to be overly subtle, so I will attempt to curb that habit in the next paragraph.
If I may offer a readers perspective, one of the differences between this series of Book Club essays, and that of Mr Lévi’s book, is that you began each essay with a brief paragraph introduction which sort set the direction of what the intention of your essay was to be. With Mr Yeats, we’re kind of diving in boots and all into unknown waters.
However, if I may add, Mr Lévi is clearly a teacher, whereas Mr Yeats is at heart a poet. And a poet may surf along the waves of wild intention and sweep us to who knows where. Obviously there is a difference between the two peoples approach to supplying a guiding light in the darkness. 🙂 I ask you, is not the task of the essayist to enlarge upon the greater meanings of the poet, and perhaps provide some structure from all of the wild words?
I’m not mucking around, until this week I’d not even comprehend the purpose of the poets words. But now I get where we are headed, maybe…
Dunno, that’s my effort to shine a light upon the subject. Hope I haven’t over stepped the friendship.
Cheers
Chris
@JMG
> Anon, they could finesse that easily enough by blaming the effects on “dark matter” and “dark energy,” since those terms can be translated quite exactly as “we have no idea what’s going on.”
Unfortunately contemporary materialism has as one of its core assumptions that nothing that can’t be easily described by an equation can be really real. Anything fundamentally qualitative gets relegated to a subjective impression in the mind, with a pinky-promise that they will eventually work out how to reduce the mind and subjective experience to an equation or computer program.
(They then get really defensive when you point out that their position implies animism: a game of Magic: The Gathering can be a conscious agent since there’s a set of cards that makes a deck Turing-complete. So can a bunch of pebbles on a beach. In fact, anything can be conscious because you can map physical and computational states more-or-less arbitrarily: a sufficiently large waterfall can be simulating a universe if you interpret it right. Worse than that: given an arbitrary choice of programming language, the size any of any program at all can be reduced to precisely 0 bits.)
…ahem, back to what I was saying: modern materialism is basically the mirror image of Platonism is which ideas are just shadowy, ephemeral imitations of material objects instead of the other way around.
Viduraawakened, ah, but astrology depends on mathematical models — so much so that in late classical Latin, mathematicus was the standard word for “astrologer.” Lacking a computer, you can’t do astrology at all without a decent grasp of spherical trigonometry, and the astrological aspects are strictly geometrical in nature. Historically speaking, in fact, astrology was the first of all sciences to have a firm basis in mathematical models! The modern rejection of astrology by scientists is thus wholly irrational — though of course it’s far from the only example of this. (I highly recommend John McClenon’s book Deviant Science: The Case of Parapsychology for an eye-opening look at the wildly irrational basis of much of what passes for modern rationalism.
KAN, that certainly works.
Chuaquin, it would be hilarious if astrology were to end up rescuing astronomy when the last funding for the latter crumbles away.
Isaac, somehow the conjunction of the word “foreplay” with The Cosmic Doctrine seems remarkably funny…
Justin, how’s your Latin? I got the concept from 17th century Rosicrucian literature.
Cliff, remember that as the Will and Creative Mind move right, the antithetical gyre becomes more powerful than the primary gyre; as they move left, the opposite takes place. As for magic, our text never mentions it. We’ll get to that a little later.
Scotty, it’s certainly a fine theme for meditation. My take, for what it’s worth, is that what he means by it is that each tincture, as it moves into the realm of the other, becomes confused with the other, so that (for example) the Creative Mind on the antithetical side of the wheel can’t perceive the world clearly, but to some extent sees what the Will wants it to see.
Chris, so noted; no, you haven’t overstepped anything. It’s simply that I tend to take my approach from the work itself, and yes, Yeats wants to plunge straight into the heart of the whirling gyres.
Slithy, oh, I know. I don’t seriously expect modern scientists to pay attention to the real world — they’re too busy frolicking in an imaginary world of dead matter in which quantity alone is real. But I like to make fun of that habit of theirs.
@JMG. Good point about the tinctures becoming confused with each other.
In the reading so far the motion of the wheel (“double movement of the two gyres”) is a constant, meaning that when the vertical line representation of Will and Creative moves, it does so at the same rate as the line of Body of Fate and the Mask (e.g. if Will & CM are at the limit of one gyre, then B.F & Mask are at same limit of the other gyre and both lines arrive in the center of the two gyres (Phase 22 and Phase 8) at the same time.
This may be too early to ask but what is the force that rotates the wheel? If the gyres of our experiences turn at the same constant rate despite our actions then a thought is that our experiences are almost predestination. If our actions account for the progress of our Will (which drags the Creative Mind along with it) then the rotation of the wheel has to be varied.
There was a comment that JMG replied to in which he said that some Phases may take 3 or 4 lifetimes to pass through. Now, of course, that accounts for the speed of the rotation. I have just rediscovered that Yeats said that our of the Four Faculties only Will & Creative Mind are active.. This explains why Body of Fate and Mask will also be opposite and rotate at the same speed as the other two. The precision of that movement threw me off so I believe one individual may need a few lifetimes to pass through one phase while another may need less. I leave the question up though for confirmation or correction.
Will is the driving faculty and pulls Creative Mind with it until Will lets the Creative Mind dominate.
Yeats says that only two of the four Faculties are active (Will & CM) and used most of this part of the chapter using them as the example in the turning gyre.
At first glance it would seem that Mask and Body of Fate are inert and also dependent on the passage of Will and Creative Mind as they are always opposite but even though he says “only two of the four are active”, he does say later that “these movement are but a convenient pictorial summary of what is more properly a double movement of two gyres”. This makes things confusing.
Either Mask & B.F. are inert and as Will & C.M. moves around their opposite faculties will be waiting for them on the other gyre. A kind of predestination. Will only goes in one direction and Mask and Body of Fate will always be defined by Will’s position.
or
One gyre drives the movement of the other gyre, they are intertwined but the movement of one (the one that hosts Will and Creative mind) drives the other, explaining the opposite movements of the faculties. This also contains elements of predestination. A set of experience we must live through. Will and Creative mind can influence the speed at which a soul travels around the Great Wheel, and maybe the “flavor” of experiences one has in a particular phase but turn always one must along a pre-planned route.
Chris # 88:
“However, if I may add, Mr Lévi is clearly a teacher, whereas Mr Yeats is at heart a poet. And a poet may surf along the waves of wild intention and sweep us to who knows where.”
I met once upon a time a poet who, like every poet, had a idyosincrasic mind, very different of my mind (I tend more to the essayist mode in my behavior). Well, we’ve had some differences with the times but we’re friends yet, but there’s something in the poet mind which is irreducible to discursive mind, by my own experience with this guy. Poets are always living in another world…
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Slithy Toves # 89:
“modern materialism is basically the mirror image of Platonism is which ideas are just shadowy, ephemeral imitations of material objects instead of the other way around.”
I suppose you’ve realized you’ve depicted a good paradox: Idealist Platonism is the shameful and “dirt” source original of modern Scientific materialism, because both are based in hard abstractions, between them the “Queen” of scientists words, the “Matter”(in capital letters of course) without no qualities…Well, it’s a wry irony finding that bow between philosophical systems, apparentlly opposed. Good thought, S.T.!
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JMG # 90:
“it would be hilarious if astrology were to end up rescuing astronomy when the last funding for the latter crumbles away.”
We’re not far away to the moment when speculative science is going to be considered useless because doesn’t provide gadgets economically valuables like for instance, genetic “engineering” (which trades on markets) or AI bubble (meanwhile the specultation with it woks of course…). Astronomy doesn’t make money by itself so I think like you John, probably its future at long time is doomed. Well, about its reconversion on its old “mother” Astrology, more strange things have been seen in past History…
In the astronomy versus astrology debate, what’s missing on the astrology side is the mechanism where by a distant planet’s location against even more distant stars should have any effect on earthly events as small as a battle or your love life. Gravity is the only known force over long distances and it’s not enough. Reflected light from the other planets is swamped by the sun. Astrologers didn’t even know about Uranus and Neptune, much less Pluto. Long term precession of the Earth’s axis will shift the ecliptic into new constellations which will have new meanings so today’s interpretations will be invalid anyway.
As to the other point about trying to overly quantify useful models, I have two examples from chemistry. Electronegativity is a very useful concept. Fluorine wants an electron really badly. Cesium has a lonely nearly orphan electron it would happily gift to the nearest gypsy. When the two elements meet you can guess what happens. The finer variations between two elements are not so predictable and there is a tendency to assign too much reliability to what the difference between element’s electronegativity says should happen.
The other useful model in chemistry is hard and soft elements. Hard elements do not share their outer electrons easily, soft ones are willing to trade. Occasionally someone tries to quantify this tendency and it fails miserably.
A more general example is the Ideal Gas Law. No real gas is ideal. As pressure goes up they get less ideal. Van der Waal made a corrected version that does better but requires empirically derived constants. Industrially at high pressure and temperature we use viral equations which are entirely empirical and derived at great expense.
This turns PV=nRT into quite the nightmare, but it’s an accurate nightmare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virial_expansion
There is a good reason they don’t teach this in high-school.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks, and very much appreciate your response. It’s always risky to provide unsolicited advice, people can get upset. Mr Yeats is clearly brilliant projecting his discovery of new ways of perceiving a souls journey. Woe is me, my mind is not in the same category, and a little bit of guidance and structure would render this subject matter comprehensible. Of course who’s to know the mind of a poet? It is very possible that the gentleman spewed forth this knowledge, thought to himself: Make of it, what you will, for those with eyes to see. My will is to express. Then went off and did something else with the remainder of his time. That’s the vibe I’m getting, but truly, I dunno.
Cheers
Chris
>Unfortunately contemporary materialism has as one of its core assumptions that nothing that can’t be easily described by an equation can be really real
Not only that. If it can’t be reproduced reliably, then they get really dismissive towards it. They’d rather it go away and you too. But yes, many of them (not all) have conflated the map (the math) with the territory. It is tempting for a certain kind of mind, the map is so much cleaner to deal with, dealing with the territory involves errors and uncertainties and compromises and tradeoffs. It’s dirty.
Even when you have a map, sometimes it’s really really hard to read properly (nonlinear equations) and you have to wear funny glasses (perturbation theory) to see anything the map is indicating. But those funny glasses restrict your view and some people have gotten so used to the funny glasses that they can’t bear to take them off.
Cool about 17th century Rosicrucianism. I haven’t learned to read Latin. I like the concept and words, so thank you for bringing them out.
Scotty, the wheel doesn’t rotate; individual souls move around it, and their speed varies. We’ll get to that as we proceed.
Chuaquin, and the number of sciences that can actually achieve economically viable products will contract over time as the available resources do. Yeah, it’s going to be a challenge.
Siliconguy, this claim of yours — that the cause has to be known before the effect can be taken seriously by scientists — would have stopped science in its tracks centuries ago. Isaac Newton famously admitted that he had no idea what made gravity work; his theory focused solely on how it worked. In exactly the same way, Darwin built his theory in complete ignorance of the molecular mechanisms of genetics, and Marie Curie carried out her epochal experiments with radium at a time when no mechanism for elements to turn into other elements was known to science. I freely grant that nobody knows the mechanism by which astrological factors affect human life. If science wasn’t hobbled by its own dogmas, the evidence for astrological effects would have led researchers to go looking for a mechanism — but as long as nobody looks for one, why, you can be very sure one won’t be found. And it’s not as though astrologers can get grant money to do the research themselves…
Chris, it’s a little more subtle than that. Yeats was saying, Here is secret knowledge. It’s yours if you can unpack it and understand it. That’s a common enough habit in public writings about occultism, and was even more common in Yeats’s time.
Other Owen, there’s that — and of course once you get past the simplest phenomena, nothing ever can be replicated exactly, because the initial conditions are not and can never be exactly the same!
Justin, you’re most welcome.
Maybe I’m misremembering or was misinformed, but I recalling reading somewhere that in the very early Renaissance, around the time of Galileo and definitely prior to Newton, the idea that the Moon caused the tides had fallen into disrepute among European academics because it seemed too much like astrology, which had also fallen into disrepute.
The image of The Great Wheel in my copy of the text (from the edition w the purple and green ‘cooper’ drawing on the front) had cancer and Capricorn flipped in position (even after making the rotation from the simpler wheel drawing where breaking strength and so forth is first put down and south shifts from above to the right side). Yours has cancer at 25.5 and mine has Capricorn there. I was struggling to make the correspondence of the ‘Tempatio/Violentia’ labels to the tarot suit-ish symbols and the placements anyway, but this seems like something worth noticing before I spend any more time on that bit… like I see the relationship between the Will and Creative Mind to Chris’ dancing analogy in reverse. Creative Mind is reaching toward the outside/Body of Fate ‘objectivity’ is approaching line dancing while the Will has to lose touch with the current Body of Fate to manifest what it desires and so lives in a kind of chaos created by putting blinders on and staying in unknowing in order to gain generative/causal power (rather than observational clarity) and as such is more like clubbing. You JMG “the Creative Mind on the antithetical side of the wheel cant perceive the world clearly.” Right? And what’s up w swapping cancer and Capricorn?
In regards to astrology as a science, I’ve been wondering why exactly it fell into disrepute. Do you think it was because people like Culpeper and Lilly popularized it and made the texts available in the vernacular, so it wasn’t the property of a privileged class any more so the intellectual elite poo-pooed it due to classism?
Cause vs mechanism seems to be causing disagreement. On gravity, arguably the cause of gravity is still not known. Newton did nail down the basic equation, then Cavendish put a number to the gravitational constant. Einstein then refined it for the more extreme conditions. So we have a repeatable, always gives the same results with no surprises quantification of it.
Astrology lacks that.
Similarly Darwin had the work of Mendel to draw on. They didn’t know about DNA but they say at least statistically what parental traits were going to the offspring.
Same thing with the radioactivity. As soon as they started looking at it they found the rate of decay followed first order kinetics just like many chemical reactions. Then a given element turned into the same different element or occasionally a mixture of two different elements but always in the same ratio.
Maybe astrology isn’t capable of that level of accuracy which is fine. As JMG has pointed magic has no effect on the physical world, it works on minds. Pirsig wrote a whole book that zen (Quality) was in the mind and not amenable to quantification while motorcycles (the stand-in for technology in general) required it. Merging them is possible (graceful motorcycles do exist) but merging physics and pleasing to the eye is not easy.
@ Siliconguy,
Thanks for the link to virial expansions. Made me reminisce of my younger days…
Thank you for conducting these discussions.
You mention the way in which the Vision material was obtained, and compare it to some other examples, including the reception of the Cosmic Doctrine. Other examples of esoteric material obtained in the context of an erotic (though not necessarily sexual) field are The Book of the Law, certain inner order teachings of the Golden Dawn obtained by Samuel and Moina Mathers, the James Merrill/David Jackson Ouija board sessions, and, arguably, the Waite/Smith Tarot. Among others.
(Other texts, like the Enochian material, or the McKenna Time Wave material, or Blake’s visionary text, or Lovecraft’s dream material, do not follow this pattern: it is one mode, and not the only mode, through which such tings manifest.)
Interestingly, in the Tibetan terma tradition, the reception of hidden or lost texts through the cooperation of consorts is actually formalized, that is, there seems to be a recognized method or technique for doing so.
In “The Gift of Harun al-Raschid”, Yeats poignantly refracts his collaboration with his wife into another tale. The whole poem repays study and meditation in connection with A Vision. To take a few lines from near the end
The signs and shapes;
All those abstractions that you fancied were
From the great Treatise of Parmenides;
All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things
Are but a new expression of her body
Drunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth.
And now my utmost mystery is out.
@ 98: “Yeats was saying, Here is secret knowledge. It’s yours if you can unpack it and understand it. That’s a common enough habit in public writings about occultism, and was even more common in Yeats’s time.”
I appreciate the encouragement; that there’s something there to make it worth the considerable effort involved.
JMG # 98:
Economic contraction’s going to be a challenge for science as the institution we’ve known in the industrial/Faustian era: I agree. I think and I’ll repeat it again, science branches with no economical fast benefits will be the first in suffering the shortages in financiation (if they aren’t suffering them now or soon). Maybe Astronomy is the canary in the mine; I’m guessing who are going to be next scientists in this list of non-economical research…Well, I’ve realized now those huge particles accelerators/colliders aren’t cheap…In spite of Stephen Hawking words (if I remember them well) about those big machines like modern cathedrals, I suspect that research for finding the smallest particles doesn’t fit to the economic contraction.
@JMG – thank you. I get that the wheel doesn’t turn but that it is a representation of the Will’s path. I mentioned rotation because, correct me if I’m wrong, the wheel is a 2d representation of the two gyres, within which, the four faculties are moving, both back and forth. The word gyre also evokes spiral movement.
Will seems to be the driving force for the soul, moving it around the wheel.
Looking forward to further posts.
I have to say, the description of the Phase 17 individual hits uncomfortably close to home for me in so many details. Everything from the obsessive focus, the tendency to dispersal, the enchantment with nature, the passion for the unattainable, the tension between gregarious and solitary tendencies — it’s all there. I’m starting to see the power of his system, let’s just say.
As an aside, I didn’t think I’d ever see ballroom dance discussed here, but this site goes all kinds of places you never expect. I took it up some years ago after never thinking in all my life that I’d be a dancer and now it has become one of my “many interests” (yet another part of the Phase 17 life). I loved that it was a major part of Steppenwolf by Hesse, quite unexpectedly for me, which also represented a turning point in the protagonist’s life (Harry Haller being a thinly disguised alter ego of Hesse himself).
Anyway, prior to this, and despite having several of Yeats’ works on my shelf, I never read him before, and now I am hooked and very interested to see how this whole thing unfolds.
Slithy, I haven’t heard that, but I know that Descartes and quite a few other European intellectuals rejected Newton’s theories out of hand because they required action at a distance, which they thought was too close to witchcraft.
AliceEm, the Cancer/Capricorn thing was an error that crept into an earlier edition and took a while to remove — so few of the publishers of A Vision had the least idea of what Yeats was talking about!
Isaac, that’s a complicated question that may just deserve a post of its own. England was the only country where astrology made it into the vernacular that early, and yet astrology dropped out of fashion just as hard all over western Europe.
Siliconguy, Mendel’s work was completely forgotten until long after Darwin’s death — it wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that it was rediscovered. Until then, one of the main arguments against Darwin’s theory was precisely that the statistical side of genetics hadn’t yet been studied. More generally, I get the idea that you may not know that much about astrology, which will also produce consistent, replicable results — if you hand the same horoscope to a dozen astrologers, for example, you’ll get the same personality description with only very modest variations. My challenge to you is that you consider learning something about it, starting with your own horoscope, and then see what you think.
LeGrand, the thought of A Vision as a Hermetic terma is at least entertaining!
Chuaquin, no argument there.
Scotty, basically, yes — the circle is the form traced out by the combined whirlings of the two gyres.
Deneb, it’s a pity that Yeats doesn’t seem to have read Hesse. It would be possible to explain quite a bit of A Vision using Hesse — Steppenwolf in particular would work well for that.
@Siliconguy and @JMG
Celestial bodies do not need to cause effects for astrology to correctly predict some aspects of the future. The only necessary condition is that celestial bodies cycles correlate with the cycle of phenomena (on Earth or elsewhere) that indeed are causes for observable effects.
For example, if the rate of carbon storage in a mature forest in a specific location was such that it takes ~40 years to reach a point where forest fires become highly probable, than *any* celestial event that is observable from Earth that had a 40 years period would be a reliable predictor of forest fires in that place. Then you would simply have to figure out something to distinguish the specific place in the sky this celestial body is in when forest fires happen. Using constellations of stars that appear immovable at human time scales is actually quite handy.
Since the movement of celestial bodies is independent of the observer and there are quite a lot of celestial bodies and cycles to choose from, then classifying them and correlating them with cycles that are meaningful to humans, basically gives us an analog computer that is tailored to periodic phenomenas while requiring absolutely no energy or material to maintain. Astrology then is simply the design of useful predictive models based on cycles that correlate with the movement of recognizable celestial bodies.
Hi John Michael,
Ah, all is now clear, and many thanks for providing the context behind the words. The befuddlement was intended as a barrier to entry, spiritual challenge and protection for Mr Yeats day job. I’d not appreciated the complexities of the social circumstances Mr Yeats existed within.
Cheers
Chris
I’m working hard not on not getting hung up in the move from a single gyre, with the narrow end artfully symbolising internal subjectivity, and the wider end outer objectivity, to the double gyre where this relationship appears to have been lost. Maybe Yeats’ move here will snap into focus for me with more time.
The whirling movements of will, mask, cm and bf are heady, dizzying, and exciting my imagination, driving me to continue reading and rereading, as full comprehension seems to be just at the tip of my conceptual dexterity.
The pattern of antithetical types to rely or be drawn to a primary mask is particularly evocative. I was recently gifted a complete set of Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series, by my mom who remembered how voraciously I devoured them as a young teen. A bookish young man, lost in vivid imagery and fantasy centering a primal archetype of simplistic masculinity… How many others who enjoyed Burroughs must have been antithetical minds drawn to to a compelling primary mask?
John Carter, early in A Princess of Mars, humbly submits that he is not brave … Events happen, and he simply finds himself performing the necessary heroics, without ever having conceived of an alternative. Completely absorbed in the external world, with very little inner life – an early phase creative mind, perhaps, if I’m tracking the general pattern of the wheel correctly?