With this post we continue our survey of the Great Wheel of the 28 lunar phases, the central symbolic mandala of Yeats’s A Vision. In last month’s episode we followed the soul through the latter part of the first quarter, ending with the shattering experience of the 8th Phase. There the soul must wrench itself free from the collective consciousness of its culture and its time, and stand wholly alone for the first time. It is wholly typical of Yeats’s system that this is not an experience of heroic triumph but one of total failure.
There’s a lesson here of considerable importance. Over the last few centuries, Western industrial society has become obsessed with narratives that imagine the individual human being as the only genuinely active force in existence, and portray everything else in the cosmos as passive material waiting for the human will to give it direction and meaning. We too often lose track of the fact that this is a half-truth at best. Sometimes each of us acts on the world, true, but sometimes the world acts on us; sometimes each of us is the blacksmith and sometimes each of us is the iron beneath the hammer. The 8th phase is the great example of the latter condition; as we will see later on, its opposing phase, the 22nd, is the great example of the former.
With the 9th Phase, however, the hammer blows have finished for the time being. The soul has definitively detached itself from the primary tincture, the mode of human existence that relates to material reality, the sensory, and the collective. Having won its freedom at the cost of failure and suffering, the soul now has to figure out what to do with it. Put in abstract terms, the answer is simple enough: it must learn to focus all its attention on the Mask, the world as it could be, and not the Body of Fate, the world as it is. That abstract answer is never enough, however. The soul needs specifics, and finding them will occupy its next six lives.
Phase 9: Belief Instead of Individuality
The first step out of the chaos of the 8th Phase, the first stage in the exploration of the strange new world of individual consciousness into which the soul has ventured, is as clumsy as any other new beginning. It is not the clumsiness of weakness, as one sees in a newborn infant. It is a clumsiness born of too much power and not enough capacity to control it. The title of the phase, “belief instead of individuality,” gives the keynote of the Will at this stage. The Will needs a belief, some more or less arbitrary set of opinions, to give form to its otherwise shapeless energies. That belief can be constructive or monumentally destructive, depending on whether the person is in or out of phase.
That depends, in turn, on the Mask. The true Mask of this phase, “Facility,” derives from Phase 23, the first of the primary phases on the wheel and a phase of joyous abandonment of abstract concerns and an equally delighted refocusing on the concrete realities of life. The beliefs that are central to the Will at Phase 9 must be held lightly, so that the person can respond with facility to the kaleidoscope of desires and energies to which he is always subjected. The Mask of perfect freedom and perfect responsiveness can never be achieved by the person of Phase 9, but the quest for that unattainable condition gives such a person extraordinary creative power.
If the person fails to take up the quest for the Mask and tries instead, like someone in a primary phase, to dissolve the Mask in the Body of Fate, the false Mask comes into play instead. Its title is “Obscurity.” In this condition the person of Phase 9 can never say what he desires, because he is hiding from it, and he becomes a plaything in the hands of his Body of Fate, which is “Enforced Sensuality.” Overwhelmed by passionate desires, the person becomes clumsy, brutal, and violent, terrified and enraged by anything that reminds him too closely of the true Mask that haunts him. Here, as Yeats notes, we find men who dread, despise, and persecute the women they love—and, it is only fair to say, women who do the same thing to the men they love, as well as same-sex couples caught up in the same whirlwind of misery, rage, and desire.
The true Creative Mind in this phase is “Self-Dramatization.” The process of creating a personality—the goal of this and the next few phases—begins as the person fits his sensual desires into a story, and dramatizes that story by his words and actions. That story becomes not merely a source of meaning but also a bulwark against the chaos of unchecked desires, the “Anarchy” that is the false Creative Mind of this phase. As the desires find their place in the drama spun by the individual, they take their first steps toward a unity that will eventually focus every energy of the self on the Mask.
Phase 10: The Image-Breaker
With this phase the soul moves a little closer to unity and the four faculties accordingly draw closer to the birth of personality. Here the emotions rather than the sensual passions are the raw material from which the person must shape the first rough attempts at unity, and so “Enforced Emotion” rather than “Enforced Sensuality” is his Body of Fate. His life will be passionate, turbulent, and troubled, as any life driven by strong emotions has to be, but he has the capacity to stir and perhaps to lead others, since thoughts differ wildly from person to person but emotions are common to all human beings. His task is to clear away all the cluttered images of collective desire from his inner vision (thus the title of this phase) so that there is room for one intensely personal object of desire.
In effect, he is creating a pedestal upon which an ideal will be placed, though the ideal belongs to a later phase and his adoration of it to a later phase still. For the time being, his true Mask is “Organisation,” and this is meant in a twofold sense. Inwardly, he begins the labor of organizing his desires and his feelings, while outwardly, he is all but certain to join or to create an organization of some kind with some serious purpose. Here we have the political and religious leaders who tear down or repurpose existing structures and replace them, or try to replace them, with something that comes closer to an idea still vaguely held.
In both these labors, the inward as well as the outward, failure is simply a matter of not getting to work. This is why “Inertia” is the false Mask of this phase. The true Creative Mind is “Domination through emotional construction,” for this phase is called to action and to the mastery of circumstances. The false Creative Mind, “Reformation,” mistakenly turns the creative effort inward and tries to force the emotional life to conform to some collective pattern.
I have no idea how well Charles Stewart Parnell is remembered outside of Ireland; certainly I’d never heard of him when I first read this passage in A Vision. He was one of the central figures in Ireland’s 19th-century struggle for home rule, an extraordinarily effective parliamentary politician whose career was a roller-coaster ride of triumphs and defeats. Typically for a person of this phase, his final defeat came as a result of his own emotional life: a long and passionate relationship with another man’s wife that became public knowledge. In the time of Queen Victoria, that was more than enough to destroy his career and send him to an early grave. In his case the work of this phase was collective as well as personal: he destroyed the image of quaint little Ireland, happy under British rule, that propagandists had been pushing for centuries, and prepared a pedestal for the ideal of an independent Ireland that rose after his time.
Phase 11: The Consumer or Pyre-builder
The word “consumer” was not a bland little label for bland little people in Yeats’s time, and he meant it literally here. As Phase 9 must forge a unity out of sensual passions and Phase 10 must do the same out of the emotional life, Phase 11 is confronted with the task of doing the same from the raw material of beliefs and opinions. “Enforced Belief” is therefore his Body of Fate. The beliefs in question are not simply a framework on which personal passions can be turned into dramatic action, as in Phase 9, for the intellect is stirring; the antithetical tincture opens in this phase. Ideology takes on central importance. In earlier phases it can be no more than a collection of verbal noises used to signal this or that passion or desire or collective commitment; now ideas themselves become the focus of attention and the instruments of life and death.
A mind focused on beliefs will be a mind obsessed with moral issues. Thus the false Mask of this phase is “Moral indifference,” the acceptance of some collective belief system irrespective of its moral value, and the false Creative Mind is “Self-assertion,” the setting up of personal interests in place of moral concerns. Out of phase, a person of Phase 11 becomes a type far too familiar to all of us, for whom this or that set of beliefs functions solely as convenient camouflage for the pursuit of personal gain.
In phase, all of this is overturned. The true Mask is “Rejection,” for the person of this phase is called on to reject the traditional beliefs of his religion or culture or class in order to replace them with some other standard chosen by himself. The true Creative Mind is accordingly “Moral iconoclasm,” the shattering of some old set of moral precepts so that they can be replaced by something that, to the person of this phase, seems more nearly perfect.
Baruch Spinoza and Girolamo Savonarola, the two figures Yeats uses as examples of the phase, were both very much in phase, and both suffered the consequences. Spinoza, a Jew, became one of the most influential philosophers of the 17th century at the cost of being expelled from the Jewish community for his heretical ideas. Savonarola, who lived in the previous century, had a more lurid fate. A wildly succesful preacher who for a while ruled the city of Florence by the sheer power of his sermons, he became too great a threat to the hierarchy of the Catholic church. He was forbidden to preach by the Pope, and when he defied the Papal edict, he was hanged, his body burnt, and the ashes dumped in the river to keep his followers from collecting relics.
Phase 12: The Forerunner
In this phase the movement from individuality to personality finds its first fulfillment. Both tinctures have opened, the primary in this phase and the antithetical in the previous phase. All four faculties are mirrored in the newborn personality, and so it becomes possible for the person of this phase to find everything in the universe outside him reflected in the newborn universe within. That inward turn becomes the dominant fact of this and the two following phases. At first, in this phase, it is fragmentary and violent, as new forces must be; later it will become all-encompassing, as the outward cosmos dissolves into that which is within.
Having disciplined passions, emotions, and beliefs in the three previous phases, the person of this phase must now carry the same process forward on the plane of the intellect; “Enforced intellectual action” is therefore his Body of Fate. In phase, this action always involves some wholly personal vision of truth, which must be taken to extremes in order to find its own definitions; thus “Self-exaggeration” is the true Mask of this phase, and “Subjective philosophy” its true Creative Mind. If the person turns instead to some vision of truth borrowed from others, becoming subservient to the primary tincture instead of following the antithetical tincture, the resulting intellectual action becomes violent but empty, a matter of bellowing arguments filling the void where the uniquely personal vision of truth ought to go. It is quite common for someone of this phase, out of phase, to lurch drunkenly between competing opinions; thus “Self-abandonment” is the false Mask of this phase and “War between two forms of expression” the false Creative Mind.
Friedrich Nietzsche is the example of this Phase Yeats gives. He was as fragmentary and violent as the phase suggests, and eventually the violence of his thought fragmented his mind and left him a catatonic mental patient. Yet his writings remain a monument of self-exaggeration in the service of subjective philosophy, as well as some of the finest German prose ever penned. In him, as in this phase generally, the creative power of the antithetical tincture rises to full flood.
Phase 13: The Sensuous Man
In this phase the inward turn continues, and for the first time unity of being becomes possible. If the person is in phase, the struggle between the contending faculties can give way at least at certain moments to perfect peace. This peace is not the product of relaxation but of tension wrought up to its maximum intensity, and therefore it can rarely be sustained for long. In those moments, however, the person can give himself over entirely to a single experience: to sensual pleasure, to creative activity, or to anything else. Having achieved unity of being, the person of this phase turns toward the world the same utter singleness of intent that the saint of Phase 27 turns toward God.
The Body of Fate in this phase is “Enforced love of another.” The Body of Fate and the Mask are moving toward one another again, lessening the conflict between them, but in people of this phase there will always be at least some conflict between that inescapable love and the call of the Mask. The true Mask of this phase is “Self-expression,” and the false Mask “Self-absorption;” creative activity of some kind is thus essential to the person of this phase if they are to avoid failure and misery.
The true Creative Mind of this phase, similarly, is “Subjective truth,” and the false Creative Mind is “Morbidity;” since our civilization is in the late primary phases, as far from this phase as it is possible to get, few people of this phase can escape at least a tinge of this morbidity in their creative efforts.
Yeats presents three examples of this phase: Charles Baudelaire, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernest Dowson. All three were significant figures of the Decadent movement that flourished and collapsed in Yeats’s youth; Baudelaire and Dowson were poets, Beardsley the most iconic artist of the movement. All three were passionate, driven, and self-destructive, floundering constantly between true and false Mask.
Phase 14: The Obsessed Man
The last step in the long inward journey that began in the innocence of Phase Two, this phase is poised on the brink of a perfection that no embodied soul can ever achieve. The person of this phase, like that of the last, achieves unity of being, but what is a product of tremendous strain in Phase 13, nerves and muscles wrought to their highest pitch, in Phase 14 happens almost by accident. The Body of Fate, “Enforced love of the world,” almost but not quite coincides with the Mask, and so can become a source of distraction and defeat if it draws the Will away from its lonely and passionate striving toward the ideal it can almost grasp. That leads to the false Mask, “Self-distrust,” and to the false Creative Mind, “Terror.”
If the person can overcome the lures and distractions the world presents to him, however, the supreme achievements of art become almost easy. The true Mask is therefore “Serenity” and the true Creative Mind “Emotional will.” Poised on the brink of the disembodied Phase 15, the soul that has brought itself into phase can balance there with perfect grace. The more reflective and studied dimensions of art and literature come in later phases; here are those poets and painters for whom genius seems almost a physical accident.
Yeats identifies the poet John Keats and the painter Giorgione as typical examples of this phase, and the poet William Wordsworth comes in for much discussion in the text, though Yeats forgot to include his name in the list at the head of the section. All three belonged to the Romantic movement, and had an extraordinarily powerful and enduring impact on the generations that followed them. In their work, the complexities of the preceding phases empty out into a perfect clarity, thought dissolves in image.
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The phases covered in this month’s discussion include two triads, 9-10-11 and 12-13-14, each of which functions as a wheel of phases of its own. Review them over the month to come, and see if you can identify more people belonging to each phase. Next month we’ll review the whole first half of the wheel, and discuss what can be known of the mysterious phase of the full moon, Phase 15.
Is there a correlation between people in the primary tincture and support for collective political ideologies, vs people in the antithetical tincture and support for individualist political ideologies?
In the section on phase 11 you write
“Out of phase, a person of Phase 9 becomes a type far too familiar to all of us, for whom this or that set of beliefs functions solely as convenient camouflage for the pursuit of personal gain.”
Should this say phase 11 instead of phase 9?
Hello JMG and commentariat:
I’ve just read your current post, John, and I’ve found in it some interesting topics to write about them; though I’ll wait to opine about those topics after having read your today post again, more slowly and quietly. Like it’s said in an old Spanish saying: “Patience is the mother of Science”(well, in my mother’s tongue this phrase rhymes better than in my translation, but I think its meaning is saved for you). So I’m going to be patient with this post…Yeats deserves more attention than another more “mundane” posts.
The chorus from “The Bug” by Mary Chapin Carpenter
“Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes it all comes together, baby
Sometimes you’re a fool in love
Sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger, baby
Sometimes you’re the ball
Sometimes it all comes together, baby
Sometimes you’re gonna lose it all, yeah”
Very Yin and Yang. There is deeper meaning there than I thought.
Several weeks ago, while looking for background music to play at my workplace, I stumbled upon a Youtube playlist consisting almost entirely of twenty-something indie folk/pop musicians. Watching and listening to these young adults bent over guitars or pianos, pouring out their longing and sorrow and visions of beauty, I thought, aha! The second quarter of the Wheel!
The quest for sensual, emotional, and intellectual independence perfectly characterizes the late teenage and young adult phases of life. Without being as rigourous as I have been in previous monthly discussions with matching phases to growth stages within one lifetime, I would place this entire sequence between the mid-teens and the early thirties.
Reading through the phase descriptions, I am reminded of the sense of immense personal power which comes with realizing one is young and beautiful and full of potential, and also the struggle to master that potential rather than be driven on the waves of desire and personal drama. Phase 11 especially calls to my mind the undergraduate student, rejecting the beliefs of the family of origin in favour of a newly-forged personal ideology which is precisely articulated but has not yet stood the test of time. Phases 12 through 14 are like the driven young person beginning to shape a career which they believe will bring the world they experience closer to the ideal world they are embellishing in their mind’s eye.
Living falsely in the second quarter of a lifetime often involves hiding from one’s true potential rather than striving toward an ideal. Pot and porn, on the one hand, or straitjacketed religious morality, on the other hand, will handily keep the young person from experiencing the variety and intensity of experience available in this stage as at no other.
Hi JMG,
I hope life is pleasing you.
Speaking of moon phases, where are we in the current moon phase? I looked it up.
The vernal equinox arrives on Friday, 20 March 2026 afternoon. Today being 10 March, we have ten days. The moon now is in the last quarter, roughy 50% illumination, waning. A new (zero) moon happens on 19 March, meaning the equinox will feel dark.
The weather here in Wisconsin, lately, has been interesting. For about two weeks, it is one day sunny, one day gloomy, one day sunny, one day gloomy, one day sunny, one day gloomy. We get a taste of winter-leaving, then a taste of spring-coming, in close succession. Buds are not out. Being northwind-ish, I am mourning the winter which is “goning” itself. I want winter to last. Be careful what you wish for.
I am exercising my inner Cailleach; at least I look the part.
There is something in the air, but not only Spring. Something else. Godzilla or Cthulhu maybe.
I will devote the next ten days to a current project I am working on. However, the weekend of 20 March, I will start a new project called our small business’ 2025 bookkeeping. I can’t put it off any longer. (My accountant applied for an extension.)
💨🏔️⛅️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
What you are saying about the world acting on us with regards to the 8th phase is really interesting… I was revisiting some Thelemic philosophy today (it’s mercury retrograde after all) and read this really interesting article by Erica Cornelius… “On Allowing Everyone Else to Do Their Will Before You Do Yours”
https://www.corneliuspublications.com/on-allowing-everyone-else-to-do-their-willbefore-you-do-yours/
“Ironically, “doing your Will” as a man of Earth is far, far more about what you don’t do than about what you do, despite that nothing is forbidden to you in principle. As paradoxical as it may seem, to “do your Will” as a man of Earth means allowing everyone else to their Will before you do yours. You “do you,” but always in such a way as they can still “do them.””
Somehow I feel this relates to the idea of those hammer blows… letting them happen to others and not interfering is one way. There was a nice discussion of the end of the Republic, Myth of Er in there too, with all the bits about reincarnation, so coming into this reading of the phases with that in mind again.
One adept I know said to wash your face in the words of Lethe, don’t drink of the water. That way the incarnation is new, but the soul has more of a chance of remembering what came before…
Anonymous, in terms of individual lives, Yeats doesn’t say. In terms of societies, the distinction’s a different one: societies ruled by the primary tincture tend to be democratic (which can be either individualist or collectivist), and societies ruled by the antithetical tincture tend to be aristocratic (ditto).
Richard, thanks for catching this. I’ve corrected it.
Chuaquin, it’s good advice.
Siliconguy, ha! Very much so, yes.
Dylan, excellent! Yes, the four quarters are also childhood, adolescence/young adulthood, maturity, and age. I think Yeats would have agreed heartily with your development of the theme.
Northwind, here it’s 74°F right now and will be snowing lightly tomorrow evening. Yes, there are things in the air: batwinged, tentacled things. 😉
Justin, hmm! More subtlety than I’ve usually seen in Thelemite discourse.
Hello JMG
Admittedly I am not following these concepts as thoroughly as I might, but still gaining not only deeper insight into my personality, but cultivating a greater understanding and tolerance for others.
Thank you!
Now that I am reading the Phases, Yeats often refers to the Image, but I haven’t seen it defined, or missed it if he defined it. What does Yeats mean by the term Image?
Another typo, if I may : “That depends, in turn, on the Mask. The true Mask of this phase, “Facility,” derives from Phase 23, the first of the antithetical phases…”
Should be primary instead, right ?
True! (or should I say True Will…) There’s a reason I haven’t revisited Thelema in awhile, but I always thought Jerry Cornelius, and I suppose his heirs, had interesting things to say, along with some of the Typhonians…
But in the main, so much of the Thelemic orders has been Caliphate this, Caliphate that, Caliphate with a whiffle ball bat…
…but to each their own True Will.
On another note:
Do you find it common for life partners and married people to be in nearby phases, but ones that cause them to be like opposites in some ways. (As we know, opposites attract.) I was thinking of Bill and George, phase 17 and 18. His desire for fame, her desire for being away from the limelight. I was thinking also of comments you made about your late wife preferring to be in the background. I was also thinking of some other things too.
Thanks!
John Clare, another Romantic, and not with the same kind of education as Keats and Wordsworth, did seem to accidentally just stumble into his gift of poesy. He remains a favorite of mine. I class him in Phase 14.
It’s very interesting two apparent opposite men (according conventional “wisdom”) like Spinoza and Savonarola, indeed were related in the same phase, (11) according Yeats system. Of course, they defied their original beliefs system to create another one they managed to think. And they were evidently punished bi it, though in different ways.
I’m not very surprised to see Nietzsche as example of a phase (12) in which a “subjective philosophy” can emerge. Well, of course he was a very good writer (though I’ve only known his work by translations from German), and some of his ideas deserve attention. However, we can see how were his last years. A Philosophy teacher I had in my teen tears told us the students that Nietzsche was an appealing but dangerous thinker, so we shouldn’t to understand nor believe literally everything he wrote. However, hr dared to point things which other philosophers didn’t wanted to touch…
Jill, delighted to hear it. That tolerance is one of the great gifts of the system — learning something of the different phases makes it easier to accept that different people really do have radically different ways of being in, and acting on, the world.
SLClaire, being Yeats, he never defines it. (There may be a sloppier thinker in all of history but I can’t name one.) My take, for whatever that’s worth, is that it’s another way of talking about the Mask.
Thibault, caught and fixed! Thank you. (In my own defense, I wrote this in a hurry, having spent the whole weekend in rural North Carolina).
Justin, you’ve just neatly defined the difference between our generations. When you mention Jerry Cornelius, my instant reaction was to think of the Michael Moorcock character, and wonder what he had to do with Thelema. (Though I admit Una Persson has something of a Crowley-ish streak!) As for phases in love, Yeats believed that most people fall in love with someone of a phase one step closer to the nearest of the two disembodied phases — thus he fell in love with Maud Gonne, who was Phase 16, and George, Phase 18, fell in love with him. Yes, this makes it hard to explain when two people fall in love with each other! I think the truth of the matter is that people tend to fall in love with people of close but not identical phase; Sara was of Phase 19, for example.
Chuaquin, exactly. Nietzsche is raw poison if you treat him as a source of truth or use his thought as the foundation of a system. His strength as a philosopher is exactly that he asked the questions nobody else was willing to ask.
JMG on Yeats: ‘There may be a sloppier thinker in all of history but I can’t name one’. Ha! And so it falls to his intellectual heirs to detail and systematize what he received in a blaze of poetic glory.
I have been thinking about the four quarters, and for my own thinking I have given them different titles according to what the soul seeks in each quarter. These also correspond well to the four quarters of a single lifetime:
First Quarter – NOVELTY – The soul is fresh, and seeks as many new experiences as possible. There is great energy and openness, but little depth or sustained focus.
Second Quarter – INTENSITY – Having experienced many things but still seeing its full potential unachieved, the soul focuses on cultivating a few of its powers a time, building and refining them toward an ideal that seems worth striving for.
Third Quarter – MEANING – Having known both victory and defeat, dreams and disillusionment, the soul seeks to reflect upon and understand its experiences.
Fourth Quarter – INTEGRATION – Everything that can be thought through has been thought through, and the soul, now wise to the ways of the world, turns its attention to what it can contribute to the world out of its stock of experience and practical insight.
I’m finding it helpful to start at the highest level of organization, the four quarters, and to just meditate on their characteristics and what the phases within them have in common. From where I stand now, I can begin to see that there are secondary groupings within the quarters, the eight groups of three phases each, but their outlines are blurry to me except for a vague sense of beginning, refining, and implementing a new set of abilities each time. The logic of the individual phases in sequence is so far entirely lost on me. It’s just a parade of colourful characters which I trust will become clearer and more coherent as I sink into the material from the top-level viewpoint I have now.
JMG,
Would some of the more brilliant and self destructive musical artist of the 20th century be in phase 13? If so, this would explain how artists of such talent and achievement as Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, Brian Wilson and Jim Morrison could burn so bright and burn out so quickly.
Or am I just confusing the effects of drug addiction and mental illness on ordinarily talented artists.
“…being Yeats, he never defines it. (There may be a sloppier thinker in all of history but I can’t name one.)” I can think of one — quite easily. But that would seriously limit his appeal to many of us. But still, it surprises me that you would say this. There must be some profound strength or appeal in his writing that makes up for it.
And, to JPM re John Clare. How many modern writers ever mention him? I can think of just one: the late Jim Harrison.
“There may be a sloppier thinker in all of history but I can’t name one.”
Surely there exist plenty of sloppy thinkers in the PMC, academia, etc right now who are worse than Yeats. Some of them have recently outsourced their sloppy thinking over to LLMs too.
Dylan, exactly. One of the reasons I’m doing this commentary is precisely to encourage people to pick up where the Yeatses left off, and do interesting things with the structure they created. Your titles are a good example — they clarify certain things that Yeats left unclear.
Clay, no, I think you’re on to something important. I don’t know their biographies well enough to be sure, but the basic trajectory sounds like Phase 13.
Phutatorius, Yeats was a genius. A sloppy genius, but a genius. Many, many thinkers who were better organized and neater in their presentation had much less to say worth saying.
Anonymous, nah, “sloppy” is not the same as “vacuous.” There’s a difference between a plate so overloaded with tasty spaghetti that noodles and sauce are tumbling onto the floor, and a plate that has nothing on it at all.
My thoughts looking at Yeats and his list of exemplars of phases was that he was in the closing phases of a creative Western culture with Tolkien, Lewis and E.F. Schumacher being some final actions of a dying body.. I also think the creative actions of the sixties and seventies were those too, with the final act being the computer technology and its effects AI being the rictus on the corpse
Yesterday I had coffee with a very elderly and famous Irish revolutionary. I mentioned that my family were originally Anglo-Irish and she said ’so your ancestors were responsible for the Ascendency’. I explained that my Anglo-Irish ancestors belonged to the minority that had sided with the Irish, and then she laughed and said ‘so you’re a Butler’. Even though I’m from a different clan it was clear that ‘Butler’ is an emblem for all the rebel Cambro-Normans who sided with Ireland. The Butler name apparently stands for justice and egalitarianism in Ireland in the same way that Campbell stands for treachery in Scotland (and MacGregor stands for stubborn resistance). Last night I looked up the proportion of the Anglo-Irish community that had sided with the Irish and it was only ten to twenty percent. So in Yeats’ time the conflict over identity and nationality would have been extremely bitter.
JMG # 15:
Exactly, my Philosophy teacher was right when he said it was necessary to read Nietzsche with some “distance”, taking his thoughts carefully. On the other hand, this German philosopher prose is very “clean” (at least I’ve found translations from German relatively easy to understand him); which makes Nietzsche different of another German culture authors (like Hegel and Heidegger, and sometimes Marx, ahem), whose opaque and dark writing is a burden for their translators and readers…
———————-
Clay D. # 17:
Jim Morrison and the another musicians had their addictions problems, which can explain part of their lives. Maybe they were in phase 13, maybe in another one. I don’t know.
@John: I have read some Michael Moorcock, and have more that I’d like to read, so I’d thought of that connection as well before. Also, as you surely know, the Chaos Star used by chaos magicians does derive from him and his ideas of Law and Chaos. I have enjoyed the original Elric sequence and the Dancers at the End of Time series and some of the others, but he wrote a lot of books and there is more Moorcock to read.
@Phutatorius et al: I’ve been stirring in some novels / novellas of Jim Harrison into my reading every year for the past five years or so. I love his writing style. He’s become a gruff favorite. I have a volume of his poetry too, but haven’t delved into that as much yet, but he is a fine nature write in that area -of course in his novels too, but their it gets mixed in with often times sordid lives of his characters and their appetites. I wonder where to place Harrison on the wheel. The gourmand aspect of him, and the rich detail he gives to sensual delights of the body in his fiction might put him in at phase 13 along with Baudelaire, Beardsley and co. Even when I get irritated by certain things in his fiction, I can’t help but really really admire his craft in prose. That’s why I am reading just a bit a year, I’m trying to savor him, like one of the dishes he wrote about in his food writing.
I forgot to mention that Julip is the one by Jim Harrison that I happen to be reading right now. It’s an amazing piece of work, and has all the things that I love about his writing. My favorite on so far though was The Land of Unlikeness. That one is in the book The River Swimmer, which is the other novella there. Harrison also shows how its done writing that short novel, which was his definite sweet spot.
I can understand Yeats idea about Savonarola and Spinoza sharing their same phase within his Wheel, because I can see to some extent the first went away from orthodoxal Catholicism, and the second ran away of Jew religion (or he was put out of it by his former “friends”). However, Savonarola ended preaching an apocalyptical/millenarist Christian speech, but Spinoza thought his philosophy according his idiosyncrasic rationalism (maybe mixed with some pantheism, if I’m not wrong). I recognize I haven’t read every book about that two controverted men, but I think there were very different in their thoughts; though I can guess they lived in different countries and time, which could explain partly this different attitudes and ideas.
At this page is the full list of all of the non-faith-specific requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 3/13). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Bob W of Lake County, Ohio’s treatment for cancer go well so that he may heal and recover as quickly as possible.
May Open Space be filled with the strength he needs to heal quickly from his current bout of Chicken Pox; may his will remain strong, that he does not scratch; may he be healed completely, and suffer no scarring in its wake.
May Bob Ralston (aka Rasty Bob), who is in hospice care in Buckeye AZ, and who just lost his wife Leslie Fish, be blessed and find relief from his pain and discomfort; may Bob’s heart remain strong.
May Princess Cutekitten, who has made no comments on any of the Ecosophia blogs for a year now, and hasn’t responded to attempts at contact, be blessed wherever she is and in whatever form she may exist.
May Cathy N. of St. Marys, Ohio heal and recover from injuries caused by a fall.
May Dustin, a relative of Brenainn, be healed of a recently discovered heart condition.
May 1Wanderers’s partner Cathy, whose cancer has returned, be given the physical and mental strength to fight it, and tolerate the treatment, and may she enjoy a full and permanent recovery.
May Jule from Iserlohn, Germany, who is experiencing complications in her pregnancy due to an influenza infection, recover and have a pleasant pregnancy and birth.
May Larry Mulford, who has entered hospice after a year battling with pancreatic cancer, pass in the smoothest possible manner, and may his wife be enveloped in our love.
May Marko have the strength to seize the opportunities.
May Pierre’s young daughter, Athena, be healed from her fatigue and its root causes in ways that are easy, natural, and as holistic as possible.
May 5 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Lydia G. of Geauga County, Ohio heal and recover from prolonged health issues.
May both Monika and the child she is pregnant with both be blessed with good health and a safe delivery.
May Mary’s sister have her auto-immune conditions sent into remission, may her eyes remain healthy, and may she heal in body, mind, and spirit.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Maybe off topic… JMG how do you think existing agricultural societies will fare during the drawn out industrial collapse? [snip]
BeardTree, that was certainly Yeats’s own view!
Tengu, according to everything I’ve read, it was bitter but less sharply drawn. Yeats was a Butler on his mother’s side, thus his middle name, but in his time there were plenty of Irish people from Anglo-Irish backgrounds who favored Irish independence and plenty of Irish Catholics who didn’t. It was a complex, messy time, but has been neatened up retrospectively in memory. Thank you, btw, for that hat tip to the MacGregors; as you may recall, Greer is a MacGregor sept.
Chuaquin, it’s my conviction that people who can’t write clearly can’t think clearly either. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were masters of crystal-clear prose, which is even harder in German than in most languages; Kant is labored but you always know exactly what he’s saying. To my mind, those are real philosophers, while Hegel, Heidegger, and Marx were shoveling smoke.
Justin, yeah, I rolled my eyes when I saw the Chaotes embracing Moorcock’s emblem of chaos. It would serve them right if Mabelrode the Faceless showed up in response. I read vast amounts of Moorcock back in the day, and should probably reread him; I suspect the Jerry Cornelius stories would make more sense to me now than they did when I was a teenager.
Chuaquin, it’s not the content of the philosophy that defines the phase!
Ecoprayer, thanks for this as always.
Alex, yes, it’s completely off topic. Please post this on this month’s Open Post, which will go up March 25, and I’ll be happy to give you a detailed response.
(Regarding the clarity of writing): And where do you (JMG) place Schwaller de Lubicz in that scale?
JMG # 29:
Yes, translators from German to another languages have an easier work with Schopenhauer, too; Kant can be more difficult, but at least translations to my mother’s tongue can be understood after a slow reading (which can’t be said when you read the “German opacity masters”).
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Well, I’ve understood Savonarola and Spinoza, alike, shared a common attitude in front of their inherited beliefs systems,(because they shared the same phase), but they were different in their philosophic ideas. So I think their phase influenced them mainly in their iconoclastical attitude in their lives.
@JPM #25 A synchronicity re: “Julip.” (my favorite in that collection is “The Beige Dolorosa.”) But I don’t know where on Yeats’ scheme I’d put Harrison. He was a guy with huge appetites and very high intelligence; maybe with the decadent poets and Beardsley as you mentioned. Phase 13. It’s curious that he liked to write stories from a woman’s point of view, though he could also be a perfect “male chauvinist pig.” Stories like “Dalva” from the woman’s point of view (which I have not read — “Dalva” became the name of a bar in San Francisco — which I never visited.) A lesbian couple at the local Quaker meeting were quite fond of “Dalva” (the novel, not the bar). It surprised me that they, of all people, would be reading Jim Harrison.
I really like what Dylan has been putting out there comment wise the last couple posts. I am eager for the next installment as I can identify with phase 13, and 14 but also think I identify with the next few phases as well. Time to reread things.
I just reread Yeats’ description of phase 13. What phase would most characterize cycling between addiction and austerity? It seems like it might be phase 13
You say people of Phase 14 are now pulled into imbalance due to Faustian Civilization being in a late primary phase.
Are there any phases which tend to be pulled into balance because the civilization is at a late primary phase? I don’t notice a lot of saints in our society. Maybe the individuality-builders of phases 6-7 “squaring” society’s phase benefit due to cosmopolitan cities, vacations (if they’re upper middle class), and subcultures?
Phutatorius # 32 and JPM # 25:
I haven’t read any novel written by Harrison yet, but it isn’t strange some male novelists can write a book from a female character view. Every man has a female side (and vice versa, every woman has her male side); you can use it (if you’re a good writer) to guess what could be a woman attitude and behavior. Of course, if you’re in this or that phase, I think it can help (or not) you to grasp the female psychology.
Hi John Michael,
Ah, we’re getting to the bit where the will’s muscle gets to direct itself against the underlying reality. It’s not nice to be flotsam… 😉 Hey, I’m impressed that Mr Yeats recognised that much can be gained through hardship. Respect.
Mastery of circumstances is an interesting turn of phrase, and yet the example was of a person dominated by their passions. These seem like impossible to reconcile notions. I’m not exactly sure of what Mr Yeats meant when he used the word ‘circumstances’. Would it be too much to elaborate on that?
Cheers
Chris
It seems to me an entire system of psychology, as profound as Jung’s could be developed on the basis of this. I mean, it already is a system of psychology, but unpacking it and getting it into the hands of people who can use it as a working tool for helping themselves and their fellow creatures… that is what I am thinking of as a potential here. How to help nudge yourself into “true to phase” or help others avoid wearing the false mask and the like… a lot could be done.
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@Phutatorius: I will have to check out Dalva. You are right about the female POV in his stories. So far in the ones I have read, it is has mostly been true. I will have to check out Dalva. Never been to San Francisco, but been to California twice when I was a kid, when my aunt was living outside LA. Won’t ever forget Yosemite. I would like to visit SF despite all the techbros and chaos.
If I may be permitted to skip ahead to Phase 15, could it be described as the Vision of Sorrow (dukkha) in Buddhism, or as I like to think of it as “The Sadness of Things” after the album by Current 93 and Nurse With Wound, or “A Sadness Song” on the Current 93 album Thunder Perfect Mind album:
https://current931.bandcamp.com/album/the-sadness-of-things
https://current931.bandcamp.com/track/a-sadness-song
I see the Phase 15 as the depression that comes after knowing just how fracked up other people can be and behave towards others, the knowledge of the evil that other people can do together. Pisces religions might call it the fallen state of the world, everything is suffering etc. Not sure if I am hitting on the right thing here or not…
What is the path of coming out of this for the person in this phase?
JMG,
Of the musical artists I mentioned the one that might be the most fruitful to look in to with relation to phase 13 is Chet Baker.
Early in his career he was acclaimed as one of the best jazz trumpeters in the world while also being a remarkable singer, while also being movie star handsome with magnetic charm especially to women.
But for unexplained reasons he fell in to heroin addiction. Eventually he got in self destructive scuffles with drug dealers and got a beating so bad he lost most of his front teeth, which for a time ruined his trumpet playing for a time and damaged his good looks.
He then continued a self destructive relationship to heroin, being imprisoned several times. But often returning from these black years to do stunning recordings or performances then slipping back in to drugs and prison.
Strangely, the more the drugs and hard living took a toll on his body the more tender melodic and soul searching his performances became . Eventually he died, from an unexplained fall from a hotel balcony in the Netherlands.
I have to be careful here, but someone mentioned Chet Baker for phase 13. I’ll add one more to that list of self-destructive but talented musicians: Steve Webber. Has anyone here heard of him? He was one half of the original “Holy Modal Rounders” and was also one of the few members of “The Fugs” who could actually play an instrument. Now here’s why I need to be careful: to me, everything about Chet Baker, his trumpet playing, his singing, and his good looks, were simply pathetic. I simply can’t think of anything nice to say about him. That probably says something about me. Phase 13: Something to watch out for.
Regarding “male novelists who can write a book from a female character view”: I think Haldór Laxness was quite skillful in it. “Salka Valka” is probably the most famous of his novels, but this can be seen also in his other work., for example in four-part “Heimsljós” (World Light), which is one of my favorite books.
After a day of reading things over again, multiple times for some phases, I’m fairly sure I’m phase 13 or 18. Maybe it’s a peculiarity of my mind that I see these as similar but disillusionment and self loathing seem to be possible to co-occur, and I seem to straddle the middle of the presentations of relationships for those phases. Not to mention other details. If JMG or anyone else has tips on dividing a line between these phases, I’m all ears.
A. Karhukainen, in the middle range. He had some brilliant insights but didn’t always develop them well, and his prose was workmanlike but labored in places.
Luke, that pattern can occur in several phases. My recommendation is to look to the Body of Fate for guidance. If a relationship with one person is a dominant force in your life, especially if that relationship is in consistent conflict with everything else you want out of life, then phase 13 is likely.
Patrick, no, we don’t have a lot of saints, but we do have a lot of people who correspond to Phase 26, the Hunchback, in its positive mode; the quest for self-realization has been a major cultural theme, and the beginning of the abstract supersensual has been a tolerably common experience. It’s in the years immediately ahead that I’d expect to see more saints.
Chris, a person dominated by his passions can dominate his circumstances in service to those passions. Consider the crazed teenage boy who will do absolutely anything to get laid! “Circumstances” here means the outward details of life.
Justin, I think you’re quite correct, and the reference to Jung is more apropos than you may realize. Did you know that Jung owned a copy of the privately printed 1925 edition of A Vision? As for Phase 15, no, not at all. Phase 15 is if anything the Vision of Joy. In it Will and Creative Mind are identical, and Mask and Body of Fate are identical: the world and the heart’s desire are one.
Clay, that does sound like 13, or maybe 14. Again, check the Body of Fate against the bio.
Luke, the Body of Fate is again the keynote. Phase 13 is dominated by a passionate love for some specific person. Phase 18 undergoes instead the repeated experience of disillusionment: what is desired, once it is attained, doesn’t live up to expectations.Which of those is a keynote in your life?
Clay D. # 40:
Chet Baker life story is sad, methink. His “toxic love” with heroin has made me remember what a Spanish rock band frontman said in an interview, not much time before dying: “I’ve used every known drug during my life, except heroin”. He went on saying he wasn’t fool enough to be addicted to heroin, which he thought was the worst addiction. Well, heroin “epidemic” arrived here during early ‘80s: Maybe it were different time and cultural framework.
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A. K. # 42:
I take note of H. Lakness, an author unknown to me until
your comment. I hope to find some of his books, if not translated to Spanish, at least in some English translation.
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JMG # 44:
You’ve written you expect to see in next years more saints. It’s possible; though I also think saints (like real heroes) aren’t very common in our real world, even when the situation (I mean the phases) favors their special attitude and behavior.
JMG,
Thanks for that. I think I missed the Body of Fate as keynote, or forgot it. I am definitely not dominated for a passionate love of a specific person, and do go through the repeated experience of disillusionment. Phase 18 it is. We’ll see it if it holds up through the solve et coagula of future posts. Phase 18 was my first idea of what I was, actually, but it was a bit unconscious because I hadn’t read as closely.
It sounds like the phases occur over at least three dimensions:
(1) developmental phases within a given lifetime (really have appreciated Dylan’s thoughts on this over the series of posts)
(2) the phase one is ‘born into’ in a given lifetime
(3) the phase one’s culture is currently in
I’m curious how these intersect.
One thought I had is that a person progresses through the phases in (1) up to the point that they reach (2). At that point they remain in that phase and struggle with issues others may pass through with relative ease. And would effectively halt their development at that point.
An interesting implication of this is that one might only know their real phase (2) near end of life (or perhaps after observing many years of being stuck on the same issues) . Certainly, a phase I might have identified with in my 20’s would be quite different from what I would relate to now.
You mentioned above JMG that there are few saints in the hunchback phase (3). Would that imply that the culture similarly plays a role of arresting the development of people incarnating into it? Or is this entire line of thinking overly simplistic?
@Phutatorius , #41,
I realize that everyone has their own tastes in music, but Chet Baker’s trumpet playing is Pathetic?
It might be reasonable to say he didn’t have the virtuosity of Miles Davis or the innovation of Louis Armstrong, but pathetic?
Please elaborate on why one of the most widely respected Jazz trumpet players of the 20th century was pathetic, it is not a claim I have ever heard before. It’s like saying Wayne Gretzky was a pathetic hockey player and then walking away with no explanation.
I remember that about Jungfrom previous posts, but wasn’t thinking of it when I typed the above. I wonder how much influencebit might have had on Jungs ideas…
And I dont know how I got that out of Phase 15. I think it was his discussion of awareness of evil. Thanks for the clarification.
Luke Z #33 and Paul #47: Thank you and you’re welcome! I am so enjoying this series of posts, and it’s great to know that others are appreciating my thoughts on it.
Paul #47: I too had thought along similar lines about the soul advancing through the phases within a single lifetime until it stops at the incarnational phase of that lifetime as a whole. I have a good friend from college who agrees with me that he’s pretty much stayed the same person since we both graduated, but that I’ve changed and changed again. (I’d guess he’s a mature first quarter guy: solid and reliable and not given to flights of fancy). I can certainly remember the ‘second quarter’ stage of my life, and those indie music videos brought back the nostalgia for it, but I’m not that person any more.
There is a minor notion in pop culture called the ‘champagne birthday’, when the date of your birthday matches the age you are turning. If you’re born on the 25th of whatever month, your 25th birthday is your champagne birthday. I’m not sure it has any deeper meaning than an excuse to drink champagne, but it could be a useful concept here. As far as I know, our host really began to hit his stride as a professional writer in his early forties, which would correspond with his soul’s Phase 18. Other writers I admire (Tolkien, Le Guin), also had their breakout moments at that stage of life.
One could argue that this is because the nature of the writer’s craft requires that kind of timescale to mature artistically and commercially, but conversely one could argue that the writer’s craft requires a third-quarter-of-the-wheel kind of person to make a serious go of it. (Poets and songwriters who find success at younger ages belong rather to the second quarter).
Justin Patrick Moore #38: Exactly. Exactly! That’s what really gets me interested in this material. It’s not just theoretically beautiful- it could be very very useful for anyone seeking greater self knowledge at any stage of development, if appropriately translated into that individual’s personal idiom.
To those who can digest Yeats’ thoughts and truly understand and re-articulate them, the power of personal change lies in their hands.
Clay at 48: I’m not a fan of the trumpet. I tried to like Miles Davis, buying several albums decades ago, but never actually liked any of it. Trumpet is fine as “orchestral color,” but as a solo instrument? No. Baker’s singing, I really, really disliked. But this is getting off topic.
Somebody should make an app that identifies your Yeats Vision Phase, presumably by asking a series of multiple-choice questions. Would that even work? Or would it be like trying to guess somebody’s birthday based on hearing their horoscope fortune read aloud?
Chuaquin, saints and heroes are both tolerably common. Great saints and great heroes, not so much, but your common or garden variety of either? Every war produces its share of heroes and every religious community has a minor saint or two.
Luke, well, there you are. We’ll proceed a couple of months from now to the third quarter, and you can make your call then.
Paul, there are at least those three, and likely many more. Yeats doesn’t specify the exact details of relationship. As for effects of culture, very much so; when the culture is in a primary phase (even number) the antithetical phases are hindered, and vice versa. The saint is the last antithetical phase before the primary hits maximum, so it’s always challenging.
Justin, I may take some time one of these days to see what changed in Jung’s theories after 1925…
Dylan, in that case my champagne birthday would have been at age 7, which probably would not have been a good idea! That said, you’re right that most writers really hit their stride in the second half of life, though of course there are exceptions.
Ambrose, I have no idea, but it seems unlikely to work, at least to me.
Dylan # 50:
I think the “champagne birthday” is a bizarre but good idea too, to have a subterfuge for drinking champagne…if you’re adult enough to celebrate it. If you were born before day 18 (legal age to drink alcohol in my country) it may be a problem to do it. And of course, if you’re older than 31 and you’ve missed that kind of birthday, it’s a pity but you can’t celebrate it anymore, like it’s my case (oohh!)
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JMG # 54:
Well, garden variety saints and heroes have gone under my radar…Of course, I was thinking only in great saints and heroes, whose lives are told in books. You’re right in everyday life you can find little saints and heroes, near anonymous, but indeed I think you must seek them paying a lot of attention to go beyond current society noise…
About little saints and heroes – a quote from Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel “The Curse of Chalion.” The viewpoint character – yes, I’ll say the hero – realizes “I’d expected the god-touched to blaze their way through the world. Instead, they swim through it as quietly as fish.” He doesn’t see himself as a hero, either, just someone trying to do his duty under near-impossible conditions.
Patricia M. # 56:
Maybe the little saints and heroes are anonymous, not famous like the great ones; even they couldn’t think ourselves as saints or heroes. According this view, that novel character you’ve remembered in your comment would be a hero, though in a wider sense than it’s usually believed.
Regarding Schwaller de Lubicz: Yes, he certainly has interesting points of view, and also tried to include some aspects of the modern biology and other science (of 1950’s) in them. I bet that nowadays he would be very interested about the work of Michael Levin.
By the way, I found it interesting in Yeats’ Vision that he employs the concept of the Great Year, as it is essentially an astronomical, empirical fact (not readily seen by eyes, like smaller cycles), that has thus seeped into occult literature.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for the explanation, and I must add, that with the fourteenth phase, there is a real beauty to the art of the Romanticism movement. Just lovely work with extraordinary depth to enjoy.
I’m intrigued to read where the third and fourth quadrants take us.
Cheers
Chris
I wonder if the era of the Epicureans was part of Phase 13 in a historical cycle.
In addition to the saints (sub)topic, I can remember from my Catholic education, a dogma within that Church “Credo” was the “Communion of the Saints”. One of its theological aspects was how important was for Rome and its believers the respect for the Saints: not only the well known Saints “made” by the Popes, but also the unknown Saints by the Church, though known evidently by God (who knows everything). Well, I don’t like superstitious saint worshipping, but I respect the saints lives (famous ones and not) as attitude and behavior models.
I don’t think I completely understand what it means for the Primary and Antithetical tinctures to be open or closed. For instance, when the primary tincture is opened, does it mean that the person will have a high propensity for religiosity or ideological commitment? And if so, what does it mean for the antithetical tincture to be open? Does it mean that the person will be self-obsessed, or something like that?
Ran into the phrase ‘rawdogging boredom’. It resolves to,
“Dubbed rawdogging, the practice involves staring into space sans entertainment, sleep or other distractions to give themselves a respite in an age where everyone is glued to their screen.”
It sounds like more formal meditation is about to take off again. It certainly won’t hurt.
Siliconguy @63: Yes, it takes certain doggedness to meditate. Especially if you are doing it zen way.
Chuaquin, I tend to think that the minor saints and heroes are more influential than most people realize — it’s precisely because nobody notices them that their work becomes pervasive.
Patricia M, exactly! Thank you for this.
A. Karhukainen, the Great Year was an astrological concept from the time it was first discovered, and astrology was a core element of the old occult synthesis — of course it also doesn’t hurt that both William and George Yeats were expert astrologers.
Chris, indeed there is. Each of the antithetical phases, to my mind, has its own creative flavor.
Justin, no, it came much later. But we’ll get to that!
Chuaquin, superstition has its advantages. 😉
Rajarshi, no, it’s nothing that conscious. When the tinctures are open, the conscious mind isn’t isolated. In the primary phases, it’s open to nature (in the first quarter) or the divine (in the fourth); in the antithetical phases, it’s open to the deep places of consciousness. When the tinctures are closed, by contrast, the conscious mind is isolated and has only its own thoughts and feelings to work with, along with whatever it gets from the senses.
Siliconguy, good heavens. That’s a very promising sign — a spontaneous turn toward meditation as a corrective to too much chatter. Hmm!
Hmm, I must have hit a wrong nerve with my question about the Great Year. In any case, astronomy vs. astrology fight here is quite moot, as they were long almost indistinguishable.
Instead I would like to know your view about the relative merits of how the Western and Indian astrology handled the problem caused by the precession in different ways: the former fixes horoscope signs to the fixed time periods in the solar calendar, while the latter keeps them paired with the actual positions of their namesake constellations, and thus the systems are nowadays offset by about one sign from each other, as I have understood it.
Just found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayanamsa
“Ayanāṃśa is the Sanskrit term for many systems used in Hindu astrology to account for the precession of equinoxes. There are also systems of ayanamsa used in Western sidereal astrology, such as the Fagan/Bradley Ayanamsa.”
I didn’t know that there is also Western sidereal astrology. I guess that is quite recent invention though? Cyril Fagan is mentioned, born in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 1896 – died in Tucson, Arizona, United States, January 5, 1970.
Let’s say someone is a phase 9 and approaching 50 years old. After getting tired of the consequences of clumsiness, cruelty, and self destruction, they spent the last 10 years in occult study trying to get their passions under control. Suddenly they find out they need a narrative in order to make something of what’s left of the incarnation. What does Yeats mean by self-dramatisation?