W. B. Yeats: Twentieth-century Magus

W.B. Yeats -- Twentieth-Century Magus is a comprehensive study of his magical practices and beliefs. Yeats moved through many different phases of spiritual development, believing that his life was an intellectual, spiritual, and artistic quest -- a quest greatly influenced by Celtic lore, Theosophy, Golden Dawn ceremonial magic, Swedenborg's metaphysics, the works of Jacob Boehme, and Neo-Platonism. For Yeats, writing poetry was an act of divine possession, and he believed that a perfected soul was the source of his inspiration, visiting him during times of superconscious awareness. Susan Johnston Graf meticulously documents and provides evidence that Yeats's poetry is a brilliant, lyric narrative of reality captured through the mind of a practicing magician working in the Western Tradition.

W. B. Yeats: Twentieth-Century Magus explores the esoteric life of Yeats, one of the most important writers of the 20th century. In addition to being a celebrated poet, Yeats was also a leading occultist, schooled in the initiatory mysteries of the West, and a member of the Golden Dawn. Susan Johnston Graf examines both Yeats the poet and Yeats the Magus, synthesizing the two and creating a truer, more interesting, and much more colorful picture of the man.