Yeats and the Golden Dawn: Occult Poetry and Automatic Writing

BY NICOLE LAU

William Butler Yeats was not just a poet who dabbled in the occult—he was a practicing magician who used poetry as magical operation, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who integrated ritual magic with literary creation, a visionary who received an entire cosmological system through his wife's automatic writing. Yeats spent decades studying Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Celtic mythology, and spiritualism, synthesizing these traditions into a personal magical system that informed every line of his mature poetry. His tower at Thoor Ballylee became a magical workspace, his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees a partnership in spirit communication, his late masterpiece A Vision a complete occult philosophy received from beyond. Yeats proves that serious occult practice and great poetry are not separate pursuits but aspects of the same work: using symbol and ritual to access deeper realities, to transform consciousness, to make the invisible visible.

The Golden Dawn: Yeats as Practicing Magician

In 1890, at age 25, Yeats joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—the most influential magical order in modern Western esotericism, founded by Freemasons and Rosicrucians to revive Renaissance magic and Kabbalah.

What Yeats learned in the Golden Dawn:

Kabbalistic cosmology: The Tree of Life as map of consciousness and reality, the sephiroth as divine emanations, the paths as stages of initiation

Ritual magic: Ceremonial techniques for invoking angels and spirits, banishing rituals, consecration of magical tools

Tarot and divination: The Golden Dawn's innovative Tarot system (later published by Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite)

Astral projection: Techniques for out-of-body travel and vision in the spirit

Correspondences: The elaborate system linking colors, planets, Hebrew letters, Egyptian gods, and Kabbalistic sephiroth

Yeats took this seriously—he advanced through the grades, performed rituals, kept magical diaries, and eventually became Imperator (leader) of a Golden Dawn temple.

His magical motto: Demon Est Deus Inversus ("The Devil is God Inverted")—revealing his understanding that light and shadow, good and evil, are complementary aspects of the divine.

The Rose: Symbol as Magical Operation

The rose is Yeats's central symbol, appearing throughout his poetry with layers of meaning drawn from multiple esoteric traditions:

The Rosicrucian Rose: The rose at the center of the cross, spirit incarnating in matter, the divine hidden in the material world

The Kabbalistic Rose: The rose as Malkuth (the material world) or as the Shekinah (divine feminine presence)

The Irish Rose: Ireland itself, the beloved country, the anima mundi (world soul)

The Beloved: Maud Gonne, Yeats's lifelong unrequited love, becomes the Rose—the unattainable ideal that drives the quest

In "The Secret Rose," Yeats writes:

"Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours"

This is not just romantic poetry—it's invocation, calling upon the Rose as divine principle to manifest in consciousness. The poem is the ritual, the words are the spell, the symbol is the gateway.

Automatic Writing: Georgie as Medium

In 1917, Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees. Four days after their wedding, Georgie began automatic writing—her hand moving without conscious control, producing messages from spirits who called themselves "Instructors."

For the next several years, Georgie channeled thousands of pages of automatic writing, which Yeats organized into his occult masterwork A Vision.

What the automatic writing revealed:

A complete cosmology: A system of 28 phases of the moon corresponding to 28 personality types

The gyres: Interpenetrating cones representing historical cycles and individual development

The Great Year: A 2,000-year cycle of civilizations rising and falling

Reincarnation: The soul's journey through multiple lives, working through the phases

The Instructors told Yeats: "We have come to give you metaphors for poetry."

This is profound: the spirits didn't come to give truth but to give symbols, images, metaphors—the raw material of poetry. The automatic writing was not revelation but creative collaboration between Yeats, Georgie, and the unconscious (or spirits, depending on your ontology).

The Gyres: Spirals of History and Consciousness

The central image of A Vision is the gyre—two interpenetrating cones, spiraling in opposite directions, representing the fundamental pattern of existence:

Primary and Antithetical: Two opposing forces (objective/subjective, collective/individual, lunar/solar) that alternate dominance

Historical cycles: Civilizations rise and fall in 2,000-year gyres—the Christian era ending, a new age beginning

Individual development: Each person moves through the 28 phases, from complete objectivity to complete subjectivity and back

The widening gyre: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"—as the gyre widens, order dissolves into chaos before the new gyre begins

The gyre appears throughout Yeats's late poetry:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"

This is not just metaphor—it's Yeats's understanding of cosmic law, the pattern underlying history, psychology, and spiritual development.

"The Second Coming": Apocalyptic Vision

Yeats's most famous poem, "The Second Coming," is pure occult prophecy—written in 1919, it predicts the collapse of Christian civilization and the birth of a new, terrifying age:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

The poem draws on:

The gyre system: The Christian gyre (2,000 years) is ending, a new gyre beginning

The Sphinx: The "rough beast" with "lion body and the head of a man" is the Sphinx, symbol of the coming age

Apocalyptic imagery: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed"—chaos, violence, the breakdown of order

Astrological timing: The Age of Pisces (Christianity) ending, the Age of Aquarius beginning

Yeats wasn't just describing World War I's aftermath—he was prophesying the end of an entire civilization, the birth of something new and monstrous. The poem is magical operation, calling forth the vision of what's coming.

Sailing to Byzantium: Art as Eternal Form

In "Sailing to Byzantium," Yeats creates his vision of transcendence through art:

"That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song"

Byzantium represents:

The eternal city: Not the natural world of birth and death but the artificial paradise of art

The golden bird: "Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing / But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make"—the soul as artwork, eternal and unchanging

The singing masters: "O sages standing in God's holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall"—the perfected souls who teach the transformation

Transcendence through art: The poet escapes the cycle of birth and death by becoming eternal form, golden bird, singing forever

This is Yeats's Hermetic vision: art as alchemy, transforming the base metal of mortal flesh into the gold of eternal form.

The Tower: Magical Workspace and Symbol

In 1917, Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, a Norman tower in western Ireland, which he restored and made his summer home. The tower became:

Magical workspace: Where he and Georgie conducted automatic writing sessions

Central symbol: Appearing throughout his late poetry as image of isolation, contemplation, and ascent

The winding stair: The spiral staircase as gyre, as path of initiation, as ascent to vision

The battlements: The high place from which the poet-magician surveys reality

In "The Tower," Yeats writes:

"I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth"

The tower is the magician's tower, the alchemist's laboratory, the hermit's cell—the place of solitary work, of transformation, of vision.

Celtic Mythology: The Irish Mysteries

Yeats didn't just import Eastern and Hermetic traditions—he worked to revive Irish mythology as living spiritual tradition:

The Sidhe (fairy folk): Not cute fairies but the Tuatha Dé Danann, the old gods of Ireland, still present in the land

Cuchulain: The Irish hero as archetypal warrior, appearing throughout Yeats's plays

The Celtic Twilight: The liminal time between day and night, between worlds, when the veil is thin

Sacred sites: Ben Bulben, Sligo, the places of power in the Irish landscape

Yeats believed Ireland's mythology was as valid as Greek or Egyptian, that the Irish landscape was charged with spiritual power, that the old gods were still accessible.

He worked to create an Irish Mysteries tradition, synthesizing Celtic mythology with Golden Dawn magic, making Ireland itself a magical landscape.

"Among School Children": The Unity of Being

Yeats's late masterpiece "Among School Children" culminates in one of poetry's most famous questions:

"O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

This is Yeats's mystical vision of unity:

The tree is one: Not divided into parts but a unified living whole

The dancer and dance are one: No separation between being and doing, self and action

Unity of Being: Yeats's term for the state where all aspects of self are integrated, where inner and outer are one

This is:

• Non-duality: The recognition that all apparent divisions are illusion
• The Hermetic axiom: "As above, so below"—the microcosm and macrocosm are one
• The goal of the Great Work: Integration, wholeness, the union of opposites

Practical Applications: Yeats's Magical Poetics

How to engage Yeats's integration of magic and poetry:

Use symbols as invocations: Choose a symbol (rose, tower, gyre) and work with it meditatively, letting it reveal its meanings.

Practice automatic writing: Let the hand move without conscious control, see what emerges from the unconscious.

Create personal cosmology: Like Yeats's gyres and phases, develop your own system of symbols and correspondences.

Study multiple traditions: Synthesize Celtic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and other systems into personal practice.

Make art magical operation: Understand that creating poetry, visual art, or music can be ritual, invocation, transformation.

Work with a partner: Georgie was essential to Yeats's late work—find collaborators for magical and creative practice.

Seek Unity of Being: Integrate all aspects of self—body, emotion, intellect, spirit—into unified whole.

The Eternal Gyre

Yeats died in 1939, but his magical poetics continue to influence poets, magicians, and seekers. He proved that:

• Serious occult practice enhances rather than diminishes literary art
• Automatic writing can be source of genuine poetry and philosophy
• Personal mythology can be as powerful as inherited tradition
• The poet can be magician, the poem can be spell, the symbol can be gateway

The gyres still turn. The tower still stands. The rough beast still slouches toward Bethlehem. And the dancer and the dance remain one.

How can we know the dancer from the dance? We can't. We are the dance. Keep turning.