The main themes William Butler Yeats treated in his poems are Irish nationalism, Celtic mythology, love, ageing and mysticism. But the last mentioned seems to be interpenetrating all his work. Just as Yeats himself once said: “The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.” Besides the poems this theme is elaborated in the best way in Yeats´ book A Vision, and also greatly revealed in his Essays and dramas. In this paper I would like to describe Yeats´ mystical opinions and to present parts of his poems where the mystical and occult occur.

For better understanding of Yeats´ choose to write about mystics it would be good to mention some facts and backgrounds which formed his mind. His mother’s family, the Pollexfens, were known for their eccentricities manifested by, for our example, an interest in astrology and magic. The unbelief and arguments of Yeats´ father against Christian belief led Yeats to investigate informal and exotic ones. He welcomed any teaching which spoke of supersensual experiences, or gave him a background for the visions which came to him “ from beyond the mind ”. Aged 20 he was among the founders of a group devoted to the occult, the Dublin Hermetic Society. When the family went to London in 1887, he joined a famous mystical society of his days, the Theosophical Society. Yeats was as a visionary insisted on surrounding himself with images. Just magic and its imaginative life appealed to him. The age of science was not interesting to him, he was more attracted by astrology than astronomy. He began to study such visionary traditions as the Platonic, the Neoplatonic, the Swedenborgian, the alchemical, the Tibetan Mysteries, Buddhism and other beliefs.

He was not only a theoretic reader but he was also eager to verify many supernatural phenomenas. He had experimented with telepathy and clairvoyance with his uncle George Pollexfen. In 1890 Yeats joined Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the organisation which incorporated traditional European Cabalistic Magic and astrology. This society enabled him constant experimentation and expression. He was learning magical and esoteric symbols, creating interrelationships between the seasons, various parts of body, the five elements, numbers, etc. Yeats combined this knowledge with his own experiences and poetic genius and made his own system of symbols. Finally, he was able to express in writing what he was envisioning. He treats such themes as questions of life and death, eternity, immortality, change and changelessness of things and all the world.

As mentioned, Yeats was a visionary so we can look at first to the places in the poems where he speaks directly about his visions and dreams. There are various kinds of these visions, some come out from the history, some speak about the life after death, and many reveal the images of fairies and myths form the “Great Memory”. Basically, there are two types of such visions. One is when he himself wants to envision or call for it using own will (sometimes he put special flowers beside his bed). The second is when he is called or enchanted by a vision or dream practically without his will or control.

And I call up McGregor from the grave, / for in my firs hard springtime we were friends (The Tower)

I saw a staring virgin stand / Where holy Dionysus died, And tear the heart out of his side, / And lay the heart upon her hand / And bear that beating heart away (Two Songs from a Play)

When I had laid it on the floor / I went to blow the fire aflame, / But something rustled on the floor, / And someone called me by my name: / It had become a glimmering girl / With apple blossom in her hair / Who called me by my name and ran / And faded through the brightening air. (The Song of Wandering Aengus)

It was the dream itself enchanted me / Character isolated by a deed / To engross the present and dominate memory. (The Circus Animals´ Desertion)

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears / Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, / And the clash of fallen horseman and the cries / Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. ( The Valley of the Black Pig)

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven / That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice, / And thereupon imagination and heart were driven / So wild that every casual thought of that and this / Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season (The Cold Heaven)

Numerous visions were connected with Yeats´ leading idea of “gyres”, the cones that spiral together and symbolise objectivity and subjectivity of the world. These idea was practically collaborated with his wife through her automatic writing and connection with a ghost named Leo Africanus. The gyres give the image of a single circle when looking down on them. This circle represents the moon and the twenty-eight phases of the moon which are closely related to the progression of time and world history. The new and full moon are the periods where time begins end ends. However, it is not an end in the right sense of the word, it is actually a beginning of a new cycle. The phases in between are the growth and evolution of the human soul over time. The cycle lasts two thousand years and each period is dominated by a single civilisation and its own prevailing myth. The present one begun with the birth of Christ and now, as Yeats says, is already in the period of disintegration. Thus the end of our cycle will come in the year of 2000. He calls this time “The Second Coming”. It might remind us the currently appearing ideas of the suggested coming of the age of “Aquarius”. In Per Amica Silentia Lunae, Yeats says that the motion of gyres and therefore the fate of a man or the world is mathematically predestined. He also adds that therefore the coming of such personalities as Buddha, Christ or Napoleon could have been predicted. All these ideas are mainly worked out in A Vision but, of course, they also appeared in the Yeats´poems:

Though I had long perned in the gyre,/ Between my hatred and desire,/ I saw my freedom won/ And all laugh in the sun. ( Demon and Beast)

The darkness drops again; but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born ? ( The Second Coming)

but man’s life is thought, / And he, despite his terror, cannot cease / Ravening through century after century / ... / Egypt and Greece, goodbye, and good-bye, Rome ! (Supernatural Songs)

The Gyres ! the gyres ! Old Rocky Face, look forth; / Things tought too long can be no longer thought, / For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth ( The Gyres)

All things fall and are built again, / And those that build them again are gay. ( Lapis Lazuli)

Together with the idea of cyclic history comes to Yeats the idea of cyclic repeating of life and death, the reincarnation of souls. He also speaks about what happens after death, describing the process of return of the soul to the cosmic trance (Yeats also calls it Anima Mundi or “artifice of eternity”), from which it sprang. The body is looked on as an animal part of a man full of desires which should be purified (this purification is symbolised by a “sages standing in God’s holy fire” who “consume” desires “away”).

O sages standing in God’s holy fire /.../ Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is; and gather me / Into the artifice of eternity ( Sailing to Byzantium)

Yeats shared the idea of reincarnating of a soul through all worldly things, not only within the human being. This idea actually refers to his view at the world or the universe as a view in the very modern term. It is the way of looking at the universe as a whole interconnected system of energies, always changing but never disappearing. Thus the first example below refers to that particular idea and the next ones show other parts of poems treating the cycle of life and death:

I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung / The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough / Among my leaves in times out of mind: / I became a rush that horses tread : / I became a man, a hater of the wind (He Thinks of His Past Greatness When a Part of the Constellations of Heaven)

Many times he died, / Many times rose again. (Death)

Many times man lives and dies / Between his two eternities, / That of race and that of soul (Under Ben Bulben)

Although Yeats saw and felt around himself the unchangeable order of dying and fading of temporary things, he was looking for something what wouldn’t be affected by this change, the immortality and eternity. That was the world where the imagination comes from. He said that the world of imagination is just the eternal world, in opposite to the world of reason, which is the world of lies and cheat, phantasm falling apart. It is, not surprisingly, a very similar idea to the ideas of William Blake, and also to the eastern idea of illusion of the material world (Maya). The source of all imagination was for Yeats already mentioned Anima Mundi, the eternal soul of the universe.

He also spoke about the Great Memory (or Great Mind) from which every images and truth spring. He wrote in one of his essays how surprised he was whenever he found that an image that came “out of beyond [his] mind” was already described by some previous poet or writer. (That phenomena was later studied by Jung who called it the Collective Unconscious, or by Timothy Leary who explained it as a product of our DNA, which contains the heritage of life’s evolution from day one. Currently, it is a place of study of English biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who calls it a theory of “morphic fields”, and who widened that phenomena practically to all living beings.) Yeats said, that therefore a poet and his imagination is a medium of the truth coming from the place of wisdom to the world. For him every true poet was also a prophet. And he called together those “ who have sought more than is in rain or dew” to reveal the wisdom to people. However he felt that the modern time was just against the possibility of imaginative life, what he felt as a decline and prophesied the “Second Coming”.

Whose images, in the Great Memory stored, / Come with loud cry and panting breast / To break upon a sleeper’s rest (The Tower)

Things out of perfection sail, / And all their swelling canvas wear (Old Tom Again)

Those masterful images because complete / Grew in pure mind (The Circus Animals´Desertion)

Though leaves are many, the root is one; / ... / I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; / Now I may wither into the truth. (The Coming of Wisdom with Me)

Though like a road / That men pass over / My body makes no moan / But sings on: / All things remain in God. (Crazy Jane on God)

Yeats’ desire and striving for knowledge and truth lasted through all his life. Although he was sceptic in belief that a man could reach the final truth or knowledge during this stage on the Earth, Yeats was vivid and enthusiastic till the end of his life. He wanted to find and know his true self, not only the ”mask”. It is said that many poets wrote their best poetry in their youth. However, Yeats logically, as he was progressing in the effort to be better and better, wrote many of his best poems at the end of his life. Practically, he followed the ideal pattern of human life, the idea of the wise old age.

He achieved the wished aims of his life: he became famous, had money, old house, wife, daughter, son and good friends. He envisioned much of the wisdom, he knew many of the life after death. Yet he was still awaiting something to come, he was asking “What Then ?” .

” The work is done.” Grown old age he thought, / ” According to my boyish plan; / Let the fools rage, I swered in naught, / Something to perfection brought”; / But louder sang that ghost, ” What then ? ” (What Than ?)

And I would find myself and not an image. (Ego Dominus Tuus)

Although Yeats suffered with diseases in his old age, he was still able to look at the world with a joy. He blessed the worldly things. He was reaching the similar he liked, the life of wise and mad sages. Despite the fact, that many times in his life he was feeling sadness and suffering, his mystical attitude enabled him to attain some states of ecstasy and blissful moments.

I pray … / That I may seem, though I die old, / A foolish, passionate man. ( A Prayer for Old Age)

Know why an old man should be mad. (Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad ?)

My body of a sudden blazed; / And twenty minutes more or less / It seemed, so great my happiness, / That was blessed and could bless. (Vacillation)

We must laugh and we must sing, / We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest. (A Dialogue of Self and Soul)

The Last Poems display perfectly the unbelievable energy of this old man. This energy I think did not spring only from Yeats’ mystical experiences but also from the fact that he was till the end of his life doing what he liked and ever had wished to do. He wanted to reveal his attained knowledge and wisdom more and more clearly. He belonged to a few people who do not regret their life. In his last unfinished essay he wrote:

I know for certain that my time will not be long. ... I am happy, and I think full of an energy, of an energy I had despaired of. It seems to me that I have found what I wanted.

I have mentioned only a few parts concerning the mysticism of Yeats’poems and life in this essay. Anyhow, the mentioned ones are still sufficient to make the reader convinced thatYeats’ entirely described will of the person, striving for wisdom, makes his poems interesting till these days. They are full of appreciating honesty and personal feelings. It is not a cheap poetry of kitsch images of nature or love, it is a poetry charged with deep thoughts, poet’s personality, wisdom and an effort to transmit it to the readers. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Yeats wanted to express himself clearly, many of his ideas in the poems are sometimes hard to understand for me. I think that to a reader who is not interested in mysticism they must be (similarly to Blake’s poems) quite obscure.