Yeats, Philosophy, and the Occult

Yeats, Philosophy, and the Occult is a collection of essays examining the thought of the Irish poet W. B. Yeats and particularly his philosophical reading and explorations of older systems of thought, where philosophy, mysticism, and the supernatural blend. It opens with a broad survey of the current state of Yeats scholarship, which also includes an examination of Yeatss poetic practice through a manuscript of the original core of a poem that became a work of philosophical thought and occult lore, The Phases of the Moon. The following essay examines an area where spiritualism, eugenic theory, and criminology cross paths in the writings of Cesare Lombroso, and Yeatss response to his work. The third paper considers Yeatss debts to the East, especially Buddhist and Hindu thought, while the fourth looks at his ideas about the dream-state, the nature of reality, and contact with the dead. The fifth essay explores Yeatss understanding of the concept of the Great Year from classical astronomy and philosophy, and its role in the system of his work A Vision, and the sixth paper studies that works theory of contemporaneous periods affecting each other across history in the light of Oswald Spenglers The Decline of the West. The seventh essay evaluates Yeatss reading of Berkeley and his critics appreciation (or lack of it) of how he responds to Berkeleys idealism. The book as a whole explores how Yeatss mind and thought relate to his poetry, drama, and prose, and how his reading informs all of them.