Yeats and European Unions

I'm not sure how much it matters or should matter to what extent the symbolism of A Vision describes a recognizable reality. If it were totally alien to what we experience, could it still have any validity? Does its claim to be "An Explanation of Life" require testing?

Much of the fascination of A Vision as with any symbolic system lies in the internal coherence, but without some reference to externals it would quickly lose our interest. A Vision's system does of course itself refer outwards to the lives of the men and women who people the incarnations represented by the phases of the moon, and to the great gyres that it claims to discern in the sweep of history.

In doing so Yeats does not make matters too difficult for himself, since he is free to assign people as he wishes to the phases (there is no external mechanism allocating them to a particular phase, as in astrology), and his interpretation of history is sketchy enough and broad enough to select only those few strands that actually fit the desired lineaments. Though his treatment of the historical gyres largely confines itself to Western European history, it is, as G. R. S. Mead noted, remarkable in omitting such major elements as the Reformation, the voyages of discovery and their consequences. Even so, the ideas raised and suggested are often provocative and can make the reader see certain matters anew.

The same is true of the forecasts that Yeats made (see YeatsVision.com), though he pruned the more detailed view of the future after the first publication, giving only the most general view of the coming years in A Vision B. One of those vague lines does, however, haunt me in a nagging way:

What discords will drive Europe to that artificial unity—only dry or drying sticks can be tied into a bundle—which is the decadence of every civilisation? (AVB 301–2)

To what extent was he looking forward to the European Union? and does it constitute as he saw it some "vast plaster Herculean image, final primary thought" (AVA 214) that he referred to in his more detailed view of the future in A Vision A? Surely in terms of his own theory, the civilization is far from decadent if we take the 2000-year measures that are the basis of his views. Yet, if the primary civilization that was enabled by Christianity and monotheistic religion in general started in 1000 C.E. and we find ourselves at the peak of the political primary, then has democracy reached its limits?

In some ways the image he uses is a false one—green sticks can be bound quite well into a bundle as long as they are straight enough and dry twigs resist being woven into a basket or any other unitary shape. However, at its heart probably lies the image of the bundle of sticks of the Roman fasces, a symbol of authority from ancient Rome that has had a wide range of uses in modern civic symbolism.

Most of us probably think first of Mussolini's adoption of the symbol and use of the term "fascism", and it is certain that Yeats would have had this image in mind. But the emblem appears in many places worldwide, including in many American insignia.  The chair where Abraham Lincoln sits in the National Mall's Lincoln Memorial has fasces at its front, as a symbol of the Union.

The final section of A Vision B is dated "1934–36", so when Yeats envisaged Europe in artificial unity in the Thirties, did he see some possibility of fascist union? of enforced union? of something like the Union of the United States? Whatever he imagined, he would no doubt recognize the European Union that does exist as a fulfilment of his thought.

Within A Vision "discords" are both the technical relationship between certain Faculties and the more general opposite to concord, the antithetical strain of the Tinctures. The word also carries its usual meaning of conflict and strife and, though it would be crass understatement to call the Second World War discord,  it is perhaps that paradox that is the greatest foresight in Yeats's formulation. The original core of the European Union, the six-member Coal and Steel Community of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg arose in part from a desire to make war and conflict impossible, hence the post-war discords give birth to unity.

Artificial? That may be the real crux. Yeats all too often seems to glorify war and conflict in his writing, viewing them as vital and vivifying:

Much of what I say is Heraclitus.  "Homer was wrong in saying 'Would that strife might perish from among gods and men'. He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer was heard all things would pass away". And again "War is the father of all; some he has made gods ans some men; some bound and some free".

In his antithetical fervour, it sometimes seems that he would view the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia with more satisfaction than the peaceful union of European countries. But to call such union artificial simply because it represents the primary trend seems unnecessarily partisan. Doomed in the long term, perhaps, but not artificial.

In the broader cycle, the current civilization with span of some two thousand years is only reaching its midpoint. But this is analogous to "classical civilization" from 1000 B.C.E. to 1000 C.E., within which many empires rose and fell and many movements flourished and withered from the rise of Mycenean culture to the fading of Byzantium — few living through it would  have seen it as a continuous whole. The historical cycles dealt with in "Dove or Swan" are rather shorter, lasting only a thousand years or so, and in this context therefore the civilization that arose around 1000 C.E. has already reached a maximum scope — the widening gyre of "The Second Coming" that has reached its point of collapse.

The Ten of any suit has reached its limit and the only way onward is to return the way it came, dwindling towards the Nine, or the start of a new suit, the Ace. In Yeats's system, both things happen: The Ace of the new gyre arises, while the gyre of the old retreats back towards its source.

It is perhaps easy at the moment to say that European civilization is in decadence or is on the point of collapse — certainly quite a few people are doing it. Yeats was right to point out that there is no infinite progress, and our current world is more primary than in his day, more democratic, more interconnected, and often putting quantity of information before depth of thought. In many ways, Yeats's vague vision of the future has already been realized. Yeats himself evades the question of what follows next.

Something of what I have said it must be, the myth declares... what else it must be no man can say, for always at the critical moment the Thirteenth Cone, the sphere, the unique intervenes.

                              Somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
                                                            (AVB 263)

It may not be connected to reality, but it sure as hell feels as if it is. The symbols remain uncertain perhaps, but they speak to us and we discern the outlines of our world.

Conjunctions I

The earlier post on The Track of the Whirling Zodiac tried to set out some of the basics — and basic problems — related to the different ways in which the zodiac can be set against the circle of the phases, or actually any cycle against any other cycle. At the simplest level of A Vision, this entails quite a lot of thinking and work for not much reward, as the aspects where these various arrangements affect the material in A Vision are often unclear.

However, one place where the subject of zodiacs and phases running counter to one another does surface, albeit rather cryptically, is in A Vision's discussion of the "heraldic supporters" of the Full Moon. These are the influences on either side of Phase 15, the point where new religious dispensations start, and Yeats is dealing here in with cycles of about 2,150 years. These are measured according to phases for Will and, for Creative Mind, backward through phases or forwards through the Zodiac.

When Will is passing through Phases 16, 17 and 18 the Creative Mind is passing through the Phases 14, 13 and 12, or from the sign of Aries to the sign of Taurus, that is to say, it is under the conjunction of Mars and Venus. When Will on the other hand is passing through Phases 12, 13 and 14 the Creative Mind is passing through the Phases 18, 17 and 16, or from the sign of Pisces to the sign of Aquarius [actually Aquarius to Pisces], it is, as it were, under the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. (AVB 207)

If you know your traditional astrology, you will remember that Aries is ruled by Mars, so that the two are to some extent interchangeable, and that the same goes for Taurus and Venus, Pisces and Jupiter, and Aquarius and Saturn (Yeats sticks with the classical planets in this case). The animation below concentrates on the process of Will from Phase 12 to Phase 18, starting each time at Phase 12: first through phases and Zodiac, then focusing on just Will and Creative Mind, then substituting the planetary rulers for the signs, first with astrological glyphs and second in words, for clarity. It may help to view the animation a few times, concentrating each time on one aspect.

The passage of Will forwards through the phases 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18,
and of Creative Mind through the zodiac Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus.

Since, therefore, a primary dispensation is said to start when Will is passing through 16–17–18 (i.e., a little after the mathematical point of Phase 15), its inception falls under the influence of Mars and Venus, taken from Creative Mind's passage through Aries and Taurus—religion is intrinsically more allied to the solar zodiac than the lunar phases. Similarly, an antithetical dispensation is said to start a little before the mathematical marker, while Will is passing through Phases 12–13–14, so its solar influence is Saturn and Jupiter from Creative Mind's passage through Aquarius and Pisces.

These two conjunctions which express so many things are certainly, upon occasion, the outward-looking mind, love and its lure, contrasted with introspective knowledge of the mind's self-begotten unity, an intellectual excitement. They stand, so to speak, like heraldic supporters guarding the mystery of the fifteenth phase. In certain lines written years ago in the first excitement of discovery I compared one to the Sphinx and one to Buddha. I should have put Christ instead of Buddha, for according to my instructors Buddha was a Jupiter-Saturn influence. (AVB 207–8)

The outward-looking mind (Mars-Venus) is fundamentally objective and primary, while the introspective mind (Jupiter-Saturn) is fundamentally subjective and antithetical. Yeats's main purpose in introducing these conjunctions is to characterize two dispensations, the primary dispensation typified by Christianity and the antithetical dispensation typified by the classical pantheons and due to return in the twenty-first century.

Strictly speaking Yeats thought that the primary dispensation had started maybe ten generations before Christ's birth—about two centuries. This would place the Phase 15 point at 200 B.C.E., so that at the time of Christ's birth the cosmic Creative Mind was passing through the Mars-Venus influence. (Buddha was the wrong choice not just from his character, but also from his dating.) And he gathered that all primary dispensations take a while to gain momentum in this way, so always fell under this influence.

In contrast, antithetical dispensations start before the preceding cycle is truly finished, i.e., while Creative Mind is still passing through Aquarius and Pisces, under Saturn and Jupiter. In other words, even if the antithetical era is not yet starting its cycle at Phase 15, it is fading in before the fact, maybe by a hundred years or more.

If Yeats took the length of a dispensation as 2,200 years, then the primary era beginning in 200 B.C.E. would be finishing in 2000 C.E., and the antithetical advent might be starting in 1900. This all means that primary dispensations are significantly shorter than antithetical ones, and also meant that Yeats himself might be living in the pre-dawn glow of the coming antithetical era. Even if the antithetical only starts a hundred years before Phase 15 is reached, the two hundred years off the beginning of the primary goes to the preceding antithetical, and the one hundred years of fade in of the new antithetical is taken off the preceding primary, so it could mean that an antithetical era is almost 600 years longer than a primary.

In the poem "Michael Robartes and the Dancer" Yeats chose to symbolize the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction that presides over the beginning of an antithetical era with the Sphinx. Given this association of the sphinx with the antithetical, it is no accident that the enigmatic "rough beast" that stirs in "The Second Coming" is appears like the sphinx at Giza—though a brilliant touch that it is described rather than named—as it ushers in the coming antithetical dispensation.

.... somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
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 towards Bethlehem to be born?

The beast is not necessarily the age's avatar, nor the anti-Christ, except inasmuch as it heralds the antithesis to Christ's era (see Notes on "The Second Coming" on my website). However, it has many characteristics that Yeats found a variety of ways to explore. It leaves us with questioning and foreboding.

I'll look further at the symbolism and the complicated resonances that Yeats creates — which include making his two children representatives of the two combinations — later on, in a second part "Conjunctions II".