Conjunctions II

Venus and Mars in conjunction over Lake Superior, October 2017 (Bob King)

After Yeats has established the basis of the Aries-Taurus conjunction of Mars-Venus and the Aquarius-Pisces conjunction of Saturn-Jupiter, he goes on to elaborate a complex series of ideas based on this pair of pairings. The associations might recall at best Hermann Hesse's ultra-cerebral Glass Bead Game or at worst the ragbag eclecticism and strained connections that are not uncommon in occult tracts, where analogies rapidly become equivalents and substitutes.

Pompeian fresco of Mars and Venus

Venus and Mars

The planets have many possible associations, ranging from the mythological to the psychological, and their "conjunctions … express so many things", but Yeats singles out for Venus-Mars, "the outward-looking mind, love and its lure", and for Jupiter-Saturn, "introspective knowledge of the mind's self-begotten unity, an intellectual excitement" (AVB 207), though which is which is not spelt out and it is only the word "love", clearly linked to Venus, as well as more general astrological symbolism from elsewhere that makes the identification clear.

In a poem written "in the first excitement of discovery I compared one to the Sphinx and one to Buddha"— the link to the conjunctions would not necessarily be very clear had Yeats not added that the Buddha should have been substituted for Christ, as "Buddha was a Jupiter-Saturn influence" (AVB 207), i.e. the Buddha in the poem represents a Venus-Mars influence, even though it shouldn't. Many years later on in the pair of couplets titled "Conjunctions," Yeats made the identification of Christ and Venus-Mars explicit.

The sword's a cross; thereon He died:
On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.
                                (VP 562)

The Sword-Cross of Santiago

Astrologically Venus and Mars are very much the principles of love and sex; harmony and aggression; comfort and adventure; union and separation. Yet they work at almost exactly the same personal level and are a very much a polar and complementary pair. The signs ruled by Venus are Taurus and Libra, opposite which stand the signs ruled by Mars, Scorpio and Aries. As mythological figures they are known for their adulterous affair, since Aphrodite-Venus was married to the smith god Hephaistos-Vulcan, who famously trapped her in the act with Ares-Mars under a net.

Mars and Venus entrapped by Vulcan, Antonio Bellucci, ca. 1700.

Jupiter and Saturn

Saturn devouring one of Jupiter's siblings
Peter Paul Rubens (1636)

The symbolism of Saturn and Jupiter is more complicated. In their Greek forms as Kronos and Zeus, though they are father and son, there is really only one story that connects them. Forewarned that he would be overthrown by his own child, Kronos (Saturn) ate his children, until his wife, Rhea, replaced the last one, Zeus (Jupiter), with a stone. Zeus grew to maturity and led a revolt against his father, dethroning him as foretold.

The planets are slow moving and astrologically work at a similar, more impersonal level than Mars or Venus, and are sometimes referred to as the "social" planets. Their domiciles are grouped together in the wintery signs, Saturn's Capricorn and Aquarius bracketed by Jupiter's Sagittarius and Pisces. Jupiter's influence is expansive and optimistic, while Saturn's is restrictive and  melancholy. Rudolf Steiner posited two versions of Satan, the tempter, Lucifer the Jovian over-reacher on the one hand, and, the denier, Ahriman the Saturnine mechanistic desiccator on the other. However, just as for Steiner the Christ principle balances the two forces, so here the balance of the two, exploration and concentration, offers "introspective knowledge of the mind's self-begotten unity".

Yeats symbolizes them by the Sphinx in "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes", which represents the triumph of intellect:

One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moon
Gazed upon all things known, all things unknown,
In triumph of intellect
With motionless head erect.    (VP 383)

The focus on knowing, recalls the pairing of the Knower and the Known, Creative Mind and Body of Fate. And similarly Yeats characterizes the antithetical revelation that starts "under Saturn-Jupiter" as "the vivification of old intellect" (AVB 208). This revivification of the old is symbolized cryptically by wheat from the pharaoh's tombs germinating (a popular nineteenth-century myth), in the companion couplet to the one quoted above:

If Jupiter and Saturn meet,
What a crop of mummy wheat! 
                  (VP 562)

The second vision of "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes" is an image of the Full Moon, with a dead spirit dancing between the Sphinx and the Buddha (who should be Christ). She is dead because the Full Moon is too pure to be alive in mortal and on either side are the two conjunctions: Aries-Taurus, Mars-Venus, or Christ (the Buddha in the poem), and Aquarius-Pisces, Saturn-Jupiter, or the Sphinx, which "stand, so to speak, like heraldic supporters guarding the mystery of the fifteenth phase" (AVB 207) (see McDowell, " 'Heraldic Supporters': Minor Symbolism and the Integrity of A Vision", YA10 [1993]).

These conjunctions also preside over the beginning of each revelation or religious dispensation (for a complication about the layout of the signs, see "Conjunctions I"). As the solar Creative Mind moves away from the Full Moon is moves from Aries into Taurus, hence the conjunction of Mars and Venus presiding over the first stages of this cycle. As this cycle draws to an end, Creative Mind is moving from Aquarius into the sign of Pisces, the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. And since the "influx that dominates a primary dispensation comes a little after the start of the dispensation itself" when Will is at Phase 16, a primary dispensation is ushered in by Mars-Venus; and "that which dominates an antithetical dispensation [comes] a considerable time before the close of the preceding primary dispensation" it comes under the influence of Saturn and Jupiter (AVB 208).

Sculpture of Zeus striking Kronos, Temple of Artemis, Corfu

In a further complication of symbolism, the Yeatses' two children were seen to embody each of them one of these conjunctions, which featured at the moment of the their birth. As Yeats wrote to Olivia Shakespear on 25 August 1934:

I was told you may remember that my two children would be Mars conjunction Venus, Saturn conjunction Jupiter respectively; & so they were — Anne the Mars Venus personality. Then I was told that they would develop so that I could study in them the alter­nating dispensations, the Christian or objective, then the Antithetical or subjective. The Christian is the Mars Venus. It is democratic. The Jupiter Saturn civilization is born free among the most cultivated, out of tradition, out of rule.

Should Jupiter and Saturn meet
What a crop of mummy wheat!

The sword's a cross; thereon He died.
On breast of Mars the goddess sighed.

I wrote those lines because some days ago George said it is very strange that whereas Michael is always thinking about life Anne always thinks of death. Then I remembered that the children were the two dispensations. Anne collects skeletons.... When she grows up she will either have some passionate love affair or have some close friend that has — the old association of love and death. (CL InteLex 6087; cf. L 827-28)

Connected with this was the possible belief that Michael was in some way connected with the avatar of the new antithetical age, but that is a story for another day. 

Jupiter and Saturn are approaching their conjunction on 21 December 2020

 

Astrology of A Vision IV: Blending the Phases of the Moon with Astrology—Natal Astrology

George Yeats's book of horoscope ("map") templates,
from the National Library of Ireland's exhibition

Did the Yeatses try to square astrology with the system's phases of the moon? And if so, how?

Yes, they did try to match the system's phases to the skies, but whether and how varied according to the type of astrology they were doing.

Types of Astrology

Traditionally there are four types of astrology—
—horary astrology, which asks a question and looks at the skies of that moment for an answer;
—inceptional or catarchic astrology, which looks at the timing of something to predict its character, or may even choose to start a venture at particular time to favour its future (electional);
—natal or genethliac astrology, which looks at skies for the birth-time of a person to discern their character and potentials in life;
—mundane astrology, which sees the cycles of the planets as corresponding with the trends and events of nations and the world at large.

A horary, "What will result of letter to Eamon De Valera be? April 16 1922", with judgments by GY and WBY on the verso, opposite another question "What will happen to Ireland in the near future" (May 7. 1922).

[GY's judgment]

I do not think this letter will cause DeValera to change his plan of campaign but I do think that it will cause him to modify it, changing from militarist factors to political strategy. I do not think WB will enter into public relations in the matter at all, but will probably be in communication privately & in personal relations with De V. & his party. The approach of [Venus] to [square Neptune] seems to me to indicate that it would be inadvisable for WB to take public part, as I take [Neptune] to be the <people> Country, then [square] of [Venus] to [Neptune] shows I think that <it> such action would <be> partly interfere with his creative power though I think the [sextile Jupiter Saturn] to [Neptune] indicates he would have personal success if he did take a public part (April 17)
Judgement by WBY
Writer to send letter & will have effect though indirect. No present practical effect ([Moon] going to [square Saturn]). [vis-matia?=?vis-major] or unknown causes ([Saturn] in XII) prevent. Should lead to some friends contact with recipient or others later on ([Moon] going to [trine Venus]). Figure powerful ([Saturn Jupiter] on asc[endant] & triple trine of [Neptune Mars Mercury]) & as [Venus] or radical [Neptune] & [Moon] & [Mars] on radical Jupiter impulse [Mars] write was well judged. (April 17)

The Yeatses' papers include examples of all four types, but they treated horary and inceptional as purely astrological and only natal and mundane are related to the phases of the moon and even then only experimentally and relatively unsatisfactorily. And the methods used for natal and for mundane astrology are very distinct. There is a movable scheme for people's birth charts, which involves aligning the horoscope's Ascendant with the phase of Will (initially at the beginning of the phase, later at the centre). In contrast, mundane astrology entailed a fixed correspondence of the phases to the zodiac, but seems to have been marked particularly by stars, so has strong sidereal elements. This post will examine Natal Astrology; Mundane Astrology will follow.

Natal Astrology

For individuals, the Yeatses aligned the zodiac with the phases by placing a person's Ascendant at the assigned phase, so the alignment varies and it also means that the chart per se cannot be used to give the phase—you need to know a person's phase to know where to locate their Ascendant. The first scripts seem to place it at the beginning of the relevant phase, while later on it is stated that it is the centre, so Yeats's Aquarius ascendant is placed at the centre of Phase 17, while George's Scorpio ascendant is placed at the centre of Phase 18.

If the fictional writer Giraldus was given W. B. Yeats's face in the portrait by Edmund Dulac, he was given George Yeats's Phase, and possibly horoscope. In one of the earlier drafts, Michael Robartes explains the diagram he is showing that includes Giraldus's birthchart:

Because Gyraldus, considered that he had himself been born was in the 18th incarnation of his cycle—it is his horoscope that is in the center. [?For] According to this astrologic system the ascendant of a horoscope is always placed before it & judged directly under the middle point of the phase of the native, & all the aspects are & planets are studied in relation to the phases at which they are placed. (YVP4 79; cf. 24)

Yeats was writing this early draft in 1918 and it seems that they were experimenting with these techniques from January 1918 for some months. Sometimes at least, they appear to have cut the chart out of a loose sheet version of the chart, in order to place it in a phase circle or alternatively to place phase attributions in the window left by cutting the chart out.

Iseult Gonne's horoscope, cut-out centre, and chart with window.
(Though both for Iseult, these are actually different charts, one being natal and the the other progressed.)

As Colin McDowell notes, because the Yeatses used a form of horoscope diagram in which the mundane houses have a fixed width and the degrees of the zodiac are written in, this can lead to some distortion of the circle (see '"Shifting Sands": Dancing the Horoscope in the Vision Papers' on pages 194–216 of Yeats's 'A Vision': Explications and Contexts available for free download). In Yeats's chart, for instance, with the Ascendant in the first degree of Aquarius and the Midheaven is at 4 degrees of Sagittarius, the distance between them is approximately 56 degrees, and the Ascendant's distance from the Nadir (4 degrees Gemini) is 124 degrees, yet both these quadrants are presented as a 90-degree right angle in the chart, and placed as such according to the phases.

Examination of my horoscope with the 28 phases!

WBY's chart in the centre, with phases around. WBY's ascendant is
placed pointing to Phase 17, where his Will was.

WBY's ascendant is placed at about 2 o'clock in the diagram to the right (the "usual" position of Phase 17). From the comments made about planets' positions (as well as cut-outs like the ones above), it seems that the Yeatses were using a circular house-based format of horoscope (where the the angle from Ascendant to Midheaven or Nadir is always 90 degrees, however many zodiacal degrees there are), with the planets placed in the corresponding phases. However, the analysis that arises from the Yeatses' own horoscopes, the only ones that they went into any detail on, provide little illumination of either horoscope or phases (see Colin McDowell, “Shifting Sands: Dancing the Horoscope in the Vision Papers,” YVEC 202–4).

This alignment, though distorted, corresponds more or less with what the Yeatses explored in the automatic script presented below. Going anti-clockwise from Phase 1: Mars is at Phase 3 or 4; Saturn at Phase 6 or 7 (along with the Moon's North Node); the Midheaven is at Phase 10; Jupiter at Phase 13; the Ascendant at Phase 17; the Moon is at Phase 18; Neptune at Phase 20; Venus at Phase 22; Mercury at Phase 24 (along with the Part of Fortune); the Sun is at Phase 26 or 27, close to Uranus, more clearly at Phase 27.
      In terms of the Phases, Yeats's Will is at Phase 17 and his Mask at Phase 3, while his Creative Mind is at Phase 13 and his Body of Fate at Phase 27. The key points of contact therefore are the opposition of Mars and Moon along the Mask-Will axis, and Jupiter with Sun and Uranus along the Creative Mind-Body of Fate axis.
      The Yeatses explored WBY's chart in a document that is listed in the Critical Edition of 'A Vision' (1925) (intro page xx), but, for some reason, not included in Yeats's 'Vision' Papers (see McDowell, 201–2). The script appears to date from January 1918 and the questions seem to indicate that this was one of the first times that they were trying to interpret the planetary positions of the chart through the phases.
      The questions and answers are on separate sheets, but put together here. Because it was only the second or third month of the automatic script, early versions of terms are used, such as "Ego" for Will, "Creative Genius" for Creative Mind and "Persona of Fate" for Body of Fate, and I have given the equivalents in square brackets. And where the Yeatses used symbols for the planets, I've put the names in square brackets. (Incidentally, one of the less explicable oddities of Yeats's idiosyncratic spelling/handwriting is his repeated writing of "begging" for "beginning".)

Examination of my horoscope with the 28 phases!

(1). Does one place As[cendant] always at begging [=beginning] of phase?
1. Yes

(2). Does take each planet with phase at which it happens to be.
2. Yes.

(3). Would you care to chose planet & phase on which you will comment?
3.  [Moon opp Mars] mask & ego [=Will]
[Sun Uranus] PF [=Persona of Fate, i.e., Body of Fate]
[Jupiter] Creative Genius & Evil Genius [=Creative Mind and False Creative Mind]
[Venus] 22

(4). How do [Sun Uranus] influence P[ersona of] F[ate]

4  Suddenness of loss mainly in romantic ways  Strange turns of fate but always bringing luck to creative genius whether by people or artistic production

(5). Is lack to C[reative] G[enius]  because [Jupiter opp Sun Uranus]

5.  Yes

(6). How does [Mars] effect Mask?

6.  Inclines strongly againts [sic] mask of intensity

(7). Why?

7   Because it is opposition [Moon]

(8) Is tendency to dispersal from [Moon]

8.  Yes  [Moon] in ascendant strong but acting against dispersal

Mars against [Moon] dispersal primary dispersal

[9 —no question or answer]

(10).  would [Mars] without [Moon] be for despersal

10 Intensity of passion

(11) [Moon] & [Mars] both separately against dispersal  together for?

11   Yes because acting against each other for the same thing

(12) Define their separate operations?

12  [Moon] anti passion & intensity [Mars] emotional passion & intensity

(13) are [Moon] & [Mars] always anti & P[rimary].

13  No  passion only primary here because in a primary phase

(14)  How does [Jupiter] effect EG & CG?

14  [Jupiter] gives richness to niative [sic] & passion & intensity obscurely though opposition [Sun] passion [Uranus]

Evil through the dramatisation of the evil genius [=False Creative Mind]

15.  Why does [Jupiter] give dramatization?

15.  [Jupiter] the actor [Jupiter opposition Uranus] [?crossed out?]

16.  Why does [Sun] give obscurity?

16   because it is in bad aspect it gives difficulty in clarity because it gives such varying images

17.  Is not that rather from [Uranus]

17   No with [Sun] merely phantasy

(18).  How does [Sun] apart from [Uranus] effect PE [=False Mask].

18 you cant take them separately

(19).  What is solar element in effect

19  The bring of luck through enforced loss

(20).  Luck from [Sun]?

20 Yes

(21).  What is effect of [Venus] at 22?

21.  That is I think quite clear enough

(22) With horoscope & phase could you find my proffession?
(23).would you consider phase?

22. Ascendant & aspects
      Of course first of all.

23.  Do you consider aspects among planets as bring on bringing out qualities of phase at which planet is?

23.  Yes

24. What does [Saturn] at 6 mean?

24. affects [Moon] by giving some of quality of 6

25. do you consider place of M.C.

25. no only if tenanted

26.  How does [Mercury] at 24 effect me?

26. work with 24

[Moon] at 18

27.  How has my choice of a wife been effected by phases?

27  Mars going to 4 mask of 18

But that is most clearly shown in the dmns[=Daimon's] horoscope in phases

[on the back of the question page in WBY's handwriting]
Mask implies love lure of saught

PF implies love of seeker

18 loves yourr[??]

17 mask it is your [Uranus] again

[Uranus] gives love being your]

28.  What has softened [Mars] in VII.

28  No only phases.

29. Do you consider planets of second circle?

[No answer]

30.  What is effect of [Neptune] in [Aries] at 20.

30  PROPAGANDA

                 [back of page] Is aireffect

31.  Is Neptune [Neptune] propaganda?

31  Mystically psychically so
twas taking [Saturn] [Neptune] main effect

32.  You mean give to [Neptune] self assertion
32  Yes yes yes

33.  Which I notice you dislike?

33   Yes

34.  Define effect of [Saturn] at 6

34  Interest in mystical also steadies [Moon] & [Uranus]

35.  are connections between houses & phases important?

35  Yes very

36.  How 26 27 & 28 effect V House matters?

36.  Only from to when planets

37.  Do take [Mars] in connection with both 3 & 4?

37  When planet is halfway take both
it happens to be mediums mask

it no that comes from combination

38.  How do 3 & 4 effect choice of wife?

38  [Moon] & [Mars]

39.  Disposition generally.

39  No she will never be at place of planet but it will be at her creative genius or mask or PF[=Body of Fate]

(40).  When a woman is symbolized by a planet will she be primary if planet at primary phase?

40 [long answer in mirror writing and crossed thru]

(40) [bis]  Georges Mask M[aud] G[onne] PF[=Body of Fate] what is distinction.
[no answer]

yes

yes wait

yes

[mirror writing cancelled]

Vth house

Better go on tomorrow

[mirror cancelled]

which you what is two words before

yes writing

re ther bad number

???

goodbye

[wavy lines & spiral circle]      (NLI 36,256/25)

As Colin McDowell notes, this "analysis . . . is hardly inspirational or incisive", and can be summarized as stating that having Body of Fate in connection with Uranus, associated with the unexpected and eccentric, may give suddenness of loss, while having the fortunate planet "Jupiter at Creative Mind will bring good luck through other people or in creative work".  Furthermore Moon close to the Will, and opposite to Mars close to the Mask "gives dispersal by acting against intensity in the Mask. Yeats asks what is the effect of having Venus at Phase 22, and is told in no uncertain terms that he did not need to ask the question. Mercury at Phase 24 allowed him to work with Lady Gregory, whose Phase that is, whereas his Mars going to Phase 4 is correlated with the fact that Phase 4 is the Mask of Phase 18, which is George’s phase" (YVEC 203).

Whose horoscope? Georges

The treatment of George's horoscope a day or two later is little more revealing (18 January 1918, YVP1 272, and summarized YVP3 352). Because of the time of day she was born, there is slightly less distortion to the chart (the angles are 74 and 106 degrees).

George Yeats's chart, with the Ascendant aligned with Phase 18.

The Ascendant is placed at Phase 18, the position of George Yeats's Will. This means that Jupiter aligns with Phase 1; Neptune with Phase 6; the Midheaven is at Phase 11, and the Moon and Venus at Phase 11 or 12; Saturn is at Phase 14; the Sun is at Phase 15 or 15, and Mercury at Phase 16; Uranus at 17, and Mars, at Phase 25, along with the Nadir. For her, the Will is at Phase 18, the Mask at Phase 4, the Creative Mind at Phase 12, and the Body of Fate at Phase 26.

          9.  What planets do you select?
          9.  Primary planets [Mars Jupiter]
              Anti [Uranus Sun Moon Venus]

          10.  What is effect of [Jupiter] at 1
          10.  [Jupiter] and [Sun] mediumship & clairvoyance

          11.  Why?
          11.  At phase one & 15
                No only because at 15
                Yes always
                There being conjunction [Uranus] it is accentuated

          12.  Do you especially connect [Sun] with clairvoyance
          12.  Yes  especially with no opposition

          13.  Is [Sun] a great image maker
          13.  [Jupiter]

          14.  Does [Uranus] always accentuate image making power?
          14.  in this case [Jupiter] at one— [Sun] at 15

          15. [Sun  Uranus] in my case causes shifting of images?
          15.  different and from 12th to 6th house

          16.  Why?
          16.  Because in position of medium both planets are in phase of spirits
          17.  Does [opposition] effect result badly?
          17.  No  opposition strengthens by giving to the mediumship & clairvoyance—[Sun] alone clair[voyance]
          18.  How is mediumship affected by its being [Jupiter]
          18.  other planets give psychism combination— [Sun] at 15 [Jupiter] at one as I said  before—now go on

          19.  What is the [Jupiter] quality in this medium [Jupiter] in [Aries]?
          19.  unity vigour philosophy intensity etc

          20.  Does [Mercury conjunct Sun] [Mercury] at 17 affect result?
          20.  Clairvoyance image giving but mainly it does not affect
          [Sun] but [Sun] affects it—being in a luring phase it is stronger than [Sun]

          21.  What do you mean by luring phase?
          21.  Fifteen and one are spirit phases

          22.  It is stronger than [Sun] & so [Sun] effects it  Why?
          22.  Yes  because it attracts [Sun] instead of reverse

          23.  How does [Uranus] at 18 effect things
          23.  The only primary strength in horoscope

          24.  Yet you put [Uranus] among anti planets?
          24.  Yes  but it is the only planet which can act primarily because [Mars] is at 24— [Jupiter] at one [Sun] at 15 [Moon Venus] 13 & 12 between

          25.  What quality of strength does [Uranus] give?
          25.  objectively can use [Mercury] —mostly it goes to [Mars] & [Venus Moon] antithetically but should be used primarily

          26.  What quality will P[rimary] use give?
          26.  Astrologically you can judge it with [Mercury] at 17—  I need not do that

          27.  give quality of [Mercury] at 17?
          27.  It would be artist or literary but strength of [Uranus] rather stunts it

          28.  Can that stunting be prevented?
          28.  If [Mars] is strengthened

          29.  Will strengthening of [Mercury] interfere with mediumship.
          29.  Yes

          30.  what do you advise?
          30.  This will be finished

          31.  I think of asking medium to help with plays etc.  If so should I postpone it?
          31.  Not good—not enough constructive ability

          32.  Do you mean she cannot design costumes Etc.?
          32.  not well done
                  yes--yes

          33.  Will you speak of [Moon Venus]
          33.  She cant do anything till this is done—no good trying plenty of activity but we use it all

          34.  Can you show how I come into horoscope.
          34.  At her evil & creative genius [False and True Creative Mind]

I had better go into something else--  I am getting no help

          35.  What does her [Mars] signify.
          35.  [Venus] at your Creative & Evil G[enius] or [Moon]? 
[Mars] where your [Jupiter] is

          36.  Can you define my relation to that self suppression.
          36.  In her case self suppression because at 24

          37.  Could you go on with Maurice [=Iseult Gonne] here?
          37.  You are too unwell—better go on another day do you think
no  it is not regular work & is disturbing

          38.  Would her mere presence interfere.
          38.  No  I would rather not & it will be better for a rest—next week I will take all circles

(YVP1 272–74) 

Again, what is clear here is not particularly informative or revealing, while what is unclear seems confusing or confused, with contradictory elements that are never really resolved here or elsewhere. Colin McDowell explores the subject of primary and antithetical planets fully in his essay, yet at the end of the analysis the Yeatses don't seem to have gained any sense of how a primary planet operates differently from an antithetical one or what effect these had on the expression of a phase.

Though neither version of A Vision includes this astrological element, there is a sense that the two systems do work alongside one another. Yeats comments that Phase 20’s creative multiplicity gives to the man of action “the greatest possible richness of resource where he is not thwarted by his horoscope” (AVB 152-53); George Russell was diverted from the natural “abstract opinion” of Phase 25 towards the “ideal conventional images of sense” of his art, “because of the character of his horoscope” (AVB 176). Even in the supernatural incarnations, where it is unclear what the process of birth entails, the stars have a role, so that, in order to see how the specifics of the being’s nature will manifest at Phase 1, we must also take into account “cycle and horoscope” (AVB 183-84). And this aspect is particularly significant in making character and the details of a person's traits the functions of the horoscope, not the Faculties which are rather fundamental biases and drives expressed through the temperament delineated by the birthchart.

see also

Astrology of A Vision I

Astrology of A Vision II

Astrology of A Vision III

Astrology of A Vision V

Pronouncing Michael Robartes and the gyre

I am asked with some regularity about two pronunciation questions that seem to nag at readers of later Yeats, neither of them to do with Irish names or recondite terms such as 'congeries', all of which can be checked relatively easily. (Apparently it's 'con-jérry-ez', by the way, with elements of variation.)

The questions are: How do you pronounce the name Robartes? And is the 'g' of  'gyre' hard or soft?

Though it has been a while since I learnt that the surname Robartes is generally pronounced as two syllables with the stress on the first, being a variant spelling of Roberts or Robards, I still find it hard to shake a preference for the pronunciation that I first adopted of three syllables with the stress on the second (a little like Pilates as opposed to Pontius Pilate). I don't think that there are any recordings of Yeats reading a poem that names him (U Penn has, I think, as full an archive as is possible from the few extant recordings), nor have I come across any record of what he said, but I accept that robarts is probably the best pronunciation.

The problem is a little different with 'gyre'. Here, the standard accepted pronunciation for the word is with a soft 'g', and it is given by the dictionary as jīr (I'm using Chambers). Many Irish accents, like most Scottish and US accents, would normally pronounce a retroflex 'r' at the end — /dʒaɪɹ/ or /dʒaɪɻ /— while most English and some New England accents would have an open ending— /dʒaɪə/ .

However, Richard Ellmann states that the whirling symbol 'was a spiral, which Yeats preferred to call a gyre (and pronounced with a hard "g")' (Yeats: The Man and the Masks, p. 231). Although he gives no reason for this statement, he had probably heard it from George Yeats's own lips.* (Apparently Lewis Carroll also expected a hard 'g' for 'gyre' in 'The Jabberwocky', as the basis for this word, 'gyroscope', was pronounced with a hard 'g' in his day.)

Further confirmation comes from a typescript that Yeats dictated, where the word is misspelt as 'guyers', which indicates that the typist heard a hard 'g'. The word has been corrected in later occurrences.

NLI MS 36,272/24, p. 7

 (A similar instance elsewhere has the seventeenth-century theosophist Jakob Boehme typed up as 'Burmah'.)

Listening to Yeats's own readings of poetry, for instance 'The Lake Isle of Inisfree', the final 'r' sounds of 'there' and 'core' are strong, so that if one wants to follow what Yeats himself said, it would probably be /gaɪɻ / .

But do we adopt Yeats's pronunciation? Even if it goes against our own accent or region?  

How should the falcon and falconer of 'The Second Coming' be pronounced—long or short 'a'? with or without an 'l' sound? (fawk'n is a traditional pronunciation, as is fol-kon, but făl-kon has become general nowadays).
Does the philosopher George Berkeley echo London's Berkeley Square (barkly) or California's Berkeley University (birkly)? 
How close did Yeats intend a rhyme such as 'work' and 'clerk' to be in 'At Galway Races'? ('clerk' rhymes with bark in most British accents, but the rhyme implies clurk).

Do we keep an early-twentieth-century pronunciation in the twenty-first century? We know that Wordsworth and Byron rhymed water and matter, while Pope rhymed line and join. Do we keep the rhyme in order to preserve the internal sound patterns and music—and risk sounding ridiculous—or do we accept that time and place may erode some of these sound elements?  

As neither 'Robartes' nor 'gyre' is in any danger of being misunderstood if we pronounce it either way, we may prefer accepted standard usage or to heed what Yeats himself said, but there is nothing to stop our Robartes being trisyllabic if we choose and our gyres from being soft.

 

*Note (added May 2023): Curtis Bradford, in his article 'George Yeats: Poet's Wife', confirms that she would have been the source: 'Her verbal memory was astonishing and, in spite of the difference of sex and hence of vocal quality, I found her by far the most convincing imitator of Yeats talking or reading poetry.... She could always suggest the right Yeatsian stress: 'My fànatic hèart"; recollect Yeatsian peculiarities of pronunciation: "Bỳ zàn ti um", "gyres" with a hard "g", "gyrate" with a soft, "demesne" as though spelled domain, and so on.' (written in 1955; published in The Sewanee Review, 77: 3 (Summer, 1969), 385-404, at 398; https://www.jstor.org/stable/27541741 ).

 



 

The Unicorn and The Lightning-Struck Tower II

Part II

Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once.

I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.

'Blood and the Moon' (VP 480–81)

It needs no great familiarity with Yeats's work to recognize the importance of towers as a recurrent symbol in his work. There are many influences that contribute to this:

The Round Tower at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow

the towers of myth, legend and history—whether Nimrod's tower at Babel or Babylon's ziggurats for watching the heavens, the lighthouse at Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world, or the round towers in Ireland's historic landscape, such as those at Glendalough and Cashel.

Added to these are also important literary influences, most notably Shelley's poetry, as well as Milton's 'Il Penseroso', which inspired a series of engravings by Samuel Palmer. All of these are evoked when Yeats has his fictional characters of Michael Robartes and Owen Aherne arrive at the foot of Yeats's own tower-house at Thoor Ballylee, Gort.

We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,
And the light proves that he is reading still.
He has found, after the manner of his kind,
Mere images; chosen this place to live in
Because, it may be, of the candle-light
From the far tower where Milton's Platonist
Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince:
The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,
An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;
And now he seeks in book or manuscript
What he shall never find. 

'The Phases of the Moon' (VP 372–73)

Samuel Palmer, 'The Lonely Tower'

With the purchase of Thoor Ballylee, Yeats was deliberately embodying a symbol in stone and mortar with a title deed. The first property Yeats had ever owned, it stood close to Augusta Gregory's house, Coole Park, and though he had bought it before his marriage to Georgie Hyde Lees, it became a sort of present to her and a statement of their marriage. He sees it as a representation of friendship and love, when he notes how he:

For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.

'Meditations in Time of Civil War' V (VP 423)

Ezra Pound viewed it with less romantic embellishment, referring to as Yeats's 'phallic symbol on the Bogs. Ballyphallus or whatever he calls it with the river on the first floor' (in a letter to John Quinn, 24 March 1920, in Reid, The Man from New York, 419).

Ironically, therefore, when Yeats has Robartes and Aherne talking on the road next to his house, he makes Robartes a liar, for if they had seen a light at the window, Mr. Yeats was almost certainly not alone and seeking wisdom in a 'book or manuscript' but rather engaged with his wife in the strange form of inspired communication involved in the Automatic Script. This new wisdom may be expressed in geometrical terms but it comes not from the mysteries of ancient texts, rather from the wisdom of the body:

             The signs and shapes;
All those abstractions that you fancied were
From the great Treatise of Parmenides;
All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things
Are but a new expression of her body
Drunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth.

("The Gift of Haroun Al-Raschid", A Vision A 126-27)

The tower occurs with some frequency in the script and it kept recurring in complex sketches along with birds, butterflies, cliffs, hands, water and trees. Apparently, at one point the Instructors prompted a stay in Glendalough, and Yeats asked if this was because of the round tower, to be told gnomically that it was there 'To put in your mind for a purpose' (20 March 1918, YVP1 395). While there, the Instructors agreed when Yeats asked if the tower was a symbol of the Passionate Body (YVP1 394) and antithetical (YVP1 396, though this may refer only to the Glendalough tower). This makes a good deal of sense, insofar as the tower is a natural symbol of isolation and the antithetical is what seeks to divide the individual from others, and is founded at the level of the Principles in the Passionate Body, the vehicle of emotion and love (developed further in Oxford the following year, YVP3 50–51). In A Vision B, Yeats writes of how 'the Celestial Body is a prisoner in a tower rescued by the Spirit' (AVB 189), while in a draft for A Vision B, he contrasts the divine dimension, 'the sphere itself, that which only contradiction can express,' saying that it is'not "the lone tower of the absolute self" but its shattering, "the absolute self" set free, that unknown reality painted or sung by the monks of Zen' (NLI 36,272/12; & cf. 36,272/22). Here the tower represents very much the antithetical separation of the individual soul, while the Sphere is its opposite, the shattered tower, where the absolute self, probably the Ghostly Self, is freed of the tower of the 'lower self': the body, the personality and the emotions.

7 January 1919, cf. YVP2 163: Cashel with symbolic objects

On a personal level, however, both Yeatses were in antithetical incarnations, so it was their natural mode, and the tower also hints at the structure they were building both in terms of the system and their marriage. While they were in Glendalough, they were told that 'The tower is incomplete' with advice to love the natural life, and that 'the tower is not joined' followed by a picture of a tower with a crack down the middle (24 March 1918, YVP1 399). At one stage, one of the Instructors opened a session with the admonition: 'Do not forget that the Tower is still your symbol | In all lives', though even Yeats seems to have wondered 'In what way am I in danger of forgetting' (15 September 1919, YVP2 427)? However, at other times they were told that, possibly as a protective symbol, the tower was more George's emblem than his (15 January 1918, YVP1 257; 28 October 1918, YVP2 102).  'You', of course, is ambiguously singular or plural, and in many ways the tower often seems to represent the relationship or partnership.

November 24, 1919, viz. YVP2 492

There also seem to have been personal rituals involved, as when Yeats was told 'tower tower you' (expanded by the editors of YVP to 'you[r thought]' for no obvious reason; 19 March 1918, YVP1 391) or one Instructor signed off, 'Goodnight | Yes | tower symbol over her' (6 November 1919, YVP2 475). Another evening they were counselled to ask only 'a few questions but build the tower & gild the sun | the moon is cold and worried and nervous and needs plenty of sun and quiet — nervous' (the part about the moon is in mirror-writing, which seems to have been used mainly when the message was meant to by-pass George; 2 November 1918, YVP2 108). Whether this was esoteric ritual or simply conjugal advice couched in symbolic language, it is clear that there is much to the Automatic Script that was a private language and involved at least as much that was unwritten as was written.

19 August 1920, Notebook 6, cf. YVP3 36

One sketch from 19 August 1920 brings together a tower with water, apple trees and flowering trees as well as birds and a unicorn (labelled, on the right-hand side), said to be carrying a mask from a tree with its horn and “Rushing” (YVP3 37). The two sets of trees are labelled apple trees and flowering trees, which may represent the same contrast of flower and fruit that Dulac used in his woodcut of the Great Wheel. But elsewhere in the Automatic Script, the tree is the symbol of the primary and the mask of the antithetical, so that the unicorn's carrying away may represent a temporary triumph of the antithetical or rescue for the antithetical Yeatses, as they build the tower of their antithetical system.

I do not know what my book will be to others — nothing perhaps.  To me it means a last act of defense against the chaos of the world; & I hope for ten years to write out of my renewed security. (letter to Edmund Dulac, 23 April [1924]).

The important thing is the meaning of the tower, both in building and destruction, is also key to the Tarot image as seen by the Golden Dawn, and therefore, I think, to the image used for George Yeats's bookplate. But before moving on to that, in the next post I shall look at the Daimon and the Lightning Flash.

The tower remains probably Yeats's most public and amongst his most recognized symbols, and he regarded it as linked to the system, but independent of it and comprehensible as a symbol without it:

In this book and elsewhere I have used towers, and one tower in particular, as symbols and have compared their winding stairs to the philosophical gyres, but it is hardly necessary to interpret what comes from the main track of thought and expression.  Shelley uses towers constantly as symbols....

A Note to The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1933 (VP 831)

Dust jacket of The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), designed by Thomas Sturge Moore