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

 

Invoking the Daimon

Following on the from the previous post about how the spiritual being of two sexes manifests as a human of one sex and a Daimon of the opposite sex, one of the key things that this entails is that contact with the Daimon means contact with the opposite. For a psychologist this would entail interior self-examination and possibly some form of therapy or analysis; however, for a magician, the interior examination would be dramatized as visualizations and the therapy as ritual invocation. Within the Golden Dawn, the visualizations would be structured through symbols drawn from the complex series of correspondences attached to the Tree of Life, with the "meditations", "skrying", or "astral travel" using imagery from astrology, alchemy, and Tarot, gods from Egypt and Greece, and angels and the names of God from the Judaeo-Christian traditions. The rituals, whether fully fledged ones at the Order's temple, or personal and private ones, would involve the same attributions, present both in physical form (through cards, colours, costume) and through the active imagination of the participants. One of the ways of invoking a force was to imitate the associated divine forms through ritual and sacred acting, with robes and masks, but more important was the assumption of the god-form, with the "symbolic God-form held firmly in the imagination" (Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn, vol. 3, 156)

One of the aims of the initiates of the Golden Dawn was an ascent on the central pillar of the Tree of Life, raising the "Human Consciousness and Lower Will [which should be located in Tiphareth] from falling into... the place of the Automatic Consciousness [Yesod]", as is the case in much of humanity. This also meant gaining greater contact with the higher spheres and a more direct flow from the higher levels, most immediately "the Higher Human Self and the Lower Genius, the God of the Man" but then the Higher Genius and beyond that the Angelic and Divine levels (see The Golden Dawn, 'Fifth Knowledge Lecture', especially 'The Microcosm—Man', vol. 1, 203–20, at 217 and 214; see yeatsvision.com on the Golden Dawn). Complementing the process of invocation of external powers, the Golden Dawn also taught evocation of forces from within the microcosm of the self.

WBY to Ezra Pound, July 15 [1918]. (ALS Yale)

Yeats frequently mentions the meditations that he associates with the symbols A Vision. The automatic script contains repeated though often unclear instructions to meditate, for example: "you will get all by meditation that you need"  (YVP1 440) and, for instance, Yeats writes of trying "to see Phase 26 in meditation & saw that stag with the crucifix between horns" (YVP3 94). When he sent the first drafts to Ezra Pound, he told him to "Read my symbol with patience ­allowing your mind to go beyond the words to the symbol itself — for this symbol seems to me strange and beautiful" (15 July [1918]). In his note on "The Second Coming", he fictionalizes the Judwalis as having "A supreme religious act of their faith is to fix their attention on the mathematical form of this movement" to achieve a moment of timeless contemplation (VP 824).

Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Cuala, 1922), note on "The Second Coming"

The Yeatses meditated on symbols associated with the Daimons of their children (YVP3 50-51), and it is likely that they also meditated on the subject of the Daimon and on their own personal Daimons (see also their Tarot readings involving the Daimons).

The hieros gamos or alchemical wedding, Rosarium Philosophorum (1550)

"The marriage bed is the symbol of the solved antinomy..."

Yeats's own female Daimon was reflected in part in the women in his life, not least George, and 'Solomon and the Witch' is one of his clearest tributes to his wife. The poem is a dialogue rather than the assumption of female voice and the witch is the Queen of Sheba,* who has cried out as a medium. Solomon interprets it as the crow of the cockerel that "crowed out eternity" ("Three hundred years before the Fall") and has crowed again now because, "Chance being one with Choice at last", he "Thought to have crowed it in again" (VP 388). This implies that the union of Solomon and Sheba has achieved the perfect fusion of the two lovers: "The marriage bed is the symbol of the solved antinomy, and were more than symbol could a man there lose and keep his identity, but he falls asleep" (AVB 52). The solved antinomy is the unity that transcends the duality of the antinomies which are intrinsic to our perception of reality. They have attained a state like that before "the ultimate reality, symbolised as the Sphere, falls in human consciousness... into a series of antinomies" (AVB 187)—or maybe "Three hundred years before the Fall"?

I see the Lunar and Solar cones first, before they start their whirling movement, as two worlds lying one within another--nothing exterior, nothing interior, Sun in Moon and Moon in Sun—a single being like man and woman in Plato's Myth, and then a separation and a whirling for countless ages... (AVA 121)

Even if Solomon does not fall asleep, however, there is not the perfect match of "imagined image" and "real image" —which is perhaps for the best as that is when "the world ends" (VP 388). Even so, the witch asks "let us try again" (VP 389).

The alchemical androgyne, Conceptio, Rosarium Philosophorum (1550)

The lot of love

A similar image of the perfected love dominates "Chosen", a poem fully in a female voice, speaking in terms at once Platonic, astrological, and astronomical.

The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.

The pairing of lots and choice goes back to Plato's 'Myth of Er' in the Republic, which Plotinus refers to in his consideration of whether the stars cause destiny or merely record it (Ennead II.3). In the  astrological practice of his period there was an array of derived points called 'lots', often now referred to as the 'Arabic parts', though actually Hellenistic in origin (in Latin pars/'part' means degree as in the 360 degrees of a circle). These include the 'lot of Fortune', the 'Lot of Spirit', and the 'lot of Eros' or of love, which can be calculated for each individual chart and as such are fixed with the horoscope. Within Yeats's cosmology the birthchart is both fated and chosen—we can only be born at a moment that expresses our character but our character chooses our moment of birth (see yeatsvision.com on the 'The Seven Propositions' and 'Astrology and the Nature of Reality'). The 'whirling Zodiac' represents this descent into incarnation.

The horoscopes of WBY and GY with their Lot of Fortune (circle with saltire cross), Lot of Spirit (circle with vertical line), and Lot of Eros (circle with a heart). WBY is  night birth, so according to traditional rules his Lots are calculated differently from those of GY, a daytime birth. (For further consideration, see yeatsvision.com.)

The voice then speaks of a man, who whirls on the turning circuit of the zodiac:

Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subterranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.

This traces the constant motion of the zodiac to the western horizon where the sun, a planet, or a lot sets and its apparent passage 'under the earth' to the nadir or midnight, its northern point (as noon or the meridian is the southern point for those in the northern hemisphere). Noon and midnight form the vertical axis of horoscope ('seemed to stand'), but the zodiac keeps turning until the particular degree comes to the point where it rises in the east:

I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
I chose it for my lot!

The word 'struggle', used in the poem's second line, is repeated with the concept of chosen fate: Lot as Chance or Fate and Choice or Destiny become one, as in the love of 'Solomon and the Witch'.

If questioned on
My utmost pleasure with a man
By some new-married bride, I take
That stillness for a theme
Where his heart my heart did seem

There is a form of union, female and male, human and Daimon, both centred in the heart of the Tree of Life or the still point at the centre of the horoscope (just as the Daimon is positioned at the centre of the Wheel of the Faculties and Principles).

And both adrift on the miraculous stream
Where—wrote a learned astrologer—
The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

With the union of Lot or Chance and Choice, fate and free will, the zodiac of time becomes the sphere of eternity, the realm of Daimon, and the cockerel of "Solomon and the Witch" can crow eternity in again.

Venus setting (lower right) in a shaft of zodiacal light (solar system dust illuminated by the sun, along the line of the zodiac), with the Milky Way arching over the upper part of the photograph.

If Yeats seeks to contact his own Daimon, he is seeking the female element of his own individuality. The internal is projected outwards, here as the relations of sexual love, whether Sheba and Solomon or the voice of "Chosen" with her man, yet in many ways this is a symbol of what is taking place on the inner planes.

Pope Pius XI said in an Encyclical that the natural union of man and woman has a kind of sacredness. He thought doubtless of the marriage of Christ and the Church, whereas I see in it a symbol of that eternal instant where the antinomy is resolved. It is not the resolution itself. (AVB 214)

The resolution would be the impossible fusion in the androgyne which symbolises the unity and wholeness that would be both consummation and extinction.


Note
* Although "the Witch" is not identified explicitly as the Queen of Sheba, the poem opens "And thus declared that Arab lady..." which seems to make it a continuation of "Solomon to Sheba", first published in 1918. The earlier poem ends:

Sang Solomon to Sheba 
And kissed her Arab eyes,
"There's not a man or woman
Born under the skies
Dare match in learning with us two,
And all day long we have found
There's not a thing but love can make
The world a narrow pound." (VP 333)

The epithet of "Witch" may be Yeats's allusion to P. B. Shelley's "The Witch of Atlas", dedicated to his own wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It is interesting to note that the Witch of Atlas creates her own androgynous companion, "by strange art she kneaded fire and snow / Together" to form "A sexless thing" that "seemed to have developed no defect / Of either sex, yet all the grace of both".

Epiphany

Today is the Feast of Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the "wise men from the east" in Bethlehem, bearing gifts of "gold, and frankincense, and myrrh" (Matthew 2:1–11). This story is given in the Gospel of Matthew, while most of the other elements—no room at the inn, the manger, and of the adoration of the shepherds—are drawn from Luke (the ox and the ass are later additions to the legend). Though many of us have become used to the fusion of the two—mainly through the hymns or readings associated with Christmas and the tradition of the nativity scene or crèche—in art, most of the old masters represent the adoration of the shepherds and the adoration of the Magi (kings or wise men) separately.

Sandro Boticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1480, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

Yeats takes these two adorations as archetypes. In the notes to The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), he characterizes three speakers of the collection's poems:* "'Michael Robartes' is fire reflected in water", "Hanrahan is fire blown by the wind", "Aedh ... fire burning by itself". Yeats then goes on:

To put it a different way, Hanrahan is the the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather permanent possessions, or the adoration of the shepherds; and Michael Robartes is the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of its possessions, or the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the myrrh and frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that it loves. (Variorum Poems, 803)

The Wind Among the Reeds (London: Elkin Matthews, 1899)

Yeats says that "It is probable that only students of the magical tradition will understand" the elemental attributions, and it is clear that he is drawing upon symbolism that includes the astrological fire, associated with intuition and imagination, while water is associated with emotion and air with intellect. He links Hanrahan and Robartes further to the idea of possession—a more earthy association, but imaginatively as much the possession of learning—and to the idea of two different revelations: the unexpected angel appearing to the shepherds in their fields, opposed to the studied revelation of the star that leads the wise men to Judea, where it is then related to written prophecy. Neither revelation is better, and though the unburdened spontaneity of the airy imagination might seem superior, the dedicated mission of the Magi is an important part of the mystery too. What the shepherds may have gained by simplicity of heart, the Magi have gained through great learning, but both have arrived at the same truth.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1668, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Yeats wrote his own story "The Adoration of the Magi" at much the same time (1897), and his three old brothers from the western islands of Ireland have qualities of both the shepherds and the Magi. Simple countrymen, they are inspired by a voice to visit Paris, in search of a place where they finally find a dying prostitute. The god Hermes speaks through one of them and tells them to bow down and hear “the secret names of the immortals” that “the immortals may come again into the world” (Variorum Secret Rose 168var; see Mythologies 2005 424n13), and the dying woman appears to give the secrets of religious mysteries, such as those Yeats was attempting to create at Lough Key: “she told them the secret names of the immortals of many lands, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft they held dearest; but most about the immortals of Ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear, and the hills of the Shee, and the horns of the moon, and the Grey Wind, and the Yellow Wind, and the Black Wind, and the Red Wind” (VSR 170var). When Yeats revised the story in the 1920s, while he was writing the first version of A Vision, instead of these revelations of these ancient secrets, the dying whore gives birth to a unicorn, though the birth is unseen and supernatural and recounted by Hermes.
 

Georges Lallemand, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1624, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

The revelation comes differently, but the import is ultimately the same—the advent of a new religious dispensation, which is first glimpsed by those who have the gift of grace or the result of preparation.

When Yeats looked back on his days in the Golden Dawn of the 1890s, he recalled:

We all, so far as I can remember, differed from ordinary students of philosophy or religion through our belief that the truth cannot be discovered but may be revealed, and that if a man do not lose faith, and if he go through certain preparations, revelation will find him at the fitting moment. I remember a learned brassfounder in the North of England who visited us occasionally, and was convince that there was a certain moment in every year which, once known, brought with it "The Summum Bonum, the Stone of the Wise." But others, for it was clear that there must be a vehicle or symbol of communication, were of the opinion that some messenger would make himself known, in a railway train let us say, or might be found after search in some distant land. (AVA x–xi, CW13 liv)

—————————————————

*Four names actually feature in the poems' original titles—Mongan is the fourth—alongside "the Poet"; these were later changed to a generic "He..." or "The Lover...".

The Unicorn and the Lightning-Struck Tower, IV

Previous posts have considered the symbolism of the unicorn, the tower and the lightning flash within Yeats's work and in the system of A Vision, but the most immediate source in many respects is, of course, the Tarot card of the lightning-struck tower. This card is labelled "La Torre" in most Italian packs, such as the one that W. B. Yeats himself had, and "La Maison Dieu" in the older French packs, such as George's Marseilles pack. The majority of designs show a lightning flash, often coming from a cloud, striking the top of a crenelated tower, dislodging its crown, and with two or more people falling, along with a hail of particles.

In the Golden Dawn's specific iconography, the card is named the "Blasted Tower" and titled "Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty". In the Order's syncretic system, the Tarot trumps were identified with the paths connecting the sephiroth on the Tree of Life, and these in turn had correspondences with astrological principles. In their system, The Tower corresponds with the path on the Tree of Life joining Hod and Netzach, one of three horizontal paths on the Tree, identified by the Hebrew letter Peh (פ)  and the planet Mars. In many ways both these attributes have some appropriateness for George: Peh means "mouth" and her work as medium for the automatic script gave words to the communicators, and she was strongly marked as a Scorpio, both by her astrological rising sign and her cycle sign in the system, ruled by Mars (Pluto had not been discovered, and the Yeatses generally used the traditional rulers anyway). George was also said to have a Mars Daimon (YVP3 292) as did WBY.

The symbolism may well extend further. The Golden Dawn's Outer Order was not involved with magic—that came later in the Second Order—rather, it was designed to provide a grounding in the basics of occult knowledge and to help balance the temperament of the aspiring initiates by a series of elemental initiations, Earth, Air, Water and then Fire. In this structure, Water and Fire were associated with Hod and Netzach, respectively, so that the path joining them is the last one that is wholly within that elemental world. Beyond that came the Portal Ritual, after which the successful aspirant would pass to the Second Order. This ritual symbolically involves crossing the "Veil of the Paroketh", separating the lower sephiroth from the central ones.

The lower four sephiroth on the Tree of Life, with some of the Golden Dawn correspondences. For Mathers' diagram of the whole Tree in relation to the GD, see http://www.YeatsVision.com/GD.html.

W. B. Yeats joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in March 1890 and, by the time he stood as a candidate for the Golden Dawn's Portal Ritual in January 1893, he had passed through the four initiations of the Outer Order. There was a minimum period of three months at each grade, so Yeats's progress was not unduly fast.

After induction into the Order as Neophyte (0=0), preparation for the grade of Zelator (1=10) focused on elemental Earth and the sephirah of Malkuth; next came Theoricus (2=9), elemental Air and the sephirah of Yesod; then Practicus (3=8), elemental Water and Hod, followed by Philosophus (4=7), elemental Fire and Netzach. These processes focused on exploring and balancing the 'lower' personality, represented by these four sephiroth, preparatory to advancing towards actual magical workings and raising of the consciousness towards the Higher Self in the Second Order, Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. The Portal Ritual does not have a specific grade related to it, representing a liminal level: the fifth element of Spirit or Akasa, the culmination of the Outer or First Order and an induction into the Second Order.

George followed the same steps, over twenty years later, inducted into the Stella Matutina in August 1914. Her advance through the grades seems to have been a little rapider, with initiations into the next grades in September and then November or December (as far as can be told from astrological charts she drew up that seem to indicate the times of initiations, see Becoming George 69-71). She probably advanced to Practicus (3=8) in May 1915.  At the end of that ritual, the Hierophant congratulates the newly made Practicus, and confers "the Mystic Title of 'MONOCRIS DE ASTRIS', which means 'Unicorn from the Stars' and I give you the symbol of MAIM which is the Hebrew Name for Water" (Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 2:118; see also the earlier version in Equinox 1:2, 274, where the title is "MONOKEROS DE ASTRIS").

Three or more months later, the aspirant might be ready to undergo the initiation to Philosophus. In this ritual he or she is addressed by the title of "Monocris de Astris", and symbolically approaches the sephirah of Netzach via the three paths that lead to it from the lower sephiroth already mastered:
· first from Malkuth by the path of Qoph, identified with the Tarot card of The Moon and the zodiac sign of Pisces;
· then from Yesod by the path of Tzadi, identified with The Star and the zodiac sign of Aquarius;
· and finally from Hod by the path of Peh, identified with The Tower and the planet Mars.

The ritual of the Philosophus, approaching Netzach via the horizontal path from Hod, shows the card as conceived by the Golden Dawn:

          And the Sixteenth Key of the Tarot:
It represents a Tower struck by a lightning-flash proceeding from a rayed circle and terminating in a triangle. It is the Tower of Babel. The flash exactly forms the Astronomical symbol of Mars. It is the Power of the Triad rushing down and destroying the Column of Darkness. The men falling from the tower represent the fall of the kings of Edom. "On the right-hand side of the Tower is Light, and the representation of the Tree of Life by Ten Circles. On the left-hand side is Darkness, and Eleven Circles symbolically representing the Qliphoth."

Aleister Crowley notes that this card "which we have seen in the 4°= 7° Ritual represents a tower struck by a flash of lightning, symbolising the Tower of Babel struck by the wrath of Heaven, and also the Power of the Triad rushing down and destroying the columns of darkness, the light of Adonai glimmering through the veils and consuming the elementary Rituals of the 1°=10°, 2°=9°, 3°=8°, and 4°=7° grades" (Equinox 1:2 293). This underlines that this stage is the true final stage of the elemental levels, associated with a breaking down of the Tower of selfhood that was built before, so that a new one can be constructed consciously to lead to the Higher Self.

A new Tarot pack, coming from the Golden Dawn tradition, actually includes a unicorn in the symbolism of the Tower card.

This Tarot is designed Harry and Nicola Wendrich, painted by Harry, in association with Nick Farrell and the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, a successor to the Golden Dawn. The tower seems to have been constructed out of letter blocks, with the base constructed from the twelve so-called simple letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the middle tier from the seven double letters, and the highest level from the three mother letters. (These categories come from the Sepher Yetzirah and correspond in turn with the twelve signs of the zodiac, the seven ancient planets, and the three elements—excluding earth.) The arrow that strikes and topples the crown of the tower issues from a circle in the form of the symbol for Mars, the card's astrological counterpart, and connected to the red colours that dominate this card. The circle is in fact a complex geodesic form of sphere, patterned on the "flower of life". This widespread form of sacred geometry can in turn be used as a matrix to generate the cabalistic Tree of Life: the patterns of the two sets of discs or globes that fall on either side of the tower, as noted by Mathers in the ritual description of the card.
The brightly coloured, positive tree is on the viewer's right and the muddy coloured negative tree on the left, with an extra eleventh sphere at its base, symbolizing imbalance. Over the stormy left side the rainbow arches, recalling the rainbow that came after the Flood that destroyed almost all human and animal life on earth. If the tower recalls the destruction of the Tower of Babel, it is testimony to the less fatal punishment that the promise of the rainbow symbolizes. The Hebrew letters letters for "bow", Q-Sh-Th, also correspond to the three lowest paths on the tree \|/ that meet in Malkuth, which Yeats linked to his vision of the Archer: the arrow is the path of Samekh, which crosses that of  Peh.

"On the right hand side of the Tower is Light and the Tree of Life. There is also the Unicorn of the Stars which is a reference to the 3=8 ritual and the Archangel Uriel. Uriel is the angel of the Mysteries, who overthrows the false perceptions" (Farrell and Wendrich). Traditionally also, Uriel is the angel who warned Noah about the coming flood, so the card brings together many aspects of emerging from an experience in which the old order is swept away to be replaced by a new one. "In fact if you cross the path from Hod to Netzach you are looking at the pulling apart of your existing universe, however if you travel the path from Netzach to Hod you are seeing your higher self creating a new Universe out of the letters it sees. The path of Peh is therefore a destruction and construction" (Farrell at the Wendriches' website).

It seems that the Yeatses must have been thinking about something very similar, and made the connection through study, or more likely through vision. In an e-mail, Nicola informed me that "The inspiration to include the unicorn in the Tower image came from a joint meditation wherein my husband and I met with the Tower archetype, who requested that Harry paint a unicorn in the image to represent the Archangel Uriel.  Uriel is the Angel of the Mysteries, who overthrows false perceptions".  Farrell also made the same connection, independently: "At the time I was inspired by the fact that the Unicorn was a symbol of the Archangel Uriel whose energy tends to unsettle and destroy in this way.  Unfortunately for the life of me I do not know where I got this association from. When I said to Harry I think we should should stick a unicorn in, he said 'oh good we have been getting that in our meditations too' " (e-mail). (See further considerations of the path and the card on Nick Farrell's blog for June 2011.)

With symbolism that is both different and strikingly congruent, the Wendrich card of the Tower bears out much of the passage that was quoted at the end of the "The Unicorn and the Lightning-Struck Tower, III":

In the same way that the external divine of the Thirteenth Cone sends the revelatory shock of the new era in a lightning flash, the Daimon's contact with its human counterpart marks turning points in an individual life. The crises are a form of constructive destruction. He expresses through a system of images a harmony of related aims and we should discover in this harmony of aims, in this unity of being not the mere intervention of the thirteenth cone but the sphere itself. . . that which only contradiction can expressnot “the  lone tower of the absolute self” but its shattering*; that whi unknown reality painted or sung by the monks of Zen. * When my Instructors talk of the shattering of the tower they seem to [depend on?] the old symbol. I am thinking of the Tarot trump [of the?] tower struck by lightning.        (NLI MS 36,272/22, p. 29) The shattering of "the lone tower of the absolute self" comes through the Daimon's lightning flash and frees the inner being. George's bookplate is thus a symbol of contradiction, a Daimonic moment of crisis, of freedom, connection with "the sphere itself", and Beatific Vision.

It may seem a strange emblem to choose as a bookplate, but it is a constant reminder that the initiate is remaking herself, shattering the tower of self that has been constructed largely unawares in youth, and that part of building a new structure of self and life comes from the words, letters, and speech of the books she reads.

Jaff Seijas: Images for the Emblems of the 28 Phases

The artist Jaff Seijas recently contacted me, drawing my attention to a group of paintings he has created for the 28 phase emblems that the Yeatses drew up from the automatic script. There is plenty more to be said about these, and I hope to get round to it, but want to share the paintings on their own first. I've added some of the pictures to the webpage where I touch on the emblems—Phase Symbols—and am posting a different selection here, with Jaff Seijas's kind permission. Go to his website at jaffseijas.com to see the full set of images. I know from writing about the phases and preparing web materials that going through all twenty-eight of them can sometimes become a little tiring, and realize that some of the images are probably less inspiring than others, so I can only add thanks that he has taken pains to illustrate the full set. Most of the emblems have relatively brief summaries, but a few have fuller descriptions, either  in the card index (S66), or in a workbook that sadly does not seem to be published (a short section on Phase 1 is quoted in George Mills Harper's The Making of Yeats's "A Vision" and passages are supplied to fill in gaps in other manuscripts).

Phase 3: "Eagle over sea with one foot caught on back of sea lion one foot caught by Dolphin. Eagle drags both"

Phase 13: "Man hanging over pond head down just touching water. Reflection on surface of pool at which he looks but another image going down. Surface image primary that in depth anti. Stagnant water & weeds. A third image from back of head which is the subconscious"

Phase 17: "Crystal arrow going through golden crescent. arrow cut so as to reflect all colours. Colours in crystal show how much energy has passed into anti"

Phase 27: "more or less [? easter] figure. in left hand holds a mans soul in a simulacrum of man temptation to put it in. He stands on globe."

Phase 15: "Beautiful Man in pool holds stone of wrath & arrow of wisdom. arrow reaches crescent."

Phase 1: "naked man at North with outstretched hands tied to branch of tree swinging. Could not get rid of it--'an obsessing figure' not luminous like the tree images. Snake coiled once round feet & tail touching ground. Head looking to place of Initiate. a good deal to left at N a figure weeping into a cup & opposite on opposite side of figure a boar drinking from cup. feet on cup pulling it towards him. on other side towards E a figure whirling a leather thong with stone at end, in a fury. He stands on back of eagle. someway past boar. think on right hand side east but not sure."

For Phase 1 itself, this last image would probably be rather simpler, since, as Harper notes, "this confusing exposition combines imagery from several Phases". The paragraph is quoted without context in The Making of Yeats's "A Vision" and is not included in Yeats's "Vision" Papers, so it is difficult to be sure exactly what Yeats was doing, but it appears to be an attempt to evoke a vision of Phase 1 within the context of the Wheel.
• The figure of Phase 1 is that of the man hanging from the tree, probably with the snake included. Yeats notes that the evocation is not luminous as true visions tend to be, and not easy to move  or develop from but obsessive.
• Phase 1 is located at cardinal North, and the man looks towards "the Initiate": this term came into the script very early and is ambiguous, as it may refer to the last phases, (especially Saint and Fool), or go beyond cycles to the centre of the Wheel (linked to avatars and Christ).
• It is difficult to see how the "figure weeping into a cup" can be both at N and a good deal to left of a figure at North. It could well be a misreading of the rather N-like glyph for Capricorn (♑), which would make sense, since this is the marker for "Loins" placed in the fourth quarter, usually shown between Phases 25 and 26. (This ties in with the description of Phase 18 on card S66, where it is noted that the "Legs go to ♈" i.e. Aries, the zodiac sign marked on the Wheel between Phases 18 and 19.)
• The elements of the weeping woman with the cup and the boar with cup both seem to come from Phase 24, even though they are referred to as being opposite one another.
• Whether these are left or right seems moot, and it is probably best not to place too much emphasis on this aspect.
• East is identified in the normal arrangement with Phase 22 and the other figure with the whirling leather thong appears to be the emblem associated with Phase 22.

•The "back of an eagle" does not tie in exactly with any symbol, though eagles figure in the emblems for Phases 3 and 9, and a "bird of prey" in Phase 8. The figure of Phase 22 may therefore be standing on an "opposite" figure.

Without more context, it is difficult to tease out exactly what the vision communicates. As it stands, it seems like a rather cluttered hybrid of Odin sacrificing himself on the World-tree and Alice in Wonderland. Yet the imagery is clearly part of Yeats's phantasmagoria, with descriptions of these images recurring in the description of Speculum Angelorum et Hominum and the woman with the cup figuring in Yeats's own bookplate.

The West Coast Tarot Reading

Train                                                  7.15pm                                       Mar 24 [1920]
on way to San Francisco [from Portland, Oregon]
(past Ashland)

Shuffle & deal out 28 packs
look for medium as Queen of Cups – WB as King of Wands
Then write again
28th pack
now 16th
17 & 18
now gather all up & by short method using medium ask [how]
[upside down writing] successful was Saturday night
Dont read till after judgment
  Yes  Yes
No swords
a predominant receptivity
martial activity
swords indicate Eastern influence – that is lacking here
It looks like a failure
Use Kg of Wands in same way
Yes Yes  that is allright – much better  Sword is yourself and the symbolism is complete – We wanted eastern symbolically incarnation – it looks like it – The sword is the daimon
No influence from medium
I am speaking of nature – not actual conception
Yes
That which came from west to east returned to west
Now it must be the reverse
in the multitudinous avatar all symbolism of all people must go from East to west & back to East
                                                                                  (YVP2 536)

En Route

As far as I can tell, the Yeatses were taking Southern Pacific's West Coast train from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco. George noted "past Ashland", one of the last towns in Oregon, so they were probably just crossing into California when they made this reading.

Before they had left Portland, on the night of Saturday 20 March, "A rather wonderful thing happened" (WBY to Edmund Dulac, 22 March 1920). A young Japanese man, Junzo Sato, had given Yeats a 550-year-old samurai sword "wrapped up in a piece of beautifully embroidered cloth, from some ancient lady-in-waiting's dress" (Junzo Sato's description; see Life2 167). This would feature in several of Yeats's later poems, most strikingly "A Dialogue of Self and Soul".

Tarot card back, featuring Golden Dawn's Rose-Cross Lamen

Creating a Spread

The Yeatses were here using a form of tarot reading based on the 28 phases of the moon. Normally in any of the practices associated with the system, we struggle to gather what could have been going on from a few scraps; here what is remarkable is that so much is spelled out on paper, though it is still very fragmentary. In part this would seem to indicate that they had not done this before, or at least not in this form, so that the script is giving fairly full instructions.

They would have known very well that the "significator" for George, the medium, as a mature woman with moderately fair complexion, would be the Queen of Cups, and that W. B. Yeats's darker looks marked him as King of Swords. This is entirely consistent with standard Golden Dawn practice which specified Kings and Knights for men, older and younger, Queens and Pages for women, older and younger, and then divided the suits by complexion with Wands at the fairest end, then Cups, Swords, and Coins as the darkest. It is quite probable that the Yeatses also considered rising signs, with GY's ascendant in the watery sign of Scorpio corresponding to Cups/Water and WBY's Aquarius ascendant corresponding to Swords/Air, (Wands or Staves would show Fire signs and Coins or Pentacles Earth ones). So it seems slightly strange to see this being stipulated by the spirits.

King of Swords, modern Marseilles Tarot

What they were being told to do was to deal the tarot pack or deck into 28 piles, and then look to see in which pile the two significators were found. Each pile would have contained only two or three cards, since there are only 78 cards in the tarot pack (Phases 1 to 22 would have three cards each, the rest only two). This is like a part of the main Golden Dawn tarot reading method called "Opening the Key," particularly the second or third part, where the cards are dealt out into twelve piles based on the houses or the zodiac.

At this point in the script it's difficult to be certain what happens, but it seems that, having looked at the different piles, George, as herself, then wrote down the piles where she found the two significators. One of the significators was found in the 28th pack of the Fool (2 cards) and the other in the 16th pack of "The Positive Man" (3 cards). The next line, "17 & 18", would refer to their own phases — WBY's Phase 17 and George's Phase 18—to broaden the picture (3 cards each). But in neither case can we tell what was done with these packs or groups of cards. Normally the reader would look at the surrounding cards to form an idea of the influences surrounding the person in question, balancing the elements according to the Golden Dawn's rules  to see which supported and which weakened the main cards, and the cards would give views of wife and husband from two separate angles—first significator in context and then the influences on their respective personal phases.  The problem is that without knowing the cards surrounding these or the cards in the other two piles, it is impossible to see exactly how the method might have worked.

Queen of Cups, Marseilles Tarot 1710s

Second Spread

 The next question is whether these 11 cards were kept aside or included when they were told to "gather all up", but it seems probable that they were included.

Furthermore, it soon becomes clear that the reading has to do with whether or not they had conceived a child the previous Saturday. Their daughter Anne had been born in February 1919 and they were evidently considering another baby.

The next instruction to use "the short method using the medium" indicates that they will use the Queen of Cups (medium/George) again, and one the shorter Golden Dawn methods that they preferred. This is hardly surprising since "Opening the Key" involves five separate operations that divide the pack in spread according to the 4 letters of God's name, then 12 houses, then 12 signs, then 36 decanates, then the 10 sephiroth of the Tree of Life. A shorter method would tend to fix on the most pertinent of these stages, or other possible spreads.

Three of Swords, Sola Busca Tarot 1490s

This time we learn that the Queen is found in a group of cards containing no swords. This means either the group of cards itself or that by counting cards and not including all of them (the rules for counting through cards in the GD method are simple enough in their own way, but mean that only certain cards are included in the main reading). The script notes that this indicates an energy that is not outgoing but receptive (probably either Cups/Water or Pentacles/Earth or a combination of both). You might have thought that this was positive for conceiving and nurturing a child, and Swords in tarot are generally the negative suit and one that most readers would be glad to see lacking. However, that does not seem to be the case here.

Martial activity seems to contradict this receptivity—though it might be a misreading here for marital activity—the script is seldom clear. However, it could indicate cards that involve Mars either by sign or decanate (the GD's system included extensive correlations between signs , planets, decanates and cards, and the Yeatses had marked such correspondences on their own cards). And there was a special reason for wanting Martial activity, as we shall see.

The Two of Coins or Pentacles, Italian Tarot
WBY has noted that this corresponds to the Jupiter decanate of Capricorn by the GD system.
At the top, he has noted "Difficulties" and, at the bottom, "pleasant change, visit to friends etc."
(see the National Library of Ireland's Exhibition on W. B. Yeats)
Similar cues are included on the cards that Frieda Harris designed for Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot (below) 

It then becomes clear that the spirits want swords, however,— "swords indicate Eastern activity". Now in the Golden Dawn system Air (and therefore swords) is identified with the East (Fire-South; Water-West; Earth-North), so there is some logic in the search for swords within the spread if Eastern influence is important.

The script notes that the venture looks like a failure—and indeed with respect to conceiving a child, it was to prove a disappointment, as their second child Michael was not born until late August 1921.

Yet the reading then proceeds to search for other possibilities, this time using the King of Wands (not Yeats's significator normally).  And the reading continues with positive acclamations for the presence of swords=East. Here we are also told that the Sword=Daimon (and that is another can of worms), and it is worth noting that Yeats's Daimon was said to be "Martial" (YVP3 292), which is probably what lies behind the comment "Sword is yourself and the symbolism is complete" (though George's Daimon was also a Mars influence). There is also a very complex sense in which the Eastern influence was important to the Yeatses themselves: their second child was to be an avatar of the new age.

Ace of Swords, Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, 1910

Okay, so this is getting very involved and grandiose. Those of you who expected a simple tarot spread are getting a picture of parents who were more than ordinarily delusional, and those who find this stuff way too weird gave up at least three paragraphs ago.¡

It has to be said that this is where even the people who can easily cope with the weird in Yeats find that they are a little embarrassed. Basically, the Yeatses thought that they might/would be giving birth to one of the next age's avatars. These avatars of the coming age would be multiple or "multitudinous" and to some extent national, but they would be incarnations of the divine force. It also leads us back to the whole theme of the Conjunctions... (skip to the end if you just want to see how the tarot works).

Conjunctions: East and West

The script seems to imply that the child to be born will not be influenced by the mother's character or "nature", so that the child will be be more like its father, and A Vision includes a rather obscure passage about symbolical East and West as father and mother, though here it seems to work the other way round:

All these symbols can be thought of as the symbols of the relations of men and women and of the birth of children. We can think of the antithetical and primary cones, or wheels, as the domination, now by the man, now by the woman, and of a child born at Phase 15 or East as acquiring a primary character from its father who is at Phase 1, or West, and of a child born at Phase 1, or West, as acquiring an antithetical character from its father at Phase 15, or East, and so on, man and woman being alternately Western and Eastern. Such symbolical children, sealed as it were by Saturn and Jupiter or Mars and Venus, cast off the mother and display their true characters as their cycle enters its last quarter. (AVB 211)

If Yeats, King of Swords, is seen as the Eastern influence, then he is fathering a child who will also be Eastern. Obviously here neither child is  a Phase 1 or 15, since these are not human incarnations, but they embody that principle, though as usual Yeats does not make it clear quite how the two concepts relate to each other precisely.

Seven of Wands and Two of Disks, Thoth Tarot, 1938–43
The Seven of Wands is one of six minor cards that correlates with a Martial decanate.

Indeed the Yeats children were said to have been sealed by the planetary conjunctions in their birth-charts: Anne, a Phase 16, by Mars and Venus, and later Michael, a Phase 14, by Jupiter and Saturn. Yeats reflected on this some fourteen years later:

I was told...that my two children would be Mars conjunctive Venus, Saturn conjunctive Jupiter respectively: and so they were—Anne the Mars-Venus personality.... George said it is very strange but whereas Michael is always thinking about life Anne always thinks of death. (L 827–28; 25 August 1934)

They also embody the Christian dispensation, Mars-Venus, and the coming antithetical dispensation, Jupiter-Saturn, not perhaps as avatars (that seems to have died down), but as symbolic children (still a fairly strange role for them to be playing, however unwittingly). For the primary dispensation at the birth of Jesus: "That which came from west to east returned to west | Now it must be the reverse | in the multitudinous avatar all symbolism of all people must go from East to west & back to East". I'll return to this subject again, I'm sure, but leave it for the moment, in order to conclude about the tarot reading.

Back to the Tarot Spread

So, finally we have a reading that is based on two aspects—a wheel of 28 Phases, where the querents' significators are used as well as their own phasal positions—and secondly, a shorter spread that involves some way in which the significators—in one case apparently a different one—are associated with distinct groups of cards such that GY's card is not located with any Swords, but WBY's is (here I show my ignorance, and would welcome any help or comments).

It's nothing radical—we can only assume that the phasal positions had the same basic meaning as they did in the Great Wheel. But without comment from the Yeatses, all we can tell is that they found a way of working their system into a new spread as they traveled southwards into California.

And it all seems to have an even greater weight, given that their luggage included a samurai sword from the East, given to them by a young man from Japan on the West coast of America.