RT Article
T1 The Entangled Imagination: W.B. Yeats’ "Moods" and the Psychologization of Magic
JF Entangled Religions
VO 14
IS 3
A1 Johannsen, Dirk
LA English
PB Ruhr-Universität Bochum
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1845599845
AB Among modern practitioners of magic, the "psychologization of magic" has become a common strategy to adapt practices such as rituals of invocation to naturalistic thought. In this article, I discuss what was probably the most elaborate attempt to bridge the gap between the magic of the past and magic suited for the present that took place within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888-1903). Approaching the Order’s teachings through the lens of contemporaneous literary discourse, the Irish poet and magician William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) attempted to consolidate supernaturalist and naturalist understandings of magic throughout the 1890s. In 1892, he made the concept of the "immortal moods" a key to both his poetry and his magical practice. Evoked through symbols in a ritual or a poem, these moods would descend "like a faint sigh into people’s minds" and move them to action, causing "all great changes in the world." Yeats explored this concept in theoretical writings, poetic experiments, and his ritual practice, finding his own imagination entangled with past imaginations. Serving a brief term as the Golden Dawn’s Imperator and Instructor in Mystical Philosophy in 1901, he condensed the insights gained from this work in the doctrines of the "great mind and great memory." Presenting a study of Yeats’ psychology of the universal mind, this article shows how his amalgamation of literary and folkloristic theorizing paved the way to connect magical and poetic practice to the emerging psychological discourse.
K1 HERMETIC ORDER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN
K1 William Butler Yeats
K1 Folklore
K1 Literary Theory
K1 psychological associationism
K1 psychologization of magic
K1 Symbolism
K1 Tradition
DO 10.46586/er.14.2023.10389