William Butler Yeats

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was a poet and leader of the Irish Literary Revival. He was heavily involved in the Dublin Theosophical Lodge, and was also interested in hermeticism, spiritualism, and Rosicrucianism.

The oriental turn to his poetry and that of Æ (George William Russell) was credited to their acquaintance with Mohini M. Chatterji. In 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Personal life

Later years

The oriental turn to his poetry and that of Æ (George William Russell) was credited to their acquaintance with Mohini M. Chatterji.

Theosophical Society involvement

Dublin Theosophical Lodge & London

In late 1884 WBY's aunt Isabella Pollexfen Varley, married to an artist in London..., sent WBY a copy of A. P. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism.... After obtaining it, WBY lent the book to his friend Charles Johnston...[who] had been considering a career in the church; instead he went to London to interview the founders of the movement, and on his return introduced Theosophy to Dublin. Johnston was an established friend of WBY since the days at Howth from 1881 to 1882.... Their paths would intersect through life, with Johnston turning up...at Madame Blavatsky's in London in the 1880s....; it was probably Johnston, together with Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, who encouraged WBY in the new fad of Theosophy.

...this Theosophist involvement, and others like it, would be WBY's university. He had begun a long career of forming clubs, of organizing speculative conversations, of interrogating a widely assorted range of spiritual disciplines and secret knowledge. The organization..., which called itself the Dublin Hermetic Society, dates from 16 June 1885. Always Theosophically bent, the Hermetic Society became in April 1886 the Dublin Theosophical Society - a limitation which disappointed WBY, though he was impressed by the envoy sent by the Theosophist leader Madame Blavatsky. WBY was deeply effected by his first experience of an Eastern holy man..., Mohini Chatterjee [who who was sent to London in 1884 with Colonel Olcott and visited Dublin in 1885].

[WBY had moved to join the rest of his family in London by April 1887.] As early as the summer of 1887 WBY had found his way to the Theosophist Madame Blavatsky, recently arrived in England; the introduction was effected by Charles Johnston.... For the rest of the autumn [in 1888], he [was] periodically paying visits to the growing Blavatsky entourage in Holland Park. In December he joined her recently established Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society. [He had an] inclination towards magical experimentation and the verification of natural phenomenon. For this reason, he strongly backed the formation of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, devoted to such rituals; he joined it in December 1888, and renewed his pledges on 20 December 1889, along with the celebrated Annie Besant among others. [Severance]

Other esoteric interests

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-yeats.html

Writings

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 54 articles by and about Yeats, including many in The Lamp, a Canadian journal. For a complete listing of his works, see Wikipedia. Here are some of his most significant works:

Other resources

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 49 articles by or about Yeats.

• Harris, Philip S. "Yeats, William Butler" Theosophical Encyclopedia (Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 2006), 682. Available at Theosopedia.
• Theosophy and the Theosophical Society at YeatsVision.com
• D.N.D. [Daniel Nicol Dunlop], "Interview with W. B. Yeats," The Irish Theosophist (2:2, November 1893), 147-9. Yeats discusses his interaction with Madame Blavatsky in the earlier days of the Theosophical movement in England. From Theosophy Canada. Also available at the Blavatsky Study Center.
• Dr. Suman Singh, "Mohini Mohan Chatterji's Influence on W.B. Yeats," Shodh Sanchayan: An Internationally Indexed Refereed Research Journal & A complete Periodical dedicated to Humanities & Social Science Research, 3:2 (July 2012).