Yeats, the tarot, and the Golden Dawn,

by Kathleen Raine

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an organization devoted to the study and practice of the occult, metaphysics, and paranormal activities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Tarot

Paperback

Published January 1, 1972

About the author

Kathleen Jessie Raine CBE was an English poet, critic and scholar, writing in particular on William Blake, W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES! YES! YES! Poetry is magick, not the other way round. Kathleen Raine's wonderful overview of the occult influences of Yeats and his involvement with the Golden Dawn is easily the most obscure thing on my bucket list of things to read before I die and has sat on my reading list for many years. To my complete amazement, it's now free to read online at JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27541704

[G.L. Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeats' work is filled with mythology. It's been years since I studied his work, but I was so glad to read this. If you're at all interested in the symbolism and its roots in the Tarot - in his affiliation with the Order of the Golden Dawn, with Aleister Crowley, and in the way Yeats chose to interpret and pass along the magical and arcane - by all means read this. It's available with free registration here.

My favorite quote: "For Yeats magic was not so much a kind of poetry, as poetry was a kind of magic, and the object of both alike was evocation of energies and knowledge from beyond normal consciousness."

[Harry Allard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked that Kathleen Raine shows a serious engagement with--and understanding of--the studies and state of being that Yeats was operating from. The world is full of bad books about this stuff. This could've dived much deeper; Yeats' poetry is full of material from the HOGD, but it's an engaging and thought-provoking discussion of the Tarot and qabbalistic imagery in his work.

[Daniel Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

just wonderful, if you are into Tarot - short and sweet but it gives a lot