Yeats: A Vision

Yeats, W. B., A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka, London: T Werner Lauries Ltd, 1925

A Vision or A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka written by the Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1867-1939) is a privately published study of various occult, esoteric, historical and philosophical subjects. It was the result of a collaboration between Yeats and his wife Georgie.

Yeats, W. B., A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka, London: T Werner Lauries Ltd, 1925

Yeats, W. B., A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka, London: T Werner Lauries Ltd, 1925

A Vision or A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka written by the Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1867-1939) is a privately published study of various occult, esoteric, historical and philosophical subjects. It was the result of a collaboration between Yeats and his wife Georgie.

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A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka written by the Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1867-1939) is a privately published study of various occult, esoteric, historical and philosophical subjects. It was the result of a collaboration between Yeats and his wife George.

Yeats’ wife George Hyde-Lees believed she was a medium and could communicate with the spirit world through a process called automatic writing. Similarly, Yeats had a lifelong interest in the occult. His interests were theosophy, Celtic mysticism, séances and took hallucinogenic drugs. Yeats moved in literary, artistic and political circles and was involved in enthusiastic experimentation.

Yeats and George Hyde-Lees married when he was 52 and she was 25 and their shared interests in all things supernatural was an important part of their relationship. Yeats married her after his obsessive love for his muse, Maud Gonne, was spurned repeatedly. Yeats also proposed to Gonne's young daughter, Iseult. Yeats had many other liaisons with young women about which his wife was fully aware. In later life Yeats was confrontational in his hostility to the muscular Catholicism of the newly independent Free State. In particular, in the Irish Senate, he unsuccessfully defended divorce which became prohibited by law.

A Vision was the result of Yeats' and Georgie's mystical and pseudo-supernatural experiences. Yeats believed in reincarnation and borrowed from many esoteric sources, philosophies and religions. He claims that all our past, present and future lives are happening simultaneously in a non-linear fashion. Yeats believed that linear time and material reality is in fact an illusion while our desires are actually independent forces that use sentient mortal beings for their grand purposes.

Most people believe that all they are is their linear personal history from birth, and youth to old age and death. Yeats believed that there is no one self but rather infinite numbers of possible pasts, presents and futures.

Collective consciousness, according to Yeats, is the sum of all individual consciousnesses so that all humans and every living thing are connected by the same reincarnated spirit. All life evolved from one source and therefore, Yeats believed, they shared the same life force or world spirit. The complexity of A Vision is an attempt to make sense of this universe.