חזון (ספר)
ביאורים

↑  W. B. Yeats's A Vision, Automatic Script - בהתייחסו לתהליך הכתיבה האוטומטית המשותף של הזוג ייטס, ניל מאן מסתמך על טבלה של התאריכים והמקומות של אירועי התקשור, תוך מתן תשומת לב לפואמה האוטוביוגרפית הכלולה בספר "חזון", "גאומטריית המדבר או המתנה של הארון א-ראשיד" (Desert Geometry or The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid), המהווה אקספוזיציה ליחידה השנייה של הספר "מה שהח'ליף סירב ללמוד" (What The Caliph Refused To Learn), בו משתמש ייטס במסגרת של פרדיגמה גאומטרית Gyre, אשר לדידו של ייטס משמשת הפרדיגמה הגאומטרית הזו לתיאור תנועתיות העולם ומוחו של האדם, ולתיאור מעגליות ההיסטוריה
↑  Whether you choose to call the extraordinary phenomenon that occurred in Ashdown Forest subconscious direction, cross-dreaming, extrasensory perception, subliminal consciousness, split subjectivity, telepathy, clairvoyance, channelling, psychic transcription, ‘faculty X’, ‘Mind Energy’, or plain hocus-pocus, the results are obvious - Becoming George, 133
↑  In A Vision, Yeats attempts to provide a metaphysical framework for understanding the human experience, history, and the cosmos. The work is deeply influenced by a series of automatic writings dictated to Yeats by his wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees, following their marriage in 1917. Yeats and Hyde-Lees believed these writings were messages from spirits or “communicators.” A Vision is organized into four books, each unraveling a facet of Yeats’s conceptualization of the universe and humanity’s place within it.

Book 1, “What the Caliph Partly Learned,” introduces Robartes, a mystic who unearths an esoteric system revealing cycles of history and human nature. Utilizing the phases of the moon as an allegory, the system classifies individuals into 28 types, each representing distinct personalities and destinies. The moon’s ever-changing face, from waxing to waning, symbolizes cyclical progressions in human temperament and societal epochs.

Book 2, “What the Caliph Refused to Learn,” ventures into the realm of poetry and contemplation. The poem that comprises Chapter 1 emphasizes the depth and layers of human connection, suggesting that true understanding goes beyond the superficial. In the poem, the beauty of a woman is portrayed as ephemeral, yet beneath it lies enduring wisdom. The poem is followed in the next chapter by a philosophical exposition of the cyclical nature of existence, fate, and destiny. Yeats introduces the “gyre” as a symbolic representation of life’s oscillations between expansion and contraction. He bridges these concepts with astrological symbols and historical events, hinting at a metaphysical connection that binds all things.

Book 3, “Dove or Swan,” opens with “Leda,” a poem capturing the tumultuous encounter between Leda and Zeus. This incident not only has personal implications for Leda but also resonates through history, influencing events like the Trojan War. The subsequent chapter delves into the cyclical nature of history and culture. Yeats traces civilizations’ ebbs and flows, from their spirited beginnings to eventual decline, highlighting ancient Greece and Rome as prime examples. He draws parallels between historical trends, religious transformations, and artistic shifts, from the grandeur of Byzantine art to the introspection of the Renaissance.

Book 4, “The Gates of Pluto,” is a reflection on life, death, and what lies beyond. “The Fool by the Roadside” contemplates the transitory nature of human existence, presenting life as fleeting. Yet, amid this fleeting existence, Yeats alludes to the enduring nature of true love. The next chapter takes a deep dive into the soul’s journey, from life to death and the metaphysical stages beyond. Yeats introduces the “Daimon,” a spiritual entity intrinsically tied to humans, guiding their fates. As souls transition through death, they embark on a series of spiritual awakenings and returns, experiencing varying states of consciousness influenced by their past actions. The chapter culminates by discussing visionary experiences that link individuals to collective human memory. Finally, in the poem “All Souls’ Night,” Yeats evokes a world where the living can commune with the dead. As the veil between the two realms thins, the poem contemplates life, death, and the truths that might only be comprehended in the hereafter.
↑  Blake, in the Mental Traveller, describes a struggle, a struggle perpetually repeated between a man and woman, and as the one ages, the other grows young. A child is given to an old woman and Her fingers number every nerve, Just as a miser counts his gold; She lives upon his shrieks and cries And she grows young as he grows old. Till he becomes a bleeding youth And she becomes a virgin bright;And bends her down to his delight. Then he in his turn becomes “an aged shadow” and is driven from his door, where “From the fire on the hearth a little female babe doth spring.” He must wander “until he can a maiden win” and then all is repeated for “The honey of her infant lips The bread and wine of her sweet smile The wild game of her roving eye Does him to infancy beguile.” Till he becomes a wayward babe And she a weeping woman old” When Edwin J. Ellis and I had finished out big book on the philosophy of William Blake, I felt that we had no understanding of this poem: we had explained its details, for they occur elsewhere in his verse or his pictures, but not in the poem as a whole, not the myth, the perpetual return to the same thing; not that which moved Blake to write it; but when I had understood the double cones, I understood it also. The woman and the man are two competing gyres growing at one another’s expense, but with Blake it is not enough to say that one is beauty and one is wisdom, for he conceives this conflict as that in all love—whether between the elements as in Parmenides, “the wanton love” of Aristotle, or between man and woman—which compels each to be slave and tyrant by turn. In our system also it is a cardinal principle that anything separated from its opposite—and victory is separation—“consumes itself away.” The existence of the one depends upon the existence of the other Blake and his wife signed in 1789, a document approving the foundation of the Swedenborgian Church, his brother remained a Swedenborgian to the end of his life, his friend Flaxman was a Swedenborgian and a very learned man, and it is possible therefore that he found among fellow-believers a knowledge of gyres and vortexes obtained from Swedenborg himself, though at that time inaccessible in print. Or, on the other hand, those beings which gave that knowledge as it is in “The Spiritual Diary” may have given it to Blake also.
↑  ‘In the symbolism the Celestial Body is said to age as the Passionate Body grows young, sometimes the Celestial Body is a prisoner in a tower rescued by the Spirit. Sometimes, grown old, it becomes the personification of evil. It pursues, persecutes and imprisons the Daimons.* *See Blake’s Mental Traveller. Neither Edwin Ellis nor I, nor any commentator has explained the poem, though one or another has explained certain passages. The student of A Vision will understand it at once. Did Blake and my instructors drawn upon some unknown historical source, some explanation perhaps of the lunar circuit?