I find another record, though made some time after the event,
of having imagined over the head of a person, who was a little of a
seer, a combined symbol of elemental air and elemental water.
of having imagined over the head of a person, who was a little of a
seer, a combined symbol of elemental air and elemental water.
Yeats
The seers when they are but speaking from tradition
will mix everything together, and speak of Finn mac Cool going to the
Assizes at Cork. Almost every one who has ever busied himself with such
matters has come, in trance or dream, upon some new and strange symbol
or event, which he has afterwards found in some work he had never read
or heard of. Examples like this are as yet too little classified, too
little analyzed, to convince the stranger, but some of them are proof
enough for those they have happened to, proof that there is a memory of
nature that reveals events and symbols of distant centuries. Mystics
of many countries and many centuries have spoken of this memory; and
the honest men and charlatans, who keep the magical traditions which
will some day be studied as a part of folk-lore, base most that is
of importance in their claims upon this memory. I have read of it in
Paracelsus and in some Indian book that describes the people of past
days as still living within it, 'Thinking the thought and doing the
deed. ' And I have found it in the prophetic books of William Blake, who
calls its images 'the bright sculptures of Los's Halls'; and says that
all events, 'all love stories,' renew themselves from those images. It
is perhaps well that so few believe in it, for if many did many would
go out of parliaments and universities and libraries and run into the
wilderness to so waste the body, and to so hush the unquiet mind that,
still living, they might pass the doors the dead pass daily; for who
among the wise would trouble himself with making laws or in writing
history or in weighing the earth if the things of eternity seemed ready
to hand?
VII
I find in my diary of magical events for 1899 that I awoke at 3 A. M.
out of a nightmare, and imagined one symbol to prevent its recurrence,
and imagined another, a simple geometrical form, which calls up dreams
of luxuriant vegetable life, that I might have pleasant dreams. I
imagined it faintly, being very sleepy, and went to sleep. I had
confused dreams which seemed to have no relation with the symbol. I
awoke about eight, having for the time forgotten both nightmare and
symbol. Presently I dozed off again and began half to dream and half
to see, as one does between sleep and waking, enormous flowers and
grapes. I awoke and recognized that what I had dreamed or seen was the
kind of thing appropriate to the symbol before I remembered having
used it.
I find another record, though made some time after the event,
of having imagined over the head of a person, who was a little of a
seer, a combined symbol of elemental air and elemental water. This
person, who did not know what symbol I was using, saw a pigeon flying
with a lobster in his bill. I find that on December 13, 1898, I used a
certain star-shaped symbol with a seeress, getting her to look at it
intently before she began seeing. She saw a rough stone house, and in
the middle of the house the skull of a horse. I find that I had used
the same symbol a few days before with a seer, and that he had seen
a rough stone house, and in the middle of the house something under
a cloth marked with the Hammer of Thor. He had lifted the cloth and
discovered a skeleton of gold with teeth of diamonds, and eyes of some
unknown dim precious stones. I had made a note to this last vision,
pointing out that we had been using a Solar symbol a little earlier.
Solar symbols often call up visions of gold and precious stones. I
do not give these examples to prove my arguments, but to illustrate
them. I know that my examples will awaken in all who have not met the
like, or who are not on other grounds inclined towards my arguments,
a most natural incredulity. It was long before I myself would admit
an inherent power in symbols, for it long seemed to me that one could
account for everything by the power of one imagination over another,
telepathy as it is called with that separation of knowledge and life,
of word and emotion, which is the sterility of scientific speech.
The symbol seemed powerful, I thought, merely because we thought it
powerful, and we would do just as well without it. In those days I used
symbols made with some ingenuity instead of merely imagining them. I
used to give them to the person I was experimenting with, and tell him
to hold them to his forehead without looking at them; and sometimes I
made a mistake. I learned from these mistakes that if I did not myself
imagine the symbol, in which case he would have a mixed vision, it
was the symbol I gave by mistake that produced the vision. Then I met
with a seer who could say to me, 'I have a vision of a square pond,
but I can see your thought, and you expect me to see an oblong pond,'
or 'The symbol you are imagining has made me see a woman holding a
crystal, but it was a moonlight sea I should have seen.
will mix everything together, and speak of Finn mac Cool going to the
Assizes at Cork. Almost every one who has ever busied himself with such
matters has come, in trance or dream, upon some new and strange symbol
or event, which he has afterwards found in some work he had never read
or heard of. Examples like this are as yet too little classified, too
little analyzed, to convince the stranger, but some of them are proof
enough for those they have happened to, proof that there is a memory of
nature that reveals events and symbols of distant centuries. Mystics
of many countries and many centuries have spoken of this memory; and
the honest men and charlatans, who keep the magical traditions which
will some day be studied as a part of folk-lore, base most that is
of importance in their claims upon this memory. I have read of it in
Paracelsus and in some Indian book that describes the people of past
days as still living within it, 'Thinking the thought and doing the
deed. ' And I have found it in the prophetic books of William Blake, who
calls its images 'the bright sculptures of Los's Halls'; and says that
all events, 'all love stories,' renew themselves from those images. It
is perhaps well that so few believe in it, for if many did many would
go out of parliaments and universities and libraries and run into the
wilderness to so waste the body, and to so hush the unquiet mind that,
still living, they might pass the doors the dead pass daily; for who
among the wise would trouble himself with making laws or in writing
history or in weighing the earth if the things of eternity seemed ready
to hand?
VII
I find in my diary of magical events for 1899 that I awoke at 3 A. M.
out of a nightmare, and imagined one symbol to prevent its recurrence,
and imagined another, a simple geometrical form, which calls up dreams
of luxuriant vegetable life, that I might have pleasant dreams. I
imagined it faintly, being very sleepy, and went to sleep. I had
confused dreams which seemed to have no relation with the symbol. I
awoke about eight, having for the time forgotten both nightmare and
symbol. Presently I dozed off again and began half to dream and half
to see, as one does between sleep and waking, enormous flowers and
grapes. I awoke and recognized that what I had dreamed or seen was the
kind of thing appropriate to the symbol before I remembered having
used it.
I find another record, though made some time after the event,
of having imagined over the head of a person, who was a little of a
seer, a combined symbol of elemental air and elemental water. This
person, who did not know what symbol I was using, saw a pigeon flying
with a lobster in his bill. I find that on December 13, 1898, I used a
certain star-shaped symbol with a seeress, getting her to look at it
intently before she began seeing. She saw a rough stone house, and in
the middle of the house the skull of a horse. I find that I had used
the same symbol a few days before with a seer, and that he had seen
a rough stone house, and in the middle of the house something under
a cloth marked with the Hammer of Thor. He had lifted the cloth and
discovered a skeleton of gold with teeth of diamonds, and eyes of some
unknown dim precious stones. I had made a note to this last vision,
pointing out that we had been using a Solar symbol a little earlier.
Solar symbols often call up visions of gold and precious stones. I
do not give these examples to prove my arguments, but to illustrate
them. I know that my examples will awaken in all who have not met the
like, or who are not on other grounds inclined towards my arguments,
a most natural incredulity. It was long before I myself would admit
an inherent power in symbols, for it long seemed to me that one could
account for everything by the power of one imagination over another,
telepathy as it is called with that separation of knowledge and life,
of word and emotion, which is the sterility of scientific speech.
The symbol seemed powerful, I thought, merely because we thought it
powerful, and we would do just as well without it. In those days I used
symbols made with some ingenuity instead of merely imagining them. I
used to give them to the person I was experimenting with, and tell him
to hold them to his forehead without looking at them; and sometimes I
made a mistake. I learned from these mistakes that if I did not myself
imagine the symbol, in which case he would have a mixed vision, it
was the symbol I gave by mistake that produced the vision. Then I met
with a seer who could say to me, 'I have a vision of a square pond,
but I can see your thought, and you expect me to see an oblong pond,'
or 'The symbol you are imagining has made me see a woman holding a
crystal, but it was a moonlight sea I should have seen.
