Download or read book W.B. Yeats--twentieth-century Magus written by Susan Johnston Graf and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: W.B. Yeats -- Twentieth-Century Magus is a comprehensive study of his magical practices and beliefs. Yeats moved through many different phases of spiritual development, believing that his life was an intellectual, spiritual, and artistic quest -- a quest greatly influenced by Celtic lore, Theosophy, Golden Dawn ceremonial magic, Swedenborg's metaphysics, the works of Jacob Boehme, and Neo-Platonism. For Yeats, writing poetry was an act of divine possession, and he believed that a perfected soul was the source of his inspiration, visiting him during times of superconscious awareness. Susan Johnston Graf meticulously documents and provides evidence that Yeats's poetry is a brilliant, lyric narrative of reality captured through the mind of a practicing magician working in the Western Tradition.