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  • Writer: Michael Martin
    Michael Martin
  • Dec 29, 2022
  • 8 min read

William Butler Yeats

In mid-November of this year I was in Washington, DC for a conference. It was really a great conference (on The Brothers Karamazov) and one of the things that was nice about it was that we participants were given a few hours downtime in the afternoons. The conference was held at a hotel in Georgetown, so in my time off I’d walk around a bit (it was unseasonably warm and hospitable to perambulation). One thing I did was visit “the Exorcist stairs,” the site of the final scene of the most terrifying film ever made when Fr. Damien Karras tells the devil to take him and leave the possessed girl before jumping out of a window to his death at the bottom of these stairs. It ended up being the most un-touristy thing in the world. In fact, I passed it twice while trying to find it. The stairs empty onto a pretty abandoned-looking parking lot and one would never guess the place to hold such an iconic place in the history of cinema. Nevertheless, I took a few photos (see below) and met two Irish women about my age who were also taking pictures. We joked that after the film had so traumatized us as teenagers, visiting the scene of the crime was a psychological necessity.

Photo credit: me

The rest of the downtime I spent cruising Georgetown’s used bookstores. Outside of my farm and the Boarshead Tavern in Stratford, Ontario, there is no place I feel more at home as in a used bookstore, a place where old and good books don’t go to die but to be reborn. And let’s face it: Kindle is the devil. When it all goes down, so will your digital library. Hoard books: humanity depends on you.


Well, on one such used bookstore sojourn, I found a copy of James Merrill’s magnum opus, The Changing Light at Sandover. I used to own this book, but I must have sold it or given it away somewhere along the years, but I never read much of it. Initially, I was intrigued by the book because Harold Bloom had nominated it for inclusion in the canon. (You can read some of Bloom and Merrill’s correspondence here.) More recently, my friend, the novelist and translator Jonathan Geltner and I were talking (okay, eyerolling) about the Catholic traddie adulation for formal verse and how poetry could use a rediscovery of the epic when Merrill’s book came up—which, we agreed, is certainly not the formal verse or epic Catholic traddies would have in mind, let alone add to the canon. The reason The Changing Light at Sandover is not the formal verse they would want is a simple one: much of the text was transmitted to Merrill and his partner David Jackson through the agency of a Ouija board.

Changing Light is rather a virtuoso piece as a collection of formal verse, wherein Merrill (and his interlocutors?) takes turns at blank verse, terza rima, the sonnet, brace octave, alexandrines, sestina, and so on—he literally pulls out all the stops. But despite Bloom’s enthusiasm, the poetry itself leaves me pretty cold, flat, uninspired. Nevertheless, I read the entire thing, all 623 pages of it. I am probably eligible for an award.

I can’t help but read Changing Light without thinking of William Butler Yeats’s A Vision, a work of metaphysical speculation also produced with the aid of supernatural interlocutors, this time by way of Yeats’s wife Georgie’s experiments in automatic writing, at first, and later by way of trance or somnabulistic locutions. (John Michael Greer recently wrote a very good piece on the Yeatses). In the 1980s I bought a first American edition of the book (1938)—I still have it—but could never quite assimilate its complicated and obscure system of symbolism. To be honest, I still can’t, as I just read through it once again after finishing Changing Light. I am sure, given time and effort, one could get to the bottom of Yeats’s system—much in the way one does through the heroic task of comprehending his master Blake’s. But it isn’t gonna be easy.


One thing is for sure: after reading through Changing Light, encountering Yeats’s prose dropped like of draught of new wine after gorging on Kool-Aid. He was a masterful poet and a stunning essayist and the letter to Ezra Pound and short comic narrative that precede his explanation of the system he received are delightful immersions in the aura of a man at the height of his literary powers. Indeed, I didn’t realize how truly impoverished was Merrill’s language until following it with Yeats’s. But, really, who could measure up?

Interestingly, Yeats (or should I say “Yeats”?) makes an appearance in Merrill’s text as on of his interlocutors, though W.H. Auden (“W.H. Auden”) plays a much more prominent role. The entities with which Merrill interacts, in fact, deliver a diagram not unlike the gyres Yeats received from his. (Incidentally, these cones or gyres are very similar to the inverted or double pyramids found in the diagrams of the 17th century Paracelsian physician and Rosicrucian apologist Robert Fludd—I write about this in both Religion and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England and The Submerged Reality).


In addition, Merrill’s “Yeats” delivers some Yeatsian verse that sounds like a very bad imitation of WBY:


O SHINING AUDIENCE, IF AN OLD MAN’S SPEECH

STIFF FROM LONG SILENCE CAN NO LONGER STRETCH

TO THAT TOP SHELF OF RIGHTFUL BARD’S APPAREL

FOR WYSTAN AUDEN & JAMES MEREL

WHO HAVE REFASHIOINED US BY FASHIONING THIS,

MAY THE YOUNG SINGER HEARD ABOVE

THE SPINNING GYRES OF HER TRUE LOVE

CLOAK THEM IN HEAVEN’S AIRLOOM HARMONIES.

I’m sure the dead Yeats would rather live than be associated with such doggerel, a veritable Yeatsian parody. Whatever the case, is it not telling that Bloom failed to detect Merrill’s agon with Yeats in what may be one of the most illustrative examples of his “anxiety of influence”? Yet even Homer nods.

One has to wonder why poets—or anyone, for that matter—would take to these sort of supernatural devices for seeking wisdom. Often they happen somewhat unexpectedly, as was the case with Yeats and his wife, but to take up a Ouija board some intentionality is certainly involved. But what’s behind such intention? Curiosity? Vanity? For Yeats, anyway, his aims were clearly revealed by his interlocutors: “we have come to give you metaphors for poetry.” It would not be wrong to wonder whether or not this voice was a projection of Yeats’s own desires—or, just as possible, the desires of Mrs. Yeats to keep her husband attentive to their marriage, as even she admitted, though she subsequently avowed that the experiment exceeded beyond that humble ambition. But, clearly, Yeats’s experiment did yield substantial metaphors for poetry, whereas Merrill’s produced but idle forms of distraction for the monied and entitled class to which he belonged with little genuine poetry added in the bargain. To Yeats’s investigations we owe thanks for one of the finest poems in the language, “The Second Coming,” from which I quote:


Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

These lines would never have come into being had not Yeats seriously pursued these metaphors.

These were not my first encounters with supernatural communication, even at second hand. In my early twenties, I, too, undertook similar experiments at the instigation of a woman I was dating. Neither one of us expected it to work. But it did, and our experience was very similar to those of the Yeatses and Merrill, though we were given no system of metaphor. My wife knew people undertaking similar experiments at around the same time (we did not know each other then) and the wine glass that group used as a planchette moved of its own accord. I don’t think there is a purely psychological or materialist explanation for such phenomena that could hold water.

Much later, I wrote about the similar experiences of advisor to Elizabeth I, the polymath and magician John Dee in my dissertation, later published as Religion and the Encounter with God. My take there is that Dee used the various technologies available to him—an obsidian crystal ball, various fumigations, incantations/prayers, and tables—to gain access to hidden knowledge known only to angels. Or so he thought. Among other dangers (the sapping of etheric vitality not the least of them), trying to contact spirits by these technological means—and, believe it or not, a Ouija board is a piece of technology—though they “work,” is by no means a guarantee that the information or the informants are reliable. In fact, what happened with Merrill, Dee, and the Yeatses gibes very well with my own experiences: initial profitable experiences and interesting information gradually give way to the strangeness, insincerity, and ridicule. But, often by that point, the unwitting victims of the ridicule have already swallowed the bait and are on the hook. This clearly happened with Dee, who violated some of the core values of the Christian faith he held so very sincerely at the instigation of the spirits with which he communicated. And it is also evident that this is what happened with Merrill, especially in the way his interlocutors often degenerate into parodic versions of their earlier rhetorical selves. Indeed, at one point they have Merrill and Jones convinced they’re conversing with a unicorn from the age of Atlantis. Apparently My Little Pony was otherwise occupied.


Yeats seems to have been less deceived—but even he was fooled. Some of his interlocutors, he later discovered, were leading him down a garden path; and these he later identified as “Frustrators.” As they once told him, “Remember we will deceive you if we can.” Merrill and Dee did not appear to be so discerning (though Dee’s assistant Edward Kelley was certainly suspicious and even quit working with Dee for a while because of it).


Among other things, Merrill’s spirits foretell a “GREAT THINNING” of the human population on the horizon, an aim also announced by the Georgia Guidestones and, let’s face it, the WEF and Bill Gates (draw your own conclusions). Merrill and Jackson conducted their conversations during the heyday of the “population bomb” hysteria in the halcyon days of promised death by “THE COMING ICE AGE,” and the spirits with which they spoke seemed to have adopted, at least to some degree, the lingua franca of the time and of the ruling classes.


Valentin Tomberg offers practical insight into this phenomena. Demons, “the hierarchy of the left,” as he calls them, do not lack faith in God, they lack faith in Man. As such some of them look for ways to ridicule the pride of men. One such demon he identifies as Mephistopheles, who uses ridicule as his primary accusatory method and “it is primarily human pretension and snobbery that he turns into ridicule” as a way to castigate “spiritual snobs.” This is precisely what happened with Merrill (who never saw it) and Dee (who probably did, but too late). Yeats seems to have been a little wiser and more honest with and about himself, which is what, I think, helped him avoid the ridicule of demons; but even he was not entirely unscathed.


Finally, look around, especially on social media and in the news media. There you will find demons ridiculing men and women at scale. But since we are in a post-Christian age, an age of decline, as a culture we have no vocabulary or diagnostic tools available to us for discerning the state in which we find ourselves. And we are all made to look like fools.


Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit. Twitter: @Sophiologist_

  • Writer: Michael Martin
    Michael Martin
  • Oct 20, 2022
  • 4 min read

Things are about to get weird.


I know what you’re thinking: things are already weird, Michael. But it’s about to get even weirder with the election. The heavens are declaring it.

On November 8th, Election Day here in the “land of democracy” [sic], we will see some significant portents as regards the positions of the planets and their relationship to one another.

First of all, it’s the day of a full lunar eclipse which will be visible in North America and will be fully visible in Washington, DC (which is significant) from roughly 3:00 – 6:00 a.m. Lunar eclipses typically act as release valves that loose the tension brought by a solar eclipse that typically anticipates it by two weeks. In this case we will have a partial solar eclipse on October 25th that will be visible in most of Europe (including Ukraine and eastern Russia) and the Middle East. That’s fun. Things may get very tense in that area of the world next week (not that they aren’t already—but just wait).

So that’s one thing.

In addition to this, the Sun and Mercury will be in an exact conjunction (meaning: at the same spot in the sky). Among other things, Mercury rules communication and acts as a triggering mechanism in astrological movements. This by itself is not necessarily a big deal. Mercury is not all that far from the Sun (it is the closest planet after all) so such a conjunction is not all that uncommon, this being the fourth such conjunction this year. The kicker is Uranus, which will be in exact conjunction to the Moon during this eclipse. This means that Sun-Mercury will be in exact opposition to Moon-Uranus. Uranus, which rules electronics, technology, and innovation, is also a bit of a loose cannon: you never know what it’s going to do, but you know it will do something. This is a real “expect the unexpected” deal, and, so, prediction becomes a bit of a challenge. As an aside, last year when Uranus was conjunct my Moon while Saturn squared it, I expected my aged mother, who suffers from advanced vascular dementia, to die (the Moon, among other things, represents the archetypal mother). She didn’t die, though she did get very ill. What happened, however, was that my wife developed rapid-onset uterine cancer, which we suspect was due to shedding from a v@xxed relative. My wife is healthy and cancer-free now, praise God. But I digress.

But wait, there’s more!

Not only will also this action be taking place in the sky, but Saturn also wants to play. Saturn, known as the Greater Malefic to the medieval astrologers, is the cosmic badass, the archetypal father and ruler of authority, structure, stability, and stuff like that. It often represents the father in the horoscope. So, anyway, Saturn will be in square (a ninety-degree angle) to both Sun-Mercury and Moon-Uranus, a configuration known as a T-square. (Another aside: my birth chart is just crummy with these things. I don’t recommend trying this at home.)

Oh, but that’s not weird enough. In addition, the Sun-Mercury conjunction will also be in exact conjunction to the fixed star Zubenelgenubi, one of the scales of justice in the sign of Libra (though some astrologers think of as one malevolent motherscratcher).

The take-home: though Uranus acts as a bit of a wildcard here, I can imagine there will be weird stuff happening with voting machines or even power outages (Uranus triggered by the energy of the Moon and Mercury), though I think Saturn will act as a check to this getting too out of hand. Does this mean State power will intervene? Or does it mean that tradition will prevail? Those are important questions, because I think this is precisely what is at stake in this election. Whatever the case, I think it is very possible there will probably be some potentially violent (and without a doubt emotional) protests or other kinds of (almost) spontaneous eruptions (definitely the right word) on November 8th. You probably don’t need astrology to predict that. But, because of Saturn’s role, I would guess that a conservative victory is coming. I could be wrong, of course, but that seems to be what the stars are saying.


One more thing.

November 8th is an important day on the liturgical calendar of the Eastern churches: The Feast of St. Michael the Archangel and All the Bodiless Powers of Heaven. THIS. IS. BIG. Valentin Tomberg calls St. Michael “the Archistrategist,” and even identifies Tuesday as the day of the week under his rulership and, in keeping with Hermetic tradition, associates him as the representative of the Sun. This gives me tremendous hope. But don’t kid yourself: we really are in a battle between good and evil. And St. Michael, Commander of the Heavenly Hosts, is on the job.

But things are still gonna get weird, at least for a little while.


Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit. Twitter: @Sophiologist_


  • Writer: Michael Martin
    Michael Martin
  • Oct 18, 2022
  • 4 min read

A few thoughts and observations, possibly related, but not by design.

Stella Matutina Farm

Last week our CSA ended for the year (CSA, for those of you who might not know, stands for “Community Supported Agriculture”). Our last shares included onions, celery, winter squash, arugula, garlic, and the remnant of our hot and sweet peppers. I haven’t calculated how much produce we sent out over our nineteen weeks of the CSA, but it is certainly in thousands and thousands of pounds. We fed thirty-three families over this time—clean, biodynamically-grown, nutrient-dense produce. Our garden is only about ¾ of an acre. That’s a lot of people (not including my own family) who can be fed from a relatively small amount of land.

We practice what used to be called “the French intensive method” for growing and also observe “no-dig” approaches to cultivation. We almost never use heavy machinery. This was the seventh year of farming at this location, and the fertility and health of the farm are astounding. We had very few problems with insects—almost none at all—though we did have some rabbits poaching a few vegetables. But the creation of a biodynamic farm is the creation of a synergistic relationship with nature. That’s a long way of saying the farm is starting to come into its maturity. The being of the farm has shown itself to us.

That reminds me: I think I may have seen the Great Pan in the woods just beyond the garden a few weeks ago.

With the coming of the Fall, the rhythm of the farm changes. We haven’t been doing much in the garden (outside of harvesting), though I do need to plant garlic pretty soon. Instead, our attention turns more to getting through winter. To this end, we brought our lambs to the butcher and will process our geese next week (and I do have some older laying hens—no longer laying all that much—who need to follow them pretty soon thereafter and be turned into stewing hens). Our steer will move along sometime in late winter. And did I mention deer season is coming up? We’re still milking our cow, Fiona, and we’ve been trying to put up some butter and cheeses and will continue to do so. I also have been curing some pork bellies, rendering beeswax, and making meads and metheglins. In fact, I have a metheglin working right now I’ve flavored with juniper berries and spruce twigs—should be ready for Christmas. In the basement we have baskets and boxes full of potatoes, sweet potatoes, red and yellow onions, and winter squash and still have to pull the rutabaga, arugula, kohlrabi, and collards from the garden; but they should all be able to last in their beds for a few more weeks. Then we’ll plant spinach in the hoop house. And I haven’t even mentioned cutting up some fallen trees in the woods for use in the wood stove next year.

The take-home: scarcity is a myth.

Oh yeah, I’m a scholar. I almost forgot.

I recently delivered a keynote address for the “Pavel Florensky for the Twenty-first Century” conference sponsored by The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge University. The title of my talk was “The Colour Blue: On the Sophiology of Pavel Florensky” (note the British spelling!). I heard proceedings from the conference may be published in book form, but I haven’t heard anything about video of the talks being made available. Other speakers included my soul brothers John Milbank and Bruce Foltz. Many of my readers will be familiar with John, but, if you don’t know about Bruce, check out his very fine book The Noetics of Nature.

I will participating in a colloquium on The Brothers Karamazov in Washington, DC next month. This will happen right after the election. Last time I was in DC, it was for another colloquium just after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Women were still wearing their knitted “pussy hats.” I imagine this visit may be just as fun. Speaking of eye-rolling, I may do one touristy thing while I’m there: visit the Exorcist stairs!

In addition, I will also be giving a talk on Valentin Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot next month at the Detroit branch (though actually in Berkley) of The Theosophical Society on November 4th. Starts at 7:00.

Speaking of Meditations on the Tarot, Mike Sauter and I recently interviewed its English translator, astrosopher and spiritual researcher, Robert Powell about the book (and many other things) on The Regeneration Podcast, which you can listen to on Podbean, Podchaser, and Spotify or watch on YouTube. While you’re there, subscribe. We recently interviewed, among others, Dominic D’Souza, Mark Vernon, and Ronald Hutton--so check them out! Upcoming guests include David Bentley Hart, Jonathan Geltner (see below), and Matthew Milliner, whose Mother of the Lamb has just been published and is mandatory reading for anyone interested in Sophiology.


Oh...and I finally uploaded the video on my interview with biblical scholar and Methodist preacher Margaret Barker. which appeared in print in Jesus the Imagination, Volume 5: The Divine Feminine, to my YouTube channel.

Reading list: besides rereading Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, I have been reading Jonathan Geltner’s excellent Absolute Music. You should read it too. I also have a stack of books on Distributism, enclosure, agrarianism, and folk religion on hand as I plan on getting a book on these themes (and others) finished before the next CSA year gets into full swing in April.

If I do say so myself, I also wrote a lovely arrangement of (and departure from) Hubert Perry’s setting of Blake’s “And did those feet in ancient time (Jerusalem)” which I would love to record one of these days.


Plant your love and let it grow.

Michael’s latest book is Sophia in Exile. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: Flesh & Spirit. Twitter: @Sophiologist_


The Center for Sophiological Studies

8780 Moeckel Road  Grass Lake, MI 49240 USA

email: Director

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