{"id":7032,"date":"2015-02-11T05:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7032"},"modified":"2015-02-11T12:19:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T19:19:42","slug":"the-scholars-mistress-the-speckled-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7032","title":{"rendered":"The Scholar’s Mistress: The Speckled Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"William

William Butler Years<\/p><\/div>\n

As an English major at Reed College, I experienced a semester-long combined seminar on William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot<\/a>. To be honest, I probably liked Eliot’s poetry more, and I wrote a just-slightly-tongue-in-cheek paper on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats<\/em><\/a>, although I did not have the chops to turn it into a Broadway musical<\/a>, which is why I am not rich and famous.<\/p>\n

\"Maud

Maud Gonne<\/p><\/div>\n

Nevertheless, I knew that Yeats was important too. We discussed him only as poet and advocate of Irish cultural identity, not as ceremonial magician,\u00a0 as prose writer, nor as Irish senator.<\/p>\n

I heard something about A Vision<\/em>, his esoteric Compleat Theory of Everything<\/a>, but when I found a copy in the library, I bounced off it like a brick wall. I lacked the background to understand, quite simply, and of course I knew next to nothing about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn<\/a>, which he joined in the early 1890s.<\/p>\n

I picked up a lot more over the years, including reading about his long, sexually frustrated (for twenty-odd years) romantic friendship with the beautiful Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne \u2014 who was a magician too,<\/a> at least until the gunfire of the 1916 Easter Rising<\/a> drowned that out.<\/p>\n

Unknown to Yeats, Gonne had an affair with a French journalist and secretly gave birth to a boy, who died at the age of 2; she returned with her lover to the child\u2019s tomb to conceive again, believing that reincarnation would bring back the lost son.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then last November, in a session of the Western Esotericism Group at the American Academy of Religion, Thomas Willard of the U. of Arizona mentioned an unfinished novel by Yeats that I had never heard of, The Speckled Bird <\/em>[for the title’s origin, see note below].<\/p>\n

Between 1896-1902, “at a point in his career when he was dramatizing his occult experiences in fiction [such as]\u00a0The Secret Rose<\/em>, a sequence of stories that embody the conflict between the natural and spiritual worlds,”\u00a0 Yeats made four attempts at this autobiographical novel [General Editor’s Introduction, The Speckled Bird<\/em><\/a>].<\/p>\n

Its central character, Michael Hearne, “is dominated by three passions: his love of Margaret [Maud Gonne], his desire to gain access to the invisible world by means of occult knowledge and techniques, and his wish to devise an appropriate ritual for the inauguration and practice of the Celtic Mysteries” [ibid.].<\/p>\n

Michael and Margaret plan a series of rituals based on the quest for the Grail, and in a letter he tells her, “We will only make a beginning, but centuries after we are dead cities shall be overthrown, it may be, because of an air that we have hummed or because of a curtain full of [magical] meaning that we have hung upon a wall.”<\/p>\n

And when Michael and Maclagan, the character based on S. L. Mathers<\/a>, are walking in the British Museum’s Egyptian Rooms, Maclagan says, “The old gods are worshipped still in secret and what we have to do is make their worship open again.”<\/p>\n

In the most-developed version, Michael Hearne abandons the plan for a Celtic esoteric order and sets off on a journey with Maclagan to Arabia and Persia \u2014 which did not occur in Yeats’ real life.<\/p>\n

Yeats and Gonne’s Celtic-mystery groups never happened. Outer-world events \u2014 the First World War (1914\u201318), the Irish rebellions <\/a>(1916, 1919\u201321) foundation of the Irish Free State<\/a> (1922), and then its subsequent civil war<\/a> (1922\u201323) \u2014 were just a little too distracting.<\/p>\n

Some would argue that the Fellowship of the Four Jewels carried on something of Yeats’ and Gonne’s idea, and in the person of Ella Young<\/a>, it has a slight connection with the development of West Coast Pagan movements in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/strong><\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> I am not sure what “the speckled bird” meant to Yeats, although he knew that it came from Jeremiah 12:9<\/a>. Christian commentators regard the bird as emblematic of the church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Eurasian eagle-owl<\/p><\/div>\n

The metaphor is of small birds mobbing an owl or other raptor. Jeremiah seems casual about bird identification, but maybe his audience knew if he meant a Eurasian eagle-owl<\/a> or some kind of large hawk.<\/p>\n

That passage also provided the name of a well-known hymn<\/a>, here sung by country star Kitty Wells<\/a> and also by Lucinda Williams<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an English major at Reed College, I experienced a semester-long combined seminar on William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. To be honest, I probably liked Eliot’s poetry more, and I wrote a just-slightly-tongue-in-cheek paper on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, although I did not have the chops to turn it into a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[75,50,72,34,5],"class_list":["post-7032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-california","tag-ireland","tag-magick","tag-music","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Pq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1214,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1214","url_meta":{"origin":7032,"position":0},"title":"Did a ‘Pagan’ Bury the Staffordshire Hoard?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Staffordshire Hoard\" is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":452,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=452","url_meta":{"origin":7032,"position":1},"title":"June 13thHappy birthday, William Butler\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"June 13thHappy birthday, William Butler Yeats. Happy birthday, Gerald B. Gardner. Happy birthday, me; and I'm going to take fly rod and float tube and go annoy some trout, so no more blogging today.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11887,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11887","url_meta":{"origin":7032,"position":2},"title":"Why Is the Hippo Goddess Holding a Bull by a Chain in the Northern Sky?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This carving comes from a Greco-Roman-era Egyptian temple in Esna,where decorated walls are being carefully cleaned and original colors seen again. As workers in Egypt remove soot and dirt from the temple, sometimes with a mixture of alcohol and distilled water, the original painted carvings and hieroglyphics beneath are so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/bulls-leg.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12216,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12216","url_meta":{"origin":7032,"position":3},"title":"Interviews with Some Irish Witches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Thoughts from several contemporary Irish practitioners about the Craft and nature, including an appearance by Jenny Butler, a member of The Pomegranate's editorial board.","rel":"","context":"In \"Ireland\"","block_context":{"text":"Ireland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ireland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11826,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11826","url_meta":{"origin":7032,"position":4},"title":"How the Irish Invented Halloween (But Americans Saved It)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 22, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Friend-of-this-blog Jenny Butler (University College Cork) leads off this RTE video on \"How the Irish really invented Halloween.\" (You can watch a larger version at the link.) Also, divination with snails.","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13588,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13588","url_meta":{"origin":7032,"position":5},"title":"“Patrick, Pagans and Party Animals”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 16, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A screenshot from Patrick, Pagans and Party Animals, a video about the saint and the explosion of the secular holiday of St. Patrick's Day. Jenny Butler, a Pagan-studies scholar from University College Cork, appears at 3:00 and elsewhere to speak up for the \"Pagan\" dimension of the story. Requires free\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Catholicism\"","block_context":{"text":"Catholicism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=catholicism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/party-aniamsl-300x204.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7032"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7056,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7032\/revisions\/7056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}