Notes to Section One

Notes Notes to Section One 1. Yeats wrote in 1928 that George had surprised him "on the afternoon of October 24th 1917, four days after my marriage, by attempting automatic writing" (VB 8), and he preserved a horoscope bearing that date and the hour 6.40 pm (see cover). Since the first Script we have discovered was dated 5 Nov, the records of the missing days are lost, destroyed or misplaced. The dates, times and places at the head of each sitting are usually George's, sometimes Yeats's. We have noted disagreements and occasionally attempted to explain. 2. These lines concerning the sun in moon and moon in sun contain the symbolic and astrological basis of V A and establish the psychological polarities of Yeats's theory of human personality. For further details consult CVA xii-xvii and MYV I 8-12. See the first fifteen lines of the AS of 6 Nov. 3. Thomas was the first and most important of several Controls and Guides who communicated through George as Medium. He belonged in 18, George's P. 4. We have been unable to identify Bolton. 5. The first of the Frustrators, Leo was a descendant or degenerate form of Leo Africanus. For details see Adams and Harper, pp3-20 and MYV I 8. For details see NB8, entries dtd 7, 14 and 18 Oct 21. 6. A stray scrap of paper in the Yeats Archives at Stony Brook refers to an Isabella of Ferrara. 7. The significance of this reference to the black and white horses in Plato's Phaedrus had been brought to Yeats's attention though a note from his friend W. T. Horton. The System itself was "said to develop" from Horton's note and a Script by Lady Edith Lyttelton. See CVA xii-xvii and MYVI10-12. 8. From this line to the end of the day's AS this exchange - of which only George's half is recorded - reveals her at her playful best. Both she and Yeats were aware that the four comers of the pyramid represented him and the three women foremost in his thought: Maud, Iseult and George. In a few days - if not already - they had become the cosmic tetrad in OJE, as we shall point out. The symbolic meaning of the pyramid of "4 comers four people" is somewhat clearer in the AS of 25 Nov. See Illustration 1. 9. Another reference to Horton and the Phaedrus myth. 10. Raymond Lully was best known for his extensive writings on alchemy. Yeats noted, on an erratum slip in The Green Helmet and Other Poems, that he had "put Raymond Lully's name in the room of the later Alchemist, Nicolas Flamel" (Wade, p. 96). 11. We have been unable to identify Daubry. 12. What George was referring to in Figaro is unclear. 13. Yeats escorted Iseult and Maud Gonne from Paris to London on 17 Sept. They were prevented from going to Ireland by the British government (L 632). 512 Notes 513 14. This offer was apparently a possible appointment to a professorship at Trinity College. 15. The word "telepathy" was coined by F. W. H. Myers, whose works Yeats knew and respected. "It is a mysterious link between conscious and subconscious minds" and must, according to Myers, "absolutely exist in the universe if the universe contains any unembodied intelligences at all" (EPS 376). 16. "The mantra", as defined by Madame Blavatsky, is "the rhythmically chanted prayer of the Hindus" (KT 70). 17. In their study for advancement through the grades in the GD the aspirants were required to "charge" the magical instruments used in ritualistic exercises (see YCD passim). 18. Filed with this day's Script is a six-page typescript headed "Script of G.H.L." [ie, Georgie Hyde-Lees]. These pages are a selection and con densation of what Yeats considered most important in AS of 8, 9 and 10 Nov. See MYV I 263-6. 19. The remainder of this introductory matter is George's effort to define the Evil Persona, for which Yeats found no use in VA. 20. These two Qs and As were the first to be numbered. Yeats is suggesting an investigation he had explored in the two essays of PASL: "Anima Hominis" and "Anima Mundi" (Myth 343-66). 21. Daily Self was replaced by Primary on 9 Nov. 22. Here as elsewhere in the AS "Medium" is a reference to George. 23. The square is apparently the symbol of the sesquiquadrate, an evil aspect, being a difference of 1350 in longitude. 24. A reference to three diagrams "for Iseult". 25. "Astral body" is a term "employed in theosophy to denote the link between the nervous system and the cosmic reservoir of energy" (EPS 16). 26. A reference to Mrs Patrick Campell, "a certain actress" who was one of the Examples for 19. 27. Percy Bysshe Shelley, an Example of 17, Yeats's P. 28. Memory dreams are contrasted to vision dreams throughout the AS. 29. Although Helen remained an archetypal ideal, she was shifted from 16 to 14, a less desirable P (see CVA 66-9, 71-5 and cf Myth 360). 30. The archetypal figure of 28, the Fool is described as "the natural man" and "The Child of God" (CVA 115). 31. Walter Savage Landor belongs in 17, though he was rejected, perhaps inadvertantly, as an example in VA. 32. The following lines represent the first thoughtful consideration of the Daimon, about whom much was to be written in the AS and VA. 33. The withered hand became the symbol of "Bricriu of the Sidhe" in DIE with which Yeats was soon to be preoccupied. See VP1543. 34. A further comment on Paris and Helen, identified in A2 above. 35. Henry ("Harold") Tudor Tucker, George's stepfather. When Yeats re corded the information about these three people in CF (T13x), he added three names with appropriate symbols: Iseult's, George's and his own. 36. After this line at the bottom of the page and upside down, George wrote: "Annales de psychiatrie July 1892. Oct: 1893". She was probably referring to Annales des sciences psychiques, a widely read monthly magazine founded in 1891 by Charles Richet, who was President of the SPR in 1905. Yeats read Richet's works and referred to the Annales in a significant note to "Sweden borg, Mediums, and the Desolate Places" (VBWI 324). Dated 14 Oct 14, this essay was not published until 1920. 514 Notes 37. The remainder of this dialogue is perhaps George's defensive argument against Yeats's love or infatuation for Maud. See Blake, p 149: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence." Blake's theory of Contraries is basic to the philosophy of the AS and VA. 38. The following discussion apparently describes George's conception of her part in the AS. 39. At this point Yeats made a bold X in the margin, probably to remind himself of the significance of the material. 40. Another X is in the margin. 41. Another X is in the margin. The underlining (here printed as italics) was apparently made at the same time. 42. This is the first of numerous references to Freud scattered throughout the AS but especially in the early sittings when Yeats and George were worried about the psychological problems of Iseult Gonne. 43. We cannot identify this name. If a Control, it was present only one other time. See word at beginning of sitting on evening of 6 Nov. 44. When Yeats published OlE (being planned at this time) in Four Plays for Dancers (1921), he included a note which partially explains his thoughts about physical beauty: Much that Robartes has written might be a commentary on Castiglione's saying that the physical beauty of woman is the spoil or monument of the victory of the soul, for physical beauty, only possible to subjective natures, is described as the result of emotional toil in past lives. (VP1566) 45. The following dialogue is another of the Yeatses' Freudian analyses of Iseult's complexes. "Subliminal" may have been borrowed from F. W. H. Myers. In a discussion of "the idea of a threshold . .. of consciousness" he wrote that "subliminal mean[s) 'beneath that of threshold'" (Myers, vol. 1, p14). 46. This may be a reference to translations from Bengali to French which Iseult attempted in 1914 or to a project which Yeats started her on in Aug 1916 (MYV 136). 47. This and the next two responses to unrecorded Qs probably allude to Yeats's relationship to Maud. 48. These two lines, slightly changed, are quoted in VB 233n. See also Mem 126 and Au 379. 49. George is recalling Yeats's first draft of the Autobiography, completed in late 1916 or early 1917: "I dreamed that I was lying on my back in a great stone trough in a great round house. I knew it was an initiation, and a wind was blowing over [me), I think from the feet up" (Mem 127). 50. George refers to the Celtic Mysteries, a religious order similar to the GD, which Yeats sought to establish at the turn of the century. The spear was one of the four sacred objects. See MYV 137 and Kalogera, passim. Notes to Section Two 1. There is a break in the AS from 12 to 20 Nov when the Yeatses were in London. From this time forward the AS is more carefully structured. The Qs, usually in Yeats's hand, are recorded and linked to the AS.

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