Psychic Daughter, Mystic Son, Sceptic Father

Abstract

John Butler Yeats’s aversion to his son’s dabblings with the occult began early and never ended. He boasted to his brother Isaac Butt Yeats in 1918 that he had helped Willie grow: “I abolished religion and insincerity,” he declared.¹ But, as he knew only too well, he had merely abolished Christianity and other conventional forms of belief in which vast groups of people find comfort in the face of the insoluble mysteries of human existence. He had not abolished William Butler Yeats’ s hunger for religion, which the son sought to feed through magic and mysticism. As early as 1892 the evidence of his father’ s dislike of mysticism is clear. John O’ Leary had apparently suggested that his protégé sprinkle cold water upon the heat and flame of his occultism, WBY ’ s reply is eloquent:

Now as to Magic. It is surely absurd to hold me “weak” or otherwise because I chose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life. Whether it be, or be not, bad for my health can only be decided by one who knows what magic is and not at all by any amateur. The probable explanation however of your somewhat testy postcard is that you were out at Bedford Park and heard my father discoursing about my magical pursuits out of the immense depths of his ignorance as to everything that I am doing and thinking.²