W.B. Yeats' Golden Dawn journal  

Posted by Frater R.T. in , ,


A friend of mine who writes at Herbis Orbis visited Dublin last year, and went to a W.B. Yeats exhibit at the National Library and shared these pictures she took of his Golden Dawn Journal.

She told me that "In addition to original manuscripts of his poems, plays and other writings, they had much of his Golden Dawn collection -- notebooks, hand-made tools, tarot, sketches, etc. Near the entrance was a facsimile of one of his earlier G.D. notebooks."

The detail is wonderful if you look at the full resolution images(click "All sizes: above the individual images). View the entire set

The detail and pure aesthetic of the journal warms my librarian's heart. I am so glad this has been preserved and was made available in this manner.

For more reading about Yeat's magical pursuits I recommend "Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses" which is a very well written book by Mary K. Greer, whose Tarot blog is linked to in my blogroll to your right. Another book, which I have not yet read, but appears worthwhile, is "Yeats's Ghosts" by Brenda Maddox. The grammarian in me wishes she had used the less cumbersome Yeats' in her title.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at Wednesday, March 11, 2009 and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

4 comments

Anonymous  

What a beautiful book! Thanks for making it known.

March 11, 2009 at 11:12 PM

Frater R.T.! Now I shall have to go and lighten up those photos -- thank you for bringing this to lux.

March 16, 2009 at 11:00 AM
Anonymous  

Anne brings all interesting things to those around her.
She's the best!

March 16, 2009 at 11:54 AM

I stumbled across this series of pictures as well as the website that is dedicated to such material where you can see a sample of some of his Golden Dawn notes.
While there isn't much to be learned from such journals or notes that I've yet encountered, there still is that charm of reading old hand-written manuscripts.

April 6, 2009 at 5:20 PM

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