Showing posts with label Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Show all posts

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.