William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost figures in 20th-century literature, renowned for his poetry, as well as his work as a literary critic and dramatist. This article explores his life and legacy.

William Butler Yeats is known to most as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. You might know that he was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, that he was an Irish nationalist, or that he had a longstanding unrequited love for his fellow activist Maud Gonne, but what many don’t know about him is the depth of his involvement in esoteric circles. While the influence of the occult is apparent in his work, it goes beyond surface level interest or simple fascination into a lifelong conviction and belief in magic and folklore.

Yeats was born June 13th, 1865 in Dublin, Ireland. He was fiercely proud of his Irish nationality and drew heavy inspiration from Irish folk tales and mythology in his early works. He was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival with his works Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, a collection of works by 18th and 19th century authors, and The Celtic Twilight, a collection of prose and poetry about Irish myths, magic, and ancient traditions. He continued to use Irish folklore and magic as inspirations in his poems and plays, with works like The Countess Cathleen and The Wind among the Reeds.

In 1885 Yeats was involved in the founding of the Dublin Hermetic Order, which later became the Dublin branch of the Theosophical Society, though he left the organization in 1890. During the same year he was admitted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and became an active recruiter for the organization. He was involved in the organization’s later power struggles as well, being present during the “Battle of Blythe Road”, which was not so much a battle as it was an incredibly dramatic argument. Yeats remained involved in the offshoot organization Stella Matutina until 1921.

During the “Battle of Blythe Road”, Macgregor Mathers, one of the three founders of the order, sent Aleister Crowley to the London location to retrieve certain objects for him. Crowley was intercepted by the landlord who then sent word to Yeats and another member upstairs. There’s a rumor about the event that says that Yeats proceeded to kick Crowley down the stairs of the building, but the reported account is not so violent. The two went downstairs and told Crowley he was not allowed in the building, and upon Crowley’s refusal to leave Yeats asked the landlord to call for a constable who told him to leave the premises.

In September of 1917 Yeats proposed to Georgie Hyde-Lees, and the two were wed October 20th of the same year. During their honeymoon, Yeats was rather dejected, having been once again rejected by both Maud Gonne and her daughter, Iseult. He feared he had made a mistake in marrying Hyde-Lees, but his fears were relieved when his wife took up automatic writing and a spirit, through her, assured him he had made the correct decision.

These automatic writing sessions, of which there were over 400, would inspire Yeats’ later works, such as his poetry collections A Vision and The Tower. These sessions would also inspire his beliefs in his later years. From these sessions he theorized that there were certain inherent patterns to life, with the most important patterns being gyres, or intersecting cones. Yeats believed that the pattern began with divine impregnation of mortal women and ended after 2,000 years, and that the midpoint of each era held a special balance that led to cultural excellence. He believed that these gyre cycles waned and waxed like the phases of the moon, and even applied his theory of gyres to the human lifespan.

Yeats died in Roquebrune, France on January 28th, 1939 of heart failure. He was buried in France, and had instructed his wife to have him moved a year after his burial from France to Sligo, though his body was not moved until 1948 because his remains had been exhumed and thrown into a communal grave in 1946. A forensic doctor was enlisted to reconstruct a skeleton that resembled Yeats but may not be entirely or even remotely comprised of his remains.