Jon:
I'd say, right on. I might mention a pet of mine, George Santayana. I've
thought he was shoved out of the Church he loved (the gag is that S.
believed there is no God and Mary is his mother) by the German philosophs
generally and Darwin, Freud (actually the late-protestant unitarians at
Harvard as stand-ins for those gents), etc., as you note. As far as I can
figure out his stance, he posited that the universe, presumably just what we
think it is materially, produced (by accident?) "wayward spirit" on this
planet, and he would concern himself with that, and let the rest go. "The
worldlings will not be without compensation that their feet have so
ceaselessly beat the earth because, when life is over and the world has gone
up in smoke, the earth will cast a slightly different shadow on the moon."
(Quoted from memory.) So much for THAT. Let us now write poetry. (One could
wish Bush would adopt that view.) For myself, I have said Boo back to
Darwin, Marx, Freud, etc., etc., all the gang, and devised my own version of
belief in Christ, against which there is absolutely no enforceable law, and
which as far as I can tell is not outrageously different from that of
Meister Eckhart or Mother Theresa. (Or of Ezra Pound.) Tom White

> From: Jon & Anne Weidler <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 11:30:41 -0600
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: modernism and the occult
>
> Mr. Seddon's distinction between the mystic and the occult reminded me
> of a book on my shelf.  *W. B. Yeats: Twentieth-Century Magus* by Susan
> Johnston Graf is not really a good book, but it is the only of its kind
> I've seen.  I purchased it at an occult bookstore near the place I used
> to have on Chicago's North side.  It dishes all the dirt on Yeats's
> occult involvement, including all the details of his feud with Aleister
> Crowley for control of the Order of the Golden Dawn, a ritual magic
> group.  The details and chronologies that Graf presents are fairly
> convincing, at least on the factual level, that Yeats was serious about
> his ritual activity, and seriously pursued occult studies within a
> curriculum of sorts.
>
> "A Vision" makes a lot more sense through this kooky sort of lens, I
> must say.  On the other hand, once I had read about all the robes and
> incantations and levels of magical initiation, it was terribly
> difficult to read Yeats with a straight face, or even to appreciate the
> efforts of critics and scholars writing about him.  There's something
> about this hidden business that doesn't like to see the light of day...
>
> It's my impression that Pound would have no truck with Order of the
> Golden Dawn hogwash (or "mysterium", in the unlikely event some fell
> spirit subscribes to this list).  It seems to make a difference if one
> is reading historico-mythic proto-structural studies like Weston or
> Frazer, rather than spellbooks or tarot cards.  It's important that
> Madame Sosotris had a nasty cold, even while predicting death by water,
> and was more than eager to receive payment for her work with the
> dimensionally handicapped.  Figures in the Modern period, in lots of
> ways, display some anxiety about what to do with their multiplicitous
> mythical heredity.  (And at the same time, Edgar Rice Burroughs is
> writing Tarzan.)  It seems to me that the decades after Darwin, Freud,
> Marx, etc. pushed Xianity (as my colleague so aptly abbreviates) off
> the main stage of intellect, leaving open a vaccuum of indeterminate
> proportions to be refilled quickly, and with whatever tools were
> closest to hand.
>
> Maude Gonne would have nothing to do with the Order of the Golden Dawn
> after a while.  Graf offers that Gonne "thought she was being disloyal
> to Ireland by belonging to what she saw as a pseudo-masonic, English
> organization."  One handy ideological complex (or vortex?) for filling
> the existential void is the nation-state, or, failing that, the
> colonial struggle to bring a nation-state into existence along ethnic
> lines.  Myth becoming race becoming state is one possible progression
> at the dawn of the century, and the aestheticized politics of the 3rd
> Reich are enough to show what a potent progression it could be.
>
> What's most interesting to me about all this (getting away from the
> British Isles and all the glyphs and arcana and Crowleys) is that the
> American myths seem only to sputter into existence, and never quite
> take consistent form without Hollywood Help.  I think about Stevens'
> early poem about the firecat and the herds of buffalo running away; or
> I think about Tarzan; or about Zane Grey's cowboy novels; and see the
> coordinates of a myth in the making.  The internationality of Pound and
> Eliot permit a level of mythic discourse that their more nationalist
> counterparts do not attempt to imitate.  But their American-ness (which
> I still do not understand) underwrites that very internationality:
> Yeats is confined in comparison, while EP ranges far and wee (so to
> speak).
>
> (I did not plan out these comments very thoroughly, as you no doubt can
> tell.  Any response is welcome.)
>
> Cheers!
> -Jon W.
> Oak Park, IL
>
> On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 09:33  AM, Richard Seddon wrote:
>
>> Tim & Charles
>>
>> First, the Occult is alive and well written about.  Visit any
>> bookstore and
>> you will find a large section devoted to Tarot cards, Crystals and the
>> Secret writings of (fill in the blank).  People write (usually not
>> well) of
>> the occult and secret history/tradition all the time.  The secret and
>> the
>> mystical seem to fascinate.
>>
>> Second,   W.B. Yeats was a self-acknowledged occultist.  Denying Yeats
>> as an
>> Occultist is to deny objective fact.  There is absolutely no more
>> question
>> of his beliefs and practices than there is of Blake's.
>>
>> Third;  at times, Surette, Materer and Tryphonopoulos have chosen  to
>> study
>> the Modernists in terms of the Occult.  This should not earn them the
>> reprobation that Charles is so ready to hurl.  I would definitely
>> recommend
>> at least the introduction of Materer's book "Modernist Alchemy" to
>> anyone.
>> These studies are at least as valid as the methodology of Marxist
>> critical
>> theory that is so often recommended on this list.
>>
>> The references that Charles had picked from Weston were baldly Occult.
>> They
>> referred to secret history and access to that history by initiates
>> only.
>> Since he was speaking of Weston in terms of "The Waste Land" and had
>> referenced the Occult through his quotes,  I thought it appropriate to
>> suggest an essay that studied all three.
>>
>> What is Mystical and what is Occult?  Where does one start and the
>> other
>> end?  I think often the same person is both Mysticist and Occultist
>> which
>> gives rise to the confusion of which he/she is.  He or she is actually
>> both.
>> But an Occultist can be not Mystical and a Mysticist can be not
>> Occultist.
>> Julian of Norwich is an example of a Christian Mystic who was not into
>> the
>> Occult.  Neo-Platonism can be mystical and is usually not Occult.
>> Supposed
>> discoveries, from secret maps passed through the ages to initiates
>> only, of
>> tunnels under the pyramids can be Occult and not Mystical.  Much of
>> UFOlogy
>> is Occult without being mystical.  Mystical involves a union with God.
>> The
>> Occult involves secret history/tradition/ritual available only to
>> initiates.
>> Where the two join is in secret theurgies, available to initiates only,
>> which promise union with a God.  The Eleusian mysteries were Occultist
>> in
>> their secret rituals and mystical in their suggestions of union with
>> the
>> Gods.  Pound can be legitimately read to be deeply interested in both
>> Mysticism and the Occult.  Pound's recommendation of Alan Upward's "The
>> Divine Mystery" can be taken as an interest in mythology or as also an
>> interest in the Occult or both.
>>
>> Pound was a regular attendee at Mead's "The Quest" society, as was
>> Dorothy
>> Shakespear.  He wrote essays for "The Quest" and delivered papers at
>> the
>> meetings.  Pound's "Psychology and Troubadours" was initially
>> published in
>> "The Quest" an avowed Occultist journal.
>>
>> A worshiper of Progressivism may use studies or belief of the Occult
>> and
>> Mysticism as a pejorative.  I do not.  This denial does not imply
>> support
>> for the Occult or Mystical.  It simply means that I will not damn
>> someone
>> for his legitimate beliefs or interests.
>>
>> Rick Seddon
>> McIntosh, NM
>>