1	William Butler Yeats and the Tarot Where got I that truth? Out of a medium’s mouth, Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh. (“Fragments II,” 214)
2	Reapeating patterns of the Tarot in Yeats’ work… An understanding of the Tarot’s symbols is crucial to any quest for an understanding of Yeats’ “centre” of writing. It ought to be recognized that Yeats’ life and creative life would have been greatly different, and most certainly poorer, without the occult religious experiences [he] partially recorded [ . . . ] Yeats himself suggested he might not have been a poet at all if he had not made magic his “constant study,” [writing that] “The mystical life is the centre [sic] of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.” (Italics mine, 10)
3	Facts There were, with Yeats’ collected papers, three Tarot packs, showing evidence of heavy use, belonging to and annotated by Yeats, George Pollexfen and Yeats’ wife (Harper 3). Yeats was clearly interested in the cards’ system for most of his life. In fact, most of the more obvious references to the Tarot are in his later poems.
4	History of the Tarot Some of the oldest surviving Tarot cards date from around the fourteenth century; the recognizable decks are from Italy, and were used both for divination and as a method for explaining and understanding complex symbolic ideas, through symbols and pictures, otherwise unavailable to a largely illiterate population (Walker 3).
5	Rider-Waite The most popular Tarot deck today, the Rider-Waite deck, upon which most individualized decks are based, was commissioned and published in 1909 by the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn, an organization to which Yeats belonged (Raine 177). The deck’s designers, A.E. Waite and Pamela Coleman-Smith, were also members of the Golden Dawn
6	"the deck focuses on clarifying..." the deck focuses on clarifying symbolism, and the way those symbols could be used in contemplation towards understanding of a “higher” order of spiritual life. Yeats echoes Waite’s sentiments about the Tarot, and spiritualism in general: We all, so far as I can remember, differed from ordinary students of philosophy or religion through our belief that truth cannot be discovered but may be revealed, and that if a man do not lose faith, and if he go through certain preparations, revelation will find him at the fitting moment [ . . . ] it recalled certain forgotten methods of meditation. (From the dedication to A Vision, qtd. in Raine 182)
7	Celtic Cross The Tarot symbols that can be found most frequently in Yeats’ poetry— the Major Arcana, or “Trumps”— are what most people use as fortune telling cards, read in the Celtic Cross spread.
8	Poem number 246, “Symbols,” The most obvious reference to the Tarot in Yeats’ poetry appears in one poem from his later work. A storm-beaten old watch tower, A blind hermit rings the hour. All destroying sword-blade still Carried by the wandering fool. Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade, Beauty and fool together laid. (italics mine, 239)
9	The Tower One of Yeats’ most frequently used Tarot symbols. In another poem Yeats exclaims: “I declare this tower is my symbol” (“Blood and the Moon” 237). The tower he describes is both the literal Thoor Ballylee which he restored and then occupied, and the symbol from the Tarot. Usually, critical focus on the Tower rests in its biographical importance; this is a significant reading, but not the only possible one.
10	The Tower & the Hermit Raines argues that Yeats’ choice of “The Tower” as his “symbol” illustrates a deep sense of loneliness and the necessity of isolation for the hermit, or mage, who must move away from society because of his hard-won wisdom (239). Yeats’ choice of the Tower as symbol, knowing as he did the Tarot symbol’s implications, also shows, through its reference to Shelly’s “crowned powers” his awareness that a poet’s “thoughts” reach possibly dangerous, hubristic, heights.
11	The Hermit in Yeats He with body waged a fight, But body won; it walks upright. Then he struggled with the heart; Innocence and peace depart. Then he struggled with the mind; His proud heart he left behind. Now his wars on God begin; At stroke of midnight God shall win. (245) Yeats’ Hermit in “Symbols” may be “blind,” but since the hermit in the poem still observes the changing of time by “ringing” the hour, there is still steadily forward movement towards a completed quest and balance. What kind of wisdom the Hermit has found remains to be seen; perhaps the warning not to be “blind” to the message that symbolic language (poems) are trying to tell us is enough, or perhaps it is a recognition that even poets can be, like the Hermit, temporarily blinded while seeking enlightenment.
12	The Hanged Man A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering flame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew; And half is half and yet is all the scene; And half and half consume what they renew, And he that Attis’ image hangs between That staring fury and the blind lush leaf May know not what he knows, but knows not grief. (250)
13	Traditional Reading The Hanged Man is both scapegoat and sacred victim— he hangs upside down from one foot from a tree-like gallows, his other leg crossed in a number four, his expression serene and contemplative; sometimes his expression even seems to be an enigmatic, secret smile (Walker 7). If the card is reversed, so that the Hanged Man’s head is “upright,” he appears to be dancing a jig— he certainly does not seem to be suffering ill effects from his crucifixion between two trees.
14	Another Yeats poem: Parnell What shudders run through all that animal blood? What is this sacrifice? Can someone there Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star? Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through, A frenzied crown, and where the branches sprang A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow; A woman, and an arrow on a string; A pierced boy, image of a star laid low. (279) “there are many other learned references which go to show the detailed and exact knowledge Yeats was able to draw on for the construction— or rather the imaginative re-visioning— of his own myth of Parnell as the sacrificed god” (230).
15	“Parnell’s Funeral:” Hanged Man We lived like men that watch a painted stage What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives. But popular rage, Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down. None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart. Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung, all that was said in Ireland is a lie Bred out of the contagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die. Leave nothing but the nothings that belong To this bare soul, let all men judge that can Whether it be an animal or a man. (279-80)
16	Parnell & The Revolution Called the "uncrowned king of Ireland", one of the most important figures in 19th century Ireland and the United Kingdom. For generations of Irish people, Parnell came to be seen as the "lost leader", against whose mythical reputation no later leader who lived a normal lifespan and who faced the practicalities of governance that Parnell never faced, could hope to prevail.
17	Ireland’s Guilt & Sorrow Yeats does not here merely glorify an empty symbolic figurehead for the purposes of literature, a Dionysus from afar— he describes his personal “thirst for accusation” and perhaps a forgiveness and redemption via that accusation. He shows us that “symbols” and “scenes” can have real consequences in human life. In fact, he emphasizes the reality of the action in Parnell’s death and the painful truth in the ritual sacrifice for Ireland.
18	Nationalism & Sacrifice Combine this guilt, this implicit sorrow and regret at the turn that Irish politics takes during his lifetime with another comment from “A Dialouge of Self and Soul”: “Is every modern nation like a tower Half dead at the top?” (234) or, like the Tarot’s Tower, stricken with violence and pride, and we find that Yeats’ reveals a contemplation on the dangers of a too-vehement, blind Nationalism he, as Ireland’s poet, helped create and inspire.
19	Lessons? While these revelations can come from studying Yeats’ poetry without regard to its use of the Tarot, the weight of the centuries’ old symbols makes the ideas, for me, easier to understand. Yeats was such a complicated writer, and his poems so dense, that it seems important to consider every opportunity to find greater understanding of his sometimes difficult, highly symbolic work. The Tarot, then, should be considered as part of a lifetime immersed in studies of what most of us barely understand. We can, as always, learn a myriad of lessons in the contextual body of other literature, both written and symbolic, surrounding his art.
20	Works Cited & Consulted Coleman-Smith, Pamela. Universal Waite Tarot Deck. 1910. Rpt, Stamford: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1990. Harper, George Mills, Editor. Yeats and the Occult. Canada: Maclean-Hunter Press, 1975. Kaplan, Stuart R. The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume II. New York: U.S. Games Systems, Inc, 1986. Lee, Karin. The Halloween Tarot. Stamford: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1996. Nichols, Sallie. Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc, 1980. Raine, Kathleen. Yeats the Initiate: Essays on Certain Themes in the Work of W.B. Yeats. Savage: Barnes & Noble Books, 1990. Waite, A.E. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. 1910. Rpt, Stamford: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1998. Walker, Barbara. The Barbara Walker Tarot: Introduction. Stamford: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1986. Weatherly, Joan. “Yeats, the Tarot, and the Fool.” College Literature: (13)1: 112-121. Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats: Second Edition. Editor, Richard J. Finneran. New York: Scribner Paperback Poetry, 1983. Works Consulted Flannery, Mary Catherine. Yeats and Magic: The Early Works. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1977. Kinahan, Frank. Yeats, Folklore and Occultism: Contexts of Early Work and Thought. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Surette, Leon. The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UPress, 1993.