New Fiction for Patrons: WB Yeats Casts A Spell

I hope you enjoy this new extract from my upcoming novel, A Life Before, a literary romance that tells the coming-of-age stories of the poet and mage, WB Yeats, and the English heiress turned Irish revolutionary, Maud Gonne. In this extract, WB Yeats casts a spell to the Norse goddess, Frigga. The narrator is Rosy Cross, "the oldest woman in Ireland", writing up these events 100 years after they happened. What happens to Rosy is fiction but the events of WB's life, and Maud Gonne's, are all meticulously researched and documented.

On an April evening, not long after Maud Gonne had twirled to triumph at her debut, the young WB Yeats took a tram out to Howth Head to spend the day...and night. An appointment marked in his mind's calendar some months ago was finally to be fulfilled. On the eastern edge of the headland, there lay a cave about halfway between the sea crashing below and the gulls crying above. Whispered tales told of it being haunted, though he’d seen no sign of such last time he overnighted there. He intended to sleep there again tonight and, at midnight, to cast a spell that would win him back his lady love. Howth was a place well known to WB. For three years, the Yeats family had lived there in what was the happiest of their many homes. Now they were squeezed into what he called a “vulgar” three-bed villa in the suburb of Terenure, on the far side of the city. Many another would have thought same house a princely place, and the whole lot of it all for one family, but the Yeats family was Protestant, and WB was full of notions. To his mind, it was miles from Howth in all the ways, and it took him an hour's journey, squeezed into a sticky-warm tram, to get there. Though it was April, it was unseasonably warm, one of those glorious days that an Irish spring can present, all the sweeter for being unexpected. As he stepped off the tram, he instantly felt the scent of salt and seaweed, of distant shores and ancient mariners, stirring his soul, recalling his childhood days in Sligo. Never mind Terenure, or any other part of Dublin—or London come to that. Sligo was the place of his parents’ people, his land of heart’s desire. And Howth had always reminded him of Sligo. He hurried toward the shoreline, like a man starved, and there found the waves in calm mood, lapping the sands. Down went his bag, off came his shoes and stockings and, with trousers rolled to the knees, straight in he stepped. Ahhh! The cold, though expected, still gave him a shock. For a moment, his world narrowed down to a little patch of exhilaration. The soles of his feet on the wet sand seemed to share his delight in the rhythm of the waves and his invigorated heartbeat. Then he saw a stick bobbing on the waves, riding the waters like a boat, and his thoughts took off again. The stick, full of knots and twists and gnarled imperfections, reminded him of his own tormented heart. He picked it up and left the water to kneel in the sand and write the name of his lady love in the sand with it. The curve of a capital “L” was a tribute to her laughter. The "a" captured the arch of her brow. The "u" was the cup of her palms as she bent to drink water from the spring. The "r" stood for the roads they'd walked together, all over Howth’s green hills, but also in their work together. It was she who had set him writing his first plays. And the final “a”, reverberating his internal pleas for another chance. L-a-u-r-a. Laura. He wrote it again, and then again, trying to pull her essence from the sands, trying to bring her close. Laura. Laura. Laura. Since he'd lost her, he couldn't settle to work. Elemental creatures came into his mind, ranting and singing of sorrow, but then hurried away, uncaptured. Hence this trip to a haunted cave, to set a Nordic spell that an old book assured him would bind her heart to his, and set them both adrift again on the miraculous stream. After he wore himself out with the sand-writing, he found a more deserted spot and took off all his clothes, so he lay naked to the sun. He started to pile sand over his genitals, emulating the conditions that always—since the first day it happened to him by accident on a beach in Sligo—got him hard and brought him to climax. He enjoyed this in the doing, and in the moment’s relaxation it gave him after, but almost instantly he was recoiling into disgust. Alas, like so many at that time, to take pleasure in the skin he was in, or the true thoughts and images that his brain contained, filled him with guilt. As soon as solo pleasuring was satisfied, he had to pile dissatisfaction in on top of it. He’d got himself caught in an awful struggle between will and impulse that exhausted him, and completely frayed his nerves. Never could he be content with this incomplete fruition. He could not have soul betrayed by fiery flesh. He needed romantic consummation. He needed love to be whole. He needed a woman. Laura. The discovery of his own sensuality had come on him like the bursting of a shell, and filled him full of secrets, and a wish to be alone. One of the reasons he hadn’t told Charley about his excursion here today. Charley Johnston, two years younger than him, was one of his two closest friends, and the best of company. He, and his friend at the art school, George Russell, shared his interest in the occult. Together, he and Charley had been reading all about the Norse gods, which was what prompted him to come back out here to the old cliff. Both Howth and Ireland’s Eye, the island just off its coast, were Norse names—Howth came from the Danish word hoved, meaning head, while ey was the Norse word for island. Last summer, he and Charley had rowed out to The Eye, and marooned themselves out there without food or top-coats. They'd had to climb the cliffs for warmth, and were hungry out, but they explored the crags and escarpments, talking philosophical theories as they went, and found a Druid burial ground, and didn’t mind that they weren’t rescued until long after midnight. Afterwards, they'd both deemed it the most perfect day. Then there was the time they'd each told their fathers they were spending the night with the other, and hid in the National Museum at closing time, so they might be locked in. They'd wanted to observe the big crystals on display there. At that size, crystals were said to omit a powerful level of Odic force, which by night manifested to those sensitive enough to see as an aura. Neither he nor Charley had seen anything, alas. He had thought of asking his friend to join him for the casting of his love spell to the grand old Norse Goddess, Frigga. For Charley had a fondness for that deity, as much as himself, and nothing his friend liked more than an experiment in the unknown. But of late, WB was finding a sweetness in being on his tod. His body and mind were firecrackers going off in a still night – loud, shocking, and lighting up corners that had been invisible to him -- and everything he experienced alone he seemed to experience more intensely. He gave himself over to his solo day, and trying to ease the fret that was on him. Walking the beach and the hills. Eating the bread and apples he’d brought for his lunch. Dozing in the heather. Listening to the murmurs of the earth beneath him, and the clouds above. Making notes in his notebook. Playing with himself again. Giving himself a tough time again, after. As evening set in, casting its shadows and bearing its chill, the deeper purpose for his trip led his steps. He’d first heard of the cave some years ago, when he lived at Howth, from a shepherd who’d told him of the man called Macrom who’d been reduced to living there, after his eviction. The herd himself had seen the spirit of the now dead Macrom, outside the cave, stoking a fire. He brought WB down to show him the wooden boards the hermit had used for protection against the elements, the cavity in the wall for storing food, the large rusted nail in the rock. The image of that nail, and the old ghost stooped over a phantom fire, had haunted WB for a while, then faded, but resurrected itself this winter. Since November, he’d been waiting for the weather to warm, so he could sleep out there again. He loved to sleep outdoors. Ever since his father had read Thoreau’s Walden to him, he’d been gripped by the idea of withdrawing to the countryside, preferably somewhere in Sligo, to live like Thoreau seeking wisdom through solitude and silence. His father forbade it, permitting him only to sleep out on the warmest nights and then under pretence of catching moths. That was back when they’d thought he would be a scientist. Now he was supposed to be an artist-—or was it a poet?—-and had no such excuse. His father thought he was staying at Charley's house tonight. For WB, his magic probes and pursuits have mattered much more than his attendance at the art school, which was more about appearances."What are we going to do with Willie?" was the great problem besetting his father. WB had recently overheard his friend, Sarah Purser, tell how he could make a doctor of him for £150, missing the plain point that such a sum was beyond the means of his father to earn, not to mention his entire unsuitability as a medic. The one thing he and his father still shared was an aversion to the world's conviction on getting on. He was never going to get on with art, he knew it and his father knew it. His teachers were unimpressed with his drawing and painting, the style of which he had learned from his father. He was equally unimpressed with their teaching, which was mostly copying from other artists. No matter. He was moving beyond all that tonight. A faint breeze rose tousled his hair and filled the air with Howth's briny tang. He understood now that to be a Ceremonial Magician was to move beyond talking and reading, into doing. As the day dimmed, and the sun set over the land behind him spreading dramatic shadows across the water, every sense was intensifying with a delicious fear and trepidation. To reach the cave, you had to cross a rocky ledge that looked frightening from above but was safe enough for anyone with a fair head for heights. The ground, a mixture of loose stones and hardy grass, was unpredictable and the stones crunched under his boots. He imagined himself the hero of his favorite book--Shelley’s Alastor, Or The Spirit Of Solitude--and spoke some of its words out, aloud into the evening air: "There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God,
Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode,
a Pythian exhalation, which inspires
love, only love..." Pythian exhalation. That divine, intoxicating, and mystical inspiration inhaled by the Delphic oracle to be expelled as wisdom, the highest form of love. He wanted to reside within that wisdom and to bring it to the world. He wanted to move among men and women with a serene tread, neither self-indulgent nor ascetic, with his mind and senses ever alert to every form of beauty. He wanted to do great work, and to be famous for it, with a fame that would continue to grow after his death. He wanted never again to suffer the morbid, soul-shaking experience of besetting religious doubt, or the pangs of despised love, but to be fascinating--to men and women in general, and to Laura. He wanted to be equally at home in a bohemian theatre, or a splendid court, or a lonely field, to feel and act the same with men of high degree and low. He wanted to enthrone the eternal world of art and poetry and spirit, to drive out the chaotic decay of materialism, to allow the soul's deeper truths--not just for himself, but for all of humanity. He wanted to be that unique and rare individual, a practicing Ritual Magician. Tonight, if his spell went well, he would begin that great work. It was time. In June he would attain his majority. If he is to be a great mage, he must put the things of boyhood behind, and begin. He patted again the pocket over his heart where he’d stowed the instructions for the spell, and the powerful invocation he would read aloud: a span of words to win the love of lady… A misstep sent a shower of pebbles cascading down. Below, the waves crashed against the rocks, sending up their salty spray. He was far too high to be touched by it, but he could feel the power of the sea's ceaseless fervour. He could see the cave now below, a black opening about three feet high, surrounded by seagulls, inviting him hither. Were gulls a good omen, or ill? He thought them magnificent, full of Shelley’s "Pythian exhalation" but the kitchen maid at their Howth house had told them an Irish tale of how oystercatchers lent the webs of their feet to the seagulls, which was why their call so forlorn, for the seagull never gave them back. It was giving him a queer vertigo to be so high above them, looking down on their wing-span gliding so creaturely, so carelessly on the wind, as the wind bore them away from the cliffside and circled them back. As he got closer, he saw the grey rock of the cave was run through with white veins and when beside it, he traced their course under his fingertips. Then, taking a deep breath, as if he was about to dive into the sea itself, he went in. All was dark and he waited for his eyes to adjust. Inside was a sound of dripping water from the rock face, outside was the distant cry of the gulls. He found the little hollow the shepherd had shown him, and there he put the cocoa and biscuits he'd brought. Then he looked about him into the darkness, allowing the cool, damp air to envelop him. Here he was. Yes, he was here. ***

Casting a spell required concentration and clarity. First the space would have to be cleansed, so that the natural energies could free flow. Then he would need to meditate to prepare himself to focus.

He removed his shoes, engaged his feet with the energy of earth. He tuned into the cries of the birds, the crashing of the waves. He opened his palms and, turning them towards the sky, brought his attention to his breath, observed his abdomen in its rise and fall.

Now he imagined he was inhaling the moonlight, each in-breath flooding his body with its silver luminescence, each out-breath exhaling the fire from his head.

He was ready.

Following the instructions on the parchment, he took from his bag his sister Lily’s hand-mirror—she would not, he hoped, miss it before its return. Placing it to face the pearly moon, he built around it a circle of stones, so it was at the center and in front of it, he placed a flat wooden cross.

Not a crucifix, the symbol of Christianity and of the death and resurrection of Christ, no. The cross that his recent studies had revealed to him as older and more universal. The axis mundi. The meeting point between heavenly and the earthly realms. The center of the universe. The heart of all existence.

According to wisdom far more ancient than the wisdom of Christ, the vertical line represented the celestial pole, a straight path upwards to the cosmic energies, and the horizontal line the material world of earthly trials and joys. between the tangible and the ethereal

Now he snipped a lock of his hair, and combined it with the tender rose petals, binding his own self to the timeless authority of love. He set them alight in the dish. The scent of the burning petals, sweet and heady, mixed with the singed smell of hair, was an offering.

With the sea's roar below and the vast, starlit sky as his canopy, WB began to chant his incantations, invoking the elements: the spirits of air, that would carrying his whispers; the spirits of fire, ablaze with desire; the spirits of water, to flow with the rhythms of his heart, the sturdy spirts of the earth.

He pictured Laura, Her skin, fair bearing the pink flush of dawn, her touch of wild madness, like a summer storm forever brewing on the horizon. Red hair untethered, glinting, full of fiery life. Pre-raphellite women’s hair.

To WB, she was both muse and mystery. How could chaos have such grace, like a leaf caught in a flurry of wind?

Sometimes his doubting self suspected that she was unworthy of his devotion but he had recently had a thought that he admired, and wrote in his notebook: One cannot, perhaps, love or believe at all if one does not love or believe a little too much?

Perhaps. That was his favourite word.

It was time to invoke the godess of goddesses, Frigga, wife of the all-powerful Odin, god of kings and heroes. Frigga, is the goddess of queens, of love and marriage and fertility and prophecy. Frigga enjoyed sitting at her spinning wheel, in the heavenly realm of Asgard, in her magnificent palace Fensalir, where, at dawn and dusk, she spun rose and golden threads as coloured clouds.

Frigga has the power of prophecy, although she does not tell what she knows, and is the only one besides Odin who was allowed to sit on the high seat, Hlidskjalf, to look out over the universe and set matters aright. (He hoped he had the proper pronunciation of Hlidskjalf.)

He would renounce poetry, as he had already renounced science for art, and art for words. He would forsake them all to devote his life to the pursuit of magic. He would become not a scientist, or an artist, or a poet, but all three. To become a mage was to attain a rare status, beyond the reach of the general public. His father's words rose in his mind again. "All belief turns us from the truth, the touch and feel of the real world". He shook his head vigorously, to clear them. No. It was true that no art, no poem could move us, if it did not rush our thought out to the edges of our flesh, but that was the beginning of the movement, not its end. The flesh was but the expression of the soul's desire, the spirit's need to express itself through the body. This was what was most real, and though it could never be captured fully by poem or painting, it could be sought. He would seek it out. He would devote his life and his work to striving after that which could never be fully expressed. He could imagine no end more noble. If he was to be the voice of the great renaissance now beginning in the world, the revolt of the soul against the intellect, he must be brave. He must obey the inward impulse of his soul, regardless of the careful considerations of the worldly-wise. This was why he had come here tonight. And so he cast his spell with fervor, with heart ablaze, and hope renewed.

Lady Frigga, in your misty halls at Fensalir, seated high on far-seeing Hlidskjalf, Though thou knowst there is no tongue in which to tell of all that is and that shall be. Yet with your spindle and your well-strung loom that dost weave the airy clouds, and send the winds to shape them, writing your wordless wisdom-runes in the ever-changing valleys of the sky, from thine wells of knowledge, all-knowing Frigga, evening-wise, guide me to heed the wisdom that lies beyond all words while yet speaking the spinning strands of possibility into a span of words to win the love of my lady, together with the peace of the skies.

It was done. In dawn's embrace, as the last syllable left his lips, the wind settled as it often does at sunrise. Behind him, the cave filled with silence. And our young poet settled too, and lay down into the most peaceful sleep he'd had in months. * * * To Be continued... Next extract in two weeks. This book will launch in autumn 2023.