…of you have followed Julian Jane's work, you know that he thinks the eagle arose in homeric times that recently, 1500 BC. Yeats, in sailing to Byzantium, has this wonderful line, something about, if ever out of nature, I should be turned. It's all about…

…of final time and things. What I thought of doing tonight, if it was a small group, possibly was discussing two poems by Yeats which deal with final things. And then the thing which broke down our effort to talk about Bosch was that we didn't have…

…crisis and transition. So I thought to begin by reading a very short, well known and simple, actually, poem of Yeats, because almost every schoolchild knows this poem. And yet exactly what it's talking about is fairly ambiguous, although I think…

…feeling. But where? What we get out of Shelley is an archaeological site, a shattered wreck. What we get out of Yeats is something much darker and more menacing, something lovecraftian, something old, something alive and something on the move. This rough…

…in the widening gyre. The best lack all conviction. The worst are full of passionate intensity. This is a fairly dark vision out of Yeats, and he hooks it up to. I mean, obviously the image that is invoked is that of the sphinx, that is this lion…

…and fin de siecle decadence, and it's almost a narcotic sensuality that comes out of these images. Then the next section is typical. Yeats. An aged man is but a paltry thing. It's invoking the transience of the body and all that. But then the last two…

…an extraordinary image of shamanic transcendentalism. Contact, connection come from the holy fire. Purn in a gyre. That's a special vocabulary of Yeats. It means simply turn in a spiral, be the singing masters of my soul. So this kind of thing coming out…

…toward these images. And, you know, in spite of the attractiveness of this, it is incredibly recidivist. I mean, you know, Yeats was associated with the pre raphaelites. Well, when you stand in, for example, the Tate and look at the pre raphaelites…

…scientifically and religiously, because then we have what you said, when I'm saying symbolical consciousness or symbolic systems, or as Yeats said, metaphors for poetry, or as even Joseph Campbell said, myth. As metaphor. As metaphor, as myth and as religion.…

…back to the Hapsburgs in Spain, they raised an army and destroyed this alchemical revolution. If you're interested, read Francis Yeats book, the Rosicrucian Enlightenment. But anyway, this habsburg army, which laid siege to Prague in the summer of 1619 and…

…my goodness, this is the stuff of prophecy. Something marvelous must be going to happen there. And, you know, you must know Yeats poem, what's it called, the second coming. The one about what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born. And it is…

…alienated from the religious offerings of Victorian England. So they began to write about these things and organize themselves and w b Yeats was part of it and Alastair Crowley, a e waite and the sister of the French philosopher Henri Bergson was married…

…who some people let me just interrupt you for one second. Well the golden dawn was part of the pre raphaelite movement. It had Yeats in it and Mathers and a e waite and all of these people and it was sort of the umbrella organization that emerged out…

…indestructible, trans dimensional object of some sort the tool at the end of time I've quoted probably to you before this thing from Yeats about once out of nature I would be a thing of gold and gold enamelling, set to sing before the lords and ladies…

…with superman. Well I don't really think of it as the nietzschean superman, but something you said you know that poem by Yeats sailing to Byzantium, and there's this wonderful phrase in there. I'm not sure I can quote it perfectly but it goes something…

…that you are half human. And this is how we behave we behave as though we have a soul, but it's stapled in Yeats Immensely compelling phrase to the body of a dying animal. This needs to be corrected, reconstructed, addressed. Otherwise we are going to…

…are going to make it happen. It has become the guiding image of what we want to be, and I'm reminded of the poem by Yeats sailing to Byzantium, where he speaks of how after death he would like to be an enameled golden object, singing to the lords and…

…open to attack. But it's an incredibly modern anticipation of ourselves going into a kind of quasi union with our technology. What is it Yeats says in sailing to Byzantium? The part about how I would be a thing of gold and gold once out of nature I…

…are going to make it happen. It has become the guiding image of what we want to be, and I'm reminded of the poem by Yeats It's sailing to Byzantium where he speaks of how after death he would like to be an enameled golden object singing to the lords…

…open to attack. But it's an incredibly modern anticipation of ourselves going into a kind of quasi union with our technology. What is it Yeats says in sailing to Byzantium? The part about how I would be a thing of gold and gold and once out of nature…

…with the notion of boundary dissolution, that to be digested by something is to actually become it. It becomes you and you know, Yeats said we become what we behold. And yeah I mean it's fairly profound when you think about it. I didn't really lean on…

…was seriously. It was called delusion of reference, this condition so and I thought, wow far out, now we have the answer to Yeats question. Do you know what Yeats question was? What rough beast is it that slouches toward bethlehem to be born? And so I…

…delusion of reference, this condition so and I thought, wow far out, now we have the answer to Yeats question. Do you know what Yeats question was? What rough beast is it that slouches toward bethlehem to be born? And so I was all quite keen on all of…

…know my goodness this is the stuff of prophecy, something marvelous must be going to happen there. And you know, you must know, Yeats Poem, what's it called? The second coming the one about what rough beast slouches toward bethlehem to be born, and it is…

…which can't be gotten rid of. So to start off this continuation of the discussion of flying saucers, I'll read Yeats again, and it's that phrase, the artifice of eternity, which again invokes this strange mechanistic yet spiritualistic future into which…