Use of Symbols in Sailing to ByzantiumUse of Symbols in Sailing to ByzantiumThere are two ways in which a poet can express himself,firstly,direct through images which are suggestive and evocative,and secondly,through symbols.symbolism is necessary for a poet who wants to say more than what meets the eye,wants to suggest something beyond the expressed meaning.
Yeats,of course,was no exception to this rule.From the first ,there were certain images and symbols to which hghe returned again and again,and into which he constantly pouredthe manifold accumulated tensions of though and emotions.In fact Yeats had been regardedas a great symbolic poet.Inummerable were the symbols that Yeats employed in many cases,the same symbols being for different purposes and in different contexts.Many of his symbols were very obscure and almost unintelligible to the unimitated reader.The reason for the obscurity or incomprehensibility of these symbols was that theywere derived from Yeatss occult studies.In his early yearshe had been a devotedstudent of theosophy and magic and a member of a society of Christian Kabalists.He had also made use of other arbitrary occult symbols of rose,cross,lily,bird,water,tree,moon and sun which
he said were derived from the occult traditions of the Gnostic-Gnosis. This also was in his interest as a symbol of his esoteric studies.At any rate from the outset,Yeatss had not forgotten about the occult or “secret occult” sources of his knowledge.Yeatss had been an avid follower of mystical magic which could be expressed in many different ways.In many aspects of Yeats’ esoteric studythe symbolism of the moon and moon stars, with their respective names, was more or less identical to, and correspondingly more familiar to, the mysteries of the Rosary and of the true Rosarian mythology. In some of these books, such as the first of the Gnostic series of books, he found it,the whole of which was written by an ancient sage of the early period and was a natural aid to the Gnostic school of philosophy.This kind of occult understanding was something that the historian William H. Ransom, for example, and the book “The Mystery of the Moon Star,” which was in issue of “The New Gnostic and Gnostic Mysteries,” and published about a century after Yeats’ death, described as “a work of great quality,” in which he made a number of clear predictions concerning the use of the moon at funerary and on many occasions pointed more than one direction and many possible conclusions. He went on to give detailed suggestions of such as occult uses as a means of communicating the message and spiritual state of death and rebirth to an experienced spiritual and mystical person.Among the important discoveries of this period concerning the Gnostic doctrine was that it may have alsobeen called the “spiritual mystery” of death and rebirth.”For all the purposes of the whole book the Gnostic mystery of the moon star was concerned with the development of the Gnosis as a means of teaching the doctrines of the Gnostic religion,” wrote H.H. Ransom in 1842.Yeatss has repeatedly stated therein that the idea of the moon star as a symbolic “spiritual” figure was not intended to be considered a dogma. Instead it was a personal matter which he felt should be considered as a personal matter of the Gnostic religion, and his spiritual-religious knowledge could only be carried to a very deep philosophical level. He maintained that the “true” Gnostic doctrine of all religions is that the spirit resides only in the heart. In his view these Gnostic ideas are not merely hypothetical but do not lie outside of the natural universe.The fact that Yeatss’s theories contained such a broad range of metaphysical conceptions and conclusions that could be extrapolated to several different levels of practice was so important to Yeatss as to be of great interest to Yeatss himself, who, in particular, made use of the wide range of these concepts during his travels around the world.In his research to this effect the “spiritual mystery” of the moon Star should be presented in three broad ranges: the practical view, the metaphorical view, and the mysticism view.The practical view was that only what had been practiced was an effective means for the maintenance of human civilization.The metaphorical view was that even if there were a great many phenomena which the Gnostic Gnostic religion held responsible for their destruction, it would still survive within the human realm. However, there were some cases where the individual