the Daimon comes not as like to like but seeking its own opposite, for man and Daimon feed the hunger in one another’s hearts. Because the ghost is simple, the man heterogeneous and confused, they are but knit together when the man has found a mask whose lineaments permit the expression of all the man most lacks, and it may be dreads, and of that only.

Susan Johnston Graf, W.B. Yeats Twentieth Century Magus: An In-Depth Study of Yeat’s Esoteric Practices and Beliefs, Including Excerpts from His Magical Diaries [Bookshop, Amazon]

Hermetic quote Graf W B Yeats Twentieth Century Magus a mask whose lineaments permit the expression of all the man most lacks

Consider also:

  1. “This letter may have been the expression of a moment’s enthusiasm, but was more probably rooted in one of those intuitions of coming technical power which every creator feels, and learns to rely upon; for all his greatest work was done, and the principles of his art were formulated, after this date. Except a word here and there, his writings hitherto had not dealt with the principles of art except remotely and by implication; but now he wrote much upon them, and not in obscure symbolic verse, but in emphatic prose, and explicit if not very poetical rhyme.”
  2. The Liar’s Tale
  3. Aleister Crowley: The Biography: Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master and Spy
  4. “Luckily for the readers of Vanity Fair, it will be he who is to explain, month by month, to its card-loving subscribers the best way to combine pleasure with profit at Pirate Bridge. I must not encroach upon his province of scientific explanations, but I should like to point out six major advantages of the game of Pirate: First: You can–if you are clever–avoid tying yourself up with a tedious or idiotic partner. Second: The hands which will work best together tend to come together as partners. Third: Fewer final bids are set back, this shortening the duration–and bother–of every rubber. Fourth: Every player is playing for himself. Four individual scores are kept, all independent. Fifth: You may feel inclined to blame someone for ‘accepting’ you, when the hand goes wrong; but you are not tied to him for a rubber. Sixth: It is a first-rate game for the man who fancies his own individual play, and has many of the best elements of poker.”
  5. “He calls the spirit of beauty liberty, because despotism, and perhaps, as ‘the man of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys,’ all authority, pluck virtue from her path towards beauty, and because it leads us by that love whose service is perfect freedom.”