“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
Susan Johnston Graf, W.B. Yeats Twentieth Century Magus: An In-Depth Study of Yeats’ Esoteric Practices and Beliefs, Including Excerpts from His Magical Diaries
Tag Archives: intensity
“Pathology of the Sublime” from Problems on the Path of Return by Mark Stavish, M.A. in Vol 3 No 1 of Caduceus.
“However, as Ferrucci states, journeys into the Inner Worlds are not without their own dangers, even into the higher ones.
‘Intense spiritual stimulation may bring inspirations, but may also penetrate directly into the lower conscious, where it throws light on and excites demons, instinctual energies, forgotten memories, and so on. These then tend to rise to consciousness, causing all sorts of trouble to the surprised conscious personality. When the demons are thus aroused, the contrast between different sides of our nature is felt with particular intensity.'” [via]
William Blake and his Illustrations to The Divine Comedy in Ideas of Good and Evil by William Butler Yeats.
“The limitation of his view was from the very intensity of his vision; he was a too literal realist of imagination, as others are of nature; and because he believed that the figures seen by the mind’s eye, when exalted by inspiration, were ‘eternal existences,’ symbols of divine essences, he hated every grace of style that might obscure their lineaments.” [via]