Graves And The Goddess

The White Goddess is perhaps the finest of Robert Graves's works on the psychological and mythological sources of poetry. In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deities—the White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Death—who was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysterious power of "pure poetry" and its peculiar and mythic language.

Examines the language of ancient Celtic and Mediterranean poetic myths, probing the role of the all-encompassing female figure, the White Goddess, in the earliest forms of poetry.

In 1948 Robert Graves published The White Goddess. His study of poetic mysticism and goddess worship has since become a founding text of Western paganism. As Wicca emerged from what Graves called, a few hopeful young people in California, to over two million strong, The White Goddess has achieved near liturgical status. This rising appreciation brings all the problems of liturgical texts. Many pagans consider Graves’ work like the goddess herself; awe inspiring but impenetrable. Stalking The Goddess is the first extensive examination of this enigmatic text to come from the pagan community and guides readers through bewildering forests of historical sources, poems, and Graves’ biography to reveal his unorthodox claims and entrancing creative process. Relentlessly perusing each path, it explores the uncharted woods and reveals the hidden signposts Graves has posted. The hunt for the goddess spans battlefields, ancient manuscripts, the British museum, and Stonehenge. En route we encounter not only the goddess herself but her three sacred animals; dog, roebuck, and lapwing. Perhaps the muse cannot be captured on her own grounds, but now at least there is a map. ,

This labyrinthine and extraordinary book, first published more than fifty years ago, was the outcome of Graves's vast reading and curious research into strange territories of folklore, mythology, religion and magic. Erudite and impassioned, it is a scholar-poet's quest for the meaning of European myths, a polemic about the relations between man and woman, and also an intensely personal document in which Graves explored the sources of his own inspiration and, as he believed, all true poetry. This new edition has been prepared by Grevel Lindop, who has written an illuminating introduction. The text of the book incorporates all Graves's final revisions, as well as his replies totwo of the original reviewers, and a long essay in which he describes the months of inspiration in which The White Goddess was written.

This text discusses how W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound and Robert Graves had access to the forbidden knowledge of the Goddess. These four poets experienced a confrontation with their unconscious and let the grace of the Goddess touch their heart strings. Consequently, through this surrendering, they created avant-garde poetry and were inspired to write seditious manifestos that would teach humanity an esoteric creed. This creed, based on humans’ eternal divine essence, aspires to liberate the eternal feminine. These poets became the instruments of the Goddess. As defenders of the Light, they took arms against the forces of inertia and proclaimed the eleusis of a new faith. This creed pledges to overthrow the anachronistic religious and social institutions and initiate a new world order and a new divinity based on the ancient rites of the Great Goddess. No matter how disparate these four were in character, they shared the vision of transmitting esoteric knowledge to profane humanity. They were specifically chosen by the Goddess as Her troubadours and they pave Her way to the religious consciousness of the people.

This is the first full biography of Charles Williams (1886-1945), an extraordinary and controversial figure who was a central member of the Inklings—the group of Oxford writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Charles Williams—novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru—was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the group. He was a pioneering fantasy writer, who still has a cult following. C.S. Lewis thought his poems on King Arthur and the Holy Grail were among the best poetry of the twentieth century for 'the soaring and gorgeous novelty of their technique, and their profound wisdom'. But Williams was full of contradictions. An influential theologian, Williams was also deeply involved in the occult, experimenting extensively with magic, practising erotically-tinged rituals, and acquiring a following of devoted disciples. Membership of the Inklings, whom he joined at the outbreak of the Second World War, was only the final phase in a remarkable career. From a poor background in working-class London, Charles Williams rose to become an influential publisher, a successful dramatist, and an innovative literary critic. His friends and admirers included T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the young Philip Larkin. A charismatic personality, he held left-wing political views, and believed that the Christian churches had dangerously undervalued sexuality. To redress the balance, he developed a 'Romantic Theology', aiming at an approach to God through sexual love. He became the most admired lecturer in wartime Oxford, influencing a generation of young writers before dying suddenly at the height of his powers. This biography draws on a wealth of documents, letters and private papers, many never before opened to researchers, and on more than twenty interviews with people who knew Williams. It vividly recreates the bizarre and dramatic life of this strange, uneasy genius, of whom Eliot wrote, 'For him there was no frontier between the material and the spiritual world.'

Edward Venn-Thomas lives in the twentieth century but has been mysteriously transported to the future, and the apparently idyllic society of New Create, where there is no hunger, no war and no dissatisfaction. However Venn-Thomas is starting to find life among the New Cretans rather dull. He comes to realize that their perfect existence, inspired by the poets and magicians of their strange occultic religion, lacks one fundamental thing - evil. So Venn-Thomas sees it as nothing less than his duty to introduce them to the darker side of life. First published in 1949 and also known as Watch the North Wind Rise, Graves's novel is a thrilling blend of utopian fantasy, science fiction and mythology.