W. B. Yeats's autobiography talks of an attempt, while in the Theosophical Society, to achieve plant palingenesis by a process that he later thought he had read in Ebenezer Sibly's work.
My article about this, "W. B. Yeats and the Vegetable Phoenix", has just been published in Yeats Annual 17 (December 2007).
It includes a survey of the probable sources of Yeats's attempt (via articles by Carl du Prel and Carl Kiesewetter in the German magazine Sphinx), and then also looks at Yeats's use and knowledge of alchemical themes in the light of this experience with plant alchemy.
Last edited on Sat Feb 16th, 2008 08:11 pm by Neil J Mann
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