Occult Joyce

Occult Joyce
The Hidden in Ulysses

By

Enrico Terrinoni

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING

 Occult Joyce: The Hidden in Ulysses, by Enrico Terrinoni

This book first published 2007 by

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright 2007 by Enrico Terrinoni

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN 1-84718-210-0; ISBN 13: 9781847182104

This work is dedicated to Chiara
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead,
For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said.
W.B. Yeats, Supernatural Songs.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword .............................................................................................................ix

Acknowledgments................................................................................................x

List of Abbreviations ..........................................................................................xi

Introduction..........................................................................................................1
Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Occult Science, and Dreamy Visions

Chapter One .......................................................................................................28

Occultism, Literature, the Unconscious and Joyce

Chapter Two.......................................................................................................71
Hades

Chapter Three.....................................................................................................84
Aeolus

Chapter Four ......................................................................................................99

Scylla and Charybdis

Chapter Five.....................................................................................................119
Lotus-Eaters

Chapter Six.......................................................................................................136
Nausicaa

Chapter Seven ..................................................................................................148

Sirens

Chapter Eight ...................................................................................................163

Proteus

Chapter Nine ....................................................................................................183

Circe
viii Table of Contents

Epilogue ...........................................................................................................204
Beyond the Occult, Beyond Joyce

Bibliography ....................................................................................................209

Index ................................................................................................................217
 FOREWORD

This book is mainly intended for general readers interested in Joyce, but I
hope that it will also be useful to specialists. All references to James Joyces
Ulysses in the end-notes are to the Random House/Bodley Head text, reprinted
in the current Penguin Student Edition. They are followed only by page
numbers. The standard episode-and-line-number reference system is here
avoided in order to encourage the readers approach to the great book as a
process of discovery. Ulysses is in many ways a human book, and its most
profound meanings are encrypted beneath the surface of its body. To unveil
its secrets implies an effort of anthropological archaeology. Accordingly,
common readers as well as experts appraising Ulysses are always in a way
interpreters of the occult, that is, the hidden in the text. Hence, only by
following the traces and signs left on the textual surface will they eventually dig
out what lies dormant beneath.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Versions of sections of this work have appeared in Joyce Studies in Italy,

edited by Franca Ruggieri, Studi Irlandesi, edited by Carlo Bigazzi, and To the
Other Shore, edited by Shane Murphy, Neal Alexander, and Anne Oakman. I
wish thank the editors warmly. I am deeply indebted to Declan Kiberd for his
continuous advice and his patience.
I acknowledge financial support from the Irish Research Council for the
Humanities and Social Sciences.
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

U Ulysses, edited by Declan Kiberd. London: Penguin, 1992.

P A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, edited by Seamus
Deane. London: Penguin, 1992.
D Dubliners, edited by Terence Brown. London: Penguin, 1992.
FW Finnegans Wake, edited by Seamus Deane. London: Penguin,
1992.
GJ Giacomo Joyce, edited by Richard Ellmann. New York:
Viking Press, 1968.
CW The Critical Writings of James Joyce, edited by Richard
Ellmann and Ellsworth Mason. New York: Viking Press,
1959.
L, I, II, or III Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I, edited by Stuart Gilbert.
London: Faber and Faber, 1957. Vol II and III, edited by
Richard Ellman. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
JJQ James Joyce Quarterly, University of Tulsa, 1963-.

All translations from Italian into English are mine, unless stated otherwise.
 INTRODUCTION

HERMETICISM, ROSICRUCIANISM, OCCULT

SCIENCE AND DREAMY VISIONS

On a normal day at the end of spring 1885, W.B. Yeats and some of his
associates secretly met to found the Dublin Hermetic Society. It was June 16,
exactly nineteen years before the day in which Joyces Ulysses is set. The
members of the society were later said to be interested in European magic and
mysticism and Eastern religion.1 The whole affair lasted only one year. In
1886, the DHS became the Dublin Theosophical Society. As Roy Foster
suggests, the shift towards theosophical matters disappointed Yeats, though he
was impressed by the envoy sent by the Theosophical leader Madame
Blavatsky.2
Such an anecdote, evoking more or less randomly the memory of Yeats in an
analysis of the occult in Joyce, may probably sound suspicious, if not out-of-
context. The antagonism between Yeats and Joyce is indeed a common place in
modern criticism. Neil Corcoran, for example, suggests that Yeats steps
forward into modernity out of the mists of the Celtic Twilight and the Irish
Literary Revival, whereas Joyce has often been read as urban realist,
European modernist, stylistic revolutionary.3 However, a new generation of
scholars is beginning to regard the relationship between the two writers in
alternative ways, especially as regards the Irish national question. Emer Nolan
argues that the Joyce/Yeats connection cannot be solved in terms of a simplistic
dualism, although it is certainly tempting to regard him [Joyce] as the antithesis
of Yeats in every conceivable way.4 As P.J. Mathews points out:

1
R. Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Mask, 42.
2
Foster, W.B. Yeats: a Life, I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, 47.
3
Corcoran, After Yeats and Joyce. Reading Modern Irish Literature, viii.
4
Nolan, Modernism and the Irish Revival, 164.
2 Introduction

Notwithstanding Joyces scepticism about certain elements of the Revival, the

idea that he may have been in sympathy with aspects of revivalist thought, is
rarely countenanced.5

In this regard, the ambiguity of Joyces political position reflected in his works
complicates the matter further. As David Lloyd has pointed out, Leopold Bloom
is a destibilizing figure, for he makes Joyces Ulysses a great counter-
nationalist text without it, for that reason, becoming a pro-imperialist one.6
Despite the apparent aesthetic and political distance that separates the two
Irish writers, the relationship between them shows also a certain affinity, an
affinity one can indeed assess by exploring their mutual visionary poetics.
However, neither Yeats nor Joyce can be seen as spokesmen of a univocal
message. It might be argued that one of their main common features is the
presence of a creative friction between antinomies that helps them produce
utterly dialectical texts. Such a struggle between contrary forces is certainly a
cornerstone of Yeatss poetics. A similar conflict is also present in Joyces
writings. Terry Eagleton describes the author of Ulysses as a rare creature, an
avant-garde artist who is also a genuine democrat. He points out that hardly
any other modernist writer is at once so esoteric and down to earth.7 A
perspective like this can be a useful groundwork for the present discussion of
Joyce and the occult, despite the fact that the actual subject of the book is a little
more esoteric than down to earth.
But now, let us return briefly to the mentioned anecdote. One may well
explain the odd coincidence by stating that the real events of June 16, 1885, and
the fictional ones of June 16, 1904, have no connection at all. On the contrary,
more credulous people may perhaps be inclined to resort to what Carl Gustav
Jung would have candidly called a synchronicity. Other readers will regard
casual events and synchronicities as the very same thing. What is exactly a
synchronicity? Jung explained that the term means a meaningful coincidence of
two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is
involved.8 In order to elucidate this definition, he mentions the distinction
between duplications of events and chance groupings. The latter are
significant in that they are more improbable than mere duplications. Here
follows a colourful example of chance groupings:

5
Mathews, Revival. The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Fin, The Gaelic League and the Co-
operative Movement, 111.
6
Lloyd, Ireland After History, 114.
7
Eagleton, The English Novel. An Introduction, 284.
8
Jung, The Collected Works, 520.
 Occult Joyce 3

On April 1, 1949, I made a note in the morning of an inscription containing a

figure that was half man and half fish. There was fish for lunch. Somebody
mentioned the custom of making an April fish of someone. In the afternoon, a
former patient of mine, whom I had not seen for months, showed me some
impressive pictures of fish. In the evening, I was shown a piece of embroidery
with sea monsters and fishes in it. The next morning, I saw a former patient, who
was visiting me for the first time in ten years. She had dreamed of a large fish the
night before. A few months later, when I was using this series for a larger work
and had just finished writing it down, I walked over to a spot by the lake in front
of the house where I had been several times in the morning. This time a fish a
foot long lay on the sea-wall. Since no one else was present, I have no idea how
the fish could have got there.
When coincidences pile up in this way one cannot help being impressed by
themfor the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual
its character, the more improbable it becomes.
[] It seems to me that in judging such a series a factor of uncertainty enters
in at this point and requires attention. I have observed something similar in other
cases, without, however, being able to draw any reliable conclusions.9

As is clear, Jung does not suggest bluntly that coincidences hide secret
meanings. They just look suspicious and possibly conceal some strange
knowledge connected with a hidden collective unconscious or memory. In our
case, the Joyce/Yeats coincidence may well be just a mere duplication,
although more superstitious readers, perhaps those equipped with a certain
knowledge of other events related to Joyces life, may even go further and
connect it with, say, the death-date of Joyces brother, Stanislaus, on June 16,
1955. Such an argument would not be rewarding in critical terms. Besides,
Jungian approaches to Joyce taking into account the theory of synchronicity are
not the most favourite ones in recent times.10 However, given Joyces particular
obsession with dates and the importance he attached to simultaneity and
coincidental occurrences in fiction, there is no doubt that the foundation of
Yeatss Dublin Hermetic Society on June 16, 1885provided that he had
access to such an informationwould have proved significant to him.
In an article written in Italian a few months after his death11 and published in
the periodical Letteratura in 1941,12 Stanislaus Joyce states that of the modern

9
Ibid., 521.
10
See Thurston: Odyssey of the Psyche: Jungian Patterns in Joyces Ulysses, in James
Joyce Broadsheet, 2.
11
The article is really an early draft of My Brothers Keeper. Its content is expanded, and
rewritten more extensively, in Stanislauss later book. To quote from it here is relevant
due to certain significant differences, especially regarding Joyces own position towards
the occult.
4 Introduction

Irish poets he esteemed only Yeats.13 He would have returned to the same idea
in My Brothers Keeper, where he wrote that his brother considered Yeats the
greatest poet Ireland had produced.14 Joyces attitude towards Yeats was in fact
two-fold. Although he did not agree, especially during his youth, with some of
Yeatss aesthetic choices,15 he must have held him undoubtedly in high regard.
This is shown by the fact that he knew by heart two of Yeatss esoteric short
stories, namely The Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi,
which deeply influenced his own early prose style. This points also to Joyces
recognition of the intrinsic value of Yeatss unmistakably occult short stories.
The respect Joyce had for the older master is beyond doubt. In a letter to his
son, Giorgio, written in June 1935, Joyce tells him about one night when he was
asked by some friends to recite something beautiful, and for the next two hours
he recited only poems by Yeats.16
The idea that Joyce was a great admirer of the art of Yeats despite the
latters clear occultist inclinations, seemingly so distant from Joyces own
temper, is shared by Ellmann. In Ulysses on the Liffey the critic stresses the
importance, in Telemachus (Ulysses 1), of the difference between Stephens
and Mulligans respective attitudes towards the great poet, stating that Stephen
never attacks him, only Mulligan does. It is a demonstration of affect that Joyce
yielded to no other Dublin contemporary.17 With regards to Circe (Ulysses
15) he records Joyces concern with the idea of a precursor, a role that he first
assigned to Ibsen, then to Ibsen and Hauptmann, although his final decision
was for Yeats.18 Thus, Yeats is not a precursor, but rather a mentor, who
himself must have had the greatest admiration for the younger artist, as is
evident in many letters. This is also confirmed in a famous speech pronounced
by Yeats on the occasion of the awarding of the Tailteann prizes in Dublin, in
August 1924:

It is our duty to say that Mr. Joyces book, though as obscene as Rabelais, and
therefore forbidden by law in England and the United States, is more indubitably
a work of genius than any prose written by an Irishman since the death of
Synge.19

12
A translation of the same essay into English appeared eight years later in the Hudson
Review. See next note.
13
S. Joyce, Recollections of James Joyce, 27.
14
S. Joyce, My Brothers Keeper, 183.
15
See for example: Ellmann, R. James Joyce, 101-3, 239, 325.
16
See L, I, 371-2.
17
Ellmann, R. Ulysses on the Liffey, 14.
18
Ibid., 148.
19
Cited in: Ellmann, R. James Joyce, 578.
 Occult Joyce 5

Despite the actual documented appreciation by Yeats of at least the Martello

tower episode of Ulysses, in 1923 the poet confessed that he had not been able
to finish the book.20 This shows that one can indeed enjoy a glass of good wine
without having to finish the whole bottle, although people like Joyce would not
agree with such a piece of wisdom.
Statements of mutual respect between Yeats and Joyce are helpful in
approaching the core argument of the present study. An analysis of the common
ground, especially in occult terms, on which the two artists occasionally drew,
might be a useful perspective for a new reading of Ulysses. It is not a concern of
this book to demonstrate that Joyce was an adept of some remote occultist sect,
or anything like that. He was no adept, nor can we see his use of occult themes
and authors as an ultimate commitment to such an obscure territory of
knowledge. On the contrary, the aim of the present analysis is to assess the
actual relevance of occult authors, themes, and methodologies of investigation
in the hidden structure of Ulysses, as well as to propose an interpretation of
Joyces response to the subject.
It is a fact that Joyce had several works dealing with various aspects of the
occult in his personal libraries. It is also beyond doubt that, from his earlier
works until his most mature books, he constantly referred to occult authors and
themes on many occasions. However, it is necessary first to define Joyces idea
of the occult. His approach is partly a way of revisiting, and perhaps resolving,
his troubled relationship with religion. This would put him in a closer position
to Yeats than one may imagine. For Yeats the occult, though an inestimable
source for artistic imagination and vision, as well as a surrogate for religious
belief, is mainly something pertaining to the supernatural. He believed intensely
in the imaginative power of the paranormal, as his affiliation to many secret and
esoteric societies, and his full commitment to practical magic, clearly show.
Kathleen Raine explains that Yeatss interest in various aspects of the occult,
like Theosophy, magic, Swedenborgianism, Neoplatonism, and Indian
philosophy concerns the exploration of a mental universe. 21 She adds that
Yeats, like Blake, did not share any part of the beliefs of materialism.22 Thus,
the occult becomes a place of the mind where all souls and memories, past and
present, occasionally meet. Belief in supernatural powers helps the poet create
an inner world of images useful in the construction of his own aesthetic
creations.
Surprisingly, Joyces attitude is not too distant from this perspective. The
supernatural, the paranormal, and visions are massively present in Ulysses,
though in distorted ways. However, to assess the nature of Joyces position

20
Ibid., 531.
21
Raine, From Blake to a Vision, 6.
22
Ibid., 6.
6 Introduction

towards the subject implies the need to reinvent the whole notion of the occult,
and to completely redesign the universe of occultism in terms of belief. It is in
fact an assumption of the present work that Joyce was not the man who would
gladly subscribe to any kind of spiritual system, let alone spiritualism. Despite
his firm rationalistic rejection of all forms of spirituality, certain psychological
considerations inform his approach to the occult in his texts.
Judging by Joyces character, his broad and multifaceted interests, and his
literary achievements, one can state bluntly that he is more empirical, scientific,
and curious than Yeats about the more material aspects of existence. However,
this cannot but settle the argument partly. Joyces aesthetic choices, which were
always very close in their effects to an empirical and terrestrial representation of
man and his unconscious, should undergo a redefinition in the light of his own
relationship to the body of occult knowledge in which he was deeply read.
Some evidence will here be useful. Among the volumes on occult subjects
he had in his personal library in Trieste, we find many texts concerning occult
matters, like Jacob Boehmes The Signature of all Things, Emanuel
Swedenborgs Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell, two books on theosophy and
discipleship by Annie Besant, a tract on the occult meaning of blood by
Rudolph Steiner, a study in French on Spiritism, a volume by Merlin called The
Book of Charms and Ceremonies Whereby All May Have the Opportunity of
Obtaining Any Object They Desire, a translation of Plutarchs theosophical
essays, a study on Yogi philosophy and oriental occultism, a work by Giordano
Bruno and a study on him, and finally several works by Blake and Yeats. 23
Joyce remained interested in the occult also in his more mature years. In the
Paris library we find a copy of The Occult Review (July 1923) which features
essays and articles on the Practical Qabala, the Akasic Records, and the
alleged communication with Madame Blavatsky. The Paris library hosts also
other books on similar subjects, though not as many as the Trieste library.24
Such a variety of texts would suggest that Joyces position towards the oc-
cult was very eclectic, as if the subject were a kind of amalgam of different tra-
ditions, all marked by the signature of secrecy. Theosophy, mysticism, magic,
spiritism, and the so-called occult science in fact blend together to form a cluster
of obscure erudition where Joyce eventually finds useful ideas, helpful in build-
ing up what looks literally like a cryptic system. This is consistent with the ways
in which scholars use the word occult as an umbrella term. Antoine Faivre de-
fines Esotericism as a field that includes various traditions of thought which
have many common denominators:

23
See Ellmann, R. The Consciousness of Joyce, 1977.
24
See Connolly, The Personal Library of James Joyce; a Descriptive bibliography.
 Occult Joyce 7

The more classical are, on the one hand, alchemy (understood as Philosophy of
Nature and as a mode of spiritual transformation), astrology (in its speculative
and not only divinatory form), magic (or magia, a manner of conceiving Nature
as alive, interwoven with correspondences, and to which are related various
forms of arithmology and musicosophy). Others were born at the beginning of
modern times, such as Christian Kabbalah, Neo-Alexandrian hermetism, Paracel-
sism, theosophy, and Rosicrucianism.25

Faivre rightly contends that the esotericists established relationships between

such diverse currents of thought eclecticly, drawing on different authorities of
the past, but almost always with a vision of universal correspondences insepara-
ble from the idea that the cosmos is alive.26 As regards this very last statement,
all readers of Joyce will know that, were it not for the esoteric notion that the
cosmos is alive, they would never encounter a soap crying Were a capital
Bloom and I; / He brightens the earth, I polish the sky27 in Circe, like many
other instances of pseudo-magical prosopopoeia.
However, the issue should not be reduced to single farcical occurrences in
Ulysses. In fact, the cluster of secret knowledge which seems to be Joyces in-
terpretation of the occult, is also consistent with the historical developments of
that amalgam of hidden traditions named by kabbalist Cornelius Agrippaan
author whom Joyce readers encounter as early as the fifth chapter of A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man28 occulta philosophia. The eclectic nature of
the esoteric is also implied in what Aldous Huxley calls Perennial Philosophy.
Alongside occult authors and artists, also many professors of literary occult-
ism describe it as an utterly heterodox doctrine. Leon Surette sums it up as fol-
lows:

Perennial Philosophy is Aldous Huxleys label for a set of beliefs that I call oc-
cultism. Both Perennial Philosophy and the occult claim for themselves what-
ever enlightenment is thought to be contained in Gnosticism, Neoplatonism,
Hermeticism, or any other mystical, pneumatic, or visionary tradition whatso-
everincluding those of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam,
as well as Swedenborgianism, spiritualism, and theosophy. They are, in short,
synoptic belief systems.29

25
Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition. Studies in Western Esotericism, xiii.
26
Ibid., xv.
27
U, 571.
28
See P, 244.
29
Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult,
xvii.
8 Introduction

Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos argues that the doctrines, myths and motifs of the
occult tradition are highly eclectic and far too various for any claim of homoge-
neity to be meaningful.30 He adds:

The occult is a heterodox tradition constantly rediscovered by its adherents who

simply borrow, steal, or reinvent religious ideas and practices that other eccen-
trics like themselves have kept current in all sorts of societies and publications.31

Tryphonopouloss definition of the occult seems to fit quite well Joyces own
interpretation of the subject. William York Tindall, in commenting on various
authors well known to Joyce such as Agrippa, the kabbalists, the Pytagoreans,
Paracelsus, Boehme, and Swedenborg, argues that they are representative of
some occult and philosophical branches of the Hermetic tradition so thor-
oughly confused with one another that there is no point in trying to distinguish
them.32
Some of the occult books Joyce had seem to point to such confusion. They
show a kind of continuity not only with the occult tradition itself, but also with
writers who were interested in occultism like Blake and Yeats. In particular,
thinkers like Boehme, the author of The Signature of All Things, and Sweden-
borg, the author of Heaven and Hell, were primary sources of inspiration for
both poets. They were also very important to Joyce, and continued to be so since
the early years until the later phases of his career. An early mention of them is to
be found in the autobiographical essay A Portrait of the Artist, written in
1904: He descended among the Hells of Swedenborg [] His heaven was sud-
denly illuminated by a horde of stars, the signature of all nature.33 Here we find
a direct mention of Swedenborg, while the allusion to Boehme is obliquely oc-
culted. It is interesting to note that the copy of The Signature of All Things Joyce
had is dated by Ellmann 1912, but the quotation above shows clearly that he
must have known the book as early as 1904, while he was still in Dublin.
Later in this study we will focus on the ways in which Joyce derived directly
from Swedenborg the idea of writing Ulysses according to a body/book corre-
spondence. The Swedish mystic, whose influence is recognisable in the works
of writers, poets, and thinkers as diverse as Sheridan Le Fanu, Blake, Yeats, and
Emerson is really a crucial author for Joyce. His interpretation of the Bible ac-
cording to a general correspondence between the body of man and the body of
Heaven deeply influenced Ulysses. Just as happens in Joyces great book, the

30
Tryphonopoulos, The History of the Occult Movement, 23.
31
Ibid., 23.
32
Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition, 24.
33
C, 44.
 Occult Joyce 9

Swede had invented a particular correspondence between the various organs of

the human body and the organs of Heaven, otherwise called the divine man.
In relation to Boehme, his Signatura Rerum is really a signature in Joyces
great work, from its use in the opening passage of Proteus (Ulysses 3),34 down
to the actual shaping of a visionary aesthetics strictly connected with the empiri-
cal perception of external reality. Boehmes unorthodox mysticism is based on
the theory of the elements. He believes that the elements of nature are powerful
forces that influence the life of man. The signature is the external body of things
as they appear to the eye. It is an exterior form hinting at the presence of a sym-
bolic nature. This connects with the poetic power of imagination, which enables
one to work out a set of interconnected correspondences. In fact, in Faivres
words, correspondences imply an imagination capable of deciphering the hi-
eroglyphs of the world, that is, the signatures of things. 35 The scholar points
out that such signatures always present themselves more or less as mediators
between the perceptible datum and the invisible or hidden thing to which it re-
fers.36 In the context of the above quotation from A Portrait of the Artist, the
symbolic potential of Joyces interpretation of Boehmes signatures as key ele-
ments of his use of the occult in his works, puts him in a much closer position to
Yeats than one may suspect.
As has been said before, Joyce admired immensely two esoteric short stories
written by Yeats. This is confirmed by Stanislaus in My Brothers Keeper.37 The
first story, The Tables of the Law, appeared in The Savoy in 1896, while the
second, The Adoration of the Magi, was published privately in a separate vol-
ume, alongside the first story, one year later. Originally, they were intended to
follow another esoteric short story called Rosa Alchemica in the volume
known as The Secret Rose, a collection published in 1897. Together they repre-
sent the follow-up to Rosa Alchemica. Joyces copy of the volume in the Tri-
este library dates 1904, but he must have read the book well before that date.
The prefatory note to the 1904 edition suggests as much, as Yeats makes a
veiled allusion to a meeting between him and the young James Joyce:

These two stories were privately printed some years ago. I do not think I should
have reprinted them had I not met a young man in Ireland, the other day, who
liked them very much and nothing else that I have written.38

34
See U, 45.
35
Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, xxii.
36
Ibid., xxii.
37
See S. Joyce, My Brothers Keeper, 183.
38
Yeats, The Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi, 1904.
10 Introduction

Yeatss first encounter with Joyce occurred in early October 1902. A few days
after their meeting, on October 22 and 23, 1902, Joyce went to Marshs library,
which still holds many occult texts. On that occasion, he read a copy of the
prophecies attributed to Joachim of Flora. The library stocks other books by the
Italian mystic. Joyce refers poetically to the circumstance in the third episode of
Ulysses where he talks about the stagnant bay of Marshs library.39 A few
lines below, he actually quotes from the text, trickily distorting a sentence writ-
ten by Joachim. He also suggests a connection between the Italian mystic and
the Dean of Saint Patricks Cathedral, Jonathan Swift.40 Yeatss occult influence
on Joyce, although subliminal, must have been relevant in this case, for both
The Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi are strictly con-
nected with Joachims ideas on religion and the history of the world, as exposed
in his imaginary secret book called Liber Inducens in Evangelium Aeternum.
Furthermore, in The Tables of the Law we encounter also a link between the
Italian mystic and Jonathan Swift. In fact, after having explained Joachims
theories on the Kingdom of the Spirit, one of the characters, Owen Aherne, in
response to the narrators scepticism about Joachims revolutionary theology,
paraphrases and distorts one of Swifts expressions in A Tale of a Tub: Jona-
than Swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbour as
himself.41 This is an interesting instance of Yeatss influence on Joyces texts.
Other references in the short story are relevant in the present discussion, for
they are parallel to some occurrences in the third episode of Ulysses. One of
them is Yeatss allusion to the kabalistic heresies of Pico della Mirandola.42 In
Joyces Proteus, besides all the references to various heretics, there occurs
also an allusion to Pico della Mirandola,43 as well as to the kabbalistic primor-
dial man, Adam Kadmon.44
The idea of using some of Yeatss intuitions concerning occult knowledge in
the unfolding of his works, is precisely suggesting the existence of an occultist
method by which Joyce manages to conceal obscure significances behind half
secret hints. Biographically speaking, we do not know, for it is not recorded
anywhere, whether or not Yeats suggested that Joyce should go to Marshs li-
brary to find books by Joachim. However, this could very well be the case, for
they met just a few days before his visit to the library, and on that occasion, as
Stanislaus records,45 they talked of the two esoteric short stories Yeats would

39
U, 49.
40
See ibid., 49.
41
Yeats, Short Fiction, 207.
42
Ibid., 204.
43
See U, 50.
44
See U, 46.
45
See n. 37 above.
 Occult Joyce 11

have reprinted some time later. Besides, in The Tables of the Law there hap-
pens to be also a reference to the 1527 edition of Joachims book Expositio in
Apocalypsin. Actually, a rare copy of the same volume, published in Venice in
1527, is the property of Marshs library, alongside three other works and a biog-
raphy of the mystic. Therefore, not only may we assume that Joyce must have
followed the advice of the older artist, but also that he took his suggestions so
seriously that he ended up using them later on, in one of the most cryptic pas-
sages of his masterpiece.
In the case just mentioned, Joyces use of one of Yeatss intuitions is clearly
recognisable. This allows us to spot a certain similarity between their ways of
concealing occult allusions in their works. Joyce and Yeats use the occult as a
landscape of the mind. A mental landscape represents, for the author of Ulysses,
the work of a lucid and precise intellect capable of elaborating complex aes-
thetic theories. It also reflects the products of a sort of hallucinated conscious-
ness devoted to the invention of an oneiric textual universe. On the other hand,
in Yeatss art the predominance of visions as a poetic device could not have a
psychological explanation concerning the nature of hallucinations, for Yeats be-
lieved in visions as ways to revelation. His writings are somehow magical writ-
ings, in that they try to establish a living connection with a supernatural spiritual
world. On the contrary, Joyce is certainly more interested in the occult as a mir-
ror reflecting a distorted human consciousness. Accordingly, in his texts he at-
tempts to approach the secret faculties of the hidden side of the mind, by resort-
ing to a parallel occult cognitive system.
Apart from the autobiographical essay (1904), other places where occult au-
thors are referred to are, for instance, the paper Ireland: Island of Saints and
Sages (1907), the Trieste conference paper on Blake (1912), Giacomo Joyce
(1914?), A Portrait (1914), certain critical writings, Ulysses (1922), and Finne-
gans Wake (1939). Swedenborg is ever present, but we also find Boehme,
Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Hermes Trismegistus, the mystic known as
Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Pico della Mirandola, Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky, Kooti Hoomi, and many others. Besides, among the ideas more fre-
quently used in Joyces fiction are Giordano Brunos and Nicholas of Cusas
theory of the coincidence of the contraries, the kabbalistic idea of the androgy-
nous man, the theosophic theory of the Akasic Records, the idea of metempsy-
chosis, numerology, and the alchemical correspondence between microcosm
and macrocosm as expressed in Hermes Trismegistuss Tabula Smaragdina.
Such themes blend with many others of a more folkloric nature in Ulysses, such
as magic transformations, living objects, apparitions of ghosts, haunting vam-
pires, and daemonic beings, all contributing to gradually change the book into a
curious example of fantastic literature.
12 Introduction

The authors Joyce occasionally mentions, with their occult theories and be-
liefs, are instrumental in the shaping of a secret internal texture in his works.
This is clear especially in Ulysses, a book partly based on the empiricalalmost
scientific in that it involves a psychological methodologyexploration of the
human mind. Occasionally, themes taken from the occult philosophy cohabit
with a kind of more superstitious interest in the occult. This is the case of
Joyces use of apparitions of ghosts and dead people, often in the form of vam-
pires.
Despite Joyces manifest interest in occult themes, his biography would lead
us think that he may have been only mocking the occult as a category of
pseudo-knowledge. For instance, in relation to the Dublin theosophists, it can be
argued that Joyces judgement was not very positive. In a letter from Rome, in
which he relates to Stanislaus his reaction to the riots at the Abbey Theatre dur-
ing the staging of Synges Playboy, he calls them derogatorily hermetists.46 An
explanation of such an attitude towards them is the widespread idea, among his
Dublin acquaintances, that Joyce was just pretending to be interested in the oc-
cult, while in fact he was only mocking it. In this regard, Stanislaus Joyces rec-
ollections are certainly illuminating:

In the period following his mothers death Joyce still maintained an interest in
theosophy, reading everything on the subject he could lay his hands on. He read
Swedenborg, Blake, Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, Leadbeater, and Annie
Besant. It was on this common theosophic terrain that he made the acquaintance
of the poet-painter-economist, George Russell, who published his poems under
the initials A.E. At their first encounter they discussed theosophy, at Russells
home, until almost daybreak. Knowing Joyces satiric humour, the other young
writers of the group laughed over this encounter later, believing that Joyce had
been pulling Russells leg.47

Stanislaus Joyce, who in My Brothers Keeper calls Blake a lunatic,48 is

very sceptical about the occult in general. However, he often refers quite clearly
to his brothers genuine, though nave, interest in the subject. His own recollec-
tion of Joyces encounters with Russell continues as follows:

And Joyce let them talk because, as he confessed to me, he preferred they should
believe a hoax had been perpetrated rather than have them discover his navet in
the matter.49

46
See L, II, 208.
47
S. Joyce, Recollections of James Joyce, 493.
48
S. Joyce, My Brothers Keeper, 243.
49
S. Joyce, Recollections of James Joyce, 493.
 Occult Joyce 13

In My Brothers Keeper, Stanislaus again refers to Joyces commitment to the

occult as something earnest though temporary:

Knowing my brothers satirical humour, his friends, foremost amongst them

Gogarty, were sure that it was a glorious leg-pull, and my brother preferred them
to think so. In fact, however, he had been even then as much in earnest as Russell
himself.50

Stanislaus felt that the influence of Yeats and Russell on Joyce in the field of
mysticism and Hermeticism was by no means a respectable matter. He refused
to acknowledge Joyces problematic two-fold attitude towards the subject.
Despite this, one can agree with Bonnie Kime Scott that although Joyces
renunciation of the Dublin theosophists was a formality that gave him a needed
sense of artistic integrity, he nonetheless left their neighbourhood, [] with
considerable theosophical baggage, and added to it as he continued to read their
work.51 As regards his alleged mocking scepticism of their practices, the
scholar believes that Joyces satirical use of the Theosophists was often
restrictive and conveniently masked indebtedness.52
It can be argued that Joyce was at the same time drawn to, and repelled by,
the occult. This ambivalence is also very Yeatsian. In fact, the visionary in
Yeats always loved to experience visions, while the sceptic loved to question
them. Declan Kiberd wittily remarks that Yeats spent much of the decade [the
1890s] seeing visions as a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn:
and the rest of it being expelled for questioning them.53 One should really be
reminded that, in 1890, Yeats was requested indirectly by Mme Blavatsky to
leave the so-called Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society due to his
scepticism about some aspects of the societys proceedings. This concerned
primarily matters of belief, like when a resolution was passed which included a
belief in Mme Blavatskys teachers.54 George Mills Harper records that:

Yeats, as always, was sceptical, refusing to decide between alternatives because

there were too few facts to go on [] Hesitant to commit himself and uneasy
about the vagueness of the resolutions, Yeats determined to keep a diary of all
signings I go through and such like, for my future use; and always to state my
reasons for each of them most carefully and when in doubt as to the legitimacy of

50
S. Joyce, My Brothers Keeper, 180.
51
Scott, Joyce and the Dublin Theosophists: Vegetable Verse and Story, 69.
52
Ibid., 70.
53
Kiberd, Irish Classics, 396.
54
See Harper, Yeatss Golden Dawn, 5.
14 Introduction

my reasons to submit them to some prominent members in whom I have

confidence.55

Such an oscillating attitude, always in balance between scepticism and

belief, is parallel to Yeatss own refusal to submit to the aggressive authority of
McGregor Mathers in the occult society he later joined, the Golden Dawn. His
behaviour generally tells us a great deal about his own opposition to the often
obscurantist attitudes of many occultists, an aspect of their character which left
Yeats disillusioned many a time.56 In fact, his belief in the occult is often
counterbalanced by doubts of various sorts. Such ambivalence perhaps led him
to prefer the magic power of poetry and imagination to proper occultism, as
the ultimate fulfilment of his visionary temper. On the other hand, one cannot
avoid registering the fact that he had been a member of the Golden Dawn and its
follow-ups for more than thirty years. This seems a good enough reason to
consider his commitment true and definitive. At the same time, his oscillations
persuade us that he must have been also partly sceptical about his own
allegiance to the occult. A truth is always made of two opposite sides, as Wilde
would remind us. In this context, to see the occult in Joyce in relation to the
occult in Yeats may be helpful in assessing the similar nature of Joyces own
ambivalent response to the question.
As Stanislaus Joyce points out,57 a blend of mysticism and occultism can be
spotted in Joyces interpretation of the occult. Actually, he seems to combine
the two categories, as if they were the two aspects of the very same system. In a
sense, we can describe mysticism and occultism as the two sides of the same
coin. As Faivre explains:

Simplifying a little, one could consider that the mysticin the very classical
senseaspires to a more or less complete suppression of images and
intermediaries, of mediations, because they quickly become obstacles for him to
union with God. This, in contrast to the esotericist, who seems more interested in
the intermediaries revealed to his inner vision by virtue of his creative
imagination than in tending above to a union with his God.58

Following such a simplifying explanation, one would be tempted to see in Joyce

stronger affinities with the esotericist nature rather than the mystic, even though
he pretended to put mystics and theosophists all into one category. However, it
is such an assembly of remote influences that I here name occult. As a matter of

55
Ibid., 6.
56
See ibid., 14-68.
57
See note 47 above.
58
Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, xxiii.
 Occult Joyce 15

fact, in A Portrait of the Artist (1904), alongside unhortodox mystics and

visionaries like Swedenborg and Boehme, Joyce mentions also the Christian
mystics John of the Cross and Joachim Abbas. In Giacomo Joyce he talks of
Miguel de Molinos and Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite. Again he mentions
Dyonisius in Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages, as well as in the Italian
conference paper on Blake. The case of this last mystic is exemplary in showing
that Joyces personal combination of mysticism and occultism had somehow an
historical foundation.
Dyonisius is probably better known as Pseudo-Dyonisius. The writings
attributed to him were very important in the religious developments of the early
Church, although later they became fundamental mainly in the Christian
orthodox tradition. Joyce considered him as the sine qua non for the
understanding of Blakes prophetic writings and visions. In a poineering study,
Frances Yates analyses what she believed to be a kind of hermetic golden age in
historya period whose dominant philosophy was precisely the occult
philosophyfocusing on certain authors, many of whom were dear to both
Yeats and Joyce (Lull, Pico, Agrippa etc).59 Her exploration explains the
relevance of the Kabbalah as a factor of continuity in the developments of the
occult philosophy in the Renaissance.
Jewish Kabbalah, after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and
through the contacts with Christian Europe, took place alongside the newly-born
Christian Kabbalah, when kabbalistic secrets and mystical techniques came
gradually to be applied also to the interpretation of Christian mysteries.
Dyonisiuss theories on the angelic hierarchies are believed by Frances Yates to
be behind the doctrines of many kabbalists, among whom we find Raimond Lull
and Francesco Giorgi.60 While Raymond Lull was a Christian kabbalist ante
litteram, the Franciscan friar of Venice, Francesco Giorgi, author of De
Harmonia Mundi, was a proper Christian kabbalist. His philosophy is summed
up in the following description by Yates:

The amalgam of Platonism, Hermeticism, Cabalism, astral cosmology and ethics

is given a strongly Christian direction in the last book of De Harmonia Mundi
which presents an elaborate Christological doctrine, infused with Franciscan
Christian mysticism.61

Such an explanation may provide us with the missing link that possibly
misled Stanislaus, in his own perception of the role of the occult in his brothers
views. Joyces idea of the occult, and particularly his own knowledge of the

59
See Yates, The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, 75.
60
See ibid., 12, 33, 36.
61
Ibid. 34.
16 Introduction

field, seems to be parallel to the occulta philosophia of the Renaissance. This

was in fact a blend of traditions as diverse as early Hermeticism, medieval
Jewish Kabbalah, mysticism, Neoplatonism, Christian Kabbalah, and so on.
Such a cluster of different categories of knowledge might have appealed very
strongly to Joyces medieval mind. Yatess idea that the theology of
Dyonisius was behind the systems of some Renaissance Christian kabbalists, is
peculiarly relevant in the present study, for it suggests precisely a cluster-like
quality of the occult. Besides, as Frances Yates again points out, the Giorgi
type of Christian Cabala, which was associated in Elizabethan England with
the Agrippa type, more deeply magical, alchemical as well as Kabbalist, is the
very root of Rosicrucianism.62 Such an intuition confirms the suspicion that
Christian Kabbalah and Rosicrucianism are actually synonymous.63
Joyce makes one significant, although seemingly casual, allusion to
Rosicrucianism in the early short story Sisters, first published in George
Russells journal, The Irish Homestead. As is well-known, the story is set in
1895, the year in which Yeats, already a member of the Golden Dawn, an
explicitly Rosicrucian association,64 wrote The Body of the Father Christian
Rosencrux. It is a short essay about the coming of an age of imagination, of
emotion, of moods, of revelation,65 after an age of criticism.66 The name
Rosencrux stands for Rosencreutz, the imaginary founder of the secret order of
the Rosicrucians. In Joyces short story, a young man is addressed by his uncles
as a Rosicrucian.67 Leaving aside the question of the historical developments
of Rosicrucianism, what is relevant in Joyces allusion is the evocative power of
the adjective Rosicrucian. Jeri Johnson dismisses the whole question of any
particular meaning to be attached to it, by pointing out that it is simply used to
suggest that the boy has become too interested in matters too esoteric for his
own good.68 However, if we see the reference in connection with Yeatss short
paper on father Christian Rosencrux, and with the idea of an amalgam of
different esoteric undercurrents to which the term Rosicrucian alludes, it may
suggest some deeper meanings yet to be calculated.
Beeler thinks that we can discuss a Rosicrucian text as a text which seems
to blur in the eyes of its readers and cross over the border of fiction into the
realm of reality.69 He argues about the way in which Rosicrucian texts were

62
Ibid. 170.
63
See ibid. 89.
64
See Harper, Yeatss Golden Dawn, 8.
65
Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 197.
66
Ibid., 197.
67
D, 2.
68
Johnson, Notes, in Joyce, Dubliners, 198, n. 4-14.
69
Beeler, The Invisible College: a Study of the Three Original Rosicrucian Texts, 26.
 Occult Joyce 17

written with multiple interpretations in mind,70 and believes that they are open
texts.71 One can suspect that a connection between the original Rosicrucian
manifestos and Joyces works does indeed exist. Some odd coincidences point
to this very conclusion. It is the case of Joyces secret (quasi-kabbalistic) use of
letters, a device consistent with the notion of open text. In Ulysses, letters and
words become alive through mutability and ambiguity. As Sebastian Knowles
rightly explains, language in Joyce is transformative, [] meaning is multiple,
and [] letters, for Joyce, are an endless source of play.72
As a matter of fact, in reading the original seventeenth-century Rosicrucian
manifestos, one may be struck by the reference, in the Fama Fraternitatisfirst
published in Germany in 1614, though an English translation by Thomas
Vaughan appeared in 1652to three books with letters for titles (book M, book
H, book I).73 Stephen Dedalus in Proteus refers twice to such an idea.74
Moreover, the anonymous author of the Fama Fraternitatis considers
Protheus the most revealing book in the philosophical Bibliotheca of the
Rosicrucian Society. In fact, the structural importance of Proteus in the
organization of Joyces great work could hardly be denied. Furthemore, the
manifestos stress the alchemical idea of a correspondence between microcosm
and macrocosm, which is one of the major structural characteristics of Ulysses.
Finally, as Frances Yates again points out, the Rosicrucian manifestos are an
expression of an age between the Renaissance and the XVII-century scientific
revolution historically set forth as an alternative to the Jesuit Order.75 All this
could well have appealed also to the anti-Jesuit in Joyce.
Rosicrucian thought is based on many of the assumptions of esotericism, like
the adept-only capability to decipher the secrets of nature. This may generally
apply also to the relationship between Joyces works and their readers. In fact,
as is stated in the second Rosicrucian manifesto called Confessio Fraternitatis,
the great book of nature is open to anyones eyes, but can be read or
understood by only a few.76 It can be argued that Ulysses is the protoptype of
the text open to many, but understandable only by few. Such an apparently
despicable and obscurantist quality of the book makes one wonder about the
genre to which it belongs. Indeed, if literary theorists had invented a narrative

70
Ibid., 37.
71
See ibid., 33.
72
Knowles, The Dublin Helix. The Life of Language in Joyces Ulysses, 17.
73
The two original manifestos are reprinted in Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian
Enlightenment.
74
See U, 50 and 61, where he speaks of alphabet books.
75
Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, xi-xii.
76
Cited in: Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, 174.
18 Introduction

subgenre called hidden writing, Joyce would have been probably among its
main exponents.77
Among the revivalists of modern Rosicrucianism were also W.B. Yeats and
Rudolph Steiner. There is absolutely no doubt that Joyce, at some stage, must
have come in contact with their works. Yeatss relationship with Rosicrucianism
is evident in his commitment to the Golden Dawn. Despite his affiliation to such
a secret esoteric society, his attitude towards occultism is filtered through his
early commitment to the more-theoretical-than-magical theosophy of Madame
Blavatsky. She was, just like Rudolph Steiner, a theorist of what could be
named occult science.
Dr. Steiner, who between 1907 and 1909 gave some 24 lectures on
Rosicrucianism between Munich and Budapest, was committed to the founding
of the so-called science of the spirit, otherwise known as anthroposophy.
One may rely on his Occult Science for an outline of its core arguments. In
Steiners words, occult science is the science of whatto the ordinary methods
of cognitionis present but unmanifest in the phenomena of the world.78
However, one must be sceptical about the alleged scientific outlook outlined in
the book. Steiners occult science moves constantly between an empiricist
approach and a non-sensible subject matter, namely the soul. He does not seem
to have had major doubts about the validity of his own original perspective. He
deeply believes that the occult science is interested in the non-sensible
World-contents in the same mood as does the natural scientist of those
accessible to sense-perception.79 The assumption is that the secret realm of the
occult, the soul, is in contact with the non-sensible.
In relation to Joyce, we really need a more sombre approach. The occult, like
many other systems of thought, has to be seen primarily, in its literal sense, as
something hidden, which can be brought to the surface by using the proper
tools. The scientific approach of such a methodology is closer to psychology
than occultism. The two fields share in fact some basic ideas. Links between
Jung, the occult, Gnosticism, and oriental philosophy, as well as between
Freuds psychology and the tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah, have been the
object of many studies in recent years.80 As regards Joyces aesthetics, the

77
In relation to this aspect, see the illuminating examples Knowles spots in The Dublin
Helix, especially the one involving Russells initials as the hidden reason why he speaks
occultly in Scylla (11-2).
78
Steiner, Occult Science: an Outline, 26.
79
Ibid., 27.
80
See for instance: Nandor Fodor, Frued, Jung and Occultism, University Books, New
York, 1971; J.J Clarke, Jung and Eastern Thought: a Dialogue with the Orient, Rutledge,
London, 1994; David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, New
 Occult Joyce 19

attention has to shift from the level of the soul to that of the mind. In the case of
his texts, our attention has to focus on the characters mind. Indeed, the
subject-matter of such an occult investigation is properly the hidden side of the
characters mind. Yet, two basic assumptions of Steiners science may be
illuminating here, in relation to the analysis of an occult side of Joyces works:

The two thoughts are as follows. First, that there is behind the visible an invisible
world, hidden to begin with from the senses and from the kind of thinking that is
fettered to the senses. And secondly, that by the due development of forces
slumbering within him it is possible for man to penetrate into this hidden world.81

Steiner explains that the visible facts, by their very nature, distinctly indicate a
hidden world.82 In applying this last sentence to Joyces works, we may read
words for facts, and possible worlds for world, and the statement would
be true all the same. In both cases, the aim is, as Steiner explains, to evolve
another mode of cognition.83
Another theorist of occult science was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. In
Ulysses, we encounter the mysterious lady in Aeolus84 (Ulysses 7) and in
Scylla and Charybdis (Ulysses 9), where her initials (H.P.B.) are quoted.85
Here follows a random example of her own methodology that shows similarities
with Steiners ideas about the hidden/manifest relationship.
In H.P.Bs Secret Doctrine, while attempting to defend, against the approach
of natural science, the notions of light, heat, sound, cohesion, and magnetisms as
substance, the theosophist displays an interesting idea of the way to cognition:

In no way [] do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording

a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in
believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of
these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed ALL that lies beyond the threshold
of sense. [] thus, we put forward the Occult teaching which maintains the
reality of a supersubstantial and supersensible essence of that Akasa [] the
nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter manifestationsits merely
phenomenal phalanx of effecton this terrene plane.86

York, Schoken, 1958; Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to
the Dead, London, Theosophical, 1982.
81
Steiner, Occult Science, 31.
82
Ibid., 32.
83
Ibid., 32.
84
See U, 178.
85
See U, 237.
86
Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 514-5.
20 Introduction

On the one hand, such an attempt to provide the occult science with a scientific
touch is also an effort to dignify a subject often dismissed as second-class
knowledge. On the other, it may be interesting to note how it actually strives to
create a connection with the material sense/perception plane. Such a striving
may certainly have been an aspect of the occult more appealing to Joyce than
Yeats.
Yeats somehow moves on different grounds. His admiration for Blavatsky
testifies to his early commitment to her secret doctrines. When he joined the
Rosicrucian Golden Dawn, he chose a Latin motto (DEDI, Demon Est Deus
Inversus)surprisingly very similar phonetically to the first part of Stephens
Latin surname, Dedaluswhich is actually taken from Section XI (Part II,
Volume I) of Blavatskys The Secret Doctrine, entitled Daemon Est Deus
Inversus. Furthermore, given the fact that the Russian charismatic theosophist
displays plainly a certain interest in matters of diabolismshe being the founder
of a theosophical journal called LuciferYeatss motto shows connections with
the more general anti-Christ theme, mirrored in the various beasts that crowd his
more apocalyptic poems.87
Such a link is also significant in relation to Joyce. Besides Stephens famous
devilish outburst Non serviam88 in Circe, clearly reminding us of his own
half-satanic temper, we shall not forget that Joyce himself, and particularly his
own pride, was described on many occasions, and by several persons of
different backgrounds, as Luciferian. Ellmann records, for instance, that George
Russell once wrote to Thomas Mosher that Joyce was as proud as Lucifer.89
By the same token, he takes account also of a conversation concerning the
character of Joyce between T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis, during which the
latter remarked: I daresay that he may be under the impression that he is being
as proud as Lucifer, or some bogtrotting humbug of that order.90
Apart from having a satanic temper, Joyce must have had also seemingly
Luciferian looks, judging by the funny reaction of two of Giorgio Joyces
schoolmates, when they saw their friends father in the hall of his house in
Zurich, in 1918:

They met what seemed to them an entirely black man in the hall. He wore a
black jacket, had a black goats beard and black, bristly hair on his head. He
shook hands with them and looked at them with his dark eyes from behind very
thick glasses. Unable to bear this concentrated gaze, they left as quickly as they

87
See my chapter on Circe.
88
U, 682.
89
Ellmann, James Joyce, 100.
90
Ibid., 494.
 Occult Joyce 21

decently could, agreeing as they went down the stairs that Giorgios father
looked exactly like the devil.91

The impression is confirmed also by one of the Zurich landladies of the Joyces,
who used to refer to the writer as Herr Satan.92
Despite this, Ellmann is probably right in stating that Lucifer (like
Prometheus and Faust) is not the ultimate model for the hero in Ulysses, this
role being assigned to men of substance and family, whether they were
voyagers, exiles, or homekeepers, 93 like Ulysses, Dante, or Shakespeare.
However, Joyces fascination with Luciferian characters is indisputable. This
might have come to him through the acquaintance with a literary figure who
was to play a central part in the publication of Joyces early work,94 Arthur
Symons, a man deeply drawn towards diabolism.95
In Ulysses, the references to a devilish, half-demonic dimension are
systematic, and therefore significant from a narrative technique point of view.
What we can call a sort of bland Satanism in the book connects with another
major hidden theme: vampirism. This again enriches Joyces idea of the occult,
to the extent of including the narrative realm of the fantastic.
Such an ambiguous fascination for demonism is also helpful in explaining
why Yeatss attitude towards the occult cannot be reduced to a mere interest in
theosophy. He became gradually more and more in search of practical modes of
psychic research. His behaviour within the Golden Dawn suggests a mixture of
scepticism and belief, which is characteristic also of Joyces response to the
occult. Here is one more anecdote which records Yeatss Joycean
ambivalence.
Despite the existence, since 1866, of a Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the
Golden Dawn claimed to be the true and only exponent of modern
Rosicrucianism in England. Since its foundation, the Order portrayed itself as
magical, establishing in Rosicrucian fashion all the necessary links with
mysticism, Kabbalah, hermeticism, and alchemy. As is shown by a scrupulous
study by Ellic Howe,96 the society was substantially a fake, for it was founded
on the existence of forged documents and manuscripts, like the famous Cypher
MS. At a certain stage, some of the original members, among whom was Yeats,
came to know about the forgery. There were some defections as well as much

91
Ibid., 435.
92
Ibid., 435.
93
Ibid., 393.
94
Ibid., 111.
95
Ibid., 112.
96
Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn; a Documentary History of a magical
order, 1887-1923.
22 Introduction

dilettantism. Despite this, Yeats decided to stay, until eventually, on April 27,
1900, he was elected Imperator of the Outer Orders Isis-Urania Temple.97
Another member of the Order was Aleister Crowley (motto: Perdurabo, i.e. I
Will Last Through), a man who was later to be famously regarded as the most
perverse man in the world due to his activities connected with Satanism. He
joined the Order in 1898 and took his so-called Portal Initiation in 1899. He
was then initiated as Adeptus Minor in Paris in 1900. Curiously enough, in 1923
Crowley published an interesting article called The Genius of Mr. James
Joyce, in which he has it that Ulysses is a sort of novel of the mind.98
Interestingly, the idea of the novel of the mindas stated by a notorious
occultist like Crowleysomehow brings us back to the aforementioned notion
of the occult as a landscape of the mind. As a mental frame, it helps Joyce find a
new parallel code of signification, a literary technique enabling him to conceal
secret meanings behind the cryptic texture of references in his works. This
contributes in creating a sort of occulted discourse beneath the textual surface.
An occultist method of interpretationwhich to some extent involves the
necessity, as Newman explains, to read the work Hermetically99can help the
reader bring to the surface the hidden significance of a number of allusions and
suggestions in Ulysses, as well as to understand Joyces alternative ways of
establishing analogic relationships between signs.
Accordingly, the relevance in artistic, religious, and psychological terms of
the cluster of symbols and images occult ideas evoke through their textual
transfiguration, should not be underestimated. As Stanislaus Joyce pointed out:

Theosophy was perhaps the only one of his enthusiasms which he came to regard
as a total loss; all that was to remain of it was his interest in dreams. He used to
make notes of the dreams that impressed him most, interpreting them and
investigating their causes after a method of his own. This habit continued at
Trieste. The importance he attached to them may be deduced from the fact that
his last book, to which he devoted seventeen years, takes the form of an
extremely long dream.100

The textual legacy of Joyces use of the occult lies also in his interest in dreams
and their psychological interpretation. Such a position is curiously compatible
with a Jungian perspective. In fact, in an essay called Psychology and
Spiritualism, Jung argues:

97
See ibid., 233.
98
The article is included in E.H. Mikhail, James Joyce: Interviews and Recollections.
99
Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 87.
100
S. Joyce, Recollections of James Joyce, 493.
 Occult Joyce 23

Those who are convinced of the reality of the spirits should know that this is a
subjective opinion which can be attacked on any number of grounds. Those who
are not convinced would beware of naively assuming that all manifestations of
this kind are meaningless swindles. This is not so at all. These phenomena exist
in their own right, regardless of the way they are interpreted, and it is beyond all
doubt that they are genuine manifestations of the unconscious. The
communications with spirits are statements about the unconscious psyche,
provided that they are really spontaneous and are not cooked up by the conscious
mind. They have this in common with dreams; for dreams, too, are statements
about the unconscious, which is why the psychotherapist uses them as a first-
class source of information.101

Therefore, it is all a matter of perspectives and interpretations, or at least it

seems to be so. Hence, we will argue about the ways in which occult knowledge
provides Joyce with the possibility of re-inventing a personal aesthetics of the
vision, and enables him eventually to escape, or rather dilute, referentiality in
the authorship/text and text/readership relations. The aesthetics of the vision
may also account for Joyces own rejection of the more spiritualistic aspects of
the occult, as well as his devotion to its imaginary dreamlike quality.
A similar perspective may again help us find common elements with Yeats.
That Yeats also used, at times, an occult symbolism without being fully
committed to it, is confirmed by a famous passage in the introduction to the
second edition of A Vision. There he denies believing in his own theory. This is
very similar to Stephens own attitude in Scylla and Charybdis, where he
states that he does not believe in his own theory about the connection between
Shakespeares life and works. What is relevant in Yeatss lucid admission of
disbelief is the symbolic importance of his system, as a means to enable
imagination to be fully in power during the process of artistic creation:

And now that the system stands out clearly in my imagination I regard them [my
circles of sun and moon] as stylistic arrangements of experience comparable to
the cubes in the drawing of Wyndham Lewis and to the ovoids in the sculpture of
Brancusi.102

Yeats considered imagination as the only power able to free the mind and give
way to the artistic development of the soul. This is in fact very similar to
Blakes feelings about poetic creativity, as well as to Paracelsuss definition of
imagination as the queen of faculties.103 Joyce, whose attention was directed

101
Jung, Psychology and Spiritualism, in Psychology and the Occult, 139.
102
See my chapter on Scylla.
103
Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, xvi.
24 Introduction

to Blake via Yeatss edition of his works,104 knew this well, for he stated that in
Blake the visionary and the artistic faculties are strictly connected. Vision is at
the basis of Blakes art, as the following account by Joyce shows only too well:

Elemental beings and spirits of dead great men often came to the poets room at
night to speak with him about art and the imagination. Then Blake would leap
out of bed, and, seizing the pencil, remain long hours in the cold London night,
drawing the limbs and lineaments of the visions.105

The biographical truthfulness of the account can be questioned. However, in the

present perspective, it is interesting to compare such a version to a remote
record of Blakes visions reported by Robert Southey:

Whoever has had what is sometimes called the vapours, and seen faces and
figures pass before his closed eyes when he is lying sleepless in bed, can very
well understand how Blake saw what he painted.106

Visionary or hallucinatory states in Blake very much resemble what the

psychologists call hypnagogic, or hypnopompic images, the only difference
between the two being whether they occur at the onset of sleep or at waking
time. It may be useful here to discuss briefly the nature of such images. For the
sake of simplification, one can take account only of hypnagogic images.
A hypnagogic state occurs at the onset of sleep, before entering into the
REM sleep. It is associated with vivid hallucinatory imagery. Hypnagogic
images are possibly the result of the visual system attempting to make sense of
the visual inputs still available to the eyes when the mind is drifting towards
sleep. Jung reports an experiment accounting for the ways in which hypnagogic
images work, as follows:

When a pencil is put into the anaesthetic hand of a hysteric, she will immediately
produce long letters in automatic writing whose content is completely foreign to
her consciousness. Cutaneus stimuli in anaesthetic regions are sometimes
perceived as visual images, or at least as vivid and unexpected ideas [] In the
half-waking state these phenomena occur fairly often as hypnagogic
hallucinations.107

Here, we can touch briefly also on another case under Jungs treatment,
involving a certain Miss S.W., 15 years old, Protestant, whose visions which

104
See S. Joyce, My Brothers Keeper, 112.
105
CW, 218.
106
Southey, The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, 194.
107
Jung, Works, Vol. I, 13-4.
 Occult Joyce 25

take the form of hypnagogic hallucinations are very similar to those experienced
by Blake in Joyces account:

Visions also came in large numbers [] At first they were confined to the onset
of sleep. A little while after she had gone to bed the room would suddenly light
up, and shining white figures detached themselves from the foggy brightness.
They were all wrapped in white veil-like robes, the women had things resembling
turbans on their heads and wore girdles. Later (according to her own statement)
the spirits were already there when she went to bed [] the visions were
generally of a pleasant nature. Gazing at the beautiful figures gave her a feeling
of delicious bliss. Terrifying visions of a daemonic character were much rarer.
These were entirely confined to night-time or dark rooms. Occasionally she saw
black figures in the street at night or in her room; once in the dark hallway she
saw a terrible copper-red face which suddenly glared at her from very near and
terrified her.108

A close psychological investigation can perhaps help us approach the textual

discourse in the works of visionaries like Boehme and Swedenborg. A similar
methodology can also be applied, to a certain extent, to writers like Yeats and
Joyce. Let us take a random controversy, appeared in the weekly journal The
Listener, between May and June 1949, which may perhaps illuminate the
present argument. The dispute sprung from an article by Kathleen Raine on
Swedenborg in which, besides considering the Swedes influence on Blake and
Yeats, the scholar tried to give an answer to a fundamental question: Are
visionaries reverting to a primitive way of thought that civilised man has
outgrown?109 Raines implicit answer involves the existence of a spiritual value
of Swedenborgs work, as well as the truthfulness of his foreseeing faculties.
Three weeks after, one Dr H.B. Rosenbuch, in a letter to the editor, replied
that to study Swedenborgs biography in the light of modern psychiatry leaves
no doubt that he was a schizophrenic who suffered from hallucinations.110 Due
to a strange kind of coincidence, on Bloomsday 1949, in The Listener, Raines
position was endorsed by the honorary secretary of the Swedenborg Society of
London, Freda G. Griffith. Her argument displays only her belief and credulity,
and is in no way scientific; accordingly, it does not deserve any attention here.
Seven days later, Raines reply to Dr. Rosenbuchs statement was published.
She curiously argued that to call Swedenborgs a schizophrenic who suffered
from hallucinations equals to call him a clairvoyant who was blessed with
visionary powers, and that whether he suffered from his visions or was

108
Ibid., 22.
109
Raine, Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic, in The Listener, May 19, 1949.
110
Ibid. June 9, 1949.
26 Introduction

blessed by them depends upon what he made of them.111 It is again a question

of interpretation, but it can also be argued that all interpretations are in a sense
manipulations.
Thus, it seems that a judgement on such phenomena always depends on the
way in which one looks at them in the first place. However, in a way Raines
and Rosenbuchs outlooks may be seen as complementary, and perhaps even
compatible. While Raines is more interested in the effects of visionary
faculties, Rosenbuchs perspective shifts the question of visions from a
spiritualistic ground to a more empirical one. It is empirical in that it may
become the subject-matter for scientific research, particularly for psychology.
It is in this context that Joyces textual use of the occult will be here partly
analysed. The oneiric quality of theosophy in which he took so much interest is
in fact the clue to the understanding of his approach to the occult as a source, a
technical device, and an effect, textually speaking, of his artistic developments.
Joyces use of visions in his works is massive. We might even say that his last
book, Finnegans Wake, is a gigantic vision. Sheldon Brivic puts it evocatively,
stating that Finnegans Wake is about a mind that contains all of history in a
dream.112 In Ulysses the most powerful visions are those we find in Proteus
and Circe, where ghosts literally materialize and come to haunt the characters
imaginations.
Thus, by considering vision as a mere faculty of imagination (i.e. the mind),
the present reading of Ulysses will take account of Joyces occultist method and
his aesthetics of the vision. By exploring the book in such a light, the secret
meanings of a certain amount of occurrences in the various chapters, alongside
the dreamlike nature of the two visionary key/episodes of the bookProteus
and Circe will finally come to the surface. This will help us discover new
significances encrypted in the hidden organization of Ulysses, a book
undoubtedly governed by an occult discourse.
However, one should always be reminded that the occult in Joyce, for all its
religious and psychological implications, pertains mainly to the act of telling, it
being involved in the dynamics of fictional representation. Accordingly, it has to
deal with the construction of a possible visionary universe through the
elaboration of empirical perceptions. Those impressions, induced on the psyche
of the characters by the seemingly normal experiences of a day, are filtered in
the text through the opaque and sometimes mocking mirror of a secret tradition.
Such a tradition, intended by Joyce as a mythical projection of the unconscious
in a textual dimension, models his subtle technique to the extent of ruling
narration according to a parallel code. It is a code pointing to an alternative

111
Ibid. June 23, 1949.
112
Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 7.
 Occult Joyce 27

cognitive ontology, based on the idea that to write is always to hide, whereas to
read is to decipher. In the present context, it will prove useful to redefine
theoretically the pliable category here named occult, in order to reinvent, with
some help of the imagination, the notion of an occult Joyce.
 CHAPTER ONE

OCCULTISM, LITERATURE,
THE UNCONSCIOUS AND JOYCE

The occult language of literature

In the history of ideas, as well as in religious and literary studies, the occult
has often been seen as a characteristically fluid category. Its changeable and in-
constant nature in fact defies scholarly categorization. This has predictably pro-
duced many generalized underestimations and misunderstandings. As we have
seen, the mutable developments of a non-unitary discipline are consistent with
the esoteric tightrope walking of some of the late nineteenth-century pseudo-
scientific revivalists of occultism and spiritualism. Faivre explained that the so-
called occult movement, which appeared between the second half of the nine-
teenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, sought to combine into one
single worldview the findings of experimental science and the occult sciences
cultivated in the renaissance.1 Such an inclusive attempt to put together differ-
ent and distant traditions, although linked by several affinities, never reached a
full stop. Fluctuations of meanings were typical of its developments through his-
tory and indeed continued to be so in recent times.
A scholarly discussion of Joyce and occultism in literature needs a prelimi-
nary word on the ways in which the eclectic patterns of occult studies and those
of Joycean scholarship eventually cross. In fact, the considerable amount of evi-
dence, both biographical and bibliographical, proving that Joyce must have been
fully aware of that secret tradition, does not alone suffice in clearing the ground
of unavoidable misunderstandings. Problems in elaborating a univocal definition
of a changeable category such as the occult still wait to be solved, despite the
illuminating criticism on the matter produced by scholars so far.
In some cases, a tendency to consider the term occultism in the broader
sense possible, rather than clarifying the approach of those critics who have
dared to analyze the relations between the occult and literature, has compli-

1
Faivre, Theosophy, Tradition, Imagination, 26.
 Occult Joyce 29

cated the situation further. The result has often been to add to the debate a theo-
retical uncertainty that blurs the very boundaries of the occult tradition itself.
In Stanislaus Joyces words, occultism equals theosophy, in spite of the fact
that historically speaking theosophy is generally understood as a more recent
phenomenon. Theosophy refers, for instance, to the not-always-easy-to-sum-up
doctrines of Madame Blavatsky. In relation to this, Joyces keeper names
mystics and visionaries who cannot be properly described as theosophists in the
modern sense. Leon Surette admits to the need of compromising by using oc-
cult and theosophy interchangeably whenever it will not cause confusion.2
The relevance of Stanislaus Joyces use of the term introduces an oneiric uni-
verse as the working-ground for Joyces major achievements. Only in this sense
is the reader allowed to consider Joyces position also from a psychological an-
gle.
As we have seen, Jung regards the occult mainly as something dealing with
the secret faculties of the unconscious (dreams, visions and hallucinations),
whereas Freudians assume that the interpretation of dreams makes them (partly)
intelligible. In such a context, what Jean Laplanche suggests by stating that a
dream is not a phantasmagoria, but a text to be deciphered,3 could be easily ap-
plied to the occult in Ulysses, and particularly to its dramatic exploit, the hallu-
cinated dreams of Circe.
The argument is still open to many different interpretations. Univocal cate-
gorizations are in fact risky here. Critic John Senior, one of the pioneers of the
modern approach to the occult in literature, proposes to help the reader avoid
possible misunderstandings by stating that:

Occultism is a dangerous word to use, and special care must be taken not to mis-
understand it. There are very low occultists and very high ones, and we should no
more commit the world view itself to Hell because of charlatans who misrepre-
sent it than we should disavow religion because of Chaucers Pardoner.4

Such a view implies the relevance of personal belief, which is no doubt a key
issue when reviewing the works of real occultists. However, the realm of be-
lief is not always a useful frame of reference when the subject for speculation is
the fictional universe of a writer.
The task of analysing the influence of the occult in Joyces writings implies
the need to tackle a major question: the scepticism of those who are inclined to
dismiss the actual relevance of his sympathy for the subject. With Joyce, it is an
established tendency among critics to consider the occult just as an object of

2
Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 26.
3
Laplanche, Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality, 8.
4
John Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, xiv.
30 Chapter One

mockery. Accordingly, it has often been preferable to solve the whole issue by
resorting to his ever-present ironical modernist detachment. A brilliant Joycean,
Robert D. Newman, rebukes such a dismissal by suggesting that

To accept unquestionably James Joyces mockery of occult practices and of those

associated with them in Ulysses is to be caught in yet another of the traps that this
consummate trickster sets for his readers. Despite a seminal article written thirty
years ago by William York Tindall, critical investigation of the Hermetic tradi-
tion in Ulysses has been largely limited to explication of allusions.5

Newmans words hint at the fact that the presence of occult contents in Ulysses
might actually signal a most profound legacy, which can be found at the level of
narrative strategies rather than the plane of mere references. He seems to sug-
gest that the importance of the occult does not confine itself to its being hidden
behind the obsolete symbolism and the occasional opacity of the book. If this
were so, it would just represent the source for possible revelations of some con-
cealed significances. In fact, the solution to the obscure occurrences in the book
is traceable beyond the plane of allusions. The occult meanings signified are
really a step further in the semiotic process. Thus, the occult becomes a structur-
ing force of the book, rather than a rhetorical device used to stress its ironical
and satirical complexity. Something similar is argued by Raph Jenkins, who in a
pioneering article on the subject states that although it is fashionable to assume
that Stephen has rejected the mysticism of AE and the theosophists, nonethe-
less his knowledge of theosophic doctrines is far greater than any commentator
has previously pointed out.6
Not only may the present perspective clash with the sensitivities of some
Joyce students, but also with the views of those who have always been reluctant
to consider the very idea of a connection between occultism and literature in the
broader sense. In relation to this, Surette cites the tendency of modern scholars
to suggest that modernists other than Yeats were infected by occult influ-
ences:

The scandal is not that scholars have dared to suggest that canonized authors
such as Conrad, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and Stevens [...] were tainted by occult in-
fluences. On the contrary, the scandal is scholarships long-standing avoidance of
the topic.7

5
Newman, Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses, 168.
6
Jenkins, Theosophy in Scylla and Charybdis, 36.
7
Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 8.
 Occult Joyce 31

To talk of scandal in a diatribe concerning the game of literature is perhaps to

overstate the whole question. It could lead to the temptation of neglecting fur-
ther interpretative possibilities in order to favour a univocal perspective. This is
dangerous in the case of Joyce, in which the more doors open the more chances
one has to get close to one of the truths.
The occult in Joyces texts equals partly the hidden side of the characters
minds, and therefore lends itself to an explanation from a psychological stand-
point. However, a discussion of occultism in literature must be primarily a dis-
cussion of language. Here it is useful to take account of the linguistic aspects of
mental processes. Simplifying a little, it can be argued that the multi-layered
process of codifying mental stimuli, perceptions, images, and thoughts into
words is the first step of all kinds of expression and communication. It implies
always, at a very basic level, at least a manifest and a hidden side. In a text, the
manifest side equals the horizon of the written (words and their combinations).
Instead, the hidden side equals what we may call the source for words, as well
as the ways in which they are interrelated in the narrative. Freuds distinction
between the latent and manifest contents of dreams, the famous dream-
thoughts/dream-content dichotomy, explains sufficiently such a dynamics. As
Freud points out:

The dream-thoughts and the dream-content are presented to us like two versions
of the same subject-matter in two different languages. Or, more properly, the
dream-content seems like a transcript of the dream-thoughts into another mode of
expression, whose characters and syntactic laws it is our business to discover by
comparing the original and the translation. The dream-thoughts are immediately
comprehensible, as soon as we have learnt them. The dream-content, on the other
hand, is expressed as it were in a pictographic script, the characters of which
have to be transposed individually into the language of the dream-thoughts. If we
attempted to read these characters according to their pictorial value instead of ac-
cording to their symbolic relation, we should clearly be led into error.8

Similarly, if we read a text only according to what the manifest side of language
suggests, we cannot but get only a partial impression about what it says. Fur-
thermore, when we translate words into a written plane accessible to a possible
reader, there occurs the question of textual interpretation. Interpretation is, still
at a very basic level, always an attempt to decipher. This is consistent with
Freuds idea on the interpretation of dreams. He believes that the manifest con-
tent of a dream is given in the form of hieroglyphics, whose interpretation im-
plies a translation into the language of the dream thought. The interpretation of
dreams is relevant here for it introduces the concept of translation as interpreta-

8
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 381-2.
32 Chapter One

tion. George Steiner contends that to read is to decipher, whereas to speak is

to translate (Metapherein), both processes implying a need to decode the
signs or vital hieroglyphs through which life acts on consciousness.9 The im-
plicit message is that, in the complicated use of the dialectics of language as a
literary code, we are to face a shift, a transfer parallel to the transition from the
mere communication of meanings in a written form to their expression in the
universe of the literary.
Clive Bloom argues that meaning, removed as the essential element of the
literary, is not itself literary.10 Whenever it is not removed from that plane, it
becomes literary in its interconnection with the dialectics of hiding and reveal-
ing, an important distinction between literature and mere communication.
Bloom spots an occult aspect in the very nature of the literary. He speaks of
that other need of language: the need of speaking in order to hide a secret.11
His analysis moves from the assumption that literature is no place for lucidity or
directness in communicating messages:

Within the act of telling the text delivers other, sometimes contradictory, mes-
sages. Direct statement [] is eschewed by the literary in favour of ambiguity,
convolution, equivocation and circumlocution [...] Thus, it might be argued that
the nature of the fictionally literary is not to communicate but in its complex way
to hide communicating or to radically delay its ever reaching a destination [...]
Literature, encoded as a language of the secret-of-the-undisclosed, conditions a
response by its refusal to speak.12

In this light, all literary texts become ciphered texts. Thus, at a very basic level,
an occult work would not necessarily need some occult meaning or doctrine to
hide in order to call itself occult. This is consistent with the Latin etymology of
the adjective. In reminding us that it means hidden, Senior suggests that oc-
cultists are often professional obscurantists.13 In the present context, an inves-
tigation of the occult in Joyce should start from that particular occult which has
not yet become occultism. Language is the basic dimension of the occult,
whereas belief and ideology are only secondary implications.
Further difficulties will complicate the present argument when proper occult
texts will be taken into consideration. Therefore, it is of some use here to dis-
cuss the ways in which the theory of language and occultism have crossed each
others paths. Many thinkers fond of the occult believe that language points to a

9
Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 77.
10
Bloom, The Occult Experience and the New Criticism: Daemonism, Sexuality and the
Hidden in Literature, 101.
11
Ibid., 100.
12
Ibid., 100-1
13
Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, xv.
 Occult Joyce 33

now-lost and fragmented primordial unity. Frank Paul Bowman explains that
such a theory follows the occult-illuminist tradition which informed symbol-
ist poetic theory as [...] Romanticism.14 He examines the idea of the birth of
language according to occult beliefs, stating that for the illuminist tradition the
purer sense is not something to be created, but something to be restored, some-
thing that has been lost.15 He argues that:

At the beginning, all was unity; this unity has been lost, fractured. The restoration
of unity and the obliteration of differences are the tasks of men and the end of
history [...] Certain mechanisms of language, in particular allegory and metaphor,
are especially apt at embodying the perception of unity [..] Language, like crea-
tion, is divine in origin; it has lost in large part its original purity and unity and
yet retains traces of that origin.16

The fragmentation of the real, as well as the attempt to make sense of it by try-
ing to recompose a lost unity, is something the reader of Joyce faces in many
places in Ulysses. For example, when Stephen Dedalus is walking along
Sandymount beach trying to read the signatures of nature,17 he is referring to the
possibility of decoding those secrets whose external shapes lie scattered around,
in chaotic fashion, in front of his very eyes. Leopold Bloom seems to have
something similar in mind, when he reflects on the reality that surrounds him
along the same beach later in the day: All these rocks with lines and scars and
letters.18 He is also perhaps expressing a belief in the primordial unity of
things, of which superficial signatures of this vegetable world are but a shadow.
In the passage above from Bowmans essay on Boehme, the reference to
metaphor and allegory as instruments useful in trying to rethink the imaginary
unity of the language of Babel, are a further link to both Ulysses and Finnegans
Wake. As Newman contends, the Neoplatonic reversion of phenomena to their
archetypes, informs the appeals of Hermeticism to Joyce, for the search for
unity is essentially a return.19 The idea of Joyce as the secret organizer of a ci-
phered text, for the understanding of which he drops hints the watchful reader
has to collect, is the condition for an approach of Ulysses from an occult stand-
point. Specifically, what Sheldon Brivic calls the dream of cosmic extensive-
ness which constitutes the essence of the Wake, every detail of which is gen-
erated by one system, Joyces mind,20 is exemplary of such a tension towards

14
Bowman, Occultism and the Language of Poetry, 52.
15
Ibid., 52
16
Ibid., 52.
17
See U, 45.
18
U, 498.
19
Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 94.
20
Sheldon Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 10.
34 Chapter One

the reconstruction of a lost psychic and linguistic landscape. The critic argues
that:

The creator of this dream is involved in it, drawn by its images of desire and anx-
ious to be overwhelmed by the randomness of its reality. But his visionary aspect
wants to use this world to awaken Finnegan by reconstructing the lost unity, to
awaken humanity by building the most complex possible image of the human
mind, an image to show that we are one and many.21

In this context, some of Jacob Boehmes ideas on language are also worthy
of consideration. The mystic is himself involved in the debate about the nature
of language. Boehme calls natural language a legacy of a lost Adamic language.
In natural language, Adamic signatures can still be recognised, although the Fall
has subverted the name of things, which were initially just direct translations of
the Divine Word. Bowman explains that:

The language of naturethe Word in creationalso exists, and letters, words,

and syllables reflect its secrets and significations [...] Our intellection of natural
language lets us understand the divine acts demonstrated by the letters [...] Thus,
all creation is a symbolic cipher, the hieroglyph of a superior reality. The natural
language is found in the signatures of things and in the Word within us. Man can
know the being of things and learn to give them their true names, and language is
the depository of mans resemblance to God.22

Whats in a name? Mageeglinjohn asks in Scylla and Charybdis.23

Whats in letters? we may add. Actually, Stephen Dedalus, who here and
there drops many hints concerning letters, eventually happens to reveal that he
has some secret knowledge of the Jewish mystical doctrine known as the Kab-
balah. The practical side of that tradition revolves around letters to which num-
bers are assigned. The whole universe is imagined as represented in the letters
of the Law. About this, it was said by a kabbalist that if a letter was taken from
the Law or added to it, the whole universe would immediately collapse. Another
modern kabbalist, Jorge Louis Borges, shows an attitude towards language
that could be described somehow as Joycean. Steiner explains that:

We can locate in the poetry and fictions of Borges every motif present in the lan-
guage mystique of Kabbalists and Gnostics: the image of the world as a concate-
nation of secret syllables, the notion of an absolute idiom or cosmic letteralpha
and alephwhich underlies the rent fabric of human tongues, the supposition

21
Ibid. 9.
22
Bowman, Occultism and the Language of Poetry, 54.
23
U, 268.
 Occult Joyce 35

that the entirety of knowledge experience is prefigured in a final tome containing

all conceivable permutations of the alphabet.24

The present investigation is informed, in its basic principles, by the theory of

a once-united language subject to fragmentation after the Fall. Such a language
has to be reconstructed. The aim is to point to the possibility of seeing language
from an occult outlook as the fragmented legacy of a primordial oneness. Its
components, letters and words, are the very fragments in which parts of the
original lost significance seem still to lie, though only in a latent way. Its means
are also analogous: metaphors, analogies, and allusions.
As Tindall has it, Joyces analogical method shows an influence of occult
thought. In talking of some of Joyces sourcesamong which he acknowledges
Joachim of Flora, Dante, Blake, Madame Blavatsky, Henry S. Olcott, Yeats,
A.E.the critic believes that Joyce drew analogical method from sources liter-
ary and occult.25 In fact, occultists happen to see the history of the world as a
chaos, made of scattered pieces of an ancient knowledge which is now lost. This
sapientia can be reconstructed by picking up the various fragments normally
disregarded as meaningless by the mass. They are not meaningless, though, for
he who knows how to collect and organize them, in order to build back a pattern
leading to a previous truth. As Tryphonopoulos explains, all occult scholars
must labor to discover and reassemble the scattered fragments in an attempt to
trace the contour of the original structure of ancient wisdom.26 This seems to
be consistent with Newmans opinion that

The worlds of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake consist of correspondences, from the
thought fragments that Stephen and Bloom mysteriously share and the elaborate
schematas that Joyce constructed linking time, color, anatomy with episodes of
Ulysses to the animistic view of Finnegans Wake. Joyces preference is for the
analogical, an attempt to knit together the world.27

However, a lost unity cannot be recreated in reality, for reality is random and
chaotic. Instead, it can be found in dreams as well as in fictional accounts, both
being curious examples of teleological narrative. This is why the dimension of
belief has to be kept within the boundaries of the oneiric, or rather, textually
speaking, the fictional. The present perspective starts from this very assumption:
a method similar to the occultist may prove useful in tracing back a system of
meaningful references lying beneath the surface of Ulysses, a masterpiece of

24
Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 67.
25
Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition, 31.
26
Tryphonopoulos, The History of the Occult Movement, 20.
27
Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 95.
36 Chapter One

hidden writing. And yet, such an occultist method in Joyce has to be, so to
speak, secularized, in that it eschews the realm of personal belief, or even any
serious interest in the question of belief.
This has some fascinating implications in the seemingly casual process of
discovering secret meanings and connections. In this light, particular sentences
in the text will come to indicate some remote ways of interpretation although
they seem to occur almost by chance in the middle of other discourses. Thus,
their apparent purpose is to conceal rather than reveal. Such a strategy implies a
redefinition of the theoretical exploration carried on so far, to the extent of in-
cluding also the fictional horizon constructed by those occult sources, which are
often the targets of many obscure allusions in Ulysses.
To sum up, the literary is intended as a manifestation of the ineluctability of
the ciphered obscurity of texts. If we add to its natural ambiguity certain occult
references, doctrines, and theories, known to the writer but hidden behind the
metaphors and allusions in his works, we witness to the ways in which a ci-
phered text becomes occult.
At this stage, it can be argued that Joyces texts are/are not occult because of
the actual presence/absence of occult notions behind them. Furthermore, some
may still wonder whether or not Joyce may be just mocking the occult, rather
than committing himself to it. It is useful here to start from the final question,
and then to proceed backwards, just as an occultist would do normally.
In relation to Joyces alleged mockery, one can easily admit to the fact that
both mockery and commitment are present in Ulysses. Mockery is evident in
many places. Besides, is there any aspect of the book in which we could be
completely sure that Joyce does not display in an oblique manner his innate
irony? Moreover, since irony implies detachment, one might wonder whether or
not detachment can be resistant to the influence exerted by an earlier commit-
ment. In fact, a sundering implies always some previous form of conciliation.
In relation to Joyces very personal version of the occult, one feels the need
for further clarifications. Of course, he was not a joiner by nature, and rather
hated the idea of belonging to movements, let alone occultist societies. Despite
this, ones own sympathy for occultism cannot be judged solely from a member-
ship of secret societies. The issue is broader. It involves the possible influence
of occult knowledge on ones life and works. The literary occult is mainly, so to
speak, a narrative strategy. As Joyce himself confessed to Harriet Shaw Weaver,
he would not pay too much attention to occult-related theories beyond using
them for all they are worth, but they have gradually forced themselves on me
through circumstances of my own life.28 This supports Newmans view that

28
Cited in ibid., 86.
 Occult Joyce 37

such theories are worthy of consideration, for allusions to Hermetic writings

and concepts steadily increased29 with each book Joyce wrote.
However, despite Joyces instrumental use of the occult, in discussing litera-
ture we need to deal also partly with the issue of belief. Since belief is somehow
linked to an idea of commitment, it is necessary to state whether or not an au-
thor actually believes in the theories he talks of. Unfortunately, belief as ex-
pressed in written texts is no easy matter to discuss. In fact, one could very
likely happen to believe the unbelievable, or to be sceptical of his own persua-
sions at the same time. The case of fiction shows the impossibility to assess the
genuineness of ones beliefs from ones written statements. As Eagleton re-
minds us, fiction is a kind of writing in which you can neither lie, tell the truth,
nor make a mistake.30 Besides, it is not always easy to distinguish between be-
lief and credulity. Surette, for instance, calls Yeats credulous,31 and still it
would be difficult nowadays not to consider him one of the most fervent believ-
ers among occult poets. Timothy Materer faces the question of belief stating
wittily that

When Alice in Through the Looking Glass tells the White Queen that no one can
believe impossible things, the Queen replies that sometimes she has believed six
impossible things before breakfast. Alice needs the ability to believe the impossi-
ble if she is to understand the looking glass world, and so do poets who write of
the occult, which takes them into a world as strange as Alices.32

Sometimes credulity and scepticism are a Janus-faced entity. This is the case
with Yeats, whose attitude is described by Materer as a mixture of scepticism
and navet characteristic of occultists.33 This can be applied also to Pound,
who often ridiculed Yeatss occultism, and yet was like Yeats in mixing
scepticism with credulity.34 In the scholars perspective, both aspects of belief
are parts of a peculiar modernist irony without which those poets would have
appeared very naive in the eyes of their readers. In short, while it seems that
some modernists shared partly a dual attitude towards the occult, it is beyond
doubt that belief in the occult is always necessary for the writing of proper oc-
cult works. In Materers words, belief is necessary to the writing of works like
A Vision.35 Hence, we need to make a further distinction between those writers

29
Ibid., 86.
30
Eagleton, After Theory, 89.
31
Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 164.
32
Materer, Modernist Alchemy: Poetry and the Occult, 3.
33
Ibid., 3.
34
Ibid., 2.
35
Ibid., 2.
38 Chapter One

who are committed believers, and those who are sceptical. This may well intro-
duce the notion of a calculated distance between Joyce and Yeats. In comment-
ing on this issue, Tindall has an illuminating explanation worth reading in full:

Supposing Hermes-Thoth the god of romantic symbolists and Joyces patron in

particular, we may expect to find correspondences or analogies in the litterish
fragments posted in that hollow image. For Yeats and a few other transcenden-
talists who believed or wanted to believe in a macrocosm they did not know but
which correspondences might reveal, such analogies are sometimes vertical as
Hermes recommends. But for writers like Joyce, who had lost belief in the upper
half of Hermetic reality, except in so far as it could be equated with the poetic
imagination or the unconscious, correspondences were generally horizontal, and
The Emerald Tablet was modified, as we have noticed, to mean as here, so there.
The method of Hermes, separated from his world and adapted to what was left,
still seemed a way of exploring, unifying, or revealing the relationship of part
with part. Joyce used correspondences to show the connection between man and
man, man and society, man and nature, and, as if to prove himself a romantic, be-
tween past and present.36

In this light, it can be argued, for instance, that Joyces scepticism partly re-
sembles the scepticism of another writer like Flaubert. Italo Calvino explains
that Flauberts scepticism together with his infinite curiosity for human knowl-
edge anticipates the qualities of the great writers of the twentieth century.37
Thus, a writer who has composed a visionary work may be allowed some doubts
regarding the reality of his own esoteric searches. At times, writers opt for the
ultimate symbolic power those experiences helped emerge. Accordingly, artists
can be considered occult even if they are not true believers. They may be credu-
lous, mocking, or even serious about their own commitments, but this does not
change the situation, for writers are occult if their works are occult. The need
here is to admit to the fact that a consumate sceptic like Joyce might have had
his own occult ways. In order to explain such an idea, the use of a metaphor
may perhaps be of some help.
Let us consider the multifaceted and heterodox universe here named occult
as a dark house, a big house perhaps, or rather, a lonely tower with high win-
dows. As regards its external, it appears as a very sinister building. Once inside,
we find out that the interior is absurdly kitsch. The furniture does not match ei-
ther the colour of the walls or the curtains. Here and there we spot flights of
stairs, perhaps winding stairs, which lead to nowhere. The high windows let
through little light, and this explains the wide range of candles which light the

36
Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition, 34-5.
37
Calvino, Lezioni Americane, 126.
 Occult Joyce 39

colourful tapestry on the walls, as well as the rose-shaped mock Byzantine mo-
saics on the floor.
The effect of such a building on the casual visitor is ambiguously powerful.
A sense of mystery is baffled by the nave blend of odd furniture and decora-
tions. Such a house could well be the consequence of what we may call open
architecture. Let us imagine that, at some stage, Joyce had a chance to enter
such a building through its backdoor in order to take furtive notes of what was
inside. Those notes we find scattered methodically in his works, as if he ex-
pected, or rather challenged, the reader to recognise the parallel signifying code
organizing them. As regards the reader, the first point of such a game is not in
the least to find the way back to the house, but rather to know that the writer
himself was there at some stage. Of course, this does not add anything to our
knowledge of either the house or the intruder. However, it may tell us something
about what the writer has actually seen in the building, and what has had some
influence on his texts. This helps also explain how texts are constructed, and the
way in which Joyce created his own occult book. The watchful reader will even-
tually spot the hidden narrative that underwrites his work. Furthermore, such a
conception of the occult speaks a final word about the scarce relevance of the
authors belief in the critical analysis of a literary work.
A similar position is held by many scholars who have dealt with the occult in
literary studies. In the preface to a valuable collection of essays on literary mod-
ernism and the occult, one of the editors, the mentioned Leon Surette, admits
beforehand to the fact that, although one of the assumption of the collection is
that mythical, ecstatic and revelatory topoi in modernist texts are informed by
an attempt to revive ancient pagan religious sensibilities, the contributors to
the book are not committed to our view.38 One of the actual contributors, John
Coggrave, has a very interesting essay on Joyces use of occult sources.
At this stage, the question of the readers response to an occult text emerges.
Is the reader to take seriously the writers alleged beliefs, or could he just dis-
miss them as fictional and still enjoy them? The issue can be approached with-
out resorting to the question of belief, which at the end of the day concerns
solely the realm of personal subjectivity and is therefore not susceptible of being
proved, let alone in an analisys of fictional texts. To wonder whether artistic ex-
pression should be committed to belief is in fact academic. This was suggested
long ago by I.A. Richards in his famous pseudo-statement theory. As he put it, a
pseudo-statement is a form of words which is justified entirely by its effect in
releasing or organising our impulses.39 Another explanation of the theory is
that the pseudo-statement stands for a form of words which looks like a state-

38
Surette and Tryphonopoulos, Literary Modernism and the Occult Tradition, xvii.
39
Richards, Science and Poetry, 59.
40 Chapter One

ment, but should not be taken as one.40 If we take it as a statement, it may be

true or it may be false; it is not necessarily false, although in fact it is likely to
be so.41
This is to suggest that a discussion of the occult in literature shall be freed of
any bias against both the actual possibility that serious authors may have been
fascinated by occultism, and the ultimate irrelevance in strictly literary terms of
their belief in the occult doctrines hidden behind their works. This opens the text
to multiple unprejudiced interpretations. Before examining in detail some of
Joyces occult sourcesand accordingly the presence/absence of occult con-
tents in his worksit may be useful to discuss briefly how recent criticism has
approached the question of the occult in literature. The purpose is to test the
opinion of other scholars against the present use of the term occult.42
In his illuminating study, John Senior wishes to demonstrate that the basic
metaphysical assumptions of symbolism are occult. 43 They point to a direct
connection between specifically occult movementsRosicrucian, theosophical,
and the likeand the symbolist movement in literature.44 Such a perspective is
close to the idea that symbolism and occultism dwell on similar grounds, in that
they both use the analogical method implicit in the very idea of symbol. A sym-
bol would point to something beyond mere referentiality, and cannot be reduced
to the level of ordinary consciousness. What the role of the occult may be in
such a semiotic process is easy to guess. A symbol pertains to the absolute, it
being itself a sign of the tendency towards the divine essence, the logos, unity,

40
Richards, Between truth and truth, 39.
41
Ibid., 39.
42
As regards a tentative chronology of the studies on the occult in literature, we may
note that one of the first links historically established by critics between the two subjects
is that between occultism, Romanticism, and Symbolism. A pioneering attention to the
subject is paid by Auguste Viatte in Sources occultes du romantisme, illuminisme,
thosophie, 1928, and by Denis Saurat in Littrature et occultisme, 1929. The relation
between Hermeticism, Pythagoras, Boehme and Swedenborg, and authors like Nerval
and Villiers de lIsle-Adam, had been previously the centre of some interesting
reflections in Arthur Symonss The Symbolist Movement in Literature, 1899. Important
contributions to the study of occult influences in literature are those of Edmund Wilson
(Axels Castle, 1933) and Mario Praz (The Romantic Agony, 1956). The two scholars,
although they did not belong to the field of occult studies yet to be defined, produced
some interesting criticism on the relevance of esoteric themes in the development of the
modern artist. Other recent studies more directly concerned with the analysis of the
occult as a structural factor in modern literature are, to name just a few, those by William
York Tindall, John Senior, George Mills Harper, Kathleen Raine, Timothy Materer,
Clive Bloom, Leon Surette, and Demetres Tryphonopoulos.
43
Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, xvi.
44
Ibid., xvi.
 Occult Joyce 41

eternity, or whatever else may be the object of this or that occultist research. In
Seniors opinion, for symbolist poets a symbol is an image which permits the
mind to break through its ordinary limits in order to perceive things not as they
seem, but are.45 Accordingly, he argues that the value of the symbol is that, in
evoking the sensation of vagueness, it stretches the limits of consciousness.46
Symbolism is not to be intended as a poetics by which images taken from the
occult lore come to substitute ordinary products of the poets imagination. The
similarity lies neither in the subject matter nor in the cultural background of the
artist or the occultist. What makes them alike is the way in which they attempt
to stretch the limits of consciousness, to try and express the ineffable by
means of a necessary imaginative complexity. The symbol is seen as something
that goes even beyond metaphor, something which has very little or no connec-
tion at all with external reality. It apparently makes the reader dismiss the uni-
verse of empirical perception in favour of a superior realm. On the one hand,
such an idea of symbolism as a kind of literary occultism shows some affinities
with Joyces own method of alluding to something beyond the expectations of a
reader accustomed to the normal use of metaphors, no matter how obscure. On
the other, it is a little too definite in pointing to the possibility of a belief through
which the occultist may actually reach with the mind an invisible realm, eternal,
wise, and perfect.
Senior, in fact, never proposes the existence of any such supernatural
heaven, for the ultimate vision, [...] is not a repudiation of the world, but an
embracing. Heaven is here, now.47 The apparent ambiguity of such a position is
suggested by certain remarks which make us rather wonder whether literature
may be the place for speculations on the infinite and the absolute, or if those
sublime conceits should be left to religious debate. For instance, when Senior
describes Swedenborg as the perfect example of the modern occultist,48 we
are induced to believe that occultism and literature must perforce be two sepa-
rate, though interconnected, grounds.
In fact, with regards to Swedenborgs doctrine of correspondences, Seniors
arguments resort to the idea of belief, the very same belief which in any writer
would inevitably be seen as a sign of naivet and credulity. He states that if
Swedenborg had chosen to call his doctrines allegories, there would have been
little theological dispute. 49 Unfortunately, like a true occultist, he called them

45
Ibid., 43.
46
Ibid., 43.
47
Ibid., 167.
48
Ibid., 32.
49
Ibid., 34.
42 Chapter One

facts, insisting not only that the universe is like a human form but that it has a
human form.50
Quite to the contrary, Joyces use of occultist doctrines, or even of a pre-
cisely occultist method in his works, does not tell us anything about his being an
occultist of any kind. As I said, belief is by no means necessary in literary crea-
tions. In other words, while a writer may well be a believer in his own visions,
or in spirits, so to speak, this is not to be the rule. In fact, it happens very rarely,
especially in the modernist literary scenario. Although one may only suppose
that Joyce was very fond of spirits, one cannot but hesitate before indulging in
the temptation to see a precise spiritualistic legacy in his works. At this stage,
one may well wonder what were the spirits Joyce was fond of, and what sort of
effect they had on his texts. An easy answer to this would be that they are those
peculiar spirits that at times help him give the narration a hallucinated touch,
like in Circe for example, where the ghosts of dead people fit the drunken
phantasmagoria quite well indeed.
However, to return to Seniors reasoning, when its logic is brought to its ex-
treme consequences, it leads him to state that Yeats is no symbolist poet at all,
due to his alleged lack of contact with the absolute. Thus, it is better to call him
an imagist for he finds images to hold the conflicting orders of experience to-
gether but never symbols, for symbols entangle the Absolute.51 Ezra Pound,
who described the image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional
complex in an instant of time, would have disagreed with John Senior in calling
Yeats an imagist. In 1914, in an essay titled The Later Yeats we read: Mr
Yeats is a symbolist, but he has written des Images as have many good poets
before him.52 In such a virtual diatribe, one wonders whether for Senior we
should consider the imagist Yeats an occultist at all. And if he is not, who is?
After Senior, other critics have attempted to question and redefine the status
of canonized authors in relation to the occult. Among them, Leon Surette is one
of the most reliable. His major studies focus on Ezra Pound and occultism. They
tend to display always a particular willingness to theorize and delimit the
ground for speculation, though at times such rigorousness seems to be baffled
by the fluid and heterodox nature of the subject he deals with.
Surettes studies are characterized by a certain courageous pride in defend-
ing strenuously particular ideas against the common view traditionally estab-
lished by authoritative critics. This is the case of the question whether Yeatss
poetry and occultism should be seen as analogous or separate. Like Foster,
Surette questions the saving the appearances arguments of Richard Ellmann
and Graham Hough. According to them, we should admit to Yeatss occultism,

50
Ibid., 34.
51
Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, 167.
52
Pound, Literary Essays, 378.
 Occult Joyce 43

but at the same time isolate it from the poetry, despite the fact that everyone
knows that the topic is manifestly occult in topic and imagery.53 Before
Surette, George Mills Harper had already attacked such a position efficaciously:

It has been critically fashionable to follow W.H. Audens dismissal of Yeatss

occult studies in all those absurd books with one contemptuous line: but
mediums, spells, the Mysterious Orienthow embarrassing. It is, I suggest, un-
scholarly if not obtuse for those whose epistemology and critical bias run counter
to Yeatss to omit any consideration of the occult tradition.54

For Surette, the eclectic esoteric tradition called Perennial Philosophy, or oc-
cultism, is secretly ubiquitous in the background of many modernist writers. At
times, it should be looked at through the lens of commitment or belief:

Scholarly ignorance of the occult results from a largely justifiable contempt for
the set of beliefs it represents. Although occultism is marginal to aesthetic cul-
ture, it is not as clearly isolated from it as might at first appear, or as one might
wish. If we draw the horizons of the occult as the occultists themselves do, it
possesses a long history running parallel to mainstream aesthetic culture, inter-
secting it at many points. The intersections of which I speak are not just resem-
blances between the themes and beliefs of occult writers and poets or artists; they
include clear-cut cases of artists who adopt and accept occult beliefs and formu-
lations.55

Such a perspective may not allow us, perhaps, to take in Joyce as a represen-
tative of occult literature. We could confine ourselves just to call him obscure,
metaphorical, or allusivelike Yeats was just an imagist for Seniorand dis-
miss any further reflection on the topic. In fact, when Surette analyses briefly
Joyces attitude towards the occult, he does so in a dismissive way. He avoids
taking into account the possibility that some aspects of Joyces cultural back-
ground were nothing but occult in the truest sense. Joyces mythical method,
he explains is an adaptation and secularization of the mystical symbolism of
the Symbolistes.56 After having suggested that Joyce replaces the esoteric
sense by a merely allusive and metonymic sense, he contends that the hidden in
Ulysses is simply the network of allusions to the Odyssey, and to a few other
open exoteric realms.57

53
Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 7.
54
Harper, Yeatss Golden Dawn, 1-2.
55
Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 11.
56
Ibid., 217.
57
Ibid., 217.
44 Chapter One

The present study of Joyces great book starts from the very opposite per-
spective. Not only was Joyces knowledge of occult writers a fundamental part
of his cultural background, to which he kept referring constantly in all his
works, but it is clearly hidden behind the net of many textual allusions appar-
ently pointing to a non-esoteric solution. More than that, it informs the structure
itself of the book. Accordingly, it shapes the text-reader relationship ineluctably
by modelling it on the adepts response to occult practices. Despite this, it would
be idle to try and find in his works any sign of belief at all. At most, we may oc-
casionally find traces of his innate superstition. Such considerations in fact dis-
courage any possible attempt to dismiss the relevance of the occult in Joyce. As
Newman explains:

Joyces parodies of the occult [] should not be interpreted as a dismissal of this

mode of thought. Part of the appeal, and indeed the consequent difficulty of
Ulysses, is the inclusive rather than the exclusive consciousness expressed within
the novel [] Joyces irony is seldom sardonic, but rather intended to tease us
out of circumscribed simplifications of life, whether they be Stephens obses-
sions or Blooms escapism.58

In this light, since all discussions of literature are textual discussions in the first
place, the term occult will here continue to refer to the system of hidden ideas
and images belonging to a secret universe encrypted in the text. Such a system
constructs eventually a parallel fictional discourse, which functions via a hidden
code of signification.
Another brief clarification is needed concerning the more biographical as-
pects of Joyces fascination for the occult. Joyces superstition is a fact hardly
questionable from a biographical point of view. This is suggested for instance
by his obsession with dates, but also by the cited book on the charms and cere-
monies to obtain any object desired he had in the Trieste library.59 However, in
this context one has to face the objections of those occult scholars who believe
that such a manifestation of human frailty has nothing, or little, to do with the
high grounds of the Perennial Philosophy. To isolate the occult from ghosts,
poltergeists, witches, vampires, werewolves, and the like,60 is sometimes one
of their preoccupations.
What is superstition? John Coggrave suggests that it is a mixture of belief,
fear and hope and presupposes correspondences within the universe which may
have no rational basis.61 In Joyce, and particularly in Ulysses, some of the

58
Newman, Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses, 170.
59
See Introduction, n. 23.
60
Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 11.
61
Coggrave, Joyces Use of Occultist Sources, 96.
 Occult Joyce 45

themes linked to folklore and superstition occur very frequently indeed. Accord-
ingly, it would be difficult to take them as something disconnected with his own
personal idea of the occult. Apparitions, ghosts, paranormal phenomena, vam-
pires, and so on, are what certain occult studies scholars tend to exclude from
their analyses. In relation to Joyce, a use of the term occult must be inclusive
rather than exclusive, and therefore comprehend also this kind of manifestation.
Before entering a textual discussion of Ulysses both as an occult book and as
a curious example of fantastic literature, where the narrative points always to an
indecision between the natural and the supernatural, it may be of some use to
examine a few occult theories familiar to Joyce, discussed in some of the books
he had in Trieste. The following analysis focuses on the ways in which they
gradually became effective structuring features of his great work.

Joyce and the Occult

A text whose importance in relation to Joyce has been oddly underestimated
is Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg. In Ulysses, the use of some of its
doctrines is subterranean and pertains to the secret internal texture of the narra-
tive. Its structural relevance in the so-called Ulysses schematas makes a new in-
terpretation of them possible which could in fact yield up original results. Those
skeletons invented by Joyce as a means to facilitate the understanding of his
book are not, of course, the ultimate explanations of the numerous enigmas the
book creates. They are just simple and sometimes superficial guidelines helpful
in approaching the work. However, one feels that their secret purpose might be
also perhaps to mislead the reader, rather than assist him on his way through the
text. Still, some of the secrets they conceal are crucial to the appreciation of the
hidden structure of the book.
The two schematas are very different.62 Besides the many variants, catego-
ries such as correspondences and scene occur only in Gorman, while others such
as persone and senso (significato) only in Linati. A two-fold difficulty links the
opaque presence in Gorman of the correspondence category to the obscure
meanings of the organs of particular chapters of the book. This eventually gives
rise to challenging dilemmas. For example, what has heart in common with
Hades (Ulysses 6), or blood with Wandering Rocks (Ulysses 10)? By re-
sorting to the theory of correspondences outlined by Swedenborg in Heaven and
Hell, one may account for the relationship between organs and episodes in
Joyces masterpiece.

62
All references to the Linati and Gorman schematas in the present study are to
Ellmanns Ulysses on the Liffey, 178-83.
46 Chapter One

The Swedish visionary based many of his writings on the idea of correspon-
dence. He also invented a particular notion of organ, concerning the interpre-
tation of the Sacred Scriptures. Before his so-called conversion, the Swede had
been involved in scientific research. This provided him with a sort of scientific-
like outlook evident in the aseptic coldness of his revelations. Since the day in
which he plunged himself into the study of the Bible, he undertook the task of
unveiling the hidden meanings encrypted in the spiritual subtext of the Scrip-
tures. His method was based on the hermetic law of correspondences between a
superior and an inferior sphere, i.e. As above, so below. Such an hermetic
tenet would have become also a fundamental component of Yeatss cultural
background. It is likely that Joyce came in touch with it via the older poet. In a
poetic passage, full of mysterious echoes, from an essay on Swedenborg written
in 1914, Yeats wrote:

Yet another impulse comes and goes, flitting through all, a preparation for the
spiritual abyss, for out of the celestial world, immediately beyond the world of
form, fall certain seeds as it were that exfoliate through us into forms, elaborate
scenes, buildings, alterations of form that are related by correspondence or
signature to celestial incomprehensible realities.63

Yeats knew well Swedenborgs visionary universe. He knew that the Swedish
mystic believed that every word of the Bible was a hint of a precise correspon-
dence between things that happen respectively in heaven and on earth. The
Swede believed that divine or angelic societies corresponded to human societies,
and that, according to the Bible, heaven was actually a divine man who ap-
peared in the shape of a human body. The organs of the divine man correspond
to the organs of mans body. Gods heaven is an exact correspondence of the
body of man in all its parts. Swedenborg explicates his own theory as follows:

It is an arcanum still unknown in the world that heaven reflects a single person if
it is grasped as a single entity, but in the heavens this is common knowledge [...]
Since angels know that all the heavens, including all their communities, reflect a
single person, they actually call heaven The Greatest and Divine Man.64

Similar ideas are exhaustingly argued in the fat volumes of Arcana Coeles-
tia, to which Joyce refers also in his Trieste paper on Blake. In reflecting on the
style of Swedenborgs prose, which has something of the realistic, Yeats sug-
gests that there is in Swedenborgs manner of expression a seeming superficial-

63
Yeats, A Vision and Related Writings, 6-7.
64
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 61.
 Occult Joyce 47

ity.65 Apparently, Joyces response to Swedenborgs plain style was not too
distant from Yeatss:

Swedenborg, who frequented all of the invisible worlds for several years, sees in
the image of man heaven itself and Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, who, accord-
ing to him, are not three angels, but three angelic choirs. Eternity [] appeared
to the Swedish mystic in the likeliness of a heavenly man, animated in all his
limbs by a fluid angelic life that forever leaves and re-enters, systole and diastole
of love and wisdom. From this vision he developed that immense system of what
he called correspondences which runs through his masterpiece Arcana Coeles-
tia.66

Joyce was aware that a somatic scheme emerged from Swedenborgs works.
This very idea is just what he states to his friend Carlo Linati in the famous let-
ter about Ulysses, written on September 21, 1920, which included the first
schema. He suggested that Ulysses is an epic tale concerning two races, the Isra-
elite and the Irish. He compared the book to the human body, and explained that
each adventure could be imagined as one person although it is composed of
persons.67 The letter illuminates the actual structure of Ulysses. Dublin be-
comes the body of the universe. Its secrets can be understood only through the
deciphering of an obscure net of correspondences involving organs of the body,
hours, arts, techniques, and so on. The process is amazingly similar to a conceit
which functions as the basis for all Swedenborgian visionary theories about cor-
respondences:

The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual worldnot just the natural
world in general, but actually in details. So anything in the natural worlds that
occurs from the spiritual world is called correspondent. It is vital to understand
that the natural world emerges and endures from the spiritual world, just like an
effect from the cause that produces it.68

Such an interpretation of the law of cause and effect fits quite well Joyces idea
that each episode (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being intercon-
nected and interrelated in the structural scheme of the whole) should [] create
its own technique.69 Besides, it is interesting to note how such correspondences
eventually merge into symbolism, in that they provide Swedenborg with the

65
Yeats, A Vision and Related Writings, 10-1.
66
CW, 221-2.
67
L, I, 147.
68
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 81.
69
L, I, 147.
48 Chapter One

possibility of a two-fold interpretation of the Scripture. This leads us back to the

question of the hidden in the literary use of language:

Now we may say a bit about the knowledge of correspondence to the natural
world through correspondences. As a consequence, communication with heaven
is given to man through correspondences [...] If man were involved in the knowl-
edge of correspondences, then he would understand the Word in its spiritual
meaning. In this way it would be granted him to understand arcana of which he
sees no trace in the literal meaning.
The Word does contain a literal meaning and a spiritual meaning. The literal
meaning is composed of worldly things, while the spiritual meaning is composed
of heavenly things.70

In Heaven and Hell, we first encounter the Correspondence of All Things

of Heaven with All Things of Man, and then the Correspondence of Heaven
with All Things of the Earth. What Swedenborg calls angelic communities
reminds one of Joyces idea that one person has to be composed of persons:

Since the whole heaven reflects a single person [] heaven is divided into mem-
bers and parts the way a person is, and these parts have similar names. Angels ac-
tually know what member one community or another is in [...] In general, the
highest or third heaven makes up the head as far as the neck, the middle or sec-
ond heaven the torso as far as the loins or knees. The lowest or first heaven up
the feet right to the soles and also the arms right to the fingers. For despite being
at the side, the arms and hands are lowest things of people. All this shows why
there are three heavens.71

We can leave aside the question of the division of heaven into three parts,
perhaps parallel to the structure of Ulysses. This might be only a coincidence
shared by many other works important to Joyce, first among them Dantes Di-
vina Comedia. Instead, a closer analysis of Swedenborgs way of assigning to
each organ a specific meaning will illuminate the presence of a very strict rela-
tionship with Joyces book.
A very secularized notion of the organs of heaven was well known to Joyce
since 1906, when he wrote a curious letter to Stanislaus in which he wittily
spoke of what the poetical and mystical Swede would call my interiors. 72
Ulysses is full of interiors, as well as Swedenborgs books. In Heaven and Hell
Swedenborg speaks of fourteen organs, while in the schematas Joyce mentions
twenty-one. Ten of them are present in both contexts. Six are referred to by the

70
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 95-6.
71
Ibid., 64.
72
L, II, 183.
 Occult Joyce 49

same names. The first is one of the most important of the whole body: heart. In
Heaven and Hell, the Swede explains that heaven is made up of two kingdoms,
the celestial and the spiritual. Different kinds of angels inhabit them. Those who
live in the first kingdom share intention, which is essentially good of love.
Those who live in the second kingdom share discernment, which is what is
true of faith. The first kingdom is associated with heart while the second corre-
sponds to the lungs.73
In the Ulysses schematas the distinction between heart and lungs is associ-
ated with the organs corresponding respectively to the sixth and the seventh epi-
sodes. With regards to the sixth chapter (Hades), in the senso category of Li-
nati we read descent to nothing, while the art of the Gorman schema is relig-
ion. Descent to nothing and religion might be said to go on quite well with
the ideas of intention and good of love, yet in a sort of parodied and in-
verted relationship. This becomes somehow clearer in connection with the sev-
enth episode (Aeolus). In the simbolo category of Linati we read wind
among other references, while the scienza/arte is rhetoric. On the contrary, in
Swedenborg the breath of the lungs is a symbol of discernment and truth
of faith. It can be argued that this is also a subtle ironical semantic inversion
playing with the idea of truth and its representation. As we will see in due time,
the possibility of portaying any truth at all in Aeolus is undermined not only
by the filter of rhetoric, but also by a peculiarly deceitful kind of discourse such
as the language of journalism.
Such distinctions are just general ones, and arguably point to a very fluid
sort of relationship between Joyce and Swedenborg. More peculiar correspon-
dences linking the various organs and the truths of the scriptures in relation to
other chapters, will certainly be of interest to the reader of Joyce. It is the case
of what Swedenborg calls a less general correspondence:

In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the head are those who are involved in
everything good more than others are. They are in fact involved in love, peace,
innocence, wisdom, discernment, and in joy and happiness as a result.74

Joyce speaks of brain in Scylla (Ulysses 9). In Gorman, the art of the episode
is literature, while the technique is dialectic. In Linati dialectic is gone
and the technique becomes whirlpools. If we compare the dynamic images
evoked by the whirlpools of literature and dialectic to Swedenborgs reassuring
love, peace, innocence, wisdom, discernment, joy and happiness, the relation-
ship looks clearer. It is as if Joyce had taken Swedenborgs idea and deliberately
inverted it. Thus, not only does he parody it, but he also demystifies, humanizes,

73
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, par. 95, 82-3.
74
Ibid., 83.
50 Chapter One

and secularizes its spiritual meanings. This is confirmed by the fact that in Li-
nati one of the symbols of Scylla is mysticism. In Gorman, mysticism is a
correspondence of the episode.
Furthermore, in the very same paragraph from Swedenborgs book, we en-
counter another interesting connection: In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people
in the loins or organs for generation are involved in marriage love.75 Rather
than loins or organs for generation, Joyce prefers to speak bluntly of genitals.
In Gorman they refer to the fifth episode (Lotus-Eaters), where the correspon-
dence is eunuchs, a very powerful symbol of marriage love and genera-
tion. On the other hand, in Linati we find a funny mixture of the spiritual and
the sexual, in the relation between the seduction of the faith and castration.
Here, Joyces will to invert and parody the original spiritual idea is even more
manifest. The way in which he seems to play with Swedenborgs ideas and doc-
trines, displays a kind of childish and hilarious glee. Something similar happens
in connection with other organs that will be taken into account in the following
chapters.
Another occult thinker whose phantom presence is very subtly concealed
behind the game of ironical jokes concerning the spiritual in Ulysses, is Annie
Besant. Her book entitled The Path to Discipleship is also present in Joyces li-
brary. Of course, the fact that he had the book would not alone suffice to prove
that he had actually read it. However, we may take Stanislauss word for this.76
He repeatedly stated that James had studied, among other authors, also the
works by Besant. A mocking reference to her occurs in Finnegans Wake, where
she is referred to as the lover of liturgy.77 James Joyces controversial fond-
ness for the teachings of theosophy, a peculiarly Victorian aspect of what is
usually regarded as a fin de sicle craving for the occult, is well described by a
two-page note headed Theosophy, included in one of the very expensive
notebooks recently acquired by the National Library of Ireland.
Annie Besant, a remarkable woman born in London to Irish parents in 1847,
a crucial year for Ireland, was to become one of Madame Blavatskys closest
collaborators, and a good friend to W.B. Yeats.78 To discuss her idea of theoso-
phy here might help us understand the reason why Joyce was at the same time
interested in, and repelled by, the occult. He somehow nurtured a cultural dis-
taste for its more backward-looking and reactionary aspects, he being some kind
of a progressive thinker. Notwithstanding this, as we know he remained inter-
ested in the topic through the years. This is partly due to what could be de-
scribed as the occults progressive strains. Such a seemingly oxymoric concept

75
Ibid., 84.
76
See Introduction, n. 47.
77
FW, 423.
78
Harper, Yeatss Golden Dawn, 8.
 Occult Joyce 51

can be explained by casting a look at the ideological manifesto of the occult so-
ciety par excellence in the Victorian period, Blavatskys and Besants Theoso-
phical Society.
A survey of some of its basic principles stated in Lucifer, the journal of the
society, gives one the impression that the whole thing could have been a rather
democratic and anti-hierarchical affair. It is stated, for instance, that the objects
of the society are to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity,
without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour, and that no persons
religious opinion are asked upon his joining.79 Tolerance, albeit only towards
the fellow-members, was in fact the only requirement for admission.
An example of such liberal politics is provided by Annie Besant herself.
Her biography would suggest that there might be forward-looking aspects even
in what is traditionally considered to be a very obscurantist subject. Before join-
ing the Theosophical Society, she had been a member of the executive commit-
tee of the Fabian Society. Her leftist ideas and commitment to socialist and
feminist causes inspired her audacious involvement in the famous Match Girls
Strike in 1888 in London. On that occasion, she wrote numerous articles expos-
ing the poor conditions of young female labourers in the match factory of Bry-
ant and May.80 Furthermore, as Kiberd records, she had a lasting impact on
both Irish and Indian cultures and was elected president of the Indian National
Congress in 1917.81 She was apparently very skilful in the application of Irish
methods of political agitations in the campaigns waged by Indian separatists.82
To assess the combination of occultism and progressive tendencies in the
dual nature of Besants thought is helpful in understanding why Joyce might
have been fascinated by her character. However, other text-related reasons ex-
plain his interest in her teachings. Unlike Swedenborgs Heaven and Hell, Be-
sants ideas do not become structural features of Ulysses. Her style is much
more didactic than the Swedes own mode of recounting his visions. Her narra-
tive actually implies a complete commitment from the disciple wishing to be-
come an initiate of the new spirituality proposed. Such an act of devotion is cer-
tainly hard to imagine as coming from Joyce. Instead, it is more plausible to
think that Besants beliefs may have initially incited his irony and disenchant-
ment. Despite this, upon reviewing Besants book, one is struck by many ideas
that help illustrate how the occultist method in Ulysses works. Furthermore, the
text discusses also some of the occult themes present in Joyces work.

79
See the scanned version of Lucifer: www.theosophical.org/intro/chap1/index.html.
80
See Besant, Annie. The White Slavery of London Match Workers, The Link, Issue
21, June 23, 1888 (reprint Northon Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Ed., vol. 2,
1715).
81
Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 252.
82
Ibid., 252.
52 Chapter One

The Path to Discipleship is a collection of four lectures delivered at the

twentieth anniversary of the Theosophical Society at Aydar, Madras, towards
the end of December 1895, the year in which Yeats wrote The Body of Father
Christian Rosencrux. Their purpose is to lead the disciple from a kind of hu-
man disunited imperfection towards what she calls the perfected ideal mani-
fested in the beginning for the guidance of the race, and unrealized in evolution
by the weakness and the childishness of men.83 The reference to the unrealized
ideal of the guidance of the race is vaguely reminiscent of the close of A Por-
trait, where Stephen Dedalus expresses his own intention to forge the uncre-
ated conscience of my race.84 According to Bonnie Kime Scott, such a wish
suggests that Joyce, at least in those youthful years, continued to describe his
mission as the spiritual reform of the Irish, a role in the tradition of the Dublin
Theosophists.85
The first discipline leading to the achievement of Besants perfection is
what she calls Karma-Yoga. This is somehow relevant in the light of the manual
of Yogi philosophy and oriental occultism Joyce had in Trieste. Many of the
doctrines of theosophy are actually derived from Eastern philosophy and relig-
ion, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Karma-Yoga is seen as a practice of
training and regulating the lower instincts. According to Besant, it can be ac-
complished by temperate self-control, by deliberate training of the lower na-
ture.86 This implies care and moderation in all physical activities, thus gradu-
ally training and regulating and moderating,87 and causes curious consequences
in ones own domestic life:

Men were not fit for the hard road of celibacy, save here and there a few [...] By
household life were men taught to control and moderate their sexual passions, not
by crushing them out [...] not by single effort which tries to kill and to uproot in a
moment, but by gradual training in moderation, and by practising self-denial of
the home.88

In the context of Ulysses, all such precepts (moderating the lower nature, choos-
ing the pure path in food, controlling the sexual passions) look like the opposite
of the ways in which Stephen and Bloom regulate their own lives. The only one
that, in an ironical and distorted interpretation, could be somehow linked to
them is practising self-denial of the home. However, the reason why the two

83
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 13-4.
84
P, 276.
85
Scott, Joyce and the Dublin Theosophists: Vegetable Verse and Story, 60.
86
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 31.
87
Ibid., 31.
88
Ibid., 32.
 Occult Joyce 53

characters happen to follow unconsciously such a precept is certainly not any

secret wish to moderate their sexual passions.
As in Swedenborg, we are again encountering a semantic inversion of a
spiritual teaching. However, considering that theosophy teaches one to detach
oneself from a terrestrial plane to reach a superior state, it is possible that Bloom
and Stephen involuntarily try to do something similar, provided that such a su-
perior state is not imagined as a supernatural condition. Unfortunately, they both
seem to fail in every attempt to purify themselves, or at least do not manage to
reach the final stages of such a complicated process. In fact, their attempts to
reconcile, to become united with their own oppositesexplicit towards the end
of the book especially in Circe and Ithaca (Ulysses 17)is hardly to be
considered an ultimate success. Quite to the contrary, the impression is that
nothing really changed during the story of a day narrated in Ulysses. All pos-
sibilities of reconcilement, or separation, not only between them but also in rela-
tion to all aspects of external reality, are still open at the end of the book. Ac-
cordingly, the world of Ulysses is real and oneiric at the same time.
That certain theosophical doctrines present in Besants teachings are perhaps
implied in the unfolding of Ulysses seems to be proved by other occurrences.
Take for instance the famous statement in Cyclops (Ulysses 12) according to
which love is supposed to be the opposite of hatred.89 The idea looks very
much like a precise principle expressed in Besants book: Hatred ceases not by
hatred at any time, hatred ceases by love [...] Forgive the injury; give love for
hatred.90 Despite the fact that in Nausicaa (Ulysses 13) Bloom seems to have
forgiven the Citizen for his injurious remarks addressed to him,91 at the end of
Cyclops we had been left wondering whether or not he was really at peace
with him. We do not know if his final imaginary victory over the Citizen at the
end of the episodeperhaps his only victory in the whole bookis an act of
reconcilement, or of dismissal of the other characters machismo.
Ulysses is a circular book, in which the beginning and the end coincide.
There is no sign of any serious psychological achievement other than the tran-
sient impressions that a normal day has left on the protagonists unconscious.
Morevoer, the various episodes are full of correspondences pointing to the rela-
tive irrelevance of a fictional dimension based on the temporal succession of
events. This is why a solution to the hatred/love dilemma may lie in another oc-
casional sentence dropped as early as in Sirens (Ulysses 11). There Bloom
silently gives voice to his own truly nihilistic feeling, stating that everything is
just an external appearance: Hate. Love. Those are names.92 This seems to

89
U, 432.
90
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 33-4.
91
See U, 496.
92
U, 368.
54 Chapter One

suggest that the answer to the evocative question, in Scylla, about what is hid-
den in a name, may be ultimately that nothing is in a name, for names are just
external forms or, in Boehmes words, signatures.
Such a perspective might well be a useful context in which to explain the
presence of theosophy in Joyces works. It would allow us to see how it plays a
structural role in Ulysses, in spite of the fact that at times it becomes clearly the
object of derision. The occult in general provides a secret solution to the over-
whelming sense of frustration, incompleteness, and failure of the protagonists, at
least the male ones. Everything in the book seems coloured by a grave and
gloomy, yet ironical, void of any ultimate sense.
It can be argued that the coincidentia oppositorum, on which much of the
stylistic greatness of the book is based, shows at the end its real emptiness of
meaning. What the protagonists fail to achieve is what they secretly talk about.
Yet, as Gose explains, Brunos coincidence of contraries informs both theme
and the structure of Ulysses,93 and cannot be dismissed so easily. Aristotles
principle of non-contradiction is here contradicted and refuted in favour of
Brunos coincidentia.94 Gose refers to the idea of a parallel system of significa-
tion in the book, and alludes to the latent presence of the author within the
text, as the occulted organizer of meanings:

Structurally, Joyce seems to have built several of his episodes as mirrors, partly
to show how one contrary reflects its opposites, but also to demonstrate that in
his universe there is an order which reflects its principle of construction. It []
also contains its creator implicitly within it, as the organizer who plants clues
which enable the wary reader to discover that conventional ideas of order are in-
adequate, that contraries do finally coincide, that all is thus mysteriously and
immeasurably one.95

Most of the times in Ulysses, occult ideas simply occur and give the narra-
tion a touch of obscurity. It is the case of Bloom, who seems to be well ac-
quainted with the theory of metempsychosis or reincarnation,96 as well as
Stephen with that of the akasic records.97 Both tenets are fundamental to Be-
sants theosophy, although they originally derive from oriental philosophy. In
this regard, Craig Carver has an interesting suggestion to make:

When Joyce and Stuart Gilbert were discussing the Aeolus episode, the subject
of Akasic records cropped up. Joyce seemed inclined [] to give some credence

93
Gose, The Coincidence of Contraries as Theme and Technique in Ulysses, 213.
94
See Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 93-5.
95
Gose, The Coincidence of Contraries as Theme and Technique in Ulysses, 230.
96
See U, 77.
97
See U, 182.
 Occult Joyce 55

to the theory held by certain occultists that essentially thoughts, like matter, are
indestructible and persist in some repository out of space and out of time, yet
accessible in certain privileged moments to the subliminal self.98

In Besants lectures, the same concept is treated as a dogma. As for Stephens

akasic records, Besants work is clearly one of Joyces major sources. It gives us
a most clear explanation of the idea:

All history lies in the akasha; its records are there imperishable and indestructi-
ble; not one act of humanity that is past but is registered there, not one fact of
human history that is not written there for the eyes that are able to see. The time
will come when all history will be written from that, instead of in the ignorant
way it is written now, and man when they want to know the past will look back
into the imperishable records and use them for swifter development, utilizing past
experience to promote a swifter growth of humanity.99

The Akashic records are thought to be kept by the so-called Recorders of

Karma. Since in those records are written down all the past thoughts and deeds
of men,100 it is rather fascinating to imagine that Joyce may have fulfilled his
unconscious desire to become in his own mind one of those imaginary keepers
of the Akashic records. Such an intention is perhaps evident in Finnegans Wake,
where he attempts to write down the whole epic of humanity. As we have seen,
this is also implied in Carvers argument about Budgens recollection of a con-
versation with Joyce. On that occasion, the writer had stated that words had the
power to evoke images from the universal mind. The scholar explains that in his
last work Joyce attempts to evoke all of human history out of the Great Mem-
ory by means of the words which he reshaped and used.101 He adds: Finne-
gans Wake is the Brook of Life [...] revealing and encompassing the flow of all
events through the deeply mysterious power of words.102
The subtle impact of the theosophical concept of the Akasic Records on
Joyces aestheticsalso in the light of Yeatss amazingly similar doctrine of the
Anima Mundiseems beyond doubt. In fact, those records could also be con-
sidered as a metaphorical aspect of the consciousness, which, in his alternation
of sleeping and waking states, manages to record unimaginable quantities of de-
tails, both superficial and profound, helpful in providing it with an aura of lost
wholeness and totality:

98
Carver, James Joyce ad the Theory of Magic, 203-4.
99
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 143-4.
100
Ibid., 84.
101
Carver, James Joyce and the Theory of Magic, 208.
102
Ibid., 208.
56 Chapter One

All your past, all the experience that you have gained, is garnered in conscious-
ness. All the knowledge that you have acquired is treasured in the consciousness
that is really you. You put out at your birth a little part of yourself to gather new
experience and to increase this consciousness still more.103

Such an idea reminds one of Jungs collective unconscious. What seems rele-
vant here is the impression of the interrelated oneness of the whole, to which
both the akashic records and the consciousness, as made up of specific frag-
ments apparently autonomous, seem to point. In fact, theosophy regards the
birth of the universe, the Kosmos, properly as the fragmentation of a primordial
unity parallel to the birth of the languages after Babel. Such a unity suffered a
major fracture, which gave rise to the transition from perfection to imperfection:

We realize that the one has become the many. Glancing backward into the primal
darkness that shroudeth all, we can hear out of that darkness but a whispera
whisper: I will multiply. That multiplication is the building of the universe, and
of the individuals who live within it. In that will to multiply of the One which is
without a second, we see the source of manifestation, we recognize the primal
germ, as it were, of the Kosmos. And as we realize that beginning of the universe
and as we see the complexity, the multiplicity, that result from the primal sim-
plicity, from the primal unity, we realize also that in each of these phenomenal
manifestations there must be imperfection.104

Accordingly, the task of the occultist in his attempt to walk back the way
towards perfection, is to try and reach a kind of unity parallel to that which is
perceived by glancing backward into the primal darkness. In this perspective, it
is easy to see how the beginning and the end are ultimately one, their true es-
sence being one of united perfection rather than fragmented imperfection. A
similar idea is the basis of the occultist method governing the reception of texts
like Ulysses. As a strategy, it helps the reader gain the hidden significance of
chaotic pieces of knowledge, apparently lost and lying scattered around in the
narrative. Those fragments sometimes give the impression of incoherence and
casualness in a literary text. One should look backwards from seemingly acci-
dental occurrences to their occulted significances, in order to rediscover a united
message. Despite the many similarities with the occult discourse, such a mes-
sage is by no means of a supernatural character in Joyce, although it is partly
connected, by ways of inversion, with a spiritual dimension of man. For all the
lack of spiritualistic ends, to interpret the text backwards is consistent with the
way in which occultists see things and the world around them. This is implicit in
Annie Besants question: Do you notice how when dealing with things from

103
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 59.
104
Ibid., 6-7.
 Occult Joyce 57

the occult standpoint, they are reversed as compared with the standpoint of
earth?105
Something similar happens with other occult themes in Ulysses. Take for in-
stance the concept of metempsychosis to which Molly refers in Calypso
(Ulysses 4).106 In the light of Besants perspective, Mollys ignorance of the sig-
nificance of methempsychosis becomes ironically offensive to the initiated dis-
ciple, for there are certain fundamental truths of life on which no longer possi-
bility of doubt must remain to him, among which we find the great truth of
Re-incarnation.107 A few lines below in Besants tract, there occurs another in-
teresting reference which is also relevant to the previous discussion on Joyce,
Swedenborg, and the heavenly man. In fact, Besant believes that another point
on which no possibility of doubt must remain is the great truth of the exis-
tence of the divine Man.108
Three more reflections on Annie Besants four lectures are worthy of discus-
sion here. The first is most significant in showing how Joyce again uses a pre-
cisely theosophic terminology in order to subvert its original message. It can be
argued that such a methodology would be characteristic also of his interpretation
of Homer. In the occult context, after having inverted the original meaning,
Joyce eventually substitutes it with an alternative significance. Take the case of
the different stages of initiation in Besants book. Initiation is considered the
expansion of consciousness, which provides one with the key to knowledge
for it opens up new vistas of knowledge and power, and gives one the key
which unlocks the doors of nature.109 The various stages of initiation are called
portals:

When a man is once initiated, what is done has to be done perfectly, no longer
imperfectly; every accomplishment is completely achieved, every chain is defi-
nitely cast off. No longer the imperfect working out.110

In order to understand how Joyce mocks at the ways in which the passing of the
various portals during initiation may lead to perfection, suffice it to quote a very
well-known statement by Stephen Dedalus summarizing the dialectic of the con-
trariesperfection/imperfectionin a revolutionary artistic theory: The man
of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of dis-

105
Ibid., 80.
106
See U, 77.
107
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 96-7.
108
Ibid., 97.
109
Ibid., 91.
110
Ibid., 92.
58 Chapter One

covery.111 In such a perspective, perfection does not point anymore to revela-

tion. Instead, revelation is achieved only through a curious kind of commitment
to making mistakes volitionally. In other words, this is to say that the fulfilment
of human nature has to come to terms with the acceptance of mans limitations
and imperfections. We are again facing a powerful inversion of a theosophical
doctrine. This, in fact, looks somehow like theosophy inverted. It is indeed a
very effective way of occulting the occult.
The two remaining ideas of Besants book that might have appealed to Joyce
do not inform the developing of a personal artistic creed, but rather constitute
somehow charming aspects of a possible alternative ideology. The first is of a
very general nature, and may account for certain places of A Portrait like
chapter three, which evoke sinister visions of hell. This shows also that Joyces
early interest in theosophy could well have been a kind of surrogate for the
religion abandoned. The context of reference is a passage from A Portrait that
deals in fact with the horrors of hell, horrors which are disregarded by the
theosophists as pure western nonsense. Besants opinion on the matter might
have provided some solace to the scared souls of many young boys educated,
like Joyce, to fear the damnation of hell in both physical and spiritual terms:

You do not know the misery and the error that too many souls undergo when
they pass from the body into the world which to them is unknown, and is
crowded for them with all the imaginary terrors with which superstition domi-
nated by pretended knowledge has peopled it: especially it is the case in the West
where man talk about eternal hell, and tell people that after death there is no
growth and no progress, that a sinful man is plunged into the lake of fire and
brimstone, there to spend the countless ages of eternity without hope of salvation,
without hope of escape. You cannot imagine what the effect of that is on souls
passing into the other world through the gateway of death, and imagining that all
this is, or even may be true, imagining that they may be victims of this horror that
they have heard of from their ignorant teachers.112

Theosophy seems to be a way of avoiding the risk of eternal burning and dam-
nation, for it eschews completely all beliefs in hell. This alone would explain
why its teachings could have partly appealed to young students whose psyche
was indeed touched by scary sermons and anathemas, while at religous schools.
A final consideration concerns a poetical description by Besant of the state
of man, when he manages to rise still higher from the last stage of his growth. It
occurs towards the end of the book. Again, what is relevant here is not the actual
spiritual benefits man can get by accepting to undergo all the stages of the com-
plex process of initiation. On the contrary, what appears fascinating is the coin-

111
U, 243.
112
Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 134.
 Occult Joyce 59

cidence, or at least the amazing similarity, between the aims of both the theoso-
phical teachings of Besant and the art of Joyce, culminating perhaps in the dis-
cordia concors of Finnegans Wake. Besant preaches about a particular state of
perfection, where thoughts, words, music, and colours blend in the final har-
mony of the whole:

If in those far-off days there should be an orator and an audience, how different
then would be the oratory and how different would be the effect on the people.
Instead of hearing words, articulate sounds that reach the ears, and, and convey
so imperfectly and inadequately but a small portion of the thought, they would
see thought as it really is; though springing out before their eyes radiant in col-
our, beautiful in sound, exquisite in shape, and they would be spoken to as it
were music, until the whole hall would be full of perfect music and perfect colour
and perfect shapes.113

Such a description might well be also a kind of manifesto of the ultimate and
perfect artistic creation, one where music and words are no more distant entities,
and analogical thoughts become a means for the mutual, silent understanding of
a united radiant plurality. This suits very well what Joyces achievements in the
visionary sections of Ulysses, as well as the Wake, might finally be. It also
shows clearly the relevance of the occult legacy in Joyces literary strategies.
Another modern theosophist whose ideas are illuminating in the present dis-
cussion is Rudolph Steiner. It will be clear from what follows that he may well
be one of the missing links accounting for the conflation of the more theoreti-
cal occultism into the folkloric realm of the unbelievable, the two aspects
coexisting in Joyces fictional universe. The title of one of his works Joyce had
in Trieste is Blut ist ein ganz besonderer saft, which means roughly Blood is a
very special fluid. It is a conference paper given in Berlin in 1906, and its con-
tents are mainly of a theosophical nature. It was translated into English in
1907.114
Before analysing it, we should take account of the fact that the word blood is
a very important one in Ulysses. It occurs some 47 times, while in Dubliners, A
Portrait and Finnegans Wake taken altogether we encounter it only 51 times.
It is also the organ of a crucial episode, Wandering Rocks. The chapter itself,
in its division into 18 sections plus a coda, is a mirror-like image of textual (and
numerological?) wholeness in the somatic organization of Ulysses, a book made
up of eighteen episodes. The term somatic is helpful here. In fact, it is rather in-
teresting to note that in Steiners anthroposophy blood mirrors the very image of

113
Ibid., 146.
114
All quotations from Steiners essay are from the English translation of the conference
papers revised text.
60 Chapter One

the human body, for a mans blood is thought to be a true double ever bearing
him company, from which he draws new strength, and to which he gives all that
he can no longer use.115
Furthermore, Steiner believes that blood is a sort of repository of the mem-
ory of the race:

A person is born of a connection, a race, a tribe, a line of ancestors, and what

these ancestors have bequeathed to him is expressed in blood [...] that is to say,
his forbears are active in his blood, and at such a time he dimly takes part in their
remote life.116

This is consistent with a powerful use of the word blood in Proteus. In the
third episode, the very idea of a blood-connection with the past generations is
hinted at in one of Stephens reflections, which reminds us of what has been
perhaps the darkest hour in modern Irish history, the great famine: Famine,
plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me.117
The tone of Steiners paper is very didactic. Its purpose is to provide the
non-adept with a general outlook on anthroposophy, i.e. the science of the
spirit. Such a discipline is in many respects very similar to Blavatsky/Besants
theosophy, i.e. divine wisdom. Accordingly, there is no need to analyse it in
detail here, especially after having briefly discussed Besants precepts. Both
doctrines share a pseudo-scientific approach to their subject-matter. Only, in
Steiners case, alongside the despicable elitish tones of superiority of the discus-
sion, from time to time we encounter also a somewhat ironical disposition. This
is very unusual for occultists, who are not famous on the whole for their lively
sense of humour. Steiners reasoning on occasions originates funny remarks,
like the following, concerning the scepticism of the contemporary judges of
Antroposophy:

The fault does not always consist in the lack of an idea behind the words, when
the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed, we may here adopt, with a slight al-
teration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg, who said: If a head and a book come
into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessar-
ily be that of the book!118

Such an ironical comment would not persuade one, of course, that ones own
intellect may be faulty if it does not grasp at once things that are not logically
intelligible. This is proved by Dr. Steiners theories which are often extravagant,

115
Steiner, Occult Significance of Blood, 15.
116
Ibid., 34-5.
117
U, 56.
118
Steiner, Occult Significance of Blood, 17.
 Occult Joyce 61

to say the least. In fact, some of his theosophical conclusions are rather odd, like
for instance those on the possible link between soul and body through blood, or
on the historical split within the racewithin a pure-blood racedue to the end
of consanguineous weddings. In spite of their pretension of scientificity, they
never demand proof or verification, and this is why they often appear very
sketchy and rather approximate, if not utterly foolish. An example of Steiners
vaguely rationalistic outlook is the occasion where he ventures into an appar-
ently scientific discussion of the various processes through which blood trans-
forms and renovates itself. Such a renovation implies the need for blood to take
in the oxygen and other nutritive substances from the world outside the body.
The argument eventually leads to some picturesque deductions. Blood appears
to be the medium through which man faces external reality as an independent
being, in that it is the receptacle of external impulses and images, which become
internal figures in the brain. However, this may happen only if the independence
of the being of man has really been achieved. Then, man becomes creative and
makes it possible for the Ego, the individual Will, to come to life.119 Alas,
whenever such a process has not taken place yet, a being would not be able to
say I, 120 due to the fact that the principle for the development of the Ego lies
nowhere else than in the blood. Now, no wonder that such a cogitation, when
colliding with the mind, may eventually produce some sort of a hollow sound.
The same vagaries of reasoning occur whenever Steiner touches on the evo-
lution of the races of mankind, and on the transition from a civilization charac-
terized by a most ancient wisdom to the birth of logical thought and intellect.
These are just examples showing the reasons why to believe in what the occult
science talks about without being tempted to make a mockery of it, is a very dif-
ficult task for the sceptic. Despite this, some of Steiners ideas, just like some of
Besants doctrines, seem to have many things in common with Jungs psychol-
ogy. In this respect, they may be relevant also in trying to understand the textual
use Joyce makes of the occult, in relation to the attempt to recreate textually a
mental universe. It is the case of what Steiner calls the spiritual archetype, the
original Spiritual Beings, whence all things manifest have proceeded.121 It is a
necessary condition for the understanding of the sensible world. An internal im-
age of such a higher essence is mirrored in the spiritual background of
blood.122 This is clearly reminiscent of the hermetic assumption as above, so
below which informs also the textual development of some of Joyces aesthetic
intuitions. It is in fact also the basic principle of the science of the spirit:

119
Ibid., 32.
120
Ibid., 32.
121
Ibid., 12.
122
Ibid., 12.
62 Chapter One

Thus the whole cosmos lives in the form of a crystal. In the same way the whole
cosmos is expressed in the living substance of a single being. The fluids coursing
through a being are, at the same time, a little world, and a counterpart of the great
world. And when substance has become capable of sensation, what then dwells in
the sensations of the most elementary creatures? Such sensations mirror the cos-
mic laws, so that each separate living creature perceives within itself microcos-
mically the entire macrocosm. The sentient life of an elementary creature is thus
an image of the life of the universe, just as the crystal is an image of its form.123

Blood as the memory of the past generations, as well as the spiritual arche-
type reflected in blood, are concepts somehow contiguous to some of those Jung
used in his studies on the psychology of the unconscious. One passage in par-
ticular from Steiners paper shows an amazing resemblance to Jungs researches
in the occult field. While the psychologist often uses hypnotism when dealing
with cases that are allegedly occult, he also takes into account somnambulism
and clairvoyance. They are all considered states of diminished consciousness,
during which the unconscious takes over and produces the strange phenomena
we label occult. Judging by its external effects, it is interesting to note how Dr.
Steiner analyses those states from a similar perspective. He takes account of the
oneiric shape of the great cosmic law in a state of reduced consciousness in the
following terms:

When [] man temporarily suppresses his higher consciousness, when he is in a

hypnotic state, or one of somnambulism, or when he is atavistically clairvoyant,
then he descends to a far deeper consciousness, one wherein he becomes dream-
ily cognizant of the great cosmic laws, but nevertheless perceives them much
more clearly than the most vivid dreams of ordinary sleep.124

In reading this, one is reminded of a passage in Ithaca where such a truth is

inverted and parodied by Joyce. In Ulysses, hypnotic and somnambulistic states
do not help peceive any of the comsic laws. They just produce confusion and
odd behaviour:

From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not totally
immune?
From Hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his sleeping
apartment [] From somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen,
crouched and crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its
destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain, sleeping.125

123
Ibid., 26.
124
Ibid., 34.
125
U, 811.
 Occult Joyce 63

Returning to Steiners extravagant theories, other aspects of his teachings are

relevant in relation to Joyce. He believes, for instance, that blood is the reposi-
tory of all perceptions, sensations, and memories coming from the contact with
the external world as well as from the legacy of the past generations. In such a
light, blood itself becomes a kind of substitute for the unconscious, the revela-
tion of its secrets being the mission of the occultist:

At the present time man in his waking-life perceives external things through the
agency of his senses and forms ideas about them. These ideas about the external
world work on his blood. Everything, therefore, of which he has been the recipi-
ent as the result of sense-experience, lives and is active in his blood: his memory
is stored with these experiences of his senses. Yet, on the other hand, the man of
to-day is no longer conscious of what he possesses in his inward bodily life by
inheritance from his ancestors. He knows naught concerning the forms of his in-
ner organs; but in earlier times this was otherwise.126

We could draw a line from this last statement to the previous discussion on
Swedenborgs ideas on the secrets of inner organs, for it seems that the general
approach to the question, for the Swede as well as for Steiner, is somehow simi-
lar. Correspondences regulate the relationship between the internal and the ex-
ternal, as well as between the world above and the world below. The occult is
properly the hidden, and will only be brought to the surface through interpreta-
tions relying on the right analogies.
A further relevant aspect of the relationship between Joyce and Steiner has
to do with the folkloric implications of the anthroposophers theories about
blood. Actually, one of the concerns of the present analysis of Ulysses is to spot
the subliminal and extremely subtle occurrences of the theme of vampirism in
various forms in the text. Interestingly, such a theme is almost always presented
as strictly linked to a set of frequent half-blasphemous half-serious references to
hilarious devils, daemonic beasts, and fake states of possession, all pointing to
the existence of a sort of bland and joking Satanism in the book. They allow us
to describe Joyces work not only in terms of occult or hidden writing, but also
as an example of fantastic literature. The correspondence between the devilish
and the vampiric attitudes of the characters, as well as their attempts to pos-
sess other people, are manifest especially in Aeolus and Circe. What could
have been the possible source of such an odd connection between devils and
vampires?
The link between vampirism and a general idea of evil is obvious. However,
theosophists and occultists are often keen in declaring the relative independence

126
Steiner, Occult Sgnificance of Blood, 35-6.
64 Chapter One

of legends and lore from their own grounds of research. In fact, occultists, while
acknowledging the existence of evil spirits, often consider folkloric accounts
about supernatural beings as something that has little to do with their own inves-
tigations. Despite this, because Joyce was not an occultist at all but just someone
interested in matters occult, he refers in his books to both theosophy and super-
natural (devilish and vampiric) phenomena without bothering too much to make
clear-cut distinctions. It could be argued that such a connection is directly de-
rived from Dr. Steiners remote conference paper on the occult meaning of
blood.
Steiners states clearly, at the very beginning of the essay, that he is going to
talk about the true significance of blood in relation to the rapport between soul
and body. He is going to do so by starting from a precise reference to the power
of blood in terms of possession. The title itself of the paper draws inspiration
from Goethes Faust. It is what Mephistopheles actually says to Faust when he
proposes to him to subscribe to the blood pact. That Goethe considers blood a
special fluid points to two directions: the previously-discussed theosophical
option, and the occult power of blood:

The only reasonable explanation that can be given [] is that to the devil, blood
was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him
whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.127

The power of blood is strictly connected with its occult meaning, that is, the link
with the past generations, history, race, and myth. Ultimately, it connects man
with the whole imagination of mankind. Blood is seen as an imperishable sub-
stance. Like Akasha, it is the receptacle of the true sense of the diachronic de-
velopment of the culture of humanity. This is why the devil wishes to take pos-
session of it:

Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power
must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If,
therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his
blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is
why the representative of the evil principle says: Sign with thy blood thy name
to the pact. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by
that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over myself. For
whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's
ego.128

127
Ibid., 5.
128
Ibid., 40-1.
 Occult Joyce 65

The exposition could not have been clearer. Despite the fact that Steiner never
refers to any sort of vampire, it is easy to see that the medium through which he
believes it is possible to possess man, is apparently the same for both the devil
and the vampire.
Here, to take into account Steiners doctrines, as well as Swedenborgs and
Besants, is an attempt to give an ultimate answer to the question of Joyces
commitment to the occult. The Irish writer is not willing to put his art into the
hands of occultists of any kind. However, his fascination for the imaginative po-
tentialities of the occult is sincere. His use of occult themes and ideas derives
from his interest in the dynamics of the mind, the oneiric, the unconscious, and
the obscure. This will become clearer when one looks at his response to the oc-
cult through the lens of Jungs psychology.

The Unconscious in Joyces text

Jungs approach to the occult concerns mainly the representation of the hid-
den activities of the mind. Such a perspective partly resembles Joyces reaction
to the subject and the use he makes of occult themes and strategies in his works.
However, the debate on the influence of the Swiss on Joyce is still open, and
lends itself to opposite positions and opinions.129 To look at their mutual rela-
tionship from an occult standpoint highlights some curious, perhaps illuminat-
ing, interpretations of the whole issue.
Jungs concern with the investigation of allegedly occult phenomena is well
known. It is first documented by his own extensive researches and writings on
the topic.130 His own position seems to have shifted slightly during his long ca-
reer, from the early dismissal of the possibility of exploring metaphysical realms
through a psychological analysis, to the later silent admission, often perceivable
between the lines, that some sort of extra-human power may actually be be-
hind certain manifestations of the psyche. However, his interest in the subject is
always of a scientific character. He tends to consider the occult from a phe-
nomenological point of view. He explains as much in a foreword to Phnomnes
occultes, written in 1939:

The point of view I have adopted is that of modern empirical psychology and the
scientific method [...] Psychology cannot establish any metaphysical truths, nor
does it try to. It is concerned solely with the phenomenology of the psyche.131

129
See next chapter, nn. 16-9.
130
An attempt to collect some of Jungs most interesting contributions to the debate is
the cited volume Psychology and the Occult, from which, for the sake of simplicity, all
quotations from Jungs works in this chapter are taken.
131
Ibid., 3.
66 Chapter One

This is true also in relation to some of the traditions forming the eclectic occult
category, like alchemy for example. Newman suggests that the belief in the
unity of matter and spirit and the correspondence between the physical and
spiritual planes132 are the very basis of alchemical thought. This would allow
one to assume that a Jungian outlook might be helpful also in analysing the oc-
cult in Joyces texts. In fact, alchemy is for Jung a projection onto matter of
archetypes and processes of the collective unconscious.133 Such an approach is
utterly distant from the pseudo-scientific explanations of the so-called occult
scientists. As Jung himself declares, that many spiritualists brag about their
science and scientific knowledge is, of course, irritating nonsense.134 How-
ever, he is always very accurate in acknowledging when supposed serious scien-
tists dealing with occult phenomena firmly state their belief in the material exis-
tence of imponderable events. This is the case with a famous English physicist,
William Crookes, who in his Quarterly Journal of Science delivered his obser-
vations on the phenomenon of the levitation of human beings in 1874. In Jungs
reaction to the exposition of Crookes accounts, we find a relatively illuminating
assessment of his own oscillation between scepticism and belief:

For a variety of reasons it is not possible to criticize Crookess powers of appre-

hension and retention during those years from the psychiatric point of view. We
only know that at that time Crookes was not manifestly insane. Crookes and his
observations must remain for the present an unsolved enigma [...] How does a
thinking person, who has shown his sober-mindedness and gift for scientific ob-
servation to good advantage in other fields, come to assert that something incon-
ceivable is a reality?135

Jungs conclusions on occult phenomena, after his investigations of the experi-

ments and sances conducted by various mediums, are of a scientific nature. He
states that the results are of purely psychological interest, and that everything
which can be considered a scientifically established fact belongs to the domain
of the mental and cerebral processes.136
However, on other occasions he is more willing to allow the existence of
some immaterial power deriving from the hidden faculties of the human brain.
Such an attitude informs Jungs response to the occult, as is clear in the fore-
word to Fanny Mosers book on GhostsSpuk: irrglaube oder wahrglaube

132
Newman, Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses, 171.
133
Ibid., 171.
134
Jung, Psychology and the Occult, 107.
135
Ibid., 100.
136
See ibid., 100-1.
 Occult Joyce 67

(1950)in which he narrates his experiences in a hunted cottage he had to share

for some weeks with an annoying and very nasty ghost.137 The short contribu-
tion points to Jungs gradual shift towards the persuasion that parapsychology
would do well to take account of the modern psychology of the unconscious.138
However, some of Jungs most important theories have indeed many things
in common with the doctrines of the theosophists, although, they always con-
cern the scientific observation of cerebral processes, rather than the steps to-
wards perfection. For instance, Jungs idea of the psyche as a divided unity is
parallel to the primordial fragmented unity of the soul according to the theoso-
phists: the psyche is not an indivisible unity but a divisible and more or less
divided whole.139 He adds that although the separate parts are connected with
one another, they are relatively independent.140 It could be argued that some-
thing similar happens with Jungs theorization of the collective unconscious,
which shows amazing similarities with both Besants doctrine of Akasha, and
Steiners occult meaning of blood:

The other part of the unconscious is what I call the impersonal or collective un-
conscious. As the name indicates, its contents are not personal but collective; that
is, they do not belong to one individual alone but to a whole group of individuals,
and generally to a whole nation, or even to the whole of mankind. These contents
are not acquired during the individuals lifetime but are products of innate forms
and instincts. Although the child possesses no inborn ideas, it nevertheless has a
highly developed brain which functions in a quite definite way. This brain is in-
herited from its ancestors; it is the deposit of the psychic functioning of the whole
human race.141

Such an outlook agrees with the principle that the occult pertains mainly to
dynamics of the mind. Accordingly, apparitions of spirits or other psychic phe-
nomena are nothing but representations of the unconscious in determinate cir-
cumstances. Only in this light can they become the object of serious scientific
research. This is Jungs conclusion in Psychology and spiritualism:

Even spirits appear to be psychic phenomena whose origins lie in the uncon-
scious. At all events, the Invisibles who are the source of information in this
book are shadowy personifications of unconscious contents, conforming to the

137
Ibid., 146-51.
138
Ibid., 152.
139
Ibid., 114.
140
Ibid., 114.
141
Ibid., 117.
68 Chapter One

rule that activated portions of the unconscious assume the character of personali-
ties when they are perceived by the conscious mind.142

This clashes evidently with the ideas of the occultists about apparitions. As
Carver explains, such phenomena, as Joyce probably knew, can be explained in
terms of the Great Memory.143 Although it is possible to approach them from
an occult standpoint, one would probably be wrong in thinking that Joyce genu-
inely uses them in such a context. A more plausible interpretation would be that
some sort of continuity exists between the occult and the oneiric. An affinity be-
tween dreams and spirits is shared by Jung, and seems to support the need for a
reconsideration of the value of dreams, apparitions, and visions in Joyce. But
what are the spirits that appear in Ulysses? At what hours and in what circum-
stances do they become manifest? Do they turn into ghostly presences that haunt
the existences of other characters? These are some of the questions we need to
answer, in an analysis of the occult phenomena in Joyces great work.
The two major spirits with a precisely haunting role in the text are Lipoti Vi-
rag and Stephens dead mother. Although they are present through allusions in
various chapters, they become actual hallucinatory personifications only in
Circe. They both materialize and come to haunt the imaginations and memo-
ries of their dear relatives late at night, between 12pm and 1am, when, at least
with regards to Stephen, the influence of a massive consumption of alcohol has
dulled the faculties of the conscious side of the psyche. This partly explains why
everything seems to happen as if in a hallucinated dream in Circe. Hallucina-
tion is the technique of the fifteenth episode according to Gorman.
Jung often links vision states similar to those occurring in Circe to attacks
of hysteria. Take for instance the case of Miss E., aged 40, single, book-keeper
in a large business.144 According to Jung, she suffered from hallucinations fea-
turing dead people. In various occasions she also saw and heard children buried
alive in a cemetery, alongside quite a number of skeletons. The following ac-
counts are interesting descriptions of the events that happened before and after
the cemetery experiences, which show a certain affinity with some of the inci-
dents of Circe:

The next night, between twelve and one oclockthe earlier attacks usually hap-
pened about this timeshe was plagued by the dead for about ten minutes. She
sat up in bed, stared into a corner of the room, and said: Now theyre coming,
but they are not all here yet. Come along, the rooms big enough, theres room
for all. When theyre all there Ill come too. Then she lay down, with the words:

142
Ibid., 138.
143
Carver, James Joyce ad the Theory of Magic, 211.
144
Jung, Psychology and the Occult, 8.
 Occult Joyce 69

Now theyre all there, and fell asleep. In the morning she had not the slightest
recollection of any of these attacks. Very short attacks occurred again on the
nights of October 4, 6, 9, 13 and 15, all between twelve and one oclock.145

Something similar happened to another patient, a certain girl of 17, also a

severe hysteric, who in her attacks saw the corpse of her dead mother ap-
proaching her, as if to draw her to itself.146 In explaining his own opinion about
the nature of such hallucinations,147 Jung returns to the case of Miss E. and her
visions of children buried alive, focusing on some of the events that prompted
the hallucinatory experiences. He specified particularly that the walk in the
cemetery induced the vision of the skeletons, whereas the hallucination of
children buried alive, whose voices the patient heard at night148 were evoked
by the meeting with the three boys. In fact, Miss E. had gone to the cemetery in
a somnanbulistic condition, which on this occasion was particularly intense in
consequence of having taken alcohol.149
All this very much resembles what happens in Ulysses. The walk in the
cemetery which occurs in Hades is what makes Bloom think of his suicidal
father. It also summons the visit of his grandfather Lipoti Virag, between twelve
and one oclock, in Circe. On the other hand, together with other plausible
explanations, alcohol partly accounts for the apparition of Stephens dead
mother at the same hour of the night, an apparition only her drunken son is ca-
pable of seeing. We should also consider that one of the symbols of Hades, a
chapter which evokes Circe in several places, is the unconscious, and that
for Jung the apparitions of spirits are nothing but psychic manifestations of the
power of the unconscious.
In general, Jung discusses partly the haunting nature of the apparitions of
dead parents in a paper published in 1920, stating that many patients felt perse-
cuted by their parents long after they are dead.150 In short, he is quite convinced
that this is the result of mental illness. The same cannot be said, of course, in
relation to the apparitions in Circe. However, what is interesting here is the
affinity between those textual apparitions and some of Jungs cases concern-
ing hallucinations and allegedly supernatural phenomena. Certain aspects of the
occult narrative of Ulysses are amazingly compatible with Jungs paranormal

145
Ibid., 10. Italics mine.
146
Ibid., 12. Italics mine.
147
Hallucinations are to be intended here as automatic constructions of complicated
visionary scenes, induced by external impressions often occurring during states of
diminished consciousness like somnambulism, a partial manifestation of severe hysteria.
148
Jung, Psychology and the Occult, 16. Italics mine.
149
Ibid., 16. Italics mine.
150
Ibid., 111.
70 Chapter One

cases. Such similarities point again to the consideration of the occult as some-
thing contiguous with the unconscious, whose obscure faculties react to external
empirical stimuli in seemingly imponderable ways. Jung is in fact fairly per-
suaded that ghosts and similar phenomena have to do with psychic facts of
which our academic wisdom refuses to take cognizance, although they appear
clearly enough in our dreams.151 Accordingly, an analogous perspective is cer-
tainly helpful not only in acknowledging the massive presence of occult (and
fantastic) contents in Ulysses, but also in showing that the tension towards the
occultum is a structural factor in Joyces vision of his own art. As we will see
shortly, this is clear in an analysis of Ulysses from an occult standpoint. What
follows is a new reading of the book, which turns Joyces masterpiece, so to
speak, literally upside down. In fact, as Besant teaches us, the occult allows one
to proceed backwards from the effects to their very causes. One of the aims of
the following investigation is therefore to prove how Ulysses is a book that can
be read backwards. In a way, this renders it even more provisional and open
than many are ready to admit.
In such a context, informed by a peculiar fondness for overturnings and in-
versions, it is useful to take a look now at the cemetery chapter. The episode
represents, in strictly spatial terms, a metaphor for the ultimate end of mans ter-
restrial life. Thus, like all proper ends, it speaks subliminally also of new latent
beginnings, which await to be re-discovered by the adept-reader.

151
Ibid., 123.
 CHAPTER TWO

HADES

Hades is a useful starting point in an analysis of the occult textuality of

Ulysses, for it anticipates oneirically some of the later narrative developments of
Circe, the final stage of the present journey.1 The two episodes are in fact
connected. As Adams points out, despite the fact that Hades is supposed to
represent an imaginary descent into a pagan version of hell, the actual descensus
Averni in Joyces book is pictured in Circe, where we witness a really haunt-
ing vision of Blooms psychic underworld, compared with which Hades [...] is
essentially a daylight chapter.2
Hades is also interesting due to its death-related implications. It might be
argued that Ulysses itself could be read somehow as a kind of distorted book of
the dead. Knowles suggests that all Ulysses speaks of exhumation,3 and that
bringing back the dead is Joyces obsession.4 Some of the characters, espe-
cially the dead ones featuring in the living external world of the cemetery epi-
sode, will remain hidden as parts of a textual unconscious in many of the subse-
quent daylight chapters. Most of them will materialize only in Circe as vision-
ary projections of the imagination. This is particularly true in the case of
Blooms dead son. Bloom thinks first of him in Hades: If little Rudy had
lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in
an Eton suit.5 Then, towards the end of Circe, in one of the final
stage-directions, the boy appears as a ghost, just as Bloom had previously imag-
ined him: a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven [] dressed in an Eton
suit.6

1
The selection and chronology of the episodes included in the present study may sound a
little eccentric. In relation to the first six, except for Proteus and Circe, rather than
the actual narrative of Ulysses the analysis follows the order in which the corresponding
organs of heaven are listed in Swedenborgs Heaven and Hell .
2
Adams, Hades, 92.
3
Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 54.
4
Ibid., 57.
5
U, 110.
6
U, 702.
72 Chapter Two

Rudy is not the only dead character referred to in Hades who appears later
in the day in Circe. The same applies to Stephens dead mother, evoked in the
memories of Simon Dedalus during the walk in the cemetery.7 This happens
also with Patrick Dignam, the main hidden protagonist of the episode, he being
the proprietor of the body that has to be buried. In Circe his ghost haunts the
scene in the shape of a daemonic dog.8
The other famous apparition of the fifteenth episode, Blooms grandfather
Lipoti Virag, is also indirectly summoned in Hades by Blooms frequent
thoughts related to his suicidal father. This happens, for instance, after Mr
Powers remarks about suicides:9 They have no mercy on that here [] Refuse
Christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the
grave.10 A final allusion to the questionable macabre practice of piercing a
dead mans heart, which has perhaps also vampiric implications, occurs towards
the end of Hades, during Blooms silent considerations about the necessity of
making sure that the supposed departed wont be buried alive.11
In the chapter we also encounter some interesting references to apparitions
of ghosts. The following is peculiarly relevant if we bear in mind the night-hour
when the spirits haunting Jungs patient previously discussed, used to pay their
ghastly visit to his young patient: Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It
was pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.12 We must not for-
get that apparitions of spirits and ghosts at the turn of midnight are also topoi of
gothic and fantastic literature. An instance of this is a book more connected with
Joyces texts than has been suggested by critics, Bram Stokers Dracula. As
Stoker informs us, in Transylvania, on a particular day of the year, the eve of St.
Georges day, according to popular lore, when the clock strikes midnight, all
the evil things in the world will have full sway.13
Such phenomena linked to folklore interested also Jung. An interpretation of
their textual occurrence through the psychology of the unconscious might prove
useful here. In one of the last paragraphs of the episode we encounter what
seems to be a manifesto of the haunting intentions of some unidentified ghost: I
will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will
haunt you after death.14

7
See U, 132.
8
See U, 597.
9
See U, 120. See also 112.
10
U, 120.
11
U, 140-1. See also below, n. 21.
12
U, 136.
13
Bram Stoker, Dracula, 6.
14
U, 146.
 Occult Joyce 73

The Land of the Dead

Paddy Dignams funeral, and therefore the call to the cemetery, both imply
the idea of the living visiting the dead. In the logic of the coincidence of the
contraries so dear to Joyce through the theories of Giordano Bruno and Nicholas
of Cusa, this will call forth, later on in the book, its very contrary, that is the
dead visiting the living, as happens in the dreams of Circe. Most of the events
of the fifteenth episode seem to occur in an unconscious dimension. The un-
conscious is also one of the symbols of Hades according to the Linati
schema. Jung argues that the soul establishes the relationship to the uncon-
scious, which is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the un-
conscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ances-
tors.15
Although Joyce was famously sceptical of psychology and psychoanalysis, a
connection between his writings and the studies of people like Jung or Freud
might exist as well. Many scholars have produced illuminating criticism that
clarifies such a problematic relationship. Sheldon Brivic argues that Joyce, in
his own ways, might have admired some of the theories formulated by Jung.16
Gillespie, in his study of Joyces sources, states that despite the alleged an-
tagonism to Freud and Jung, Joyce owned several of their works.17 Newman
contends that Joyce must have read Jungs Psychology of the Unconscious, and
reminds us of the similarities between the 1916 English translation of the work
and the psychological method of Ulysses. He thinks that such affinities de-
serve further attention, especially regarding the emphasis that Jung gives in this
version to the sons battle for deliverance from the mother, as well as its links
with the climatic hallucinatory appearance of Stephens mother in Circe.18
Atherton suggests that Joyces dislike of Jung and Freud did not prevent him
from using their discoveries, and yet he doubts if he accepted Jungs theory of
collective unconscious.19
In the present perspective, the relevance of Jungs notion of collective un-
conscious in Ulysses lies in its connection with some very similar occult doc-
trines discussed in the previous chapter. The unconscious, like the theosophists
Akasha and Steiners occult meaning of blood, is not only the receptacle, the
memory, of all the impulses of the history of humanity. It is also, ironically, a
medium of communication with the world of the dead, and particularly with
ones own ancestors.

15
Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 183.
16
See Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 23-4.
17
Gillespie, Inverted Volumes Improperly Arranged, 9.
18
See Newman, Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses, 169.
19
Atherton, The Books at the Wake, 39.
74 Chapter Two

Such a relationship between the living and the dead has also farcical implica-
tions. As Kimberly J. Devlin points out, Hades reminds us that the world of
the living is as ephemeral as Homers parade of visible shades.20 The living
correspond to the dead, just as death itself is presented somehow as parallel to
life. We encounter a similar idea in the evocative conclusion of the short story
The Dead, where Joyce portrays oneirically a final communion between the
living and the departed.
In the sixth episode of Ulysses, the idea of the possible means for a commu-
nication between the living and the dead is hidden behind some mocking refer-
ences connected with the preoccupations about the people buried alive: They
ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or
a telephone in the coffin.21 The reference to the telephone is a clear link to the
passage in Proteus where the navelcord suggests to Stephen the idea of a
communication with Eden by phone.22 In fact, also in Hades we find an allu-
sion to the navelcord. There it becomes the symbol of a connection with the un-
derworld, it being compared to the gravediggers rope.23
On the other hand, in the unfolding of the chapter we find also an ironical al-
lusion to a possible communication among the dead themselves: Wonder does
the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communica-
tion [] Got wind of Dignam.24 A possible communication within the com-
munity of the dead, besides pertaining to the faculties of the unconscious and
being symbolized by images of various cords (telephonic cords, navelcord, cof-
finband), points also to a relationship between some visible realm and an un-
known country of the mind. Another reference in the symbol category of the Li-
nati schema seems to point to this very idea: lignoto, meaning literally the
unknown.
In the English version of the schema printed at the end of Ellmanns Ulysses
on the Liffey, an erroneous translation occurs. While in Italian lignoto is in-
tended as a substantive, the English translation proposes to take it for an adjec-
tive. Accordingly, in English it becomes the unknown man, which would lead
the reader think of a particular character in the episode. Thus, it would be easy
to think of a reference to the Man in the Macintosh. Such a wrong identification
actually occurs, for instance, in the cited paper on Hades, otherwise illuminat-
ing, by Adams.25 On the contrary, the unknown refers to some hidden
space/time relationship. This could be, for instance, the unknown future pre-

20
Devlin, Visible Shades and Shades of Visibility, 85.
21
U, 140-1. See above, n. 11.
22
See U, 46.
23
See U, 142.
24
U, 145.
25
See Adams, Hades, 102.
 Occult Joyce 75

dicted by Tyresias in the descent to Hades in the Odyssey. It could even stand
for a connection with another symbol in the schema, the unconscious, which
would encourage the reader to look for an interpretation of its occurrence in
psychological terms. Such a love for misunderstandings and double-patterns is
characteristic of Joyces texts, and is consistent with his own wish to play with
inversions as a literary device.

Poetics of Inversion
In the somatic scheme of Ulysses the organ assigned to Hades is heart.
Many of the religious connotations of the word in the chapter let us imagine that
the heart of Ulysses may be ultimately a suffering and broken one, like Christs
heart for example. However, in relation to sacro cuore, i.e. sacred heart,
which is also one of the symbols in Linati, as Adams points out, its not at all
easy to calculate the spirit behind this very potent symbol.26 By taking into ac-
count Swedenborgs notion of the heart of heaven, we may eventually cast some
light on the calculation of the hidden meaning of the heart of Hades.
In Swedenborgs Heaven and Hell we read that the celestial kingdom cor-
responds to the heart, and that the celestial kingdom is the seat of heavens
intention, where the good of love reigns.27 Therefore, from the mystics in-
terpretation of the Bible, we apprehend that in the Word heart indicates will and
good of love. Instead, the unconscious, one of the most important symbols of
Hades, can hardly be the proper seat of mans intention. Therefore it could
be argued that Joyce, being temperamentally predisposed to inversion by nature
(non serviam), is here attempting to establish a sort of inverted, and possibly
parodied, relationship between his somatic work of art and the Swedes repre-
sentation of the human body of heaven. As we will see, such a semantic over-
turn of the original spiritual significances of the organs is implied in the organi-
zation of many among the episodes of Ulysses which have a correspondence
with the body. The game Joyce is playing in building up the Ulysses schematas
according to an episode/organ relationship is even more comprehensive than
this. It is as if the aim of the schematas was partly to mislead rather than help
the reader of Ulysses understand the textual obscurity of the book.
In this context, the semantic overturn functions as a device that inevitably
produces confusion and even hilarity in the expectations of those readers
equipped with some knowledge of the Swedes doctrines. This does not work
only in relation to Swedenborgs spiritual teachings. Taking into account, for
instance, again the simbolo category, the first inversion of meanings concerns

26
Ibid.,106.
27
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 82-3.
76 Chapter Two

Homers Ulysses. In fact, in Homers work Ulysses goes down to Hades to look
for Tyresias the foreseer. He wishes to know something about the future obsta-
cles to his return home. Instead, in Linati we find il passato, meaning the
past. This is another powerful inversion, for the episode is actually crowded
with remembrances and memories of the past, and all hints at the future dimen-
sion are dropped only in a subliminal and unconscious way.
Something similar happens with the above-cited references to the haunting
ghosts appearing later in Circe. Accordingly, the possibility of a system of in-
versions being a structuring factor of the episode seems to point again to the co-
incidentia oppositorumthe balance of the opposites merging into a final
communionas the ultimate sense and solution of the contraries evoked in the
text. In other words, we are induced to witness the ever-present transition from
one extreme to the other,28 until finally both ends meet.29 However, the truth-
fulness of such an assumption is yet to be verified, and the reader is challenged
to test it against the actual unfolding of the book, until a possible further inver-
sion may occur again.
The future/past example is only one of the many instances suggesting that a
technique based on the inverting device may work as a hidden force behind the
surface of the chapter, and more generally of Ulysses. One wonders whether the
Swedish mystics teachings hide some other hints to opposite analogies in the
text. From the quotation above, we grasp that for Swedenborg the organ heart is
the symbol of good of love, and is therefore an image of mystical joy. On the
contrary, almost all the references in the schematas concerning the sixth episode
seem to provide the idea of a very painful earthly heart suffering from a serious
breakdown.
The heart of Ulysses is as broken as the heart of suicidal people. One of the
symbols in Linati is crepacuore, meaning breakdown or heartbreak. In the
text, we encounter many clear references to such a powerful symbol. The most
obvious is Martin Cunninghams cold statement about breakdown as the cause
of death of his alcoholic friend Paddy Dignam.30 Just a few lines below, during
one of Mr Blooms trains of thoughts, we find a less realistic but more symbolic
reference which links the word breakdown to the fall of Parnell.31 Finally, after
Mr Powers unmerciful remark about the people who kill themselves, we en-
counter Blooms sad and crude reflections suggested by the above-mentioned
recollection of his broken-hearted father.
One of the references to breakdown is also the recollection of Mrs Sinico,
the sad lady who committed suicide in the short story A Painful Case, in-

28
U, 122.
29
U, 136.
30
See U, 119.
31
See U, 119.
 Occult Joyce 77

cluded in Dubliners. Her ghost occurs twice in the episode. The first reference is
very indirect indeed. It is Blooms statement about the destiny of the Dignam
family after Paddys departure: A sad case.32 Mrs Sinico is one of the most
striking examples of broken-hearted characters to be found in Joyces works.
The other occurrence is less open to speculation. It is a plain allusion to the un-
happy lady: Last time I was here was Mrs Sinicos funeral. Poor papa too. The
love that kills.33 The fact itself that her name is present in both A Painful
Case and Hades is quite interesting. It encourages one to look for further cor-
respondences between Dubliners and Ulysses.
The first link one might think of is to a short story whose title manifestly al-
ludes to the other world: The Dead. Adams is one of the critics who propose a
similar interpretation.34 The connection goes beyond thematic similarity, and
touches on certain features of narration. A journey in the carriage where a con-
versation between the characters takes place occurs in both the contexts. The
several recollections of the memory of those who have left this world also point
to some striking affinities. An ultimate sense of the imaginary co-existence of
the living and the dead is clearly felt by the reader in both cases, especially to-
wards the end of the short story, as well as in the representation of Blooms
cynical thoughts about the more materialistic aspects of death. In fact, both
Gabriel Conroy and Bloom, two men of the press, continually try to avoid sen-
timentality towards the stories of dead people. Conroy is capable of mistaking
Grettas sad attitude in the recollection of her dead lover for passionate sexual
excitement, while Bloom manages to be completely and superbly cold about a
supposed spiritual dimension with which death may be thought to be concerned:
Well it is a long rest. [] Must be damned unpleasant. Cant believe it at first.
Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite.35
Ultimately, and more subliminally, the memory of Lily, the caretakers
daughter who inaugurates the narration of The Dead, could perhaps be re-
called in the sixth episode both by the caretaker Corny Kelleher and by the song
The Lily of Killarney, whose title is quoted in one of Blooms reflections.36
Joyce was in fact used to constructing such apparently far-fetched analogies in
his works. To analyse them more comprehensively as parts of a hidden system
would be quite interesting, although it would probably lead the present discus-
sion away from its core theme: the broken heart of Hades.
Not only is the heart of the episode broken, but it is also sick. Actually, one
of the symbols is vizio cardiaco, i.e. heart trouble. In the text, Paddy Dignam

32
U, 129.
33
U, 145.
34
See Adams, Hades, 99-101.
35
U, 140.
36
See U, 114.
78 Chapter Two

and other alcoholics like him suffer from this illness.37 Alcohol, according to
Simon Dedalus, is also threatening the life of his own son. Simons concerns are
about Buck Mulligans evil influence on Stephen: I wont have her bastard of a
nephew ruin my son.38 Prompted by such a remark, Bloom thinks of his own
dead son, Rudy, whose departure, together with Virags death, left him obvi-
ously heart-broken. Accordingly, by way of analogy, or at least in merely figu-
rative terms, we may conclude that the heart of the father is as suffering as the
heart of the son. Bloom is in fact both the son of a broken-hearted man, and a
mourning father himself. In this light, the hidden meaning of another symbol in
Linati, the sacred heart, comes suddenly to the surface.
A reference to the statue of the sacred heart occurs when the characters are
walking in the cemetery in search for Parnells resting place.39 Besides the curi-
ous correspondence between a dead political leader, who had created quite a
turmoil in the relationships between Britain and Ireland a few years before, and
another famous agitator, Jesus Christ, we may suspect that Joyce is here play-
ing with a further subtly blasphemous allusion. He wishes to suggest, very cun-
ningly indeed, that the sacred heart of Gods son lies buried in a human ceme-
tery, in the company of other dead men like him.

Descensus Nihilo
Hints at the connection between Hades and religion are present in many
places in the episode. We encounter, for instance, all the rituals of a funeral
ceremony, many comments on the various religions and types of burials, as well
as several curses and imprecations. Hence, it is easy to guess why religione is
the art of the chapter in Linati. Speaking in terms of Swedenborgian references,
such an attention to religion may be suspect. The spiritual significance of the
organ heart according to the mystics reading of the Bible takes on certain pagan
and profane shades in Joyces work. Such a conclusion comes from a particular
occurrence in the senso category of Linati, which reads discesa nel nulla, that
is descent to nothing.
In Swedenborgs world, to be in the heart of heaven means to have ascended
to a privileged position, among those angels who share the divine will and good
of love. On the other hand, according to Joyce, to reside in the heart of his
epic of the human body points simply to a gloomy descensus nihilo. Such a
nothing is both a symbol of the ultimate rejection of all religious beliefs in the
other world, and a commitment to a peculiarly sceptical kind of nihilism. This

37
See U, 129.
38
U, 110.
39
See U, 144.
 Occult Joyce 79

has certainly interesting implications in terms of a possible Jungian interpreta-

tion of a descent to ones own unconscious. Besides, the act of descending to the
land of the dead has also deep meanings in both the spiritual and the lay textual
tradition, as examples from both religious and classical literature clearly show.
In Hades, Joyce seems to play with no less than four different kinds of de-
scent. The classical parallels are somehow more evident than the religious ones.
They refer mainly to the world of the epic. However, the religious connotations
are rather subliminal, and could as well help us explain some obscure references
of the episodes epic correspondences.
In relation to Swedenborgs world, the verb to ascend (to heaven) clearly
reminds those acquainted with certain aspects of the Christian doctrine, of
Christs ascension to heaven after his own death. In Hades, the counterpart of
the ascension is evidently the descent. Ironically, the destination of such a jour-
ney, that is, the nothing, looks a little less desirable than Christs own resting
place. It could be argued that in the apocryphal gospel tradition there exist also
accounts of a descent of Christ to hell. That Joyce had actually read some of the
apocryphal gospels is very likely, for he was always most keen in reading works
whose authority was denied by the Church. This is shown for instance by the
references to various heresiarchs like Photius, Arius, Valentine, and Sabellius in
the first episode of Ulysses, alongside many others in the third. Accordingly, it
is very probable that at some stage he must have encountered a corpus of writ-
ings never accepted by the Church as official gospels.
Apocryphal ways are characteristic of Joyces narrative discourse. It can be
argued, for instance, that Stephen himself adopts an apocryphal method in elu-
cidating his theory on Shakespeare in Scylla, as John Eglinton clearly sug-
gests.40 This is proved by the fact that in Ulysses 9 Christs descent to hell,
known as the harrowing of hell, is also referred to by Stephen, although in a dis-
torted way.41
An apocryphal gospel in which the descent to hell is narrated, is the Evan-
gelium Nicodemi. The Gospel of Nicodemus was first found in manuscripts of
the XII century. It has been one of the most popular among apocryphal texts. It
soon became known through a variety of medieval versions, as well as in ver-
nacular translations. It is made up of two parts: the Acts of Pilate, and the ac-
tual narrative of the harrowing of hell. The latter describes Christs journey to
hell in the space-time between death and resurrection. Christs mission is to save
the patriarchs and the innocents who had the misfortune of dying before his
coming. The notion that Christ visited the land of the dead, as deriving from the
apocryphal tradition, could well be behind Joyces blasphemous allusion to the

40
See U, 250.
41
See U, 253.
80 Chapter Two

sacred heart, whose final resting place, in the quotation above, was to be among
the dead.
Further correspondences for the descent are Ulyssess own descent to the
underworld in the Odyssey, and Aeneass visit to Hades in Virgils great work.
That the latter reference is actually one of the secret intentions of the sixth chap-
ter is proved by the fact that Simon Dedalus, on spotting his son from the car-
riage, addresses Mulligan, who is with him, as his fidus Achates.42 Achates is
one of the comrades of Aeneas.
The final allusion behind the idea of the descent is a book which Ellmann
compared, in complexity at least, to Ulysses itself: La divina comedia by
Dante Alighieri.43 The work is made up of three parts like Ulysses, and the pro-
tagonist is the author himself. As is well known, Dante embarks on a fantastical
journey to hell, purgatory, and heaven. The first part concerns a descent to
Limbo and then to Inferno. What Dante visits is not a pagan Hades, as Ulysses
and Aeneas had done, but Christian hell. In his journey to the land of the
damned, his companion is Virgil.
In Joyces Hades, all possible destinations of the soul after death are the
subject of mockery, and show plainly Blooms agnostic, sceptical, and hilarious
nature.44 If the theosophists, like Bloom, were sceptical of the actual existence
of hell, Simon Dedalus appears to be quite confused about the very existence of
its imaginary contrary, heaven. After Martin Cunninghams wryly sympathetic
remark that Dedaluss dead wife is better now where she is, he answers sadly: I
suppose she is in heaven if there is a heaven.45
On the other hand, Blooms attitude towards what he probably regards as a
mere superstition, he being some kind of a non-Jewish Jew, is dismissive of all
possibilities of a life after death. This is suggested by his ironical reaction to the
formula I am the resurrection and the life, uttered by the priest during the fu-
neral ceremony:

Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of
their graves, Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up!
Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the
46
rest of his traps.

By substituting the destination of all journeys to the underworld with a no mans

land, an inexorable nothing, the cited probable sources for the image of the de-

42
U, 109.
43
See Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 57.
44
See for instance U, 140.
45
U, 132.
46
U, 133.
 Occult Joyce 81

scent blend with a definitive sympathy for nihilism. The idea behind such a
complex system of allusions could well be that a newly deconsecrated heart of
the father/son descending to nothing/Hades, is here the real protagonist. This is
not only an ultimate refusal of a religious concept. The power of the semantic
inversion, which makes an ascension become gradually a descent, functions as a
kind of joking heresy. Like other proper heresies, it is not just a symbol of de-
nial, but also a statement about an alternative ideology. It is as if Bloom were
looking for a substitute for the religion abandoned. All of a sudden, Bloom finds
out that a final reconcilement of the contrasts and contraries of human bodily
existence may be achieved only by means of ironical inversions, that is, by jour-
neys backwards.
Swedenborg, like many other non-orthodox thinkers to whom Joyce often
refers (Boehme, Bruno, Agrippa etc), was considered a heretic himself. His
intention was to build up a new Church, whose program was to replace the theo-
logical architecture of the Christian tradition made up of what he considered
wrong interpretations of the Bible, with an alternative view of the true meaning
of the sacred scriptures. Such a revolutionary exegesis was to be founded, at
least partly, on the revelation of the hidden meanings of the organs of heaven,
according to a new reading of the Bible through correspondences. Hence, the
heart of heaven, like all other organs of which he speaks at length in his works,
is a purely symbolic heart. It means that, just as the will and love should reside
in the heart of men, so should divine will and good of love dwell in the heart of
heaven.
On the other hand, Joyces aim is to create a system as complex as possible,
blending pagan, Christian, epic, mystical, heretical, and modern traditions. Us-
ing heart as a symbol, he is attempting to blur the readers possibility of under-
standing some of the remote allusions hidden behind the organ. He is thus play-
ing the role of an obscurantist creator of meanings. Besides, his use of Sweden-
borgian symbolism reveals also an utter desire to parody the concept of spiritu-
ality as such. The wish to invert spiritual notions belonging to some obscure
mystical tradition proves very successful in providing his system with all the
necessary mystery an occult text requires.
Certain significant references to both heaven and hell occur in the episode,
which seem point to the concept of the coincidence of the contraries as the sub-
tle message of Joyces narrative. This is the case, for instance, of the existence
of the four rivers of the underworld, a topos in the classic tradition. One of
them, the Acheron, is a concrete obstacle preventing the dead souls from reach-
ing their fatal destination without the help of the proper ferryman. All dead peo-
ple, before getting to know what kind of a place is waiting for them, have to
cross that river. The way to hell is then a waterway. To hell by water, one
might think. In Ulysses, the four rivers of Hades coincide with the four rivers of
82 Chapter Two

Dublin the carriage crosses during the journey to Glasnevin cemetery. At some
point of the narration, we find the following obscure train of sentences: Devel-
oping waterways. James MCann hobby to row me oer the ferry. Cheaper tran-
sit. [] To heaven by water.47 The way to hell has thus become the way to
heaven, and the two ultimate contraries ironically coincide again.
Such a mocking final reconcilement of heaven and hell will be explored ex-
haustively in Circe. Here, in order to see the bigger picture, one should bear in
mind that water in Ulysses is always strictly linked to the idea of death. The
theme of the death-by-water is obsessively present in the book, just like in
Eliots The Waste Land. Stephens silent statement in Proteus that Seadeath
is the mildest of all deaths48 is parallel to one of Blooms thoughts towards the
end of Hades: Drowning they say is the pleasantest.49
However, in Hades the death theme is mostly parodied. We encounter it in
the funny story Bloom tries to narrate, which is instead finished by Martin Cun-
ningham.50 Death-by-water, which is supposed to be a serious subject, is here
deconsecrated and parodied. Water, a symbol of death in the previous chapters,
is now just an accident. Accordingly, if water/death leads to both heaven and
hell without any substantial distinction in the mockery of it all, then to end up in
heaven or in hell after death becomes just a matter of sheer chance. Heaven and
hell are essentially the same thing: a nothing which is both nihilism and coinci-
dence of the opposites. At the same time, the belief in a life after death is un-
dermined by a prevailing sceptical attitude.
Ascending and descending coincide. Being born and being dead are mirror-
like parts of the same game: In the midst of death we are in life.51 The spiri-
tual dimension has ineluctably become the object of derision. We encounter the
catholic Simon Dedalus cursing mutely at the sky,52 and the non-Jewish Jew
Bloom talking of hell in a parodied manner: Must be an infernal lot of bad gas
round the place.53 Here he might be echoing a particular passage from Swe-
denborgs Heaven and Hell where we read: When they [the hells] are closed
[] one can see something dark, thick with smoke.54
Finally, the idea that Giordano Brunos coinciding contraries may in retro-
spect be seen to give form to each episode of Ulysses,55 as Richard Ellmann

47
U, 124.
48
U, 63.
49
U, 145.
50
See U, 118.
51
U, 136.
52
See U, 112.
53
U, 130.
54
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 476.
55
Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 54.
 Occult Joyce 83

convincingly argues, is probably the basic principle behind the inverting tech-
nique informing many secret interpretations of the book, which thus becomes a
distorted occult text. It provides us also with a link to the further explorations of
the coincidentia in Finnegans Wake, where it merges into Vicos cycles, and
makes Joyce himself the creator of something that may never end. The hermetic
coincidence of the contraries is then the imaginary conclusion of a process it has
contributed to start. The beginning corresponds to the end. The fine is again
awaking in order to start a new circular and eternal cycle. Despite the mocking
context in which such secret doctrine is worked out, the purpose of Joyces sub-
tle irony in playing with the readers expectations is not simply to baffle,56 as
Adams suggests.
Accordingly, we should not underestimate the importance of the method just
outlined as a structuring force of the hidden writing of Ulysses. Some of the im-
plications of this complex technique must be approached with an eye to the oc-
cult dynamics informing the cultural background of the author. An occult out-
look will therefore help us understand fully the hidden semiotic discourse of
Ulysses, as a deeply layered structure of signification. Such a destabilizing proc-
ess of signification is most evident in a chapter that takes its imaginary title
from the Greek god of the wind, Aeolus.

56
Adams, Surface and Symbol, 12.
 CHAPTER THREE

AEOLUS

To take a look at Aeolus after Hades is useful in the present context, not
only in the light of the actual chronology of the book. Despite the stylistic dif-
ferences, which are indeed relatively easy to recognize, like for instance the
structuring of the narration in Aeolus according to a journalistic editorial pol-
icy, with headlines and pars, we encounter also certain subtle allusions to Ha-
des, which function as subterranean patterns of continuity between the two epi-
sodes. Such a narrative consistency is secretly implied in the beginning of the
chapter. Actually, the very first headline, IN THE HEART OF THE HIBER-
NIAN METROPOLIS,1 brings the attentive reader back to heart, the organ
of the chapter just concluded. Such a connection seems to be one of the leitmo-
tifs of Aeolus.
As is well-known, the organ of the episode, lungs, through the textual
simulation of the act of breathing, is what is imagined to inform the style of the
narrative. At a more superficial level, Aeolus is also supposed to be a repre-
sentation of what may have happened, in a Dublin newspaper office, at noon of
a normal day, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The connection between
lungs and heart is obvious. The act of breathing as a bodily function is perforce
connected with the circulation of blood. Thus, the first link between the two
chapters in Ulysses, intended as the epic of the human body, is easy to grasp.
One is allowed to presume that another headline HOW A GREAT DAILY
ORGAN IS TURNED OUT,2 besides pertaining obviously to the world of the
press, may also be another general allusion to the organ category. The interpre-
tation of an odd sentence stuck in one of Blooms thoughts, just a few lines be-
fore the above reference, is an even more illuminating instance of this analogical
process: But will he save the circulation?3 Only on the surface does this refer
to the circulation of the newspaper. Such a complex double relation
(press/lungs, lungs/heart) is just an effect of the theory that everything in Ulys-

1
U, 147.
2
U, 150.
3
U, 150.
 Occult Joyce 85

ses must be interconnected.4 In this light, Hades and Aeolus are really twin-
episodes. As we will see, a major source of inspiration for the organ/episode re-
lation agrees in presenting lungs and heart as organs whose occult meanings
are inseparable.

Rhetoric of the Occult

According to Hodgart the seventh chapter is the only place in the book
where we find some real, actual work performed by Bloom in order to earn his
wages.5 In fact, as Patrick Magee points out, Aeolus is a particularly
masculine episode,6 despite the fact that most of the other male characters
happen to be scarcely involved in any work at all. Both the perspectives,
although oriented towards different goals, suggest the ironical meaning of
Blooms fatigue, in opposition to the windy rhetoric of his colleagues. This
explains why their behaviour towards him is not in the least friendly. It is of
some use here to look for some of the hidden figures of narration standing for an
obscure connection with the rest of the occult intentions of the book. In order to
do so, one cannot but refer constantly to the surface level of the episode linked
to the various implications of the science/art of the Linati schema, that is
rhetoric.
As is well known, the word has both a technical and a pejorative meaning. In
relation to the classical world, it alludes to the art of persuasion. Cicero and
Quintilianus were among its main theorists. Before them, Aristotle and Plato
were also among those who contributed to the debate concerning rhetoric, which
later included the speculations of the sophists. As a matter of fact, in Aeolus
Stephen is said to be reminiscent of a pupil of one of the most famous among
the sophists, Antisthenes, a disciple of Gorgia.7 In Scylla Stephen himself
directly refers to Antisthes.8
Rhetoric was very much loved in medieval times too. Its structural legacy in
literature is to be spotted, for instance, in Dantes and Boccaccios prose works,
and in the culture of the Renaissance or the Baroque period. We find clear relics
of its classical five divisions (inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, actio) also
in the homiletic tradition. Many sermons written and performed in continental
and insular monasteries followed the old rules of rhetoric as they had been
codified in the classical age.

4
See Chapter One, n. 67, 69.
5
See Hodgart, Aeolus, 115.
6
McGee, Machines, Empire, and the Wise Virgins: Cultural Revolution in Aeolus,
90.
7
See U, 188.
8
See U, 258.
86 Chapter Three

Such knowledge, fully accepted as a fundamental part of education during

many centuries, was gradually to be seen, in more recent times, just as tedious
erudition made up of useless rules. Such a shift in the general attitude towards
the subject is well explained by the fact that we are no longer accustomed to
studying rhetoric at school. Young students may well regard it just as some sort
of a sadistic punishment imposed by old-fasionhed professors whose sole
purpose is to give them a bad time. Furthermore, rhetoric often identifies for us
also a way of being either pompously inconclusive or dishonestly prolix, rather
than a system of useful rules of the discourse.
Nevertheless, it was a fundamental aspect of education during James Joyces
schooldays, alongside many other subjects that nowadays students usually
ignore. It was of particular importance especially in Catholic schools such as
those Joyce attended, and one level at the Jesuits schools was even titled
rhetoric. In Ulysses, particularly in the seventh episode, Joyce makes his
readers aware of both the semantic shades of the word, which he happens to use
in a veiled and quite ironical way. The technics of the Linati schema are in fact
simboleutike, dikanike, epidiktike and tropi. They refer to three particular
speeches and a parable occurring in the episode. However, tracing exact and
precise references between those speeches and the varieties of rhetoric Joyce
mentions is not the task of the present analysis. The correspondence between
them is part of a more general parody. This is clear if we take account of the
surface meaning of the episode.
According to Ellmann, the three speeches are only wind.9 The episode is
definitely full of swollen windbags. In relation to journalism, Bloom himself
gives the reader a clue that explains the hidden implications in the chapter:
Weathercocks. [] Wouldnt know which to believe.10 This is exactly what
he thinks of journalistic rhetoric. Hence, it is not surprising that among the
symbols in Linati we encounter press as well as wind. The
journalism=futility equation is easily understood even at a first reading, and the
general deceitfulness of the rules of speech seems to play the main role in the
narration. We will not find a more convincing example of mutability11 and
falsity of speech in the whole book.
Why does Joyce so unequivocally mock the world of rhetoric? Kiberds
suggestion that Joyce, like Yeats, felt relieved to have escaped a career as a
journalist12 provides a sufficient explanation of such an attitude towards
journalistic rhetoric. In the present context, an occult interpretation of the
correspondence between lungs and Aeolus may eventually help us account

9
Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 68.
10
U, 159.
11
Mutabilit is one of the symbols of Linati.
12
Kiberd, in U, 991.
 Occult Joyce 87

for some obscure meanings of rhetoric in the episode. Since in Ulysses each
organ is supposed to create its own technique,13 in Aeolus the act of breathing,
made of two contrasting halvesinspiration and expirationis acutely
symbolized by many couples of doubling and self-inverting sentences.14 This is
just an effect of Joyces method, and does not explain the reason for its actual
use. By resorting to Swedenborgs doctrine of correspondences, a new reading
of the episode becomes possible.
The Swede believes that the lungs and the heart of heaven are the two most
important organs of the divine body. As such, they are strictly related. Of the
two kingdoms into which heaven is divided, the celestial and the spiritual, the
first corresponds to the heart and the second to the lungs. Furthermore, the
spiritual kingdom belongs to discernment: the breath of the lungs indicates
discernment and what is true of faith.15 Both the ideas of truth and faith appear
very useful to a comprehensive interpretation of Aeolus.
Swedenborg believes that the main activity of the lungs in the body of
heaven is itself a symbol of truth of faith. On the contrary, according to what
might be a readers first response to the seventh episode, rather than any sort of
truth Aeolus gives us the idea of falsity, deceitfulness, and dishonesty in
speech. The semantic overturn is even more powerful here than in Hades. In
the sixth chapter, intention/heart pointed to the unconscious; here truth/lungs
becomes falsity.
A link between lungs and the idea of an inverted truth is provided once again
by a seemingly casual sentence, apparently very easy to understand, but silently
pointing to an occult explanation. It is a brief section of one of Blooms
thoughts about journalistic rhetoric: Hot and cold in the same breath.16 As has
been noted, the passage could very well allude to one of Aesops fables, in
which a satyr could heat his hands and cool his soup with the same breath.17 It
could also provide a solution to the pseudo-mystic inverted correspondence of
the episode. The sentence may in fact have a double meaning. On the one hand,
it apparently describes the quintessence of rhetorical journalism, by presenting
the newspaper-men as a bunch of hypocritical fellows, who can say one thing
and the opposite with the same breath. On the other, its hidden meaning
clarifies the nature of the obscure link between rhetoric/deceitfulness and lungs.
The sentence describes nothing more than the usual act of breathing, which is
made of two contrasting halves: inspiration (cold) and expiration (hot).
Breathing is then a necessary conjunction of two contraries, without which the

13
See n. 4 above.
14
See Ellmann, 71-3.
15
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 82-3.
16
U, 159 .
17
See U, 994, n. 159.17.
88 Chapter Three

action performed by the lungs in the economy of the body would be impossible.
More than that, the breathing of the lungs becomes a sine qua non for life itself
to exist. It seems to suggest that what really keeps death temporarily away for
man is the coincidence of the contraries.
However, one should acknowledge that a subtle irony is clearly the main
feature of the allusion here. This irony informs also many other obscure
references in the episode, all contributing in constructing its deep structure
based on an occult rhetoric. Irony and double meanings are parallel to the subtle
semantic duality of the cited sentence. They serve both as a solution to the
question of the two initial meanings of rhetoric, and as a deceitful device in the
narrative. As Adams explains, Joyce expects the reader to see through surface
inanity to underlying truth, as well as through surface pretensions [] to
underlying fraud.18 Truth and fraud are therefore also coexisting contraries,
although any reconciliation between them appears improbable in reality. In fact,
a reunion of such discordant realms can happen in the possible worlds of
narrative, the only space where the fictional and the real go hand in hand.

Hidden Patterns of Futility

Irony permeates the very heart and lungs of Ulysses, and pertains to the great
works deep structure. Quoting again from Adams, Joyces intricate, perverse
way with small patterns may give us extra reason to hesitate before large
ones.19 One of those small meaningful patterns is suggested again by the
scienza/arte of the chapter according to Linati. The Italian word Joyce used is in
fact rettorica, a term chosen instead of the more common retorica without
the double t. It is an old and academic spelling, which makes us wonder what
Joyces source could have been.
A probable solution to this question would be the book of a Gorizian
writerGorizia is just a few kilometres from Trieste, the city where Joyce
wrote much of Ulyssesentitled La persuasione e la rettorica, (i.e. Persuasion
and Rhetoric), published in 1913. The work caused a sensation in Italy in the
second decade of the twentieth century, mainly due to certain biographical
details of the life and death of its author. The book was actually a university
dissertation written by a young philosophy student of Jewish origins, Carlo
Michelstaedter, who after having submitted it to the examining commission in
October 1910, shot himself with a revolver and died.
Originally, the thesis was supposed to be about the idea of rhetoric in the
works of Plato and Aristotle. John McCourt notes poignantly the evident

18
Adams, Surface and Symbol, 160.
19
Ibid., 159.
 Occult Joyce 89

parallelism between the sad destiny of this young student and the life of Otto
Weininger, author of Sex and Character, which had ended in a similar way a
few years before in a place not too distant from Michelstadters Gorizia and
Joyces Trieste. In this context, it may be interesting to note that in one of
Joyces notebooks recently acquired by the National Library of Ireland, there
exists a whole paragraph headed Weininger which dates probably around
1915. It proves that Joyce took a serious interest in the intellectual. McCourt
speaks also of a few other Triestine writers who knew the work of Weininger.
Among them was Italo SvevoJoyces friend and pupiland Biagio Marin,
who had been himself shocked by Weiningers suicide which mirrored that of
his friend Carlo Michelstaedter.20
McCourt is completely right in making the connection. Both philosophers
came in fact from the same geographical area. Both belonged to the Jewish
intellectual community, and both committed suicide. Nevertheless, the influence
of Weiningers theories on the sexuality of the Jews, especially regarding
Blooms supposed androgyny and the writing of Circe, is documented, while
even the fame of Michelstaedter is almost unknown beyond the Alps, not to
speak of his possible influence on Joyce.
Something seems to suggest the presence of an obscure connection between
this suicidal student and the young James Joyce. They were both interested in
meaningful coincidences. As regards Michelstaedter, he was so attentive to the
importance of dates that he shot himself on his mothers birthday. In January
1910 the 28-year-old Irish writer had come back to Trieste after his sojourn in
Dublin, and he was still there in October, when Michelstaedter committed
suicide. Immediately after the tragedy, local and national newspapers speculated
creatively about the event. In November 1910, Giovanni Papini, a famous
Italian critic, and a very close friend to Carlo Linati, published an article about
Michaelstaedter entitled A metaphysical suicide which came out in a major
national newspaper. The essay was reprinted two years later in a book by Papini
himself, where it precedes a paper on Carlo Linati. All this would point to the
likeliness that Joyce must have known about the destiny of the unfortunate
Jewish philosopher, although no proof of the relationship is available yet.
Michelstaedters book became popular soon after its publication. It actually
deals with a very original interpretation of the two ideas of persuasion and
rhetoric, which has interesting connections with the kind of rhetoric mocked at
in Aeolus. Persuasion is for him the condition of being, not in the historical
sense of existing, but in the sense of becoming fully oneself. On the
contrary, rhetoric means to live and to accept the necesary compromise with the
deceitful forces of history and society. Such forces include politics and religion.

20
McCourt, The Years of Bloom, James Joyce in Trieste 1904 -1920, 229.
90 Chapter Three

Michaelstaedters attitude towards modern society is extremely hostile, and

recalls some aspects of Stephen Dedaluss luciferian non serviam, as well as
some implications of the journalistic rhetoric of Aeolus. The following
passage taken from his thesis is a powerful example of such a defiant character:

(Men) neither know nor can produce anything. They are content with words that
feign communication [] and feed their boredom with words [] use words to
mean things that they do not know, in order to soothe their sorrow.21

At the end of the book, he bitterly criticizes all at once politicians, men of
letters, historians, journalists, and clergymen, in an attitude not too dissimilar
from the one we encounter in some parts of Joyces The Holy Office. The
rettorica obsessing him is neither the classical craft of speech nor an art of
persuasion, but the quintessence of falsity and futility. It is a commitment to
human frailty and dishonesty, a fatal preference for cowardice disguised as
worldliness.
It is likely that Joyce, probably via Carlo Linati, came to know at some stage
about this young Jewish suicidal writer. If this were the case, he would certainly
have been struck by the evocative power of certain strange synchronicities of his
life. The Gorizian intellectual died at the age of 23 in October 1910. Joyce left
Ireland in October 1904, almost at the same age. Michelstaedter was some sort
of an exiled Jew, for he lived in a multicultural land characterised by the
presence of mixed national identities and nationalistic cultural claims. It was an
area of multilingualism. He had some knowledge of the Kabbalah, and
presumably, judging by the day chosen for his suicide, believed in the
occurrence of meaningful coincidences. It would be redundant here to say
anything about Joyces own obsession with dates. On the contrary, it could be
useful to return to the idea of synchronicity, in order to establish whether or not
it could be somehow applied to Joyces texts.
Jean Kimball, in an interesting Jungian study of Ulysses, which has recently
received some harsh criticism,22 argues that according to Jung synchronicity is a
modern differentiation of the alchemical theory of correspondence, based []
on empirical experience and experimentation.23 In other words, this theory
deals with non-casual coincidences, which presumably were part of human
knowledge before their meanings were lost and forgotten. Kimball, perhaps
wisely showing some sort of a sceptical attitude, states that Jung acknowledges
that synchronicity explains nothing, it simply formulates the occurrence of

21
Michelstaedter, La persuasione e la retorica, 110.
22
See Introduction, n. 10.
23
Kimball, Odyssey of the Psyche. Jungian Patterns in Joyces Ulysses, 20.
 Occult Joyce 91

meaningful coincidences.24 She adds: the only recognizable and demonstrable

link between them is common meaning, or equivalence.25
Bearing in mind that a non-casual coincidence, in textual terms, may very
well be an odd fact difficult to explain due to the absence of a precise frame of
reference, we may take again Adamss word that in a discussion of
consistency, the odd fact is on every count more important than the regular
one.26 This would encourage one to believe that to apply the synchronicity
theory to a literary text can eventually yield up fascinating results. A most
relevant feature of textual analysis is in fact parallelism. In the present context,
it mainly points to the potential relevance of occult semantic substrata. Such
information hidden beneath the surface of the text includes the referents
accounting for all the odd occurrences in the narrative. Those referents are
occult, in that they are indeed concealed from the eyes of the reader. A pointed
analysis of them will show that they can be taken as fragments of a once-united
truth. To interpret such latent narrative contents may lead one to take the value
of meaningful coincidences in the book more seriously than has been done in
the past.

Vampiric Spirituality
At this stage, it can be of some use to return to the religious implications of
the correspondence between the breath of the lungs and the truth of faith. In
the textual world of Aeolus, such a connection involves a newspaper=Church
equation which is quite easy to grasp. The fact itself that the Freemans Journal
was closely connected with the Catholic Church in Ireland, necessarily points to
the textual parallelism between the world of the press and a religious dimension.
In textual terms, the relationship is hinted at very soon in the episode. One of the
first newspapers headlines is THE CROZIER AND THE PEN.27 Just a few
lines above, a character named Red Murray had ironically spoken of the
newspapers publisher, William Brayden, as of our Saviour.28 After this, when
Murray says that Archbishop Walsh has phoned twice in the morning, Bloom
wittily remarks that he is also one of our saviours.29
In assessing the importance of the religious connection, it could be of some
interest to note that in Linati red is the colour of the episode. Red is also the
colour of the garments commonly worn by Cardinals. Ellmanns comment on

24
Ibid., 20.
25
Ibid., 20.
26
Adams, Surface and Symbol, xix.
27
U, 149.
28
U, 149.
29
U, 150.
92 Chapter Three

the religious allusions of the chapter is quite interesting: though seemingly

haphazard, these remarks neatly supply one of the keys to the episode.30 The
critic manages to explain convincingly the religious significance of the veiled
textual presences of Jesus and the Lord in the episode.
However, it is quite interesting to note that the main religious discourse
behind the chapter is not strictly speaking the Catholic but the pagan Ancient
Greek one. Aeolus is in fact the Greek god of wind. In the correspondences
category in Gorman, we find him associated with the newspapers editor, Myles
Crawford. He is himself, so to speak, a living allusion to the Catholic world. It is
he who announces No drinks served before mass31 in commenting on Simon
Dedaluss desire to embark on a pub-crawl. Finally, in warning Stephen against
possible obscene allusions in his parable, he ironically gives voice to his own
authority by saying: no poetic licence. Were in the archdiocese here.32
The newspapers office itself is depicted as a religious site, a profane
archdiocese where all are eventually lay ministers. However, everything in
Joyce always suggests the likely cohabitation of opposite meanings. Here, the
rhetoric of the inversion is silently at work. This is suggested by a non-casual
hint dropped at some stage of the narration: Read it backwards first.33 Bloom
is actually referring to the Dayfathers job of checking the exact sequence of the
types of a paragraph about to be printed by reading them backwards. The
thought also reminds him of his dead father, who used to read to him his Jewish
hagadah book backwards. If we take such a seemingly casual occurrence as an
occult hint, one of those silent suggestions that speak directly to the reader
bypassing referentiality, it could perhaps point to the existence of a system of
inversions in the episode that extends to the realm of religion.
Thus, religion could be turned into a sort of inverted spirituality. In such a
context, he who is correspondent to a god may also be the symbol of an evil
being like the devil. Actually, Crawford himself tempts Stephen in devilish
fashion, by attempting to draw him to his circle: I want you to write something
for me, he said. [] Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father son and Holy Ghost
and Jakes MCarthy. 34 Of course, from a symbolic point of view, Crawford is
just trying to persuade the young intellectual to write the great book of the age,
like a new Irish Bible. However, the half-blasphemous implications of the
passage are better understood if we consider that, actually, who happens to say
the final word on religion in the last line of the episode is Crawford himself. I
am referring to a seemingly casual line that in fact casts imaginary doubts on the

30
Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 64.
31
U, 161.
32
U, 187.
33
U, 155.
34
U, 171.
 Occult Joyce 93

authority of whoever migt be in charge of interpreting Gods truth: If the God

Almightys truth was known.35 The sentence powerfully questions the idea of
any knowable truth of faith, and therefore seems to warn the reader against
accepting the very role of the interpreter of divine things. This is in a way also
an attempt to express disillusion towards diviners in the broader sense, and
certainly discourages the very idea of canonical readings of given texts.
However, to disregard a particular religious, theoretical, or philosophical
option often implies the need to come to terms with its opposite. Although we
have seen how Joyces mocking response to religion does not lead him to prefer
any other spiritual solution, let alone daemonism, it is interesting to see how in
the episode religious parodies parallel the hoax involving a less saintly sphere
linked to a general idea of evil. That some kinds of farcically wicked presence
are latent in the press world portrayed by Joyce is shown by the way in which
Bloom behaves with Councillor Nannetti. When he has to explain to the
foreman how the two keys of the advertisement have to be drawn, he simply
crosses his fingers, as if he was confronting the devil or a vampire. Something
similar happens, for instance, in Dracula at one point when the local people are
told by Jonathan Harker about his intention to visit the bloody Count: the
crowd round the inn door [] all made the sign of the cross and pointed two
fingers towards me.36
In Aeolus, the very image of the vampire is explicitly evoked by the
recollection of Stephens poem from chapter three, which included the image of
the vampires kiss.37 In the context of Anglo-Irish literature, the main source for
this is a lyric from Douglas Hydes Loves Songs of Connacht published in 1893,
the year in which the Gaelic League was founded. The book was immediately a
great success. However, it is possible that eleven years later, in 1904, when
Stephen actually rewrites it, it might have become somehow out of fashion. We
can actually detect some parodical intentions in Stephens adaptation of Hydes
translation from the Irish. In fact, it is the Sassenach Haines, Stephens enemy,
who takes some interest in the Irish language, and particularly in Hydes Love
Songs.38 Later on, when we will take account of Circe, we will encounter
other very subtle vampiric connections linked to the year of 1893, a year which
in fact divides the 22-year period of Stephens (and Joyces?) life between 1882
and 1904, into two exact halves.
The year 1893 is crucial in Ulysses. In 1893 both Joyce and Stephen were
eleven, just like the ghost of Blooms dead son, Rudy, in Circe. A further odd
coincidence of events is interesting to note here. It involves another writer who

35
U, 189.
36
Stoker, Dracula, 7.
37
See U, 168.
38
See U, 254.
94 Chapter Three

is himself at the very core of the subliminal discourse of Ulysses: William

Shakespeare. It has to do with the Bards son, Hamnet, who was baptised on 2
FebruaryJoyces birthday1585, and who died eleven years later. That Joyce
knew such biographical details is almost certain, for Stephens theory in
Scylla is deeply rooted in his pointed knowledge of the life of Shakespeare.
Finally, a further literary connection concerning the vampire theme leads
again to Emanuel Swedenborg and his influence on Joyce. One may be
reminded of the many subtle allusions in Joyces texts to another Anglo-Irish
writer who was fond of vampires, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the author of
Carmilla, one of the first she-vampires of fantastic literature. He was also into
Swedenborgianism, as many references to the Swede in his works indisputably
show. As has been suggested, Sheridan Le Fanu was a major influence on
Joyce, especially in relation to Finnegans Wake. Atherton has interesting
comments on all the allusions in the Wake to his The House by the
Churchyardone of the books Joyces father loved mostbut also to the
murder of Lord Cavendish and his associate by the Invincibles.39 Actually, the
Invincibles affair, which took place on May 6, 1882, three months after Joyces
birth, is also an important theme of Aeolus.
In Ulysses we find a very odd coincidence regarding Sheridan Le Fanu. In
Cyclops we encounter the title of the famous collection of short stories which
contains Carmilla, In a Glass Darkly, alluded to in a surprisingly cryptic way
during a parodical description of a spiritualistic sance.40 The Sheridan Le
Fanu/Joyce connection could also be plainly established via the influence that
Swedenbord had on both writers. Swedenborgs teachings are famously
structural aspects of Sheridan Le Fanus fiction. In the novel Uncle Silas the
Swede is directly quoted and constantly referred to. In the short story collection
In a Glass Darkly, alongside all apparitions of the mystic through quotations
from his works, Swedenborg is actually present by means of a very Joycean
trick dealing with the biographical dimension. A fictional character, Doctor
Martin Hesselius, who is said to have studied the case of the vampire Carmilla,
is in fact modelled on one Hesselius who was a cousin of Swedenborg.
Such an occult use of a historical character connected with the Swede is
parallel to Joyces occultist habit of concealing details of persons that he knew,
or that he knew of, in his works. In this light, Swedenborg could be seen as a
major link between Joyce and Sheridan Le Fanu. McCormack states that an
interest in Swedenborgs thought underlines the continuity between Le Fanu
and the generation of Yeats and Wilde.41 One can imagine that this kind of
continuity via Swedenborg could be extended also to James Joyce.

39
See Atherton, The Books at the Wake, 110-3.
40
See U, 389.
41
McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, 6.
 Occult Joyce 95

Other minor coincidences point to a relationship between the works of Joyce

and those of Sheridan Le Fanu. A very powerful one is the fact that in Circe,
the image of the vampire will ultimately materialize in the shape of Stephens
dead mother.42 The dead mother=vampire relation is also what partly occurs in
Carmilla, where the mother of Lauraone of Carmillas favourite victims
and Carmilla herself belong in fact to the same family.43 Besides, Carmilla
represents a sort of distorted maternal figure in the story, as many references
show. William Vender, in his well-known Freudian reading of the short story,
calls the figure of the mother the daemonic shadow mother.44 This is relevant
here, not only due to the association between the mother and the vampire, but
also for the parallelism between the vampiric and the daemonic, which features
massively also in Ulysses.
A further occult connection leading again to Sheridan Le Fanu is the
reference in Aeolus to Lady Dudley, the viceroys wife whom Joyce happens
to connect with the Phoenix Park murders.45 She is actually the wife of the same
Lord Lieutenant who will pass through the city later in the day, in Joyces book.
Bearing in mind that Sheridan Le Fanu had lived for many years in Phoenix
Park where the viceroys lodge was locatedhis father being chaplain to the
Royal Hibernian Military School also situated in the parkLady Dudley evokes
the memory of Dudley Ruthyn, Silass evil son in Uncle Silas.
As regards Lord Dudley passing through the city in Ulysses, there is a
further odd biographical coincidence, which alas does not account for any
particular detail in text. Nevertheless, perhaps it may help us see in a new light
the relationship between the two writers, as well as the knowledge Joyce might
have had of some details of Sheridan Le Fanus life. McCormack reminds us
that, on the occasion of King Georges visit to Dublin in 1821, Joseph and
William Sheridan Le Fanu watched the kings procession into Dublin from
their grandfathers house in Eccles Street.46 The fact that the children were
actually staying in the street where Bloom also lives, may or may not be
meaningful. Perhaps it is just a synchronicity, and we may be sceptical about it
as Jung would have been. However, in case Joyce had somehow come to know
such a detail about Sheridan Le Fanus biography, it would mean that surface
meanings in Ulysses are often just ways to mislead the reader, and to create an
illusionistic narrative whose deep sense is to be found elsewhere.

42
U, 702. See the discussion of this occurrence in my chapter on Circe.
43
See Davis, Gothics Enigmatic Signifier. The Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanus
Carmilla.
44
Vender, Carmilla: the Arts of Repression, 215. See also: Michelis, Dirty Mamma:
Horror, Vampires, and the Maternal in Late Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction.
45
See U, 174.
46
McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, 15. Italics mine.
96 Chapter Three

Despite this questionable biographical dimension, the two authors are linked
by the use of the theme of vampirism. Such a connection is based mainly upon
subtle textual references. The following is an almost random example. Just after
the recollection of Stephens poem, Myles Crawford utters a strange unfinished
sentence, preceded by a broken reference to a story set in Vienna. The tale
concerns the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph: Hungarian it was one day.47
Bearing this in mind, one should note that in the episode Myles Crawford makes
also a strange mistake about the Invincibles affair, dating it 1881, instead of
1882, the year Joyce was born. Curiously enough, as Adams points out, Bloom
in Eumeus makes the same error.48 The double occurrence may well be a
double mistake. However, one should consider that in Joyce mistakes are always
volitional, and are supposed to open the portals of discovery.
Adams has a paragraph titled Bloom as Hungarian, Bloom as Jew, in
which he partly fails to spot a precise function of Bloom being of Hungarian
origins. Both the scenes of Crawfords unfinished tale and Blooms origins
point to a parallelism between the two characters. The reference to Hungary also
reminds us of the background of Carmilla, a story set in Styria, which is an
Austrian province on the Hungarian border.49 However, textually speaking,
what makes Crawfords vampiric allusions come to he surface is one of
Stephens silent comments upon his ugly features: Would anyone wish that
mouth for her kiss?50 Here the text seems to be establishing again a direct
dialogue with the attentive reader. Stephen is clearly linking the kiss of the
vampire in his poem, a female kiss, to Myles Crawford, a character who is at the
same time the newspapers editor, a mock Cardinal, a symbol of the pagan god
Aeolus, and finally a devil tempter. The connection is suggested by the fact that
the poem also explicitly talks of a female vampire, which agains leads us back
to Sheridan Le Fanu, as well as to the recollection of Stephens dead mother.
The relationship between Stephen and Myles Crawford is problematic. The
devil/vampire Crawford tempts Stephen and tries to persuade him to make ally
with him. At a crucial point, Bloom rings the office, as if he were trying to
rescue unconsciously the young intellectual from the evil temptations of the
editor, and is providentially told through a third party to go to Hell by
Crawford himself.51 Alongside this, we find other casual references to a
mocking devilish dimension in the words of the editor, like the following
sentences: we havent got the chance of a snowball in Hell,52 or there was

47
U, 169.
48
See Adams, Surface and Symbol, 161-2.
49
See Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly, 344.
50
U, 175. Italics mine.
51
See U, 173.
52
U, 166.
 Occult Joyce 97

weeping and gnashing of teeth over that.53 This last expression, besides being
reminiscent of chapter seven of the Gospel according to St. Matthew,54 seems to
be also evocative of the section devoted to the description of Hell in
Swedenborgs book, significantly entitled What Hell-Fire and Gnashing of
Teeth Are.55
Since the term occult is here used in an inclusive way, it may be interesting
to note that in Aeolus we encounter one passage where some important
sources of Joyce in the field of occultism make their appearance disguised as
names. They include A.E. and Madame Blavatsky.56 Direct allusions to
mysticism, alongside oblique references and occult hints, are all relevant in a
proper understanding of the episodes substructure. Most of them concern
religious or occult matters. Although they are fundamental in the subtext of the
work, they play also an active role in the shaping of the narration.
The whole system of obscure references in the episode is resolved in a
famous, although seemingly irrelevant, hint occurring twice during Stephens
monologues: Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was.57
Leaving aside the question of Joyces (mis)spelling of the word, readers must be
reminded that the Akashic records are potentially the means of communication
between the living and the collective memory of humanity (Past, Present,
Future). They are said to comprehend all things on earth, which happened in any
age or time. They show affinities with what Yeats called Anima Mundi, and
somehow suggest that things which seem to have no apparent meaning at all
may instead be meaningful according to hidden patterns of interpretation. If
there existed in the world of men such things as the Akashic records, they would
certainly be responsible for the occurrence of all the odd synchronicities spotted
in the preceeding pages.
In the context of Ulysses, the idea of an immortal repository of all memories
and thoughts of both the living and the dead must perforce be translated into a
symbolic level. It seems that apparently casual occurrences should always be
interpreted as if they were open to an explanation that takes account of the tex-
tually hidden. Secret clues possibly belong to the texts unconscious. They al-
ways work beneath the surface of narration. The task of the reader is then to es-
tablish the right connections, in order to make them come to the surface. This
might eventually make him look like an adept of what could be seen as a
pseudo-orphic (half-religious, half-satanic) secret cult we may call Joyceanity.
By paying the due attention to the hidden meanings of the connections, to the

53
U, 174.
54
See Hodgart, Aeolus, 119.
55
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 471-9.
56
See U, 178.
57
U, 182. See also 183.
98 Chapter Three

semantic intersections between the various levels of narration, and finally to the
hidden semiotic code which organizes them, one could eventually approach a
great deal of the structural complexity of the book from a new perspective. Such
an oblique rhetoric will be even more evident in the next chapter, where the
ghostly presence of William Shakespeare will come to haunt the scene, and join
the odd company of the occult protagonists of the episode.
 CHAPTER FOUR

SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS

In an analysis of the internal thematic structure of Ulysses, there are several

reasons why one should discuss Scylla after having cast an eye on Hades
and Aeolus. One of them is well explained by Vivian Mercier, who detects in
Ulysses 9 the occasion of a third possible encounter between Stephen and
Bloom, after having been in each others vicinity three times.1 We can
consider this just a coincidence by absence. Other textual occurrences actually
link the three chapters. They include the subliminal echo of the apocryphal
Harrowing of Hell, the Haines/Douglas Hyde ironical connection, and the
Stephen=Anthistenes equation. One could also interpret Blooms furtive visit to
the library in search of an issue of the Kilkenny People as a further connection
with the world of the press depicted in the seventh episode. Moreover, it can be
argued that Stephens reference to the coffined thoughts2 dwelling in the
National Library reminds one of both the athmosphere of the cemetery episode3
and those death breaths4 he had breathed in Proteus. We may eventually
reach the same conclusion by analysing other textual correspondences.
A remark in Scylla, commenting on Stephens management of the
discussion among the intellectuals gathered in the library, is peculiarly relevant
in this perspective. It parallels a sentence in Proteus which describes
Stephens awareness that he is gradually overcoming the difficulty of walking
with his eyes closed. In the ninth episode, while he is conducting his dialogic
struggle in the library, we read: I think youre getting on very nicely. Just mix
up a mixture of theolologicalphilological.5 In the third chapter we had: Im
getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side.6 The use of
similar expressions is not just a coincidence. It tells us something about the

1
Mercier, John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of Scylla and Charybdis, 80.
2
U, 248.
3
This connection, and the following one, are suggested by Kiberd in his annotations to
the text: U, 1021, n. 248.7.
4
U, 61.
5
U, 263.
6
U, 45.
100 Chapter Four

difference between Stephens ways of dealing with his own thoughts on the two
occasions, and therefore points to a kind of development of his rhetorical skills.
At a surface level, the resemblance between Proteus and Scylla is
prompted by the fact that Stephen appears to be playing indisputably the main
role, the winners one, in both contexts. However, while in the third episode his
silent reasoning does not have to face the reaction of any imaginary antagonist,
in Scylla he takes part in a dispute and confronts other characters. As many
have argued, the way in which the talk in the library is reported makes one think
of a dialogue. The dramatic nature of Scylla parallels the structure of Circe,
an episode much resembling a dramatic visionary play. Actually, at a certain
stage the dialogue of the ninth episode merges into drama. It is the case of a
short play whose protagonists are Stephen, Buck Mulligan, Best, and
Quakerlyster.7 The idea that Scylla is a sort of imaginary go-between chapter
between Proteus and Circe seems to be confirmed by an occasional hint
linking back to Stephens dream in the third episode, a dream which in a way
anticipates the atmosphere of Ulysses 15: Street of harlots after. A creamfruit
melon he held to me.8
Dialogue is often used as a means to unfold a theory avoiding what are
perceived at times as the intolerable pedantries of intellectual discourse. In the
library episode, the theory expounded concerns the relationship between an
authors life and his works. However, through the use of a particular
terminology Joyce is silently referring also to another kind of hidden reasoning,
which may help us understand some later oneiric developments of Circe.
Scylla is, so to speak, the theoretical precondition to the approach of the
fifteenth episode, the solution to the occult question in Ulysses. This is
suggested by what is really a covert theory of ghosts. Ghosts, in fact, haunt the
world of Scylla just as they will influence the dynamics of perception in the
hallucinated universe of Circe.

A Theory of Ghosts
Bearing in mind Jungs interpretation of ghosts, spirits, and apparitions as
psychic facts, or in other words, as representations of the activity of the
unconscious, one may see in a new light Stephens definition of a ghost as one
who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through
change of manners.9 It is clear, from the unfolding of his own theory, that he
interprets apparitions in their literary sense as projections of the artistic will.

7
See U, 268-9.
8
U, 279.
9
U, 240.
 Occult Joyce 101

This is why they manifest as unconscious casual phenomena. The Shakespeare

theory in Scylla is undoubtedly a ghostly one. It is mainly based on the idea
that Shakespeare is not Hamlet, but rather the ghost of the princes father. By
stating that the true artist becomes an androgynous angel, as well as a wife
unto himself,10 Stephen is implying that artists are truly ghosts. As Mercier
argues, the artist is not absent from but hidden by his work.11 Stephen explains
as much in the following terms:

He [the artist] goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from
himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on
towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has
written or by the laws he has revealed.12

In the passage, Stephen is obviously referring to Shakespeare, as well as to

himself as the recorder of his own life. The story has to be revealed to the reader
gradually through a process that involves the act of negating direct knowledge.
Such an idea in the Joyce=Shakespeare equation has become a commonplace in
criticism,13 although it might be objected on many theoretical grounds. One
should really be careful before indulging in the temptation to put life and its
representation on contiguous levels. However, it is a fact that in Joyces fiction
aspects of biography provide at least a useful referential frame which helps
locate historically, so to speak, some of the ideas discussed as well as many of
the characters portrayed.
In this light, the occult implications of the fact that the two authors are
ghostly textual presences in their respective works, is rarely taken into
consideration. In Scylla, a similar gaseous relationship is suggested in many
places. Take for instance the passage where Eglinton ironically introduces
Stephens theory that Hamlet is a ghoststory. Soon after that, Stephens
murmured admonition reads: List! List! O List!14 As is well known, this is
what the ghost actually says in Shakespeares play. Some time later, before
stating that Shakespeare is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinores
rocks,15 the young intellectual rejoices at his own success in making his
audience admire the perfection of his own dialectical performance, by uttering:

10
U, 274.
11
Mercier, John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of Scylla and Charybdis, 69.
12
U, 252.
13
See Merciers cited article, but also Schuttes work on Joyce and Shakespeare (n. 27
below), and Kelloggs essay mentioned below (n. 33).
14
U, 240.
15
U, 252.
102 Chapter Four

They list.16 Thus, he himself, like Shakespeare, turns into a ghost.

Furthermore, he also ironically identifies with Hamlets evil uncle, lover of the
princes mother, in the act of pouring poison into his listeners ears.17
Ghosts and actors are parallel in Shakespeares world, for they are so in his
language. One should not overrate here the semantic duplicity, in Elizabethan
times, of the word shadow. The term could mean a spirit, but also something
similar to a ghost. However, as Oscar Wilde reminds us in The Portrait of Mr
W.H., the technical meaning of the word was connected with the stage. After the
reference above, Stephen finally reveals that the writer, in his being both the
ghost and the ghosts creatorbut also an actor, that is, a feigner, a
dissimulatoris therefore the creator of himself, his own imaginary father.
Such a ghostly family game, implied in his questionable biographical
interpretation of Shakespeares plays, had been previously the target of
Mulligans mockery. In Telemachus, he had reassured Haines that Stephen
was able to prove by algebra that the grandson of Hamlet is the grandfather of
Shakespeare, and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.18 It follows
that in Scylla some generations of the Bards family are finally linked via
relations of identities. Such identities involve both the living and the dead in the
shape of apparitions. An odd connection between grandsons and grandfathers is
here established. At first, it seems to clash with the idea that the ghost of the
father is haunting the life of the son, as we are told in Scylla. However, in the
ninth episode some strange relationships are outlined which point to a
consubstantiality of all the members of the same family in the broader economy
of the race:

When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name

in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son
merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race,
the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson.19

In this perspective, also the appearance of the ghost of Lipoti Virag, Blooms
grandfather, in Circe, rather than his own suicidal father whom one would
have expected after the many references to him in the book, is not as strange as
it could seem. Mr Best thinks that to be a grandfather is an art,20 and this
announces subtly the importance of the coming of Lipoti in Circe. His
presence is therefore completely justified by the identity of grandsons and

16
U, 252.
17
See U, 252.
18
U, 21.
19
U, 267.
20
See U, 250.
 Occult Joyce 103

grandfathers theorized in Scylla. It is also in a way foretold by the pseudo-

theological reflections of Stephen about the mystery of paternity on which the
Church appears to be ultimately founded.21
Accordingly, the apparition of the spirit of Stephens mother in the visionary
drama of Ulysses 15 should be ironically dismissed as a psychic delusion
experienced by Stephen, in that maternity for him is hardly to be considered a
mystery like fatherhood. Besides, in the case of Blooms future pregnancy,
maternity is somehow presented as a symbol of the unity of man and women, in
the perfection of artistic androgyny. This introduces a major theme of Ulysses,
the visionary identity of genders, which can partly be explained as a mock-
legacy of a neoplatonic tenet.
Other occult aspects of Scylla, possibly the easiest to spot at a first
reading, are the rather systematic references to the world of theosophy that
crowd the episode.22 Their occurrence has been more or less fully analysed by
many critics, like Ralph Jenkins for example, and the reader will here be spared
of didactic explanations. A pointed analysis of the theosophical allusions of the
chapter would be little relevant in this context, for those textual references are
just, in their own ways, surface devices with a mystifying function. The core of
the present analysis is instead the subliminal presence of a parallel discourse
that underwrites narration. This can in fact be spotted at a deeper level than the
referential one, and it does not point to an attitude of mockery and dismissal. In
fact, to believe in direct statements in Joyce is always to be deceived.
Accordingly, his surface treatment of occult contents is clearly dismissive, and
as such it would lead one to disregard the occult dimension as little relevant.
Mercier is one of the critics who fell into such a tricky trap. In commenting
on the fact that mysticism is one of the symbols in Linati, he states that
perhaps theosophy, which is ridiculed in more than one passage, stands for
mysticism in general.23 He may well be right, judging by Stephens behaviour
in the episode.24 However, despite the overwhelming irony, what is meaningful
in the present context is the structure lying beneath the surface of the work, a
structure certainly informed also by irony and disenchantment. Similarly, we all
know that one would be naively mistaken if one believed that what the
characters of a fictional text say corresponds to the authors views. This is
particularly true in the case of Joyce, especially when mockery is involved. We
might as well refer to an opinion expressed in the text by the quaker librarian:
The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.25

21
See U, 266.
22
See for instance U, 237.
23
Mercier, John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of Scylla and Charybdis, 72.
24
See for instance U, 237.
25
U, 255.
104 Chapter Four

That Joyce is close to the cause of the theosophists can hardly be

demonstrated. However, his own response to the occult does not prevent him
from using their methods and ideas in a convincing and quite fruitful way. One
instance of this is the aforementioned idea that the Church is founded on the
mystery of paternity, and therefore founded, like the world, macro- and micro-
cosm, upon the void.26 Such a remark, besides anticipating the ultimate sense
of Joyces dealing with the issue of spirituality in nihilistic terms, explains how
thoroughly, in the micro/macrocosm reference, the text agrees with some basic
teachings of the hermetists. An interesting mediation, though rooted in a
different kind of analysis, is the one proposed by Schutte in his illuminating
study of Joyce and Shakespeare:

Like Bloom, he [Stephen] feels the power of spiritual values; he hates Mulligan
for deriding them. He is willing to grant their power and acknowledge that they
may exist, but like Bloom he refuses to allow them dominion over his life []
On the other hand, because he insists on absolute dedication to Art, Stephen feels
he must reject also precisely those spiritual values which Bloom has said alone
are life.27

A dual attitude in dealing with spiritual themes emerges from such an argument.
Stephen is at the same time capable of acknowledging the power of spirituality
and of rejecting its influence on his artistic views. This mixture of scepticism
and belief is consistent with the pseudo-statements theory discussed earlier on.
In the episode, such a blend of contrary inclinations parallels Stephens
explanation of his Shakespeare theory and his contemporaneous rejection of it
when Eglinton asks him whether he believes in it or not. Mockery, which at
times implies the negation of belief, is fundamental to Joyces conception of his
own art. This is proved by a series of ironical remarks which follow Eglintons
opinion that Stephen should not expect to be paid for a theory in which he does
not believe:

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to

unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap.28

Negation always implies acknowledgement. Acceptance and rejection are the

two sides of the same coin, that is, so to speak, the coin of belief. Another
solution to such a friction of antinomies is Eglintons wise suggestion that the

26
U, 266.
27
Schutte, Joyce and Shakespeare. A Study in the Meaning of Ulysses, 145-6.
28
U, 275.
 Occult Joyce 105

truth is to be found midway.29 In other words, this could well be a milder

version of the final coincidence of the contraries which the hermetists, ridiculed
in more than one passage in Ulysses, had successfully taught Joyce.

A Wife unto Himself

Oppositions are no doubt among the hidden structural forces of Scylla, as the
treatment of Shakespeare in the chapter demonstrates.30 Other similar issues can
be found in the schematas. They include the contrasts between mysticism and
scholasticism, Plato and Aristotle, London/Paris and Stratford/Dublin, and fi-
nally youth and old age. The latter is also a crucial question in Yeatss poetry.
The hint at another significant opposition in occult terms, of which Robert
Kellogg brilliantly recognizes the actual source,31 is dropped during one of
Stephens references to William Shakespeare. As Stephen has it, Shakespeare
lived in London as an ante-litteram Don Juan for many years, after having been
raped in Stratford by a woman eight years older than him. Stephen synthesizes
such an ambivalence in a colourful sentence: Twenty years he dallied there
between conjugal love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul
pleasures.32 The two kinds of love alluded to are seen as opposite aspects in
Shakespeares sentimental life. Kellogg explains the allusion as a reference to
the title of a tract by Swedenborg, whose English translation, published in 1794,
is Swedenborgs Delights of Wisdom concerning Conjugal Love: after which
follow the pleasures of Insanity concerning Scortatory Love.33 The scholar is no
doubt right in spotting this very subtle reference. However, since Joyce did not
have a copy of the pamphlet, nor is it stated anywhere that he had actually read
it, we will never know whether he went further than remembering just its title.
The only book by Swedenborg Joyce has ever possessed is in fact Heaven and
Hell. Luckily enough, the text deals at length with the notion of conjugal love,
that is, marriage love, and can therefore prove helpful in explaining the true
meaning of the allusion in Scylla.
Conjugal love is presented in Ulysses as a merely human and earthly
experience, while for the Swede it is a mystical estate concerning the spiritual
life of the angels:

[] there are marriages in the heavens just as there are on earth. But marriages in
the heavens are very different from marriages on earth [] Marriage in heaven is

29
See U, 272.
30
See for instance the description of the Bard as ravisher and ravished, U, 252.
31
See n. 33 below.
32
U, 258.
33
Kellogg, Scylla and Charibdis, 171.
106 Chapter Four

the bonding of two individuals into one mind. We shall first explain what this
bonding is like.
The mind is made up of two parts, one of which is called discernment, the other
intention. When these two parts work together, they are called a single mind.
In heaven, the husband takes that part called discernment, and the wife that part
called intention. When this bond (which is a matter of more inward elements)
comes down into the lower levels that involve their bodies, it is perceived and
felt as love. This is true marriage love.
We can see from this that true marriage love originates from the bonding of two
individuals into one mind. In heaven, this is called dwelling together, and a
couple is not called two but one.34

The idea that the heavenly couple is called one instead of two implies a kind
of unity of being, an androgyny of the soul, whose possible realization can
only take place in heaven. In fact, as we will see later in this study, the idea of a
terrestrial reconciliation between the sexes, and precisely the union between
Bloom and Molly in the text, is hard to achieve. It is in fact overshadowed by
the superior androgynous reconciliation within oneself. Carolyn Heilbrun
explains that the term androgyny defines a condition under which the
characteristics of the sexes and the human impulses expressed by men and
women, are not rigidly assigned.35 This agrees with the ideas of animus and
anima which Jung explains in these terms:

Every man carries within him the eternal image of a woman [] a definite femi-
nine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of
primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or
archetype of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of
all the impressions ever made by woman [] The same is true of the woman: she
too has her inborn image of man.36

Although Stephen says that Shakespeare would at the same time be bawd
and cuckold,37 he adds in Swedenborgian fashion that in the economy of
heaven, foretold by Hamlet there are no more marriages, glorified man, an
androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.38 The purpose of this passage is
to portray the sentimental and sexual life of a particular man by offering a
powerful and refined parody of the original spiritual interpretation connected
with androgyny. The shift from heavenly environs to earthly Elizabethan

34
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 285.
35
Heilbrun, Towards Androgyny. Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, x.
36
Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 17, 198.
37
See U, 274.
38
U, 274.
 Occult Joyce 107

England is a way of secularizing the occult. It can also be argued that the idea of
the two angels becoming one might have influenced the fictional relationship
between Stephen/Bloom and Molly. Consider, for instance, the following
passage from Heaven and Hell:

The existence of this kind of bonding of husband and wife in the most inward
elements of their minds, comes from their creation itself. The man is actually
born to be discerningthat is, to think from discernment; while the woman is
born to be affectionalthat is to think from intention [] In the matter of form,
a man has harder, less attractive face, a heavier voice, a harder body; while a
woman has a smoother, more attractive face, a gentler voice, a softer body []
There is, however, no dominance in marriages in heaven. The wifes
intention actually belongs to her husband, and the husbands discernment to the
wife, because each wants to intend and think like the otherthat is, with sharing,
and reciprocally. This is the source of their bonding into one.39

The references to a smoother, more attractive face, a gentler voice, a softer

body, perhaps suit the image of Molly Bloom in Ulysses. Also the idea of a
wife as representative of the intentionand discernment in changeable
proportionscould somehow illuminate the sense of Mollys drowsy
monologue in the last episode, where the actual border between the two faculties
appears to be utterly ephemeral.
In order to establish a final link between the Swedes idea of marriages in
heaven and Joyces own work, at the risk of sounding redundant, or rather, a
Swedenborgian adept, we can take a look at a few more passages from Heaven
and Hell concerning the attributes of conjugal unions:

I have been told by angels that so far as two married partners are involved in this
bond, they are involved in true marriage love and at the same time in intelligence,
wisdom, and happiness; this because the DivineTrue and the DivineGood,
the sources of all intelligence, wisdom, and happiness, flow primarily into true
marriage love [] true marriage love, seen in its own right, is a condition of
innocence. [] For nothing fails to give pleasure to their minds; in fact, heaven
flows with its joys into the details of their lives.40

Curiously enough, the words love, intelligence, wisdom, happiness, good,

innocence and joy are also considered by Swedengorg to be the very attributes
of head, an organ of the body of heaven:

39
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 286.
40
Ibid, 287, 295. Italics mine
108 Chapter Four

In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the head are those who are involved in
everything good more than others are. They are in fact involved in love, peace,
innocence, wisdom, discernment [intelligence], and in joy and happiness as a
result.41

The Linati schema informs us that the organ of Scylla is brain. Brain in
this context equals head through semantic extension. What is then the
connection between those attributes of head/marriage love and the sense of the
ninth episode? This is the question we need to answer in order to understand
fully one of the hidden themes of the chapter, and precisely its bookish
literariness.
Let us start by saying that all the qualities Swedenborg attaches to the head
of heaven share inevitably some ethical meaning. They in fact represent an
estate of spiritual perfection. Considering that literature is the art of the
episode according the schematas, Swedenborgs attributes seem to jar with
Joyces idea of literature, which in the early essay, Drama and Life (1900), he
had described as the whimsicalities and circumstances of men and women.42
As is the case with Stephens parallel essay Art and Life in Stephen Hero, it
can be argued that the notion of literature discussed there does not correspond to
the more mature developments of the same concept when Joyce actually wrote
Ulysses. Generally speaking, and leaving aside theoretical consideration about
authorship, one could perhaps agree with Kellogg that one should rather
attribute its ideas [the ideas expressed in Stephens essay] to Joyce [] than to
a fictional prefiguration of the Stephen of Ulysses.43 Kellogs hypothesis is
that the distinction scarcely exists when the thoughts of the two are from the
same period.44 This is consistent with a very basic truth: the facts of Ulysses
take place in 1904 and not in 1922. Something similar happens in relation to
Stephens aesthetic theories exposed in various works, which we tend to ascribe
to an authorial function dependent on Joyces intentions while at university. By
the same token, in an analisys of Joyces ideas about the relationship between
literary representation and life, one can assume that the ideas expressed in
Scylla are close at least to the position of the young Joyce on the matter.
To a certain extent, one can also agree with Schuttes opinion that between
the end of the Portrait and the opening of Ulysses, Stephens character has
hardened, and he has lost much of his capacity for growth.45 This may point to
some quite intentional irony on Joyces part, in pretending that one of his alter

41
Ibid, 83. Italics mine.
42
CW, 40.
43
Kellogg, 154.
44
Ibid., Scylla and Charybdis, 154.
45
Schutte, Joyce and Shakespeare. A Study in the Meaning of Ulysses, 18.
 Occult Joyce 109

egos whose character has hardened expresses a most revealing theory

concerning the obscure relationship between the authors life and his works.
Accordingly, it can be argued that in the episode the literature/brain
dichotomy is indisputably linked to life via a further powerful inversion. All the
attributes of the head quoted abovewisdom, innocence, intelligence, love,
good, joy and happinesscannot really suit Joyces idea of literature as a type
of writing that eschews morals. Not only is the lack of moral goals inconsistent
with Swedenborgs belief, but it seems to be its very contrary. In the light of
Stephens rejection of his own theory, and therefore of his own lies about it, the
following definition of literature as lie, taken from an essay by Italian writer
Giorgio Manganelli, may help us approach the question of calculating the
hidden meaning of the art of Scylla:

Literature, far from describing the totality of man, is not expression but
provocation. It is not the wonderful human figure sought by the moralists of
culture. Instead, it is ambiguous, unnatural, a little monstrous. Literature is not
just an arbitrary action. It is vicious. It is always an act of disobedience, a jest, a
joke, a sacred provocative gesture against history.46

Stephens perspective is very similar to this. The reader will acknowledge

that while he pretends to be talking about Shakespeare, he is instead evidently
speaking of himself, and unconsciously of Leopold and Molly. The final irony
of such a discourse emerges when he states that he does not believe in his own
theory, which makes him reject all sorts of commitments, even to himself.
In Telemachus Stephen was concerned about making money with his own
theory.47 In Scylla he is ready to sell it for a guinea.48 This ironically jars with
the opening of the episode, where the Quaker librarian had mentioned Goethes
priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister.49
It seems that the idea of literature in Ulysses shows a complete lack of moral
aims. Such a hoax of gigantic proportions involves necessarily many hidden
references in the book. Among them, the mystical ones play an important role.
In the present perspective, mysticismhere intended as a part of the heterodox
universe named occultismand literature are hardly differentiated. In fact, in
the episode the two categories blend in Joyces view.
Many writers mentioned in the episode belong to what could be described as
A.E.s intellectual circle. Despite the fact that they were not all true believers, it
is clear that Russell was regarded by them as an influential figure in Dublins

46
Manganelli, Il rumore sottile della prosa, 76.
47
See U, 18-9.
48
See U, 275.
49
See U, 235.
110 Chapter Four

literary scenario. Actually, before leaving the library, Russell is invited by a

third party to one of George Moores evenings. At the end of the episode, Buck
Mulligan will be invited too.50 Moreover, at a certain stage Russell is rumoured
to be working on a poetry collection that shall include the poems of some young
Irish poets, but Stephen is not among them.
Russell, described as the gulfer of souls,51 is therefore a symbol of both
literature and mysticism. His textual presence justifies the occurrence of certain
occult themes in the episode. Apart from the strictly theosophical ones, we
encounter also certain bland references to Satanism, like those present in
previous chapters. Some of them whisper occasionally the name of W.B. Yeats,
himself a ghostly shadow in the episode.

Diabolus Est Deus Inversus

Mercier argues that in Scylla Joyce is inviting the reader to an odd game
of hide-and-seek.52 In such a playful atmosphere, we find some interesting
references to Shakespeare, and precisely to the bards alleged intention to hide
himself in his works.53 In modern times, something similar happens with certain
film directors, like in the movie The Dead where Huston makes a short
appearance as the cab-driver at the end of the story.
Another Shakespeare-related Will, whose presence has escaped most readers
of the episode, is subtly concealed in the text, and this is Stephens description
of the jester Mulligan as a lubber jester, a wellkempt head,54 which actually
hides a reference to Will Kempe, who played the jester in Burbages company.
The way in which his name is disguised contributes in providing
Mageeglinjohns famous question whats in a name?55 with further obscure
echoes.
Such echoes are also linked to the use of pseudonyms and initials in the
reference to certain characters whose actual identification is not a hard task.
Again, most of them belong to both the fields of mysticism and literature. We
find two other Wills, suggested by the initials W.B. (Yeats and Blake), the
theosophist par excellence Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (H.P.B), her
occult mentor Kooti Hoomi (K.H.), George Russell (A.E.), and so on. Stephens

50
See U, 245, 275.
51
U, 245.
52
Mercier, John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of Scylla and Charybdis, 69.
53
See U, 269.
54
U, 276.
55
U, 268.
 Occult Joyce 111

initials are also subtly incorporated in the text: S.D. sua donna.56 This again
suggests the idea of androgyny, for sua donna in Italian means his woman.
The many references to persons named Will, beside reminding one of
Wildes theory in The Portrait of W.H. alluded to by Mr Best,57 happen to cause
inevitable confusion in the text:

Gentle Will is being roughly handed, gentle Mr Best said gently.

Which Will? Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting missed.
The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Wills widow, is
the will to die.58

A particular Will who appears as another powerful ghost-by-absence

haunting the episode is Yeats. His occult presence is suggested by many
allusions, among which some are more direct than others. Of course, when one
speaks of the presence of Yeats, one refers to his textual existence within the
fictional horizon of the narrative. One may well argue that all fictional presences
are somehow ghostly ones or, in other words, textual shadows. Actual persons
cannot be present in the real sense of the word. Besides, there is no real world
in the strict sense to which the text refers, but only possible worlds, like
Giordano Brunos infinite worlds. The people are there insofar as their names
are there. They are, so to speak, hidden behind names.
Through the dynamic role of the reader, Joyces textuality seems sometimes
to behave like the spiritualistic formulas of the mediums who are asked to evoke
spirits on behalf of third parties. In the same way, the people concealed behind
the text can also be summoned through analogical interpretation. This happens,
for instance, when a reader spots an allusion to a character in an ambiguous
textual occurrence. In Joyces works, such a method stands for a proof that a
quasi-magical practice of letting the characters lie hidden beneath the text is
silently at work. It is as if they are awaiting to be summoned by the reader/adept
through the dialectical relationship that links words (names, initials, and so on)
to their occult referents. The relation between a text and its reader is somehow
similar to that between the formulas of a charm and the person who tries to
evoke some absent presence, like in spiritualistic sances. This is, of course,
subtly parodied by Joyce, and the whole affair is thoroughly secularized.
In order to show how this process works in detail, we may start with the first
allusion to the works of Yeats. It occurs at the very beginning of the episode,
when Stephen is about to start his lecture on Hamlet: Seven is dear to the

56
U. 269.
57
See U, 254.
58
U, 264.
112 Chapter Four

mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.59 As I have said, W.B. may
well be also the initials of William Blake. However, some allusions seem to
suggest that the shadow of the Sligo poet is lurking behind this particular
occurrence all the same.
It is useful to take account of certain occult implications of the number
seven, a number which, as has been noted, occurs many times in Yeatss poetry
too. The reference here could be, say, to the sailing seven in A Cradle Song,
to the Seven Light in The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers, or even
to the poem and the collection titled In The Seven Woods. Actually, towards the
end of Scylla, Joyce happens to write a parody of the poem Baile and Ailinn
from In the Seven Woods.60 Coggrave explains that Joyces use of numbers is
evident through his work, particularly the number seven, traditionally the
occultist symbol of creativity, wholeness and perfection.61 He goes on quoting
from Blavatskys Isis Unveiled, where the mysterious lady refers to an occult
correspondence between many different things. These include the seven
prismatic colours of the rainbow, the seven labours of magic of the kabbalists,
the seven upper spheres, the seven notes of the musical scale, the seven
numerals of Pythagoras, the seven wonders of the world, the seven ages, and
finally the seven steps of the masons.62 This plethora of meanings hidden behind
the number seven is confirmed by the popular Brewers Book of Myths and
Legends, which gives the following account of some of them:

Seven. A mystic sacred number; it is composed of four and three, which among
the Pythagoreans were, and from time immemorial have been, accounted lucky
numbers. Among the Babylonians, Egyptians and other ancient peoples there
were seven sacred planets; and the Hebrew verb to swear means literally, to
come under the influence of seven things [] There are seven days in the
creation, seven days in the week, seven virtues, seven divisions in the Lords
prayer, seven ages in the life of man, climateric years are seven and nine with
their multiples by odd numbers, and the seventh son of a seventh son was always
held notable.
Among the Hebrews every seventh year was Sabbatical, and seven times seven
years was the Jubilee. Three great Jewish feasts lasted seven days and between
the first and second were seven weeks. Levitical purifications lasted seven days.
The number is associated with a variety of occurrences in the Old Testament.
In the Apocalypse we have seven churches of Asia, seven candlesticks, seven
stars, seven trumpets, seven spirits before the throne of God, seven horns, seven
vials, seven plagues, a seven-headed monster, and the lamb with seven eyes.

59
U, 236.
60
See U, 277. See also Kiberds annotations: 1029, n. 277.15-24.
61
Coggrave, Joyces Use of Occultist Sources, 105.
62
See also Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 408.
 Occult Joyce 113

The old astrologers and alchemists recognized seven planets, each having its own
heaven.63

The number seven stands also for a cluster of further occult meanings,
including the seven planes of nature;64 Rudolph Steiners seven stages of the
way of initiation or his sevenfold man;65 the seven kabbalistic sephiroths
proceeding from the first triad;66 and finally, in Joyces episode, the wonder of
seven parishes67 which Shakespeares secondbest bed is not, according to
Stephen.
John Senior argues that the number seven has also certain alchemic
implications, linked to music by means of a Kabbalistic connection. He
acknowledges that the alchemists said that the seven metals were the seven
strings of the lyre and the seven notes of the musical scale.68
Theosophical and numerological allusions in the text often take place
alongside the nebulous theme of Satanism, in the context of the half-serious and
eclectic occult system of Ulysses. It is interesting here to consider briefly also
the various references to this subject. We encounter the title of a novel by Marie
Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan which, as Kiberd explains, suggests a kind of
mockery of Stephens youthful aim to write an epic with the satanic figure as
hero.69 Immediately after the mentioned shining seven, there come mixed
references to Miltons Satan in Paradise Lost, suggesting again the idea that the
devil is more than an occasional presence in the episode.70 In such a context
made of subliminal meanings, a sentence occurring a few lines below which is
at the surface level obviously referred just to Cranly, could be seen as a satanic
allusion: My souls youth I gave to him.71 The image of the devil is also
implied in Stephens recollection of James VI, King of Scotland,72 who had
written a treatise on demonology.73 Similarly, we may take account of the
reference to Sir Walter Ralegh,74 whose circle of atheist friends, according to

63
Brewers Book of Myth and Legend, 259.
64
See Jenkins, Theosophy in Scylla and Charybdis, 37-8.
65
See Steiner, Occult Science, 58-9.
66
This will be discussed more comprehensively in the chapters on Sirens and
Proteus.
67
U, 265.
68
Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, 29.
69
Kiberd, in U, 1015, n. 235.25.
70
See U, 236.
71
U, 236.
72
See U, 263.
73
See U, 1025 n. 263.3.
74
See U, 258.
114 Chapter Four

past scholarship, was said to rejoice at reading Gods name backwards.75

Interestingly, the reader will be forced to accomplish this very practice later on,
in Circe.
The same theme seems to be carried out also in the unfolding of the logic of
the initials. For instance, Buck Mulligan, the performer of an inverted Christian
rite much resembling the parody of a black mass as early as in Telemachus,
has initials that could also point to the black mass (B.M.). It could also be
argued that the first and the final letters of Blooms surname are B.M., while the
initials of Molly Bloom are the same as Buck Mulligans, only inverted.
A less tentative textual connection with the satanic theme is provided by an
interesting passage in Scylla, which links back to chapter four of A Portrait,
where Swedenborgian and devilish ghosts had joined the same company in the
ciphered language of Stephens artistic intentions. Before discussing it, we may
briefly take account of a further connection between the two contexts, a cluster
of sentences which describe Stephens reflections while leaving the library:
The portico. Here I watched the birds for augury.76 Stephens recollection is
an intertextual link to a passage in A Portrait featuring a direct allusion to
Swedenborg. It concerns the Swedes ideas regarding the correspondence of
birds to things of the intellect. In Stephens words, the birds know their names
and seasons because they, unlike man, are in order of their life and have not
perverted that order by reason.77 As we will see, such a retrospective
connection between Ulysses and A Portrait helps us see in a new light the
satanic theme in Scylla.
Towards the end of the discussion in the library, the reader encounters an
obscure epithet referred to Stephen: Bous Stephanoumenos.78 It means
ox/bull soul of Stephen, and recalls the description of Stephen as the
bullockbefriending bard,79 as well as Joyces collaboration with The Irish
Homestead. This was a farmers journal edited by A.E., in which three of
Joyces short stories had been published in 1904. However, phonetically
speaking, the name may eventually sound to anyone with little Greek a little
devilish, like the name Mephistopheles, for example. The man=beast equation
implied would also lead to this conclusion. In Christian iconography, the devil is
often described by the image of the beast. What makes the connection relevant
in the present context are again a couple of passages from chapter four of A
Portrait, which help us see the bigger picture: Stephanos Dedalos! Bous

75
This is suggested in De Angelis, Commento a Ulisse, 1231, n. 792.
76
U, 279.
77
P, 244.
78
U, 269.
79
U, 44.
 Occult Joyce 115

Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephanoforos!80 A few paragraphs above, a super-

subtle allusion to hell and the devil via musical theory and the history of music
had been made:

He heard notes of fitful music leaping upwards a tone and downwards a

diminished fourth, upwards a tone and downwards a major third, like
triplebranching flames leaping fitfully flame after flame, out of a midnight
wood.81

The occult meaning of the musical intervals quoted here has escaped most read-
ers of Ulysses. The passage contains satanic allusions, which introduce the sub-
sequent image of the flames, a clearer reference to hell and the devil. Lets start
by saying that such a precision in the use of a jargon like that of harmony,
hardly accessible to common readers, is at least suspect, and like all things sus-
pect in Joyce, it probably hides a secret solution. A diminished fourth and a ma-
jor third are musical intervals which, though harmonically different, both in-
volve two tones. Suffice it to say that Stephen imagines that he is hearing first
an ascending one-tone interval followed by a descending diminished fourth,
then again another ascending one-tone interval followed by a descending major
third. It is not clear whether the first notes of the one-tone ascending intervals
and those of the two-tone descending ones are the same notes, but if they are so
the hidden sense of Joyces musical allusion would instantly materialize as a sa-
tanic allusion. In fact, the result of the two descending intervals would be two
three-tone intervals, and in the history of musical harmony the three-tone inter-
valbetter known as the tritonus or the tritoneis also called the Diabolus in
Musica, that is, the devil in music. Until the end of the Renaissance, it was re-
garded as dangerous for its devilish associations. The Church prohibited it, for it
was thought to summon Satan. Popular lore has it that those who were found
using the interval could be subjected to torture, and that burnings were a favour-
ite option. It follows that Joyce, whose keen knowledge of music should not be
underestimated despite his relative imprecision in dealing properly with musical
jargon, is here playing with a very subtle game hardly accessible to the non-
specialists. He is thus making a satanic allusion so obscure that it could have
been picked up only by a few. Such an obscurantist attitude is by no means sur-
prising on Joyces part, and is somehow consistent with the ways of the occult-
ists. Their secrets are in fact to be disclosed only to adepts, and are not to be
known by others. Similarly, Joyce is perhaps parodying an attempt to rewrite in
cryptograms a kind of knowledge for adepts only. At the same time, he is subtly
stating that, in order to understand the secrets he has concealed in his works, his

80
P, 182-3.
81
P, 179.
116 Chapter Four

readers have to commit themselves to him, as if he were God, or Satan, or both

of them.
It is in this context that we should locate the importance of Yeatss gaseus
presence in the episode. We should not forget that his already-mentioned
Golden Dawns mottoDEDI, Diabolus Est Deus Inversuswas also a clear
reference to the devil. The allusions pointing to Yeatss haunting role are of two
kinds: direct and indirect. Among the direct ones, beside those already
discussed, we find also a reference to his Cathleen Ni Houlihan,82 and to
Aengus of the birds83 evoking Yeatss The Wanderings of Aengus. They
also include Stephens overt recollection of the Sligo poets admiration for
Colums lines,84 and finally Mulligans ironical rebuke to Stephen about his lack
of the Yeats touch.85
Other occurrences are more open to different interpretations, although it
seems that they may eventually point to a Yeatsian connection too. For instance,
the way in which the clown Mulligan is portrayed in Scylla as looking
blithe in motley86 is perhaps reminiscent of where motley is worn, a famous
line from Yeatss Easter 1916.87 The poem, written in September 1916, was
published immediately after in a private edition of 25 copies, but became well
known to the wider public only when it appeared in The New Statesmen and The
Dial in the Autumn of 1920. Ellmann records that Scylla was composed
between October 1918 and February 1919. It was first published between April
and May 1919.88 Accordingly, provided that there might be a link between the
two uses of the same unusual word, the dates of composition and publication
point to the fact that an influence of Yeats on Joyce is possible. Otherwise, it
may well be just a coincidence. A slightly different version of the same
coincidence recurs also in Circe, where Mulligan is described as wearing a
clowns cap with curling bell,89 a clear reminiscence of Yeats poem The
Cap and Bells.
A similar connection is provided also by the resemblance between other
seemingly casual expressions in the episode and verses written by Yeats. An
instance of this could be a curious sentence pronounced by Mulligan: O,
thunder of those loins!90 which may eventually parallel a shudder in the loins

82
See U, 236.
83
U, 279.
84
See U, 246.
85
See U, 278.
86
U, 253.
87
Yeats, Collected Poems (1992), 176.
88
Ellmann, James Joyce, 442.
89
U, 681.
90
U, 257.
 Occult Joyce 117

in Yeatss Leda and the Swan, from The Tower (1928). In support of this view
it can be argued that while Mulligan was talking of the statue of a goddess, the
Venus Kallipyge, a few lines below Stephen actually speaks of Helen, that is,
Ledas daughter.
Such subliminal links between Joyce and Yeatstwo artists who
undoubtedly shared some similar interests and sources in the visionary field
(Blake, Boehme, Swedenborg and Joachim Abbas etc)are somehow
reflected in their respective attitudes towards their own theories. Stephens
ironical rejection of the ideas explained in his Shakespeare lecture is a debt to
Wilde, who thought that a truth is made of two opposites both of which may be
true all the same. However, it is also quite similar in spirit to a famous passage
from Yeatss introduction to the second edition of A Vision, where the poet
answers negatively a possible question about his own belief in the complex
theory he has formulated.
In Athertons words, A Vision is a work which Joyce seems to treat as if it
were a book he had written himself.91 Despite this, the sceptical intentions
explicit in Yeatss unwillingness to believe in his own theory could not in any
way have influenced the writing of the Hamlet theory in Scylla. The
mentioned introduction by Yeats was published in 1928, many years after the
composition of Joyces episode. On the other hand, the suggestion that this
could point to an influence of Joyce on Yeats is rather fascinating.
A similar outlook, although on a very different textual ground, is what Roy
Foster seems to suggest when he speaks of the influence of Joyces Portrait on
Yeatss Reveries, which may be traced in the childs eye impressionism of his
opening passage.92 However, even if this is not the case, Yeatss introduction
to A Vision stands out clearly to show the similarities between the artistic
tempers of the two writers. Such an attitude jars with the popular view that
Joyce and Yeats are poles apart with no hopes of reconciliation, wittily summed
up by Terry Eagleton in The Ballad of Willie Yeats:

But the Irish were deaf to this mystical wit

In England a Gael and in Ireland a Brit
Twixt twaddle and Thompson gun they made their choice
Youre a tiresome auld eejit said young Jimmy Joyce.93

However, one feels that it is time for a comparative study attempting to trace
the affinities between Joyce and Yeats, despite the apparent aesthetic, cultural,
and political distance that separates them. Such a critical attitude would be cer-

91
Atherton, The Books at the Wake, 113.
92
Foster, W.B. Yeats: a Life, I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, 526.
93
Eagleton, The Ballad of Willie Yeats, 3.
118 Chapter Four

tainly helpful in shaking a little the popular assumption that the poetics of Yeats
and Joyce are irreconcialable, a view that nowadays has the typical solidity of
common places. The time has come, perhaps, to review the relationship between
Joyce and Yeats, at least in terms of aesthetic affinity, if not of proper artistic
legacy. The latent presence of Yeats is detectable also between the lines of what
is seemingly one of the less interesting chapters of Ulysses, Lotus-Eaters
(Ulysses 5). There, as in Scylla, it blends with other proper occult themes
such as theosophy, Satanism, and vampirism. Accordingly, Yeatss ghost will
gradually become one of the structuring features of the hidden subtext of Ulys-
ses.
 CHAPTER FIVE

LOTUS-EATERS

Lotus-Eaters is a key chapter for the understanding of Ulysses as an occult

text, and yet it has been described as one of the least interesting episodes, lying
as it does in perfumed lethargy between the fecund smell of Calypsos bed and
the morbid air of Hades.1 Accordingly, it has attracted relatively little atten-
tion. Herring, the author of the above poetical description, is no doubt right. The
reader encounters little action in Lotus-Eaters, and the narration unfolds in a
seemingly narcotic way. However, this is true only on the surface, for the epi-
sode is much more complex than may appear at first. Herring acknowledges that
it is more than an interlude, for it forecasts motifs in the novel.2 He cor-
rectly believes that such a textual interrelation typical of the episodes of Ulysses
causes each chapter to grow more or less naturally out of the previous one, thus
swelling the progress of a design previously begun.3
The hidden structure of Ulysses 5 is characterised by a subterranean net of
complex symbolic references, which lie dormant in the shadow of its lethargic
quality. In many cases, they are deeply linked to the some of the main occult
themes already taken into consideration in relation to previous chapters. The oc-
currence of such themes establishes a problematic relationship between an ap-
parently linear episode and one of the most revealing in the whole book:
Scylla. This partly explains the present choice of studying Lotus-Eaters af-
ter having looked at the library chapter.
A further reason for such a decision concerns the complex occult meaning of
the organ category. The episode has two different organs: skin (Linati) and
genitals (Gorman). Despite the importance of the first, keenly analysed by
many critics in the past, here we may take the alternative pattern, and follow for
the first time in this study the Gorman schema. In fact, an explanation of the
hidden meaning of genitals in the light of Swedenborgs thought will prove
illuminating. It shows how an occult narration literally permeates also the pre-
sent episode. It points to the possibility of reorganizing the chapters of Ulysses

1
Herring, Lotuseaters, 72.
2
Ibid., 72.
3
Ibid., 73.
120 Chapter Five

according to a different sequence, a hidden order that eventually opens up new

interpretations for the watchful reader.

Interplay of Obscure Trivialities

The range of obscure and secret meanings encrypted in the textual dimen-
sion of the chapter is very wide. Each of them seems to allude to different
spheres and themes, all pointing once again to Joyces eclectic and amalgam-
like idea of the occult. As before, we again encounter the Yeats connection
alongside Swedenborgian echoes, blasphemous allusions, and oblique links to
the Kabbalah. All such themes are dependent on each other, for they are interre-
lated and interconnected in a bigger perspective. If taken together, they form a
comprehensive system, a parallel semiotic code pointing to a cluster of mean-
ings corresponding to a hidden structure. Keeping this ideal unity in mind,
alongside the unstable fluidity which generally accompanies all esoteric knowl-
edge, it is useful to spot and analyze those themes separately, despite the fact
that they are indeed parts of a whole.
As regards the Yeats connection, in the previous chapter the poets textual
absence has been described by a gaseous presence in Ulysses. More generally,
two different kinds of relationship between the Sligo poet and Joyce can be
identified. The first depends on similarities in their respective poetics, which
could perhaps be interpreted in terms of influence or artistic legacy. The second
can be taken as a curious type of synchronicity. While according to theosophical
thought the meaning of coincidences may refer to the realm of the mysterious
keepers of the akashic records, textual synchronicities, that is to say, seem-
ingly casual coincidences consciously orchestrated by an authorial strategy, be-
long to the texts instructions, and are supposed to guide the reader towards
some specific goal.
A different type of coincidence concerning biographical events such as the
foundation of Yeatss Hermetic Society in Dublin, or the date of death of Stanis-
laus Joyce, or even Yeatss fathers death, on February 3, 1922the day after
the publication of Ulyssesare not the subject of critical interpretation. Per-
haps, they may well be synchronicities in the Jungian sense, or rather mere co-
incidences of events with no meaning at all. Such possibilities, despite the po-
tential symbolical significance they might have had for Joyces superstitious
mind, or even for Yeatss credulous attitude towards the odd, do not explain
anything about the text, nor do they illuminate the connection between the
works of the two writers.
On the contrary, we may regard other textual features, like, say, the female
voice of Yeatss Crazy Jane poems, to name just a random example, as possibly
pointing to an occult dimension. This might be the tension towards the unity of
 Occult Joyce 121

the opposites (also in terms of gender), of which the interchange of sexes is a

powerful symbol. Such phenomena happen for instance in Circe, where Bella
turns into Bello, and Leopold Bloom becomes pregnant. According to Ellmann,
Crazy Jane expresses a view that may eventually represent the opposite of
Yeatss nature, a view which jars with Yeatss own attitude towards society.
The series of poems centred on her character are in fact completely physical
and anti-intellectual.4 In relation to one single poem, Crazy Jane talks with the
Bishop, Ellmann has an illuminating explanation of its duplicity:

[She] is not so wild as she appears, or as Yeats pretended, for, as the last two
lines indicate [For nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent], she
shares his theories about love, and sees it as a conflict of opposites but also as an
escape from them to unity, wholeness, or, to use a word which she would not
have used, to beatitude.5

Another biographer of Yeats, Stephen Coote, shares a similar view: Contraries

meet in Crazy Jane and, in their fullness, redeem her from the ghostly existence
foredoomed for the unfulfilled dead.6 Such a tension towards reunion, or rec-
onciliation after the sundering, is similar to what, after being theorized in
Scylla, occurs in Circe. Actually, the sexual violence of which Bello/Bella
is capable, and of which Bloom becomes a willing victim, echoes distanly the
fierce and defiant character of Crazy Jane. Yet again, the possibility of arguing
about an influence of Yeats on Joyce in this case is denied by the simple fact
that the writing of the Crazy Jane series began in 1929,7 some seven years after
the publication of Ulysses, and nine after the completion of Circe.8 One won-
ders whether, on the contrary, Joyce finally managed to teach something to the
older poet.
Such textual synchronicities are just general. They are interesting as guide-
lines to approach the cultural frameworks of the artistic achievements of the two
writers. However, they also suggest that the relationship between Yeats and
Joyce is not a superficial one. As regards Lotus-Eaters, the link is established
on the basis of some most subtle references. One involves the idea of androg-
yny, while the others, anticipating and explaining a meaningful allusion pre-
sent in Scylla and Charybdis, refer more generally to the world of the occult.
A few pages from the beginning of the episode, after Bloom collects Martha
Cliffords spicy letter in Westland Row post office, he spots a recruiting poster

4
Ellmann, Yeats: The Man ad the Mask, 272.
5
Ibid., 273.
6
Coote, W.B. Yeats: A Life, 510.
7
See Ellmann, Yeats: The Man ad the Mask, 273.
8
See Ellmann, James Joyce, 442.
122 Chapter Five

which makes him think first of Major Tweedy, and then of Maud Gonne.9 As is
well known, she is also a constant reference in the poems of Yeats. He loved her
deeply and even proposed to her at some stage. Actually, he loved her so much
that, after she had turned him down, he ended up proposing to her daughter. The
response of Gonnes daughter, Iseult, showed clearly that she was at least as
wise as her mother, for she rejected him too.
However, in early 1903 Maud married John MacBride,10 one of the national-
ist leaders executed during the Easter Rising in 1916. Yeats hated MacBride,
whose masculine character must indeed have been opposite to his own. He
eventually immortalized him as a drunken, vainglorious lout in one of his
most famous poems. Many sources describe Maud Gonne as a woman with a
very strong personality and determination. Probably, given her passionate inter-
est in politics and certain masculine traits of her temperament, we could imagine
her as some kind of a manly woman. Roy Foster records that she was once
described as a great red-haired yahoo of a woman by a timid Trinity don.11
Many examples of her fierce temper support such a view, like for instance a par-
ticular event happened during the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, in 1897. In the fol-
lowing account, Ellmann describes her defiant behaviour as opposed to Yeatss
protective attitude:

Maud Gonne delivered an incendiary speech to the crowd, telling how she had
tried to decorate the graves of the Manchester Martyrs (Irishmen hanged for
revolutionary activity thirty years before), and had been refused permission be-
cause of the Jubilee. In a low voice that yet seemed to go through the crowd, she
said, Must the graves of our dead go undecorated because Victoria has her Jubi-
lee? and the whole crowd went wild. A riot started, and Maud Gonne wanted to
join the rioters, but Yeats, to her great irritation, prevented her.12

To state bluntly that Yeatss reaction in this case shows unequivocally his femi-
nine side against Maud Gonnes masculine pride would probably be much too
speculative. However, it is a fact that he was deeply fascinated by this side of
her character, a counterpart to his own intellectual nature, which prevented him
from performing any kind of violence from too close a distance. In Lotus-
Eaters, only on the surface does the reference to Maud Gonneprompted by
associative reasoning which starts from the military poster on show on the wall
of the post officeappear casual. Its hidden meaning may well be again one of
the several allusions to the interchange of genders and androgyny in Ulysses.

9
See U, 88.
10
See Foster, W.B. Yeats: a Life, I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, 286.
11
Ibid. 91.
12
Ellmann, Yeats: The Man ad the Mask, 113.
 Occult Joyce 123

Such an occulted discourse is proved also by the circumstance that Lotus-

Eaters, like Scylla and Charybdis, is connected via one of its organs with
Swedenborgs marriage love, an idea clearly linked to the androgynous status of
angels. In the episode, the reference to Maud Gonne obviously recalls the image
of W.B. Yeats, who had been obsessed by her for so long. Perhaps Joyce, in his
attitude of parody towards almost everything, was mocking at the poets unful-
filled love, or rather at his half-feminine character.
On other occasions, Joyces texts seem to show a certain reverence towards
Yeats. This is the case of a series of allusions to the number seven which oc-
cur also in Lotus-Eaters. The shining seven dear to Yeats in Scylla are
parallel to the presence of the same number, in various shapes and forms, no
less than five times in the fifth episode. Some of the references are quite ob-
scure, while others are plainly blasphemous, or rather related to the main occult
motifs of the book.
The first two occur in the same page. A few lines after the Plumtree Potted
Meat rhyme, we encounter the following curious sentence portraying Molly
letargically resting on the bed, with blackened court cards laid along her thigh
by sevens.13 Immediately after, there follow a few lines from Loves old
sweet song. As C.H. Hughes explains, it is a monotonous song characterized
by many repetitions. It is interesting to note that the initial refrain is repeated
seven times.14 The two occurrences both imply Blooms scarce sexual confi-
dence, and point perhaps to his ambiguous sexual identity.
The remaining three are also interesting. One concerns a seven-figure
cheque cashed by Lord Iveagh in the Bank of Ireland15 and immediately pre-
cedes the moment in which Bloom reaches All Hallows church,16 as if to pro-
pose a funny mixture of the secular and the spiritual in the attempt to assess the
monetary value of religion. The other, five paragraphs below, ironically in-
volves the religious sphere too, it being a reference to the Seventh heaven.17
The passage, as we will see, hides subtly many obscene and blasphemous impli-
cations. In fact, it relates to the women who kneel in the church waiting for the
priest to satisfy their appetite. The last occurrence is the imprecise recollec-
tion of a piece of sacred music by the Italian composer Francesco Saverio
Mercadante. Joyce writes: Mercadante: seven last words.18 The original title
of the work is Le sette parole del Nostro Signore, meaning The seven words of
Our Lord.

13
U, 91.
14
See Hughes, The Human Side of Music, 87.
15
See U, 97.
16
See U, 9.
17
U, 98.
18
U, 101.
124 Chapter Five

As is evident, most of the allusions somehow imply a religious context,

which provides them with the necessary background blasphemous thoughts al-
ways need. However, in order to understand fully their meaning in the text, and
the evident obsession with the number seven as a magic number, we can look
back at what Joyce wrote in the early essay A Portrait of the Artist in 1904:

Use of reason is by popular judgement antedated by some seven years and so it is

not easy to set down the exact age at which the natural sensibility of the subject
of this portrait awoke to the focus of eternal damnation, the necessity of peni-
tence and the efficacy of prayer.19

The paragraph itself concerns Joyces early preoccupations with religious prac-
tices. The relevance of the number seven for Joyce is highlighted also by the
fact that at the age of seven a child was supposed to enter the schools run by
Jesuits, though he was only 6 when he enrolled at Clongowes Wood College.20
This would put him in the position of an outsider, one who swam against the
tide, since the early days. We shall also consider that the essay owes much also
to the style of Yeatss prose, and to his mystical and alchemical knowledge. The
connection testifies to Joyces early commitment to occult knowledge, the leg-
acy of which, in terms of narrative strategy, eventually leads to interesting ex-
planations of non-casual allusions in Ulysses.
Many of Blooms internal monologues are in fact examples of such a legacy,
and help us calculate the hidden relevance of seemingly casual occurrences in
the episode. An instance of this is the following passage: The chemist turned
back page after page [] Quest for philosophers stone. The alchemists.21
Here, the rather obvious connection between chemistry and alchemy is pre-
sented as part of a train of thought. It does not need logical explanations, and
therefore in a way contributes to highlighting the continuity between the two
disciplines from an occult standpoint. Such continuity is taken for granted in
Blooms thoughts, and is therefore passed on to the reader as it is, with no fur-
ther explorations.
Often in Ulysses occult assumptions illuminate obscure passages which
could be explained, at a superficial level, by resorting to linear interpretations.
Here, the superficial connection between chemistry and alchemy could also
point to the underlying structure that regulates the textual dynamics of the book.
In fact, the reference to the goal of the alchemists is stuck there in the middle of
a monologue with no apparent reason. It becomes meaningful only if we con-

19
C, 41. Italics mine.
20
See Elmann, James Joyce, 27.
21
U, 103-4.
 Occult Joyce 125

sider its epiphanic nature, which brings to the surface also a series of previous
references to that cluster of meanings forming the sphere of the occult.
Such a general interconnection of ideas reminds one again of the Anima
Mundi evoked by Yeats, a poetical version of the esoteric Akashic Records.
From an occult point of view, it refers to the eternal soul of the world whose mi-
crocosmic image is hidden in the deep abyss of the human unconscious. This
silent consciousness is the receptacle of all the memories of the world, and
awakens from time to time to give birth to seemingly casual events. Such
events, in a literary context, lead to epiphanic discoveries and manifestations.
Just a few words in the middle of a paragraph and, all of a sudden, a series of
recollections comes to the surface through the medium of analogy. The reader
acquainted with occult ways of communicating meanings will perhaps spot ref-
erences to alchemy, Yeats, esoteric quests, mystical numbers, hermetic doc-
trines, and so on. Something similar to this process is described by Oxen of the
Sun (Ulysses 14) in a seemingly casual poetical sentence:

A scene disengages itself in the observers memory, evoked, it would seem, by a

word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as
some thought) with their immediate pleasures.22

Such an epiphanic occultist method is really what helps Joyce hide secrets
and occult significances behind his words. Accordinlgy, it should also ideally
help the reader partly gain the knowledge of the way back to the original mes-
sage. This eventually happens if we take account of the latent presence of Swe-
denborg in the episode.

Organs of Castration
The Swedenborgian connection shows further the advantages of analysing
comparatively Lotus-Eaters and Scylla and Charybdis by proceeding back-
wards from Ulysses 9 down to Ulysses 5. We have seen how the Library
chapter is connected with marriage-love by means of plain allusions in a dis-
torted context. Here, the correspondence is even more evident. As I have said,
the episode has two organs, skin and genitals. In relation to the first, Maud
Ellmann interprets it as a clue to the importance of the skin/surface level against
the preoccupations with depths. She believes that such a preoccupation is so
great in Western culture that it is difficult to credit surfaces.23 Dealing with
the issue of skin disease in the episode, she suggests that in Lotus-Eaters
Bloom isbusy saving his skin, which is threatened by wounding from without,

22
U, 552.
23
Ellmann, M. Skinscapes in Lotus-Eaters, 55.
126 Chapter Five

by leakage from within, as well as by the skin diseases that befuddle this distinc-
tion.24 Thus, the critic argues that in the episode images of skin disease []
bring to the light the existential insecurity of skin, its susceptibility to wounding,
penetration, desquamation.25
Both the organs of the episode are, so to speak, external. However, in the
present discussion, genitals appear to be more revealing in connection with
Swedenborg. In fact, in the mystics opinion, in the Greatest Man, or heaven,
people in the loins or organs for generation are involved in marriage love.26 As
we have seen, Stephen dismisses the perfection of marriage love in the ninth
episode, where it comes to mean unfaithfulness via a process of semantic in-
version. Here, considering that one of the symbols in Linati is indeed castra-
tion, and that the Gorman schema suggests a reference to eunuchs, the reader
may well be facing an even more powerful overturning of meanings.
The various ways in which both the external organs are presented in a
negative manner point to the possibility that their meanings can indeed be in-
verted. Thus, the idyll of marriage love gradually turns into the dark and sterile
shadows of castration. In fact, just as Blooms penis is famously described as a
limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower,27 skin is generally dis-
missed as a monstrous and awful thing, perhaps echoing some descriptions by
Dean Swift in Gullivers Travel. In the episode, we find plenty of examples of
this tendency, like the allusions to various skin diseases such as eczema,28
smallpox,29 warts, bunions, and pimples.30 Should we assume that surfaces (and
perhaps surface interpretations) are in Ulysses something to be rejected as use-
less and meaningless, just like external organs? In relation to Blooms sexuality
and masculinity, this is not very relevant, for he is supposed to be some sort of
an androgynous angel, and as we know such beings must be rightly deprived of
all the joys of sex. This makes him somehow ironically close to Stephen, who
can also be symbolically imagined as an angel, for he does not bear a body
yet, as the Linati schema suggests. However, this is just partly the case, for at
least Bloom will later enjoy some of the pleasures of sex, although only in the
company of himself.
The whole system of the episode points to an overturn of the meaning of
genitals. In a Swedenborgian context, they are a symbol of marriage love, while
in Ulysses they refer only to unfaithfulness (Scylla) and castration (Lotus-

24
Ibid. 65.
25
Ibid. 65.
26
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 84.
27
U, 107.
28
See U, 86.
29
See U, 92.
30
See U, 104.
 Occult Joyce 127

Eaters). Unfaithfulness can be seen as the opposite of marriage love. We en-

counter Mollys intentions of betraying her husband as early as in Calypso,
where we also become aware of Blooms possible flirtation with Martha Clif-
ford. He receives a letter from her, and is very anxious to read it. The letter
shows the ladys desire to meet him personally, alongside some chastizing fan-
tasies she has about him. In the present perspective, her (un)volitional error
about the other wor(l)d in the letter may also point to some occult meanings
dealing with a supernatural dimension parallel to the terrestrial one. Such a
theme will be discussed at lenght in my chapter on Nausicaa.
Returning to Blooms marriage, we may note that thoughts about Molly are
very frequent in the episode. They are perhaps the real reason why he discards
the possibility of meeting up with Martha. In one case, when Bloom is fancying
his bath and foreseeing his masturbation, surprisingly enough he anticipates the
last words of Mollys final monologue, possibly parodying them in advance:
Nicer if I a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I.31 Unfortunately, here Bloom
is not thinking of a possible marital reconciliation. He is just dwelling on the
fantasy of a masturbation in the bath, and possibly suggesting the feminine
qualitieshe a nice girl which contribute in making him a mock androgynous
being. These are two further negations of marriage love. However, his fancy
will be frustrated further, until the final fulfilment of his desire will occur in
Nausicaa. This shows again the uselessness and the futility of bodily instincts,
particularly of those related to the genitals. It is indeed a further proof that one
of the organs of this chapter does not stand anymore for marriage love, nor does
it point to its opposite, unfaithfulness. It is changed utterly into a grim symbol of
castration.
Castration can be either sexual or social. When the two forces of sex and so-
ciety combine, it causes graver problems. A particular sexual castration leading
to the evasion of the duties of marriage love occurs in countries where the relig-
ion of drinking counts on many adepts. To spend most evenings drinking out
makes people occasionally neglect their family duties, as well as their sexual
lives. Herring argues that the pubs in Dublin also provide refuge from real-
ity,32 but Bloom does not seem to be one of those men whose time would be
marked by the closing-time hours of pubs. Perhaps, this is due to his Jewish ori-
gins. Jewish people are allegedly not the most committed among drinkers. Curi-
ous anthropological studies about the ways in which drink does not affect the
Jews properly, started to appear since the late 1940s. Most of them seem to
point to the existence of a cultural environment which almost naturally prevents
a Jewish person from becoming a drunkard.33

31
U, 105.
32
Herring, Lotus-Eaters, 82.
33
See Keller, Mark, The Great Jewish Drink Mystery.
128 Chapter Five

Thus, it is not surprising that in one of the first images of the fifth chapter,
when Bloom spots a young boy smoking, he imagines his sad family situation as
follows: Tell him if he smokes he wont grow. O let him! His life isnt such a
bed of roses! Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da.34
Bloom is here referring to a peculiar kind of self-castration and alienation from
which he seems to be fortunately free. Yet, a different kind of distance between
him and his wife does exist, and is again a proof of his half-androgynous incli-
nations.
As Declan Kiberd explains, throughout the day, Bloom will often try to
imagine himself in the role of this or that woman.35 Many hints point to the in-
terchange of sexes throughout the episode. One of the most revealing is the fa-
mous reference to an actress, Millicent Palmer, who played the role of Prince
Hamlet at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on June 15, 1904. This implies the rec-
ognition of the female element in the character of Hamlet. Considering the the-
ory exposed in Scylla and Charybdis, it also suggests a female element in
Shakespeares personality. We shall not forget that promiscuity was normal in
theatre performances in Elizabethan times. Women were never involved in the
acting, and men played all feminine roles. The idea fascinates Bloom to the ex-
tent that he enacts a feminine behaviour himself, blending it with his ambiva-
lence (part fascination, part frustration) on the subject of castration. In order to
show this close link between the themes of hermetic androgyny and castration,
we may consider the following famous passage:

As he walked he took the folded Freeman from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled
it lenghtwise in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouser-
leg.36

The section contains two most symbolical elements which look inseparable. The
first is the rolled newspaper as a sausage-like surrogate penis,37 while the sec-
ond is the act of sauntering, which reminds us of the girl Bloom sees outside a
shop in Calyspo.38 The newspaper may symbolize Blooms unconscious
knowledge of his own castration, while the act of sauntering may perhaps sug-
gest obliquely the feminine part of his hidden nature. In Lotus-Eaters we en-
counter some striking images concerning the idea of sexual desires not properly
fulfilled. Later on in the book will it be clear that they are also a symbol of an-

34
U, 86.
35
Kiberd, in U, 974, n. 87.27.
36
U, 87.
37
Kiberd in U, 974, n. 87-27.
38
See U, 71.
 Occult Joyce 129

drogyny. The passage quoted above is just an anticipation of what will happen
in subsequent chapters.
Another example of castration is given by the cab-horses=eunuchs equation
established in the Gorman schema in the correspondences section. It gradually
makes its way throughout the episode. The stress on the sexual neutrality of
both nags and eunuchs prompts a parallel between man and animal, which
seems to contain subtle blasphemous allusions also in the light of a beast/Devil
connection. Let us consider for instance the image of a cod in a pot39 at the
end of the episode. It is a possible mocking metaphor for the figure of Christ ac-
cording to early Christian symbolism. In the history of Christianity, the image of
the fish representing Christ the saviour has much to do with the Kabbalah for
reasons that will be explained later.
Joyces obscure reference points to his awareness of some aspects of such a
secret tradition. However, this is a problematic issue. As Brivic argues, Joyces
version of the Kabbalah is thoroughly personal.40 In relation to Finnegans
Wake, Atherton is right in including the Kabbalah in the list of those occultist
sources (Spiritualism, occultism, alchemy) in which we are given to understand
that Joyce was deeply read.41 However, he dutifully highlights an inconsistency
in Joyces knowledge of Kabbalistic doctrines. This is evident in his discussion
of the numerological relationship, which links the books by Levy-Bruhls that
Joyce had in his personal library, and the Wake. Atherthon, despite stating that
everything Joyce uses in Finnegans Wake about the Kabbalah seemed to be
contained in the article on that subject in the eleventh edition of the Encyclope-
dia Britannica,42 had previously explained the above connection as follows:

According to Levy-Bruhl, there is no number among the first ten that does not
possess supreme mystical importance for some social group or other. Further-
more, certain multiples of numbers of mystic value participate in the peculiar
properties of those numbers. This is the state of affairs in Finnegans Wake. So
far as arithmetic is concerned there is simply unity and diversity. But each of the
main characters has a number as well as a symbol, and certain numbersof
which 1123 is the most prominenthave a mystical value which has still not
been satisfactorily explained. The particular character assigned to each number
may have been obtained by Joyce from some works on occultism and the Kab-
balah.43

39
U, 106.
40
Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 28.
41
Atherthon, The Books at the Wake, 46.
42
Ibid. 47.
43
Ibid., 44.
130 Chapter Five

Given the description of the occult as a cluster of various interrelated traditions

of secret knowledge of which the Kabbalah was a major component, the fact
that Joyces Kabbalistic sources are contained only in one article of the Ency-
clopedia Britannica sounds odd. In fact, Kabbalah-derived ideas about the
magical and mystical value of numbers literally permeate the whole eclectic
corpus of occult works. They are a major aspect of Rosicrucianism as well as of
modern theosophy, and no doubt inform substantially also the works of Levy-
Bruhl, which we may well regard as one of Joyces direct sources. If we assume
that there are many indirect influences in Joyces occult background, and not
only those that have been traced or are traceable, his keen use of Kabbalistic
doctrines is not surprising at all.
Such awareness is easy to demonstrate. Take for instance his use of a par-
ticular image related to the Kabbalah in the Wake connected with Grard de
Nerval. De Nerval was one of the authors he learned about via Arthur Symons.
Atherton states that according to Symons the manuscript of De Nervals La
Rve et la Vie was scrawled on scraps of paper interrupted with Kabbalistic
signs and a demonstration of the Immaculate Conception by geometry. 44 The
scholar accepts that such a demonstration probably has something to do with
the geometrical figure in the Wake (293) which shows figurat leavely the
whome of your eternal geometer. 45 However, considering that Symonss
book, which Joyce read and studied in Trieste,46 was published in 1899, the
demonstration of the Immaculate Conception by geometry may well have in-
spired also another feature of Ulysses, and precisely Mulligans joke about
Stephens ability to prove by algebra that Hamlets grandson is Shakespeares
grandfather.47 Besides, it helps us understand that, if Kabbalah-related textual
traces are present in detail in the Wake, there is no sufficient reason to dismiss
the possibility that they are also present behind certain apparently odd passages
in Ulysses.
Such a perspective could illuminate the previous mocking Christological
reference to a cod in a pot.48 The image of the fish standing for a symbol of
Christ has its roots in a Kabbalistic technique known as Notarikon, which shows
a Jewish-Christian legacy. A full explanation of how it works can be found in
the mystical Jewish book Sefir Yezirath. Notarikon is a technique of combining
letters together in order to form new words. Such original lexical creations
can be subject to a mystical interpretation according to a secret symbolism. In
short, Notarikon concerns the creation of a new meaningful term by aligning the

44
Ibid., 51.
45
Ibid., 51.
46
Ibid., 49.
47
U, 21.
48
U, 106.
 Occult Joyce 131

initials of certain source terms. In the case of Christ portrayed as a fish, apart
from the evangelical metaphor of the fisher of soulsprobably accounting for
the description of A.E. as a gulfer of souls in Scyllawe must note that the
original Greek word for fish is ichthys. According to Notarikon, the word is
made up by the initials of the sentence Iesous Christos Theou Yios Sauter, i.e.
Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour.
Notarikon is deeply involved in the birth of Christian symbolism. It is a pri-
mordial link between the development of the esoteric systems of the two parallel
religious traditions, the Hebrew and the Christian. As regards Joyces actual
knowledge of this technique, one can agree with Mitchell Morse who, after hav-
ing revealed the solution to the acronym for fish, points out: whether or not
Stephen is consciously playing this word game, Joyce certainly is.49 Similarly,
although Bloom may not be necessarily aware of the kabbalistic implications of
his reference to a cod in a pot, Joyce surely is. In fact, as we will see, the hy-
pothesis that Bloom knows well some of the techniques and doctrines of the
Kabbalah is more than an easy speculation. Suffice it to say now that the above-
mentioned example can give us a fair idea of Joyces utterly obscure use of
mystical notions, and his method of weaving them into his narrative.

Opiate Religion of the Masses

Let us now return to the man=animal equation in the light of the idea of cas-
tration. First, the correspondence is alluded to by the description of the nags
eyes as full buck eyes.50 This probably refers also to the equine Mulligan,51
and again suggests perhaps a parallel with Swift and the farcical man/horse du-
ality exposed in Gullivers Travels. The general man/animal relationship is col-
oured by certain blasphemous tints. As for the cab-horses, the reference to their
castration occurs just after the passage where Bloom was said to be hearing the
crunching gilded oats52 they were champing. On the other hand, the very
paragraph where the word eunuch occurs twice53 follows the passage where the
priest places the host into the mouth of the communicants in All Hallows
church. Thus, as men and women are satisfied by eating the sacred wafer,
nags are happy to champ their oats. Oats and host are therefore corresponding. It
is interesting to note that, in the Linati schema, we find them both among the
symbols of the episode.

49
Ibid., 47.
50
U, 93.
51
As Kiberd suggests in U, 977, n. 93.31.
52
U, 93.
53
U, 101.
132 Chapter Five

Another aspect of the men=horses equation is provided by the similarity be-

tween a sentence referring to the nags genitals (a stump of black guttapercha
wagging limp between their haunches)54 and one which instead refers to
Blooms penis (the limp father of thousands.)55 Both the useless organs are
described by the adjective limp, and both induce a sort of pleasure in Mr
Blooms lazy contemplative attitude. He hypothesizes that the circumstance of
being gelded may eventually produce a certain feeling of quiet satisfaction.
While he is looking at the cab-horses, he sympathetically thinks: Might be
happy all the same that way.56 Here Bloom is also metaphorically thinking of
his own social as well as sexual self-castration. Later in the episode, a similar
reflection will refer to those eunuchs who used to sing sacred music in the
choirs: Suppose they wouldnt feel anything after. Kind of placid [] Eunuch.
One way out of it.57
The correspondence of men and animals implies a satanic allusion too. In sa-
tanic rites such as extreme black masses, sexual intercourses often happen in the
animal way. Blooms walking into the church of All Hallows through the back
door may perhaps be an allusion to this very practice. Despite this, what really
strikes the attention is the occult system of powerful obscenities and blasphe-
mies hidden behind the symbols of Linati.
First, the image of the eunuch recalls that of the priest. We see him walking,
like a eunuch in a harem, along by the women knelt in the benches, in order to
distribute the Holy Communion. In support of this view we may refer back to a
sentence in Proteus, in which Stephen had imagined the snorted Latin of
Jackpriests, moving burly in their albs, tonsured oiled and gelded.58 This is an-
other reference to the priest=eunuch equation. The obscene metaphor in Lotus-
Eaters goes even further:

The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He
stopped at each [] and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank.
Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her
mouth, murmuring all the time.59

The passage is obscene at its utmost. Joyce makes Bloom pretend that he, being
some kind of a Jew, does not recognize a sacred term such as host, which he
calls the thing. The priest is no longer a eunuch walking along by the women,

54
U, 94.
55
U, 107.
56
U, 94.
57
U, 101.
58
U, 49.
59
U, 99. Italics mine.
 Occult Joyce 133

but a blasphemous devotee, or rather a pseudo-satanic minister morbidly satis-

fied by a congregation of women by means of oral sex in a sacred place. Be-
sides, this also implies a clear correspondence between host and penis, as before
between host and oats, all featuring as symbols in Linati.
It seems that such a method of concealing obscene and blasphemous impli-
cations behind an apparently detached description of a catholic rite, is one of the
major features of the episode. Bloom himself explains this very idea through a
typically Joycean device we have already encountered. A character discusses a
particular matter pretending to reveal an utter truth about it, whereas he is in-
stead entering a direct dialogue with the reader. Thus, he speaks on behalf of the
author himself, or rather of an authorial function wishing to peep in through the
thick texture of the narrative. The aim is to suggest silently that tales are always
to some extent lies, and narrators often resemble professional liars. The actual
reference behind the veil of such fictional lies is to narrative itself, or to the gen-
eral scheme of the work, and often points to new unexpected interpretations.
An instance of this process occurs in one of Blooms thoughts: Lollipop. It
does. Yes, bread of angels its called. Theres a big idea behind it, kind of king-
dom of God is within you feel.60 Here the big idea, connected with cannibalism
by means of a previously established equation between Corpus Christi and
Christs corpse,61 is not just the Churchs religious cunning in inventing a
powerful symbolism intended to cheat on its own people. Rather, due to an
irony which functions as the very technical device enabling narrators to conceal
obscene unforeseen meanings behind simple words, the big idea behind
Blooms seemingly random thought can be explained as follows. The sacred
host the communicants eat symbolizes the kingdom of God, intended in Swe-
denborgian fashion as the very body of God. Such body is really a corpse. Thus,
believers become ironically, and unwillingly, necrophiliacs. Furthermore, man
can tranquilly champ Gods corpse just as nags champ oats. The logical conse-
quence is that the dead body of the Creator can be devoured by the created in a
macabre cannibalistic pseudo-religious rite. Therefore, it will ultimately dwell
temporarily inside the body of man, and one can imagine that sooner or later it
will have to be expelled from there. This is one of the hidden blasphemous
meanings of the digestive value of religion exposed in Joyces early Portrait.
The whole process resembles and expands the previous sinister hoax alluded
to in Hades, where the resting place of the sacred heart of Jesus was a ceme-
tery. Christian communion becomes in Lotus-Eaters a trivial thing, for it loses
all its religious connotations, and begins to exhale a faint odour of blasphemy.
This also stands for Blooms (and Joyces?) own refusal to be subject to any

60
U, 99. Italics mine.
61
See U, 99.
134 Chapter Five

kind of spiritual ideology. Although Bloom is Jewish by family tradition, he is

not a very good practising Jew. In Lotus-Eaters, he also professes his own
murmured mock non serviam to the promises of the Roman Catholic Church.
Stephen Dedalus had already done something similar in A Portrait and will
repeat his oath in Circe. His own refusal will be an act of defiant and indig-
nant courage. Instead, Blooms non serviam is tainted by obscenities and trivi-
alities, although it stands mainly for the position of a sceptical person. Blooms
choice to step aside from religion is pronounced by means of a mere mockery of
spiritual institutions. It could be interpreted as the development of Joyces own
firmness in rejecting the spiritual. However, Blooms decision is implicit,
whereas Stephens (and Joyces) was clearly explicit.
The hoax involves also other aspects connected with religion, and particu-
larly those suggested by another symbol, drugs. It clearly explains what
Blooms intentions finally are. Drugs are connected with spirituality also in
Marxs famous slogan about religion, the opiate of the masses. In the follow-
ing quotation, Bloom parodies the motto in his own way: Sermon [] Save
Chinas millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an
ounce of opium.62 The final sentence of the passage suggests Blooms own
preference for opium over spiritual delusions. However, it may also point to the
Chinees customs. His ironical preference for drugs is the main difference be-
tween his own non serviam and Stephens. While Stephens was informed by
silence, exile, and cunning, Blooms is pragmatically influenced just by the ef-
fects of opium.
Furthermore, Marxs idea about the value of religion is parodied twice, if we
consider also a last connection with A Portrait, which can link to the allusion to
Christ as a cod in a pot. In the discussion among the students about universal
brotherhoodwhich is also a possible hint at the aims of Blavatskys theoso-
phical societyin the fifth chapter of the book, Temple had stated that Marx
was a bloody cod.63 Such an attempt at reducing the universality of Marxs
truths to minimal terms parallels the dismissal of the message of Christ in Ulys-
ses, where he is no more a god but a cod.
The fact that Bloom opts for opium rather than religion has also some hidden
meanings which bring us back to a major issue of the episode, the possible use-
lessness of external organs. Let us just consider the following quotations: Cigar
has a cooling effect. Narcotic;64 Drugs age you after mental excitement. Leth-
argy then [] Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts.
Lovephiltres.65 Here, drugs evidently equal a certain peace of the mind and

62
U, 98.
63
P, 213.
64
U, 96.
65
U, 104.
 Occult Joyce 135

quietness of the senses. The image of the cigar is another surrogate penis, just as
the folded paper before. Yet, it does not provide an idea of excitement. On the
contrary, like the other drugs referred to, it suggests a satisfactory narcotic ef-
fect. Bloom is again taking pleasure in imagining himself in a state of lethargy,
while making bland sexual allusions in the reference to excitement and
lovephiltres. His own personal non serviam is thus also informed by a fascina-
tion for the self-satisfactory and psychologically relaxing aspects of castration.
Castration is the basic symbol of the episode. It takes place alongside the
atmosphere of perfumed lethargy which perspire from its pages. It is also the
ultimate reason for Blooms own refusal of a possible love affair with Martha
Clifford. He does not fall into any (religious, sexual, or even social) temptation,
which may involve someone else apart from himself. In other words, like a vol-
untary exile, he steps aside from society intended as a community. Having al-
most lost his hopes in the marriage relationship with Molly, he tries to be con-
tent with himself alone, by fancying the act of self-produced pleasure that will
occur in Nausicaa.
However, his chosen destiny to live in a state of lethargy can still be rescued
by an act of love. Ironically, this could well be the prospect possibly concealed
behind Mollys softly murmured and final Yes. In the meantime, while love is
yet to come, and sexual intercourse is only a distant mirage, Bloom must still
test the possibility of some kind of erotic satisfaction. This will actually take
place in the next chapter, Nausicaa, though in an atmosphere of uncertainty,
which in a way parallels the delusional experiences of the more visionary chap-
ters.
 CHAPTER SIX

NAUSICAA

Nausicaa is certainly not among the most complex episodes of Ulysses.

Despite the different styles and the shifts from one point of view to another in
the middle of the chapter, the tale is narrated in a less tortuous way than else-
where. It is probably such a quality of the language, a certain easy clarity of nar-
ration, which has amplified in past years the meaning of the main event related,
Blooms masturbation on Sandymount strand. Rather than the religious cere-
mony that takes place in the church near to where Bloom and Gerty are playing
their game, it is the seemingly innocent, though partly idealized, language of
the first section of the episode that provides the sexual act with its shocking con-
tours.
Scholars have traditionally interpreted the chapter as made up of two halves,
corresponding respectively to Gertys and Blooms points of view. Such a narra-
tive plainness gives indeed the impression that to approach Joyces art in Nau-
sicaa is possible without the help of too many reference commentaries. John
Bishop, in assessing a stylistic consistency between the thirteenth chapter and
the preceding one, Cyclops, rightly states that both the episodes present read-
ers with alternate perspectives on the same scene, though here [in Nausicaa]
only two of them rather than many.1 The critic argues that the first half, an
indirect (and female) monologue, offers a mediated account of Gerty MacDow-
ells view of a flirtatious encounter with Bloom, while the second a direct
(and male) monologue, offers Bloom unmeditated reflections backward over the
same events.2
Although the apparent simplicity of the episodes structure may be perhaps
only a superficial aspect of Nausicaa, this does not imply, as always in Joyce,
that hidden meanings are not lurking in the shadow, here as elsewhere. In fact,
to think naively that the division of the chapter in two corresponding halves may
be the sole, or even the main, stylistic device present in the episode is to be
caught in an easy trick set by Joyce for his readers. As Fritz Senn argues, Nau-
sicaa is technically complex, numerous discordant ruptures disturbing the ba-

1
Bishop, A Metaphysics of Coitus in Nausicaa, 185.
2
Ibid., 185.
 Occult Joyce 137

sic division into two main parts.3 He believes that, like Cyclops and Oxen
of the Sun, Nausicaa also contains a wide range of moods and styles,
though the spectrum is narrower.4 He identifies many fancy sub-categories,
such as luxuriant clusters, endearing ways, sumptuous confection, and so
on.5 However, rather than indulging in the description of such features, it will be
useful here to re-examine the main theoretical issue of Nausicaa, that is, the
question of perception and its relationship with external reality. The whole nar-
rative strategy of Ulysses is founded on such a connection, and so are Senns
sub-categories in Nausicaa.
The way in which Gertys monologue is presented to the reader partly helps
us understand the nature of her approach to external reality. All impressions are
based on what appears in the exterior. Later in the episode, the two conflicting
versions of the events will make it clear that Gertys perception is affected by an
eccess of sentimentalism, while Blooms is much too rooted in materialism.
However, they both share the assumption that all impressions always draw on
the activity of the organs of perception. They give the protagonists the opportu-
nity to unleash their fantasies, and to construct what appears to be a virtual af-
fair.

The Failure of Perception

All fantasies in the episode are governed by the fervid activity of imagina-
tion. It is the functioning of the two organs, eye and nosewhich according to
the schematas correspond to Nausicaathat gives life to such fantasies. As
before, one would do well to investigate whether such a hint dropped by Joyce
in his guidelines for the understanding of the book is to be taken seriously as the
principle of the episode, or rather ironically as a mocking parody of something
else. The latter hypothesis would point to some secret wish to question the
credibility of all possible theories of knowledge based on the relationship be-
tween perception and reality.
The issue of perception as a means to understanding has been in the past the
centre of the philosophical disputes between empiricists and idealists. Bishop
Berkeley, one of the ghosts that haunt the scene in Proteus, argued that sen-
sual qualities inhere in the mind. He questioned, and somehow surpassed,
Lockes sensism, according to which only the secondary qualities were in the
mind. Esse est percipi, i.e. to exist is to be perceived, is the well known
statement which powerfully sums up Berkeleys thought on the matter. It im-

3
Senn., Nausicaa, 305.
4
Ibid., 306.
5
See ibid., 306.
138 Chapter Six

plies a certain connection between the object as it appears through the senses,
and the person who tries to get a perception of it. Since perception is only per-
ception by sense, there will always be unperceived objects. Although they are
not perceived, they do exist all the same, for, as Winkler suggests, there is
some other spirit that perceives them, though we do not.6
It follows that, although sometimes we cannot use our perception in order to
achieve our knowledge of external objects, reality exists in that it is thought of
by God. Alas, man is just a mortal thing, and can only perceive by sense, and
therefore only understand via sensual perception. In fact, perception is the sole
means which can eventually produce some forms of understanding. We encoun-
ter an experiment to test the validity of such a statement in the third episode of
Ulysses. There, Stephen Dedalus happens to wonder whether perception, espe-
cially visual perception, could provide any understanding of reality besides a
mere contact with it: If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if
not a door. Shut your eyes and see.7
Given the importance of the act of closing his own eyes in order to see, the
experiment stands also for an anticipation of the game of glances between
Bloom and Gerty in Nausicaa. Stephens attempt to analyze the effect pro-
duced by the closing and the opening of his eyes while slowly walking along
Sandymount strand, seems to correspond to Blooms obsessive stares, according
to Gertys version, later in the day on the same beach. The location chosen by
Joyce as an appropriate place to test the possibility of sensual, and particularly
visual, perception is a further superficial link between the two chapters.
The range of possibilities in terms of narration opened by the functions of
the organ nose is explored also in Lotus-Eaters, where scents and perfumes
abound. In that episode, as we have seen, we also find an allusion to a fantasy of
masturbation in the bath, which announces the main event of Nausicaa. Fur-
thermore, through the eyes of Jewish-born Leopold Bloom, we witness a Catho-
lic mass in the church of All Hallows, which parallels the ceremony in the
church of Mary Star of the Sea, in Nausicaa. The two episodes are thus deeply
connected. However, although we cannot state bluntly that there was in Joyces
philosophical attitudes any particular idealistic or empiricist tendency at all, we
can still question why at times he adopts such an experimental method, and
what the hidden message of such a reasoning might be. In order to clarify this
idea, we may once again take account of an aspect of Joyces cultural back-
ground, which utterly contrasts with any possible sensual perception horizon,
that is, Swedenborgs visionary teachings.

6
Winkler, Berkeley: An Interpretation, 205.
7
U, 45.
 Occult Joyce 139

In Nausicaa the will to invert, parody, and mock the meaning of the corre-
spondences suggested by the Swedish visionary is easy to spot. Some features of
the chapter prove that a kind of semantic inversion, or overturn of meanings, is
very relevant in the game of ironical, farcical, and grotesque allusions to Swe-
denborgian spirituality.
In Heaven and Hell it is stated that heavenly organs such as eye and nose are
themselves involved in the dialectical dynamics of perception and understand-
ing: People in the eyes are involved in discernment [] people in the nostrils,
in perception.8 The ideas of discernment and perception are indeed connected
from a mystical point of view. The relationship between the angels who inhabit
certain parts of heaven and their knowledge of the secret truths hidden in the
Bible parallels the rapport between the person and external reality. This allows
us to hypothesize that knowledge derives only from perception by senses in both
the contexts. The concept can easily apply also to the narrative strategies of
Nausicaa, although such a superficial similarity may sound deceitful at first.
He who believesbe he the reader, or even a fictional characterthat truth
comes from the senses, thinks that the only possible knowledge that can create a
contact between the individual and external reality can be established through
perception. Hence, all understanding must emerge from that very contact. He
does not care about hidden meanings, or ultimate significances, of the thing it-
self assuming that there is none, or rather, if there is one, that it pertains to God
and is, so to speak, unperceivable by man. He thus equates perception and un-
derstanding which become as one.
On the contrary, the mystic, who firmly believes in the theory of correspon-
dences, thinks that perception and understanding are not just mediums between
the self and reality. They go beyond mere materialistic contact, and imply a
connection with the hidden truths revealed only to adepts. Perception is a mysti-
cal way to revelation, and therefore leads to a form of understanding mainly
through the contemplation of the divine. The significance of the act of see-
ingwhich according to the Swede corresponds to understandingis then
profound. The seer is he who alone understands. Seers were said to be the
prophets, the evangelists, and Christ himself.
As one should expect, Joyces almost childish love for jokes, especially
when they concern religion, is evident also in Nausicaa. Here, as in many
other episodes, his purpose is to ridicule the meaning of such correspondences
as those Swedenborg had so carefully established. The aim is to show not only
that perception has little to do with understanding, but also that all spiritual un-
derstanding which comes from perception by sense must necessarily be deceit-
ful. At the same time, such a deconstructive aim illustrates the failure of the ex-

8
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 84.
140 Chapter Six

perimental method, portrayed at the end of the day only as an incomplete and
unfulfilling approach to knowledge.
The attack on spirituality is even more violent, and becomes one of the main
issues of the episode. This is true on a superficial level, considering for example
the temporal coincidence of a religious ceremony in the church, and a com-
pletely irreligious act such as a masturbation performed nearby. Blooms behav-
iour is doubly irreverent, for as Senn explains: Masturbation is a sin in the
Catholic context, and its essential sterility made it an offence in the Judaic
code.9
A deeper level on which the episode is projected consists in showing subtly
the failure of all perceptions as possible keys to understanding secret truths and
hidden meanings linked to the spiritual world. Even from a quick glance at the
schematas, such a ridiculing of visual perception is more than evident. The
sense is the projected mirage, a further development of the idea of deceitful-
ness. It is definitely an image of most distant perception: Were those night-
clouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they.
An optical illusion. Mirage.10
Moreover, among the symbols we find hypocrisy, which also suggests the
idea of falsity. Finally, the art of the episode is painting. This implies a subtle
allusion to the fragility of all possible visual perceptions. In fact, together with
the reference to eye as one of the organs, this sounds certainly self-ironical,
considering that Joyce already had grave eyesight problems by the time he
wrote the episode.11
A similar view is prompted also by the meaning of nose, the organ of the
second part of the episode, Blooms monologues. Bishop believes that its func-
tion is profoundly anti-idealizing,12 and therefore reinforces the dismissal of
Gertys view based instead mainly on perception through the act of seeing.
The style itself suggests that what we see is by no means an objective truth,
but changes according to the different points of view. Most of the narration is
made up of monologues giving voice to two opposite personal angles. The effect
on the reader is that no absolute clarity is possible at all. Blooms version of the
facts is utterly discordant from Gertys. Considering also that their virtual affair,
as is idealized by her, draws mainly on visual perceptions, the structure itself of
the narrative stands as a statement of the deceitfulness of the senses, and of the
failure of all possible representations of an objective reality.

9
Senn, Nausicaa, 278.
10
U, 490-1.
11
Nausicaa was completed in early 1920 (see Ellmann, James Joyce, 442). For Joyces
eyesight problems see: ibid., 440-1, 454.
12
Bishop, A Metaphysics of Coitus in Nausicaa, 199.
 Occult Joyce 141

Thus, if our own senses are not worthy of trust, and we, victims of perennial
optical mirages, are not capable of avoiding deceit in trying to see anything at
all beyond external reality, what is the alternative? When empiricist and idealis-
tic options are both discarded as superficial, while spirituality is seen as errone-
ous though fascinating, what way of escaping mere nihilism does man have?
Although we can imagine that Joyce was indeed some kind of a nihilist
writer, we cannot solve the dilemma just by suggesting that he rejected both the
approaches by treating them as ridiculous and futile. An alternative narrative is
possible. Some of the latent textual instructions of the episode point to the exis-
tence of an occultist method that helps us reconstruct a secret subtext over-
looked by most readers so far.

A Language Between Us
Nausicaa is crowded with subtle allusions hinting at the shadowy presence
of a ciphered language. To spot such a secret medium of comunication requires
attention, for it is softened in the narrative by a peculiarly deceitful female sen-
sitivity evident in both Blooms and Gertys monologues. Its presence is again
revealed by the occurrence of particular sentences, which pop in the text in a
seemingly casual way just in the middle of other discourses. Although their ap-
parent purpose is to direct the reader to the referential level of narration, they
metaphorically indicate some remote ways of interpretation. Here are three ex-
amples:

You could see there was a story behind it.13

Just changes when you are on the track of the secret.14

Still it was a kind of language between us.15

As in Lotus-Eaters, thanks to such textual clues, the narrative directly ad-

dresses the reader in order to tell him something about the underlying secret
structure that underwrites Ulysses.
Other allusions in the chapter point to the presence of a subliminal discourse,
through which the characters manage to silently exchange informations. They
function just as scattered pieces of a seemingly occult language shared by Gerty
and Bloom. On the surface, they appear to be unconscious, and yet they hint at a
hidden explanation.

13
U, 462.
14
U, 480.
15
U, 485.
142 Chapter Six

Gertys language, though seemingly innocent, is in fact dotted with strange

references, which in an occult context would prove meaningful. For instance,
while she is describing the behaviour of the two little boys, Tommy and Jacky
Caffrey, she calls them Masters.16 She also refers to a golden rule,17 as well
as to the unmentionables.18 Her childish language justifies the use of such
terms, and still they are also significant in an occult perspective. Masters are in
fact those who lead the performance of magic rites, or occult ceremonies. In fic-
tion, master is the word that Renfield, the bug-eating madman of Dracula, uses
to address the Count. The golden rule may well suggest the law of God in
the Jewish as well as the Christian tradition. It can also be reminiscent of the or-
der of the Golden Dawn, of which Yeats was a prominent member. It may even
conceal meanings linked to the alchemical idea of purity represented by gold.
Finally, unmentionable could also be an epithet for the unutterable name of
god, according to the Jewish Kabbalah.
All those references point in ironical fashion to a kind of speech that occult-
ists could recognize. Among Gertys confused and ingenuous meditations, other
expressions are significant, especially with reference to the Rosicrucian Society.
She describes her mouth as rosebud,19 and imagines her own complexion as
the faintest rosebloom,20 so alluding also to the alleged freemason Bloom.
Furthermore, she silently recites in her thougths a litany dedicated to the Virgin
Mary, calling her mystical rose.21 Ultimately, a few pages later, we encounter
a reference to the conventions of Society with a big ess,22 which may well be
another veiled allusion to the same context.
Bloom and Gerty are the indisputable protagonists of the episode, for they
share a secret language known only to them. It is a language made up of appar-
ently casual sentences which, when taken together and reorganized, may be-
come significant. They are the only two characters in the whole chapter who de-
serve complete attention from the reader. They live in a world of their own, dis-
tant from everyone elses world, far away, one might say, from the world of
mortals. Gertys idealization of Bloom automatically sets him in a different and
superior sphere, aloof from the rest of men. We can also find in the text evi-
dences of her own detachment, as if she could join him in his own dimension.
The very idea of a distance from humanity is suggested for instance in the fol-
lowing passage: They both knew that she was something aloof, apart in another

16
U, 450.
17
U, 451.
18
U, 451.
19
U, 452.
20
U, 453.
21
U, 463.
22
U, 475.
 Occult Joyce 143

sphere, that she was not one of them and there was somebody else too that knew
it.23
Having stated that the protagonists who share a secret language which al-
lows them to communicate silently are presented to the reader as people who do
belong to a different world, the system of subliminal references goes even fur-
ther, and touches on other categories of the occult such as magic, divination, as-
trology, metempsychosis, vampires, and finally satanic allusions.

Occult Themes and Techniques

Such a secret game involves the descriptions of both Gerty and Bloom as
characters that seem to belong to an occult world of their own. At the very be-
ginning of the chapter, the reader encounters for instance an odd comment re-
garding Gertys blue eyes: Why have women such eyes of witchery?24 A few
lines below, we find a precise reference to the haunting expression25 of her
eyes. On the other hand, Bloom is described in a more dark and mysterious way,
like someone coming back from the world of the dead. His passion is silent as
the grave,26 and precipitates Gertys Pateresque wish to cry to him chockingly
[] a little strangled cry, [] that cry that has rung through the ages.27
A few pages before, she had indeed sensed something magical concerning
her own attraction to Mr Bloom, as if he could command her will without the
need for her consent: If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no
holding back for her.28 Such a reflection makes her express a fatal wish of
commitment to the superior power of Mr Bloom: She would make the great
sacrifice.29 Only on the surface does such a suspicious terminology refer to
love talk. Instead, subterranean meanings half occult half ironical are lurking
beneath the text here. This is consistent with Todorovs idea that the readers
response to a fantastic text is informed by his indecision as to whether the narra-
tive has a natural or a supernatural explanation.
Such ambiguous allusions to an occult signification are far too numerous in
the episode to be ignored. They inevitably point to the existence of a parallel
fantastic subnarrative. Some of them are much too manifest, and hardly explain-
able from a non-occult perspective. They include, for instance, a strange reflec-
tion such as the following: Metempsychosis. They believed you could be

23
U, 472.
24
U, 453.
25
U, 453.
26
U, 477.
27
U, 477.
28
U, 474.
29
U, 474.
144 Chapter Six

changed into a tree from grief.30 Bloom himself provides us with the key to
contextualize such a reference. At a certain stage, he in fact wonders whether
reality is secretly ruled by some extra-human power. He calls such a force mag-
netism, and sees it as a sort of astral effect on human lives. In doing so, he
makes clear that what actually governs earthly events must not be a supernatural
power, but something essentially natural, though occult. Here the reader should
be reminded of the attention the occultists normally pay to the subject of mag-
netism.31 One of Blooms reflections seems to suggest that such a power may
also ironically explain why his watch has stopped the moment he was cuck-
olded:

Wonder is there any magnetic influence between the person because that was
about the time he [] Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnet-
ism [] Magnetic needle tells you whats going on in the sun, the stars. 32

Alongside such allusions, all of which appear to be coloured by light tints of

mockery, it is interesting to spot also the various places where we find half seri-
ous references to the devil. As before, here they happen to summon the theme of
vampirism, a theme strongly present in Nausicaa and very much connected
with that of a bland Satanism in the book. It is useful to stress that they are not
actual allusions to the devil, their tone being much similar to Gertys ingenuous
and unconscious occultist language. They appear just as seemingly innocent ex-
pressions. Nonetheless, it is their methodical recurrence, alongside the general
blasphemous atmosphere of the episode, which must alert us.
Six times we find such occurrences. Only one does not refer to persons. It is
in fact related to the haunting power of alcohol, which is described by the ex-
pression demon drink.33 Two are meant to illuminate Blooms point of view
concerning the real nature of women during their monthly period: Devils they
are when thats coming on them. Dark devilish appearance.34 Two are also
used by the protagonist in order to describe Gertys character and behaviour:
Hot little devil all the same,35 and O Lord, that little limping devil.36 Fi-
nally, the last one is dedicated to Mr Bloom: Her womans instinct told her that
she had raised the devil in him.37

30
U, 492.
31
See Introduction, n. 86.
32
U, 487.
33
U, 460.
34
U, 481.
35
U, 479.
36
U, 482.
37
U, 469.
 Occult Joyce 145

All such cases, together with the others quoted before and despite their gen-
eral innocent air, are hints that suggest the presence of a possible hidden narra-
tive. As I have said, they function as analogical springboards for the occult
theme of vampirism, introduced by the ubiquitous presence of a bat in the epi-
sode. As Ronald Bates argues in an essay investigating the correspondence of
birds to things of the intellect in A Portrait, in Christian iconography bat-wings
are symbolic of Satan, demons and Death.38 In Nausicaa a bat is seen flying
above in the sky after twilight.39 In Bram Stokers vampire novel, not only the
daylight-fearing Count can turn into a bat, but he can also assume the form of
rats. Bearing this in mind, we may perhaps see in a different light the following
passage from Nausicaa:

Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably [] Ba again. Wonder
they come out at night like mice. They are a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping
mice. What frightens them, light or noise? 40

Before adding anything on this subject, readers should be reminded that it would
be rather hard to find evidence that Joyce had read Dracula, although Joseph
Valente, author of challenging books on both Stoker and Joyce, rightly suggests
that this is very likely.41 The only actual reference to Bram Stoker in Joyces
texts is a cryptic allusion in Finnegans Wake, which could be also reminiscent
of the atmosphere of Circe: Lets root out Brimstoker and give him the thrall
of our lives. Its Draculas nightout.42
In Nausicaa the theme of vampirism is justified also by a reference which
links back to the third episode, Proteus. After his masturbation on the beach,
Mr Bloom stoops over a piece of paper he finds on the strand and picks it up.43
As we know, in the morning Stephen had started to write a short poem on the
same beach, and had left it there. Its verses included the powerful image of the
kiss of a pale vampire, as well as a bat which sails bloodying the sea.44 Per-
haps Bloom holds the same piece of paper. Later on, he will try to write poetry
himself, though without apparent success.
Numerous expressions in Nausicaa seem to suggest that the relationship
between the two protagonists of the episode parallels the rapport between vam-
pires and their victims in fantastic literature. As in works like Dracula or Car-

38
Bates, The Correspondence of Birds to Things of the Intellect, 283.
39
See U, 473.
40
U, 492.
41
See Valente, Quare Joyce, 74.
42
FW, 145.
43
See U, 497.
44
U, 60.
146 Chapter Six

milla, Mr Bloom represents the master vampire while Gerty is his half-
consenting prey. She spots a waxen pallor45 in her own features, a trait shared
by all the famous vampires in the history of literature, as well as by their vic-
tims. Besides, this recalls also the pale vampire of Stephens poem. Moreover,
twice in her thoughts we find references to strange pains that literally pierce her
heart.46 They could remind us of the way to kill vampires. In fact, Edy Board-
man does wonder whether Gerty is actually heartbroken.47
In this context, the following reference is also illuminating: Every effort
would be to share his thoughts.48 It implies the possibility of telepathy between
Gerty and Bloom, which is indeed parallel to the mental connection between the
master vampire and his victim, like in Dracula. Unfortunately, the only result
telepathy produces here is not mutual understanding, but rather deception. How-
ever, all this indicates indeed the actual presence of a hidden plot, which speaks
of a possible mock vampiric world. Despite this, we must of course keep in
mind that on the surface such expressions describe just a love affair; and yet,
love is also a crucial theme of Dracula, as well as of other vampire stories.
This last connection points to an almost revolutionary occult explanation of
one of the most cryptic passages of the chapter, if not of the whole book: the
famous riddle of the sands. Blooms abortive poem reads: I AM.A.49 As
many scholars have argued, the message contains the Latin (and Italian) root of
the verb amare, i.e. to love. Taking for granted that this is the main intention of
Blooms scribbled phrase, Fritz Senn gives the following explanation of the pas-
sage:

In one respect Bloom attains the Christian aim of forgiving his most recent per-
secutor, the citizen: Look at it the other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not
to hurt he meant.50

One can agree with Senn in making the connection between the riddle and the
sentence occurring only a few lines above. However, this points to a superficial
explanation, and needs to be supplemented by a deeper one. Although Bloom
may well be referring superficially to the Citizen in a new light of forgiveness
and love, we can also take his mumbled suggestion literally. To look at it the
other way round is really to read it backwards. Bloom knows quite well that
reading backwards, that is, from the right to the left, is the way one would nor-

45
U, 452.
46
See U, 454, 466.
47
See U, 471.
48
U, 474.
49
U, 498.
50
Senn, Nausicaa, 281.
 Occult Joyce 147

mally read Hebrew. In Circe Blooms dead son, Rudy, reads in such a way.51
Hence, if we invert the sequence of letters Bloom wrote the results is:
A.MAI. Two occult hypotheses can be argued now.
The first parly alludes again to a connection with vampirism and specifically
with Stokers Dracula. In fact, in Italian, a language Joyce knew almost per-
fectly, the word amai means I once loved. Despite the fact that at a more su-
perficial level this evokes the memory of Blooms failed marriage with Molly,
as well as his own present incapability to love, the riddle can also be interpreted
as an inter-textual reference to a particular passage in Dracula where the master
commands the three vampirellas to leave Jonathan Harker alone. There the
Count, apart from suggesting the possibility that he will love again, makes clear
to his evil companions that he once loved.52 However, until the relationship
between Joyce and Stoker will be established in a definitive way, it is better not
to speculate too much on this option.
On the contrary, the second solution is more revealing, and certainly consis-
tent with the present reading of the book. The new expression, A.MAI, is
another incomplete sentence pointing to one of the main occult themes of the
book, the androgyny of Leopold Bloom. In fact, the newly-formed meaning
foresees a status which he will actually achieve only in Circe, where he will
experience motherhood. The cry A.MAI is Blooms proleptic vision of
himself as the mother he will become, though only in a hallucinatory context.53
This suggests obliquely the structural importance of the inverting technique in
Ulysses. Its theoretical basis is again the equivalence/coincidence of the contrar-
ies. One wonders whether such a conflation of opposites will lead in the book to
an actual final reconciliation. An answer to such a dilemma will be the core of
the analysis of the next chapter, Sirens.

51
See U, 702.
52
Here follows the passage:
How dare you touch him, any of you? [] This man belongs to me! [] The fair girl,
with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:-
You yourself never loved; you never love![]
Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. (Stoker, Dracula, 34).
53
For a recent alternative explanation of the riddle see: Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 10-1.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

SIRENS

Sirens is really a turning point in the interpretation of Ulysses as an occult

book. As before in relation to other places of the text, its importance lies in the
possibility of unveiling particular truths concealed either behind very subtle al-
lusions, or behind an equation between distant levels of signification. Both as-
pects point to an underlying occult code that has to be identified in order to be
brought to the surface. Here, the game of hiding and conceiling involves mainly
some obscure implications of music. In Sirens, all the already-discussed the-
matic figures of the book (the law of correspondences, the Swedenborgian con-
nection, the semantic overturn, the coincidentia), alongside the development of
an occultist method of narration, are inestricably connected.
On a more superficial level, the first obvious correspondence is between the
overture-like beginning and the further developments of the themes it presents.
The orchestral exhortation Begin1 is the first musical metaphor we encounter.
It introduces the reader to the general atmosphere of Sirens, accordingly the
most musical among all episodes of Ulysses. The reasons for such an assump-
tion are quite evident, foremost among them the attempt to produce musical ef-
fects. In the schematas we find explicit links to the musical dimension. Music
is the art, fuga per canonem is the technique, and sounds and embellish-
ments are the symbols.
Jules Law believes in the possibility of displacing the meaning of the epi-
sode which is framed by a political context (signalled most immediately by the
passing of the viceregal cavalcade) which it is Blooms project to repress and
avoid.2 Such a general statement in the beginning of his analysisthe title of
the first paragraph being The outside of musicseems to suggest an ap-
proach that might be useful also in the present perspective. Laws reading of
Sirens is not only impatient with music. It is informed by the conviction that
some of the most intriguing developments in the chapter occur outside its
psycho-philosophical meditation on music.3 In the present view, the outside of

1
U, 330.
2
Law, Political Sirens, 150.
3
Ibid., 150.
 Occult Joyce 149

music does not concern a political interpretation. In fact, it is rather an inside,

in that it deals with some occult implications of music, and their structural
meaning in relation to developments of the musical theme in the book.
This way of appraising Sirens will show how some of the odd references
we find in the schematas could be approached from a new perspective. Thus, the
link between them and the text becomes logically coherent. This is the case, for
example, of the sweet cheat as the sense/meaning, or promises as one of the
symbols. The Swedenborgian correspondence for the organ ear can partly
provide an explanation of such connections.
As always with Ulysses, we must distinguish between several layers of signi-
fication, those linked to superficial meanings, and those belonging to the field of
indirect allusions. Their coexistence in the text-reader relationship produces a
sort of semiotic blackout, a paralysis of meaning which strips the reader of all
certainties about the possible construction of verifiable interpretations. Further-
more, the reader here has also to deal with a special kind of allusion, far from
general, but also distinct from any idea of metaphor we are accustomed to. It is a
secret level, which finally corresponds to the superficial textual levels, echoed
through some obscure hints in the narration.4

The sad magic of music

Of all the various themes Sirens conceals, some are more relevant than
others in the organization of the work, their implications being broader and
more fascinating. All of them are double-faced, and the two aspects of each, the
superficial and the secret, are always corresponding. It goes without saying that
despite their double nature, they are also interrelated and depending on each
other.
A superficial theme, rather easily spotted by the reader, is a sort of pervasive
air of sadness, incompleteness, and failure. The eleventh episode of Ulysses is
possibly the one in which we feel most the frustrated nature of Mr Bloom, as
well as the psychological effects his condition inexorably produces. Alongside
Blooms own failure, we face also other personal sad stories, like the one re-
called by the depiction of Simon Dedalus as a still-good-enough singer, though
not as good as in the old days. Not only is such a general loneliness of the epi-
sode the starting point of the present reflection, but it is also the goal of all
speculations, it being a kind of human sense of the chapter.
The first reference to such a feeling occurs in the overture, and anticipates
some further developments of the same idea: I feels so sad. P.S. So lonely

4
The word superficial, here, indicates a sort of general sense of the episode, similar to its
first effect upon the reader.
150 Chapter Seven

blooming.5 These words represent the fulcrum of Blooms broodings. His very
nature is a frustrated one, his blooming being castrated by the ways of life. Yet,
some irony is here detectable. The P.S. reference indicates his own latent in-
tention to write a letter to Martha Clifford. The following sentence, the poetic
So lonely blooming, may very well be, in his own mind, also a trick to try and
obtain from her a kind of maternal attention towards him. The whole line can be
interpreted as an effort to establish a complex out-of-marriage relationship with
a woman who has already shown her sadistic intention to punish him.6 Of
course, it refers also to a verse from The Last Rose of Summer by Thomas
Moore. This provides the link to another line in the same overture, where the
title of the poem occurs woven with Rose of Castille by Balfe. The result is an
effect of light sadness (Last rose Castille of summer left bloom I feel so sad
alone),7 perhaps anticipating oneirically the last line of Finnegans Wake: A
way a lone a last a loved a long the.8
Another passage in the first pages alludes to the same feeling, although it is
not directly addressed to Bloom: Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly [] Saunter-
ing sadly [] Sadly she in sauntering gold hair.9 This is very interesting in
many respects. First, it points to the fact that Bloom is not the only sad character
in the episode. It anticipates that during the day we will encounter other lonely
people absorbed in a similar atmosphere of incompleteness. A further detail
suggests that the ways of Miss Kennedy and those of Bloom have something in
common. As many have noted, the verb to saunter is used on various occa-
sions in Ulysses to describe a somewhat girlish way of walking, which is also
characteristic of Bloom.10 Apart from discussing the arguable feminine nature of
the act of sauntering, the use of the same verb in connection with Bloom and
other women in the book may be a hint helpful in trying to understand the utter
reason of the feeling of lonesomeness evident throughout the episode.
Men and women are corresponding in the book, as their attitudes and ways
clearly show. However, as in reality, something belonging to their terrestrial na-
ture is there to keep them apart. The feeling of sadness and frustration could
well be provided by a secret awareness of such an irreconcilable fraction. In
fact, Bloom will become a woman only in the visionary exploit of Circe. Still,
the allusions to androgyny are so frequent in the book that they invite us to treat
them rather seriously.

5
U, 329.
6
See U, 95.
7
U, 330.
8
FW, 628.
9
U, 331.
10
See Chapter Five, n. 38.
 Occult Joyce 151

Feelings of loneliness and sadness are the main superficial features of the
episode. They are the symbols of a secret esoteric truth. We can imagine that the
naturally unfulfilled tension towards androgyny and unity in the protagonists is
the ultimate reason inducing those very feelings. Such conclusions could even-
tually undermine the authority of another occult truth unmistakably connected
with the technique of Ulysses, the coincidentia oppositorum.
Could it be that this Neoplatonic belief in unity as reconciliation of the con-
traries is here only a pretext to suggest that the destiny of mens terrestrial exis-
tence is irreparably tainted by nostalgia? A famous quotation taken from the fi-
nal part of the episode seems to point to this very truth: Hate. Love. Those are
names.11 As we have seen, the sentence jars with the other statement occurring
in Cyclops, where love is meant to be the opposite of hatred.12 We are facing
a definitive ironical ambiguity here. It would be rather difficult to discern
whether or not this is a parody of both the occult beliefs. Contraries look like
mere masks, and the possibility of returning to any primordial unity at all pro-
duces both frustration and irony at the same time.
Platos Convivium inspired the occult belief that men and women shared
once the same nature, but are now separated by a distance that is merely corpo-
real and bodily. This deserves attention in Sirens. It is not an accident that at
the end of the episode Bloom happens to spot a whore with black straw hat
askew.13 She corresponds to Blazes Boylan, Mollys lover, who also wears a
straw hat. Something obliquely similar could be said of Simon Daedalus, who
happens to reach his pipe forth from the skirt of his coat.14 This superficial
truth parallels a secret reasoning, a subliminal esoteric logic underlying the
whole episode.
A second superficial theme, the magical power of music, is announced by
the reference to the singer Simon Dedalus. It shows the relevance of inter-
textuality in Joyces works, for some passages and the general atmosphere of the
chapter contain many echoes from the short story The Dead. Such a connec-
tion has been comprehensively analysed, among the others, by Jackson I. Cope,
who takes the many common features between Sirens and The Dead as a
starting point for a brilliant analysis of Ulysses as a kind of ciphered text.
Between Sirens and The Dead, some places suggest an evident resem-
blance. The performances of the singersAunt Julia and the tenor Bartell
DArcy in the short story, Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard in the eleventh epi-
sode of Ulyssesare just the first and more superficial correspondences. During

11
U, 368.
12
See Chapter One, nn. 89, 90, 91, 92.
13
U, 374.
14
U, 336.
152 Chapter Seven

their performances, silence is made around them, and the audience remains still
and attentively listening. In relation to this, Bettina Klein states that:

Dedaluss, Dollards and Cowleys music (voice and piano=string instrument) at-
tracts more attention than the barmaids seductive display. It is in particular
Simon Dedaluss voice that enchants all the listeners, Bloom and the barmaids
included. Male singing outdoes anything else brought forward in this episode.
This is a clear reference to Apolloniuss Orpheus who beats the Sirens with his
songs.15

The enchanting power of music is evident in both Aunt Julias and Bartell
DArcys performances in The Dead. However, it is during DArcys that we
encounter an atmosphere which somehow anticipates the singing of Sirens. In
the following passage, the tenor is giving his version of The Lass of Aughrim,
while Gretta Conroy, standing on the stairs, is absorbed in a most mysterious
stillness: Gabriel [] asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in
the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of.16 Gabriel is wondering
what has stolen his wifes mind and thoughts. His thoughts are parallel to
Blooms ironical meditations on the same subject, towards the end of the elev-
enth episode: What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattle-
snakes.17
Despite Blooms grossly materialistic attitude, it is quite evident that both
men are somehow attempting to cope with the same dilemma. Gabriels refer-
ence to distant music also has its counterpart in Sirens. Here, rather than
any sort of existentialist interpretation of a tune hardly heard from a certain dis-
tance, it is the nature of silence itself, both as a sound and as a necessity for the
act of listening, which catches Blooms investigative character: That voice was
a lamentation. Calmer now. Its in silence you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now
silent air.18
The reference to vibration is fundamental, for it provides a link between the
superficial side of the theme of music and its secret explanation. Here we need
to stress the value of silence as a state of the mind. As Bloom believes, it gives
one the opportunity to understand the real nature of music, of which the act of
listening is the sine qua non.
In the episode, music has also a sort of magical/alchemical power. It can
change the moods of people, as Bloom himself secretly acknowledges when he
thinks of the above mentioned P.S. in the letter to Martha Clifford: Too po-

15
Klein, Traces of Homer: Between Sources and Models in Joyces Aeolus, 276.
16
D, 211.
17
U, 367.
18
U, 357.
 Occult Joyce 153

etical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms Shakespeare said.19
Hallan Hepburn, in discussing Blooms thought that minor-key melancholy in
music is performative, a pretense of feeling,20 highlights the magical implica-
tions of music: As Plato argues in his discussion of musical modes in The Re-
public, music affects emotions [...] For Plato as for Bloom, this affectivity by-
passes reason.21
Such a peculiar power of music influences the characters moods also in
The Dead, where both Gretta and Gabriel finally surrender to its secret force.
Gretta is won by the recollection of the sad memories of her Galway past, while
Gabriel is defeated by the silent sound of the faintly falling snow. Accordingly,
he dies an imaginary death in communion with the destiny of all the living and
the dead.
Music can change moods then, and turn joy and desire into hopeless sadness.
This happens in The Dead as well as in Sirens, where sounds of desolation
inform all of Blooms reflections. However, music in the chapter has also a
more superficial effect, which may perhaps be explained just as a Dublin, or
rather an Irish, peculiarity of the time. When performed in a bar, it often hap-
pens to obtain complete attention and willingness to listen from the people gath-
ered there. This is the case in the Ormond Bar, where the protagonists lend at-
tention to the singers whenever they start to perform. Throughout the episode,
we encounter many exhortations to hush and listen, and they are generally ac-
complished.
It is the case, for instance, of the gentle and charming captatio benevolentiae
by which Simon Dedalus begs for attention before starting his own song.22 A
strong summon to listen, which resounds with the subtle murmur of a powerful
sexual metaphor, comes also from Miss Douce when she offers George Lidwell
a winding seahorn, in order to make him hear the voice of the sea.23
In the Odyssey, Ulysses providentially saves his comrades from hearing the
dangerous call of the Sirens by plugging their ears with wax. In Joyces episode,
despite the difficulty to state with a sufficient amount of certainty who the Si-
rens really arewhether the singers or the seductive barmaidsthe Homeric
connection is certainly parodied and inverted. Here everyone can hear, even
deaf people, as if the power of music shared something of the supernatural:
And by the door deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened.24

19
U, 361.
20
Hepburn, Ulysses, Opera, Loss, 67.
21
Ibid., 67.
22
See U, 352.
23
See U, 362-3.
24
U, 366.
154 Chapter Seven

In analysing the hidden meaning of some references in the schematas, a

similar parodical effect occurs. This happens if we take into account the Swe-
denborgian connection, which can eventually unveil a secret theme connected
with music.

Music inverted
Ear is the organ of Sirens. In Swedenborgs Heaven and Hell we are
given to understand that in the Scriptures the ear is a symbol of hearkening and
obedience.25 Joyce subtly mocks both the ideas. In the schematas, in fact, we
find promises among the symbols, and the sweet cheat as the
sense/meaning. While those references may very likely be only half-serious
reminiscences of the Homeric correspondence with the singing of the Sirens, it
is hard not to spot also a link to the two concepts of hearkening and obedience
in the light of a semantic overturn. In fact, although in Sirens the protagonists
imaginatively plug both their ears with their fingers, everyone actually obeys to
the sweet cheat of music and to its magical power. Accordingly, everybody
hearkens to its false promises. The false promise here is also the trap Joyce sets
for those among his readers who are not willing to see through surface mean-
ings.
Alongside all the general exhortations to lend attention to music occurring in
many places of the episode, the secret sense concealed behind the two ideas may
dwell in a different ground rather than a strictly musical one. Bloom thinks as
much in an odd silent reference which plays on both levels, the superficial and
the secret: Might be what you like till you hear the words.26 We have seen al-
ready how apparently casual sentences like this may open a vast range of possi-
bilities in terms of interpretation. The suggestion to wait until the words make
their appearance is subtler than might seem. It alludes to the cheating spells of
music, but also to a words=music equation which is fundamental to Joyces own
poetics.
Actually, the relationship between words and music is a major feature also in
other works by Joyce. The musical effects of narrative play a central role, for
example, in The Deadespecially in the perfect symphonic architecture of its
final paragraphsin Chamber Music, in many places of A Portrait, and in Fin-
negans Wake. Among all the episodes of Ulysses, Sirens is the one where mu-
sic plays alone the main part. One is reminded of what Joyce wrote to Harriet
Weaver in the summer of 1919, in relation to the fact that since he had written

25
Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 84.
26
U, 359.
 Occult Joyce 155

the Sirens episode, he found it impossible to listen to any kind of music.27

This points to the existence of a very strict relationship between music and lan-
guage.
The musicality of the chapter is mainly, in fact, a product of the organization
of words, whose concatenation secretly gives it an inner life. Richard Ellmann
argues that while Pater wrote that the arts aspire to the condition of music, and
Mallarm believed that music had to work with relationships which words had
already established, it was Joyce who suggested that all the music aspires to
the condition of language.28
Joyces radical ideas about the relationship between words and music are
certainly very helpful in appraising Sirens. However, one should be careful
before generalizing so neatly and state bluntly that for Joyce music aspires to the
condition of language. At least one cannot do so if one considers only the elev-
enth episode of Ulysses. It would be easier to show how such a statement works
with regards to Finnegans Wake, where music, or rather harmony, is not only
the starting point but also the final aim of Joyces art. Thus, harmonic effects are
somehow achieved through the attempt to reproduce polyphony via polysemy.
On the contrary, as regards Sirens, one has to refrain from indulging in the
easy temptation of drawing an exact parallel between the condition of music and
that of language. In an early study, A. Walton Litz, following Curtiuss wise
scepticism about a compromise between music and literature, suggests that
Joyce, in trying to atone musical and literary forms, ended up weakening the
rational structure of his prose, exalting secondary qualities (suggestion and
sound-imitation) at the expense of communication.29 His conclusion is that
Sirens demonstrates the weaknesses of a compromise between the two
arts.30
Such a judgement may well seem overstated, especially in the light of the fu-
ture achievements of Joyce in the effort to create his own music in the Wake. On
the other hand, the insuperable barrier to the simulation of musical form is what
produces Joyces frustration, given also his unfulfilled wish to become a musi-
cian/performer. Such a frustration actually led him to pursue a literary career as
his second best choice.31 In order to solve the question of the relationship be-
tween literature and music, Hepburn suggests that we should resort to opera as
the place where both arts blend in a successful wedding.32

27
See L, I, 128-9.
28
Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 104.
29
Litz, The Art of Joyce, 70.
30
Ibid., 70
31
See Kiberd, Theatre as Opera: The Gigli Concert, 145.
32
See Hepburn, Ulysses, Opera, Loss, 64.
156 Chapter Seven

The textual ambiguity of Sirens may also encourage us to consider care-

fully the secret system of references, as well as the suggestions hidden by the
writer between the lines, not as a surrogate for the failure of a compromise be-
tween the two arts, but rather as a latent feature of the episode. In this context, a
quotation such as the following sounds as a key phrase to approach the occult
message concealed behind Sirens: Words? Music? No: its whats behind.33
Whats behind refers to a textual unconscious, neither invented nor under-
stood by the protagonist, yet fully orchestrated by the author. This agrees with
Hepburns comment that music stands as the Freudian Unberwusste, or un-
known component of identity that colours individual subjectivity and human
interaction.34
What is the hidden essence of music? What links it to the ultimate secrets of
words and language? The solution is eventually provided by a secondary charac-
ter, Richie Goulding. After Simon Dedaluss performance, he joins the praising
crew and addresses Bloom with the following remark: Grandest number in the
whole opera.35 Despite the apparent clarity of the sentence, which occurred
also in Proteus,36 Blooms mind does not catch the superficial meaning of the
expression. On the contrary, he is fascinated by another idea suggested by the
word number. The term no longer stands for a musical piece. Instead, he takes it
literally, and it inaugurates a most peculiar train of thoughts already implied in
the earlier reference to vibrations:

Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided
by half is twice one. Vibrations; chords those are. One plus six is seven. Do any-
thing you like with figures juggling [...] Musemathematics. And you think you
are listening to the ethereal. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times
nine minus x is thirtyfive thousands.37

The shift from the previous words/music relation to a more comprehensive

perspective including numerical allusions is now clear. It becomes almost a
structural factor of Joyces poetics if we consider that, as John Senior explains,
the essence of music, according to the hermetic belief of the Pytagoreans, is
numerical: Through numbers, the alchemists also identified themselves with

33
U, 354.
34
Hepburn, Ulysses, Opera, Loss, 63.
35
U, 359.
36
U, 48.
37
U, 359. For a detailed explanation of the mathematical meaning of the passage see
Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 76-7.
 Occult Joyce 157

the Pythagoreans. [] Pythagoras taught the relation between number and mu-
sic.38
Secret relationships between words/letters and numbers are also established
in the tradition of the Kabbalah. The idea that Joyce was fully aware of the con-
nections between such numerological doctrines seems to be shared by Sheldon
Brivic. The scholar points out that he was aware of Giordano Brunos state-
ment that the wisdom of the Kabbalah derives from the Egyptians, among
whom Moses was brought up, 39 and that Blavatskys Isis Unveiled sees a
connection between the Kabbalah and the cosmological theory of numerals
which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants. 40 This leads inexo-
rably to a most mysterious and revealing solution. The unveiling of music will
eventually help us discover whats behind it.

Music unveiled
Acoustic science says that it is the number of vibrations in a unit of time that
gives the sound its height, and allows us to distinguish a particular note from
another. Its frequency gives a sound its timbre. Numbers are also the basis of the
idea of rhythm. This seems to be the hint dropped by another seemingly casual
sentence in the episode: Time makes the tune.41
The assumption that the whole essence of music is numerical is established
in the cited expression Musemathematics, which in its first part contains a ref-
erence to the inspirational process, and indirectly also to the ancient Greek
world of the Pythagoreans. Blooms reflections are the products of his half-
scientific mind, and this somehow anticipates an attitude that will be more evi-
dent in Itacha. The principle implied in the above-expression is that musical
relationships are parallel to mathematic ones insofar as they depend on similar
numerical rapports.
Hence, the previous words=music equation, which has been replaced by the
music=numbers relation, gives way, now, by means of a simple logical syllo-
gism, to the rapport between words and numbers. In order to solve the question
in a definitive way, we may take account of some ideas and techniques of the
Kabbalah, which Joyce undoubtedly came to know through a number of diverse
sources. We have already touched briefly on the subject. Now it is time to return
to this issue in order to assess its actual relevance in the hidden discourse of
Joyces great work.

38
Senior, The Way Down and Out, 29. See also my chapter on Scylla, n. 68.
39
Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 13.
40
Ibid., 13.
41
U, 359.
158 Chapter Seven

As Gershom Scholem puts it, the Kabbalah, literally tradition, that is, the
tradition of things divine, is the sum of Jewish mysticism.42 Cope informs us
that Joyce had access to important texts of the Kabbalistic tradition, in the
course of his weaving of Ulysses.43 In response to this, Brivic argues that
Cope effectively expands our recognition of Joyces knowledge of the Kab-
balah, though some of his observations are more suggestive than conclusive.44
One can agree with Cope that Joyces knowledge of the Kabbalah is deeper
than has been suggested. In order to support this view from a textual perspec-
tive, we can here review a few implications of kabbalistic knowledge, which
will prove further the extent of Joyces awareness of the teachings of the kabbal-
ists.
A technique known as Gematria provides the link with the reasoning ex-
plained above, and with the final numbers=words equation. Scholem describes it
as the interpretation through the numerical value of the Hebrew letters.45 In
the Kabbalah, the fundamental tenet of the Gematria is the correspondence of
the letters of the alphabet to numbers. This is undoubtedly what Blooms mono-
logue is all about. It is confirmed by a passage in Ithaca where we witness to
his own knowledge of such a technique:

And Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the
absence of mem) a substituted goph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordi-
nal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4 and 100.46

Cope states that a mock kabbalistic relationship between numbers and letters
has been alluded to previously in Ulysses,47 and precisely in Stephens fancy
telephone call to Edenville, in the third episode: Hello. Kinch here. Put me on
to Edenville. Aleph. Alpha: nought, nought, one.48 A further link to the same
episode is the aforementioned mutual reference to the greatest number [] in
the whole opera.49
With regards to most of Blooms allusions, it would be quite useless to look
for more precise relations here. This is due first to the fact that a parodying will
seems to be, as always, the main feature of the game. Secondly, as we know,

42
Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, i.
43
Cope, Joyces Cities, 70-81.
44
Brivic, The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 7.
45
Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 56.
46
U, 806.
47
See Cope, Sirens, 236-7.
48
U, 46. See also next chapter.
49
U, 48.
 Occult Joyce 159

Joyce was certainly not a Kabbalist, although at times he behaves as such.50

Coggrave puts it in the following way:

[The Kabbalah] appealed to Joyce as a schema which linked every aspect of

animal, vegetable and human life with that of the cosmos. It functioned as yet
one more example of a network of correspondences that would, without demand-
ing formal adherence, provide him with what was basically an aesthetic arrange-
ment of the multifarious items of universal experience without binding him to
any particular creed or organization.51

With this being the case, what is interesting in Ulysses mock kabbalistic textual
occurrences is the secret system of allusions underwriting them. It is perhaps a
legacy of Blooms multifaceted Jewish background. This leads us back to the
general meaning of the episode from which the present analysis started.
The theory of the hidden references to Kabbalistic techniques is in fact nei-
ther the main feature of the chapter, nor the ultimate cause behind its organiza-
tion. It is nothing but a means by which other more general statements and
truths are suggested. Those statements, providing a kind of human sense to the
chapter, are likely to be applied also to the book as a whole. Through such a fi-
nal step, we may eventually find out that they are introduced to our attention
both as superficial and as secret themes, the latter being suggested by the
strange numerical techniques of the Kabbalah. In order to show how such a cir-
cularity of ideas works, we can take into account the general Kabbalistic as-
sumptions of which the numerical references seem to be a signatura. They may
well explain the sense of incompleteness, failure, and frustration of which
Bloom and other characters in the episode fall victims.
Kabbalistic teachings not only include a practical sidethe techniques of in-
terpretation through numbers, letters, and wordsbut also theoretical aspects,
which partly contrast with the traditional orthodox rabbinical doctrine. Such a
theoretical side involves a series of what look like revolutionary statements
about the nature and the essence of God and his Law.
Scholem explains that most Kabbalistic doctrines revolve around the divine
emanations or sephiroth, in which Gods creative power unfolds.52 God reveals
himself through the creative power of the sephiroth.53 Suffice our discussion
to explain that the sephiroth, or manifestations of the power of God, are ten, and

50
An interesting application of a quasi-kabbalistic method (including the exchange of
letters for numbers and the act of reading the alphabet backwards, a connection with
Rudys way of reading) is to be found in Knowless explanation of the Dolphins Barn
cryptogram. See, Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 21-4.
51
Coggrave, Joyces Use of Occultist Sources, 113.
52
Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 35.
53
Ibid., 35.
160 Chapter Seven

among them the first three are the more general ones. Each of the remaining
seven, named the lower sephiroth, corresponds to a part of the human body of
the primordial man, Adam Kadmon. It is interesting to note that in the third epi-
sode of Ulysses we find a seemingly casual allusion to Adam Kadmon.54 He is
the man in the purest form that certain Kabbalistic traditions identify with the
God of the sepiroth, or God as he reveals Himself through the manifestations of
His power.
The general correspondence of the sephiroth with parts of the body, seem-
ingly consistent with Swedenborgs idea of the body of heaven, may have in-
fluenced also the internal organization of Joyces bodily book. Besides, as we
will see, such mystical ideas are here used just in order to introduce another ver-
sion of the theme of androgynya link back to the theorization of the perfect
artist as an androgynous angel and a wife unto himself in Scylla.
The androgyny of God is in fact the revolutionary theory secretly elaborated
by the Kabbalists, in manifest contrast with the Jewish traditional doctrine.
Scholem puts it as follows:

Of the seven potencies that emanate from it [from the third sephiroth],55 the first
six are symbolized as parts of the Primordial mens body and epitomized in the
phallic foundation [...]
The tenth sephirah, however, no longer represents a particular part of man, but,
as complement to the universally human and masculine principle, the feminine,
seen at once as mother, wife, and as daughter, though manifested in different
ways in these different aspects. This discovery of the feminine element of God,
which the Kabbalists tried to justify by Gnostic exegesis, is of course one of the
most significant steps they took.56

There is no doubt that a writer like Joyce could have been intrigued by such
a complex, half-blasphemous, and obscure doctrine belonging to the tradition of
Jewish mystical knowledge. The kabbalistic doctrine of the sephiroth57 was
mentioned in the article on the Kabbalah in the eleventh edition of the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica, which Atherton believes to be one of Joyces major sources.58

54
See U, 46.
55
The third sephiroth, also called the upper mother, is a demiurgic potency, an aspect of
God, an almost-independent feminine element within him.
56
Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 105.
57
For the importance of the sephiroth in the Wake, see: Brivic, The Mind Factory:
Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, 261,
Campbell and Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, 171, 193-5.
58
See my chapter on Lotus-Eaters, n. 42.
 Occult Joyce 161

Given that Joyce refers first to Adam Kadmon, and then to the androgynous
as the prototype of the perfect artist, one wonders how the concept is presented
to the reader. Does it point to a serious commitment to, or rather a mocking par-
ody of, kabbalistic knowledge?
We have seen that the straw-hatted whore at the end of the episode is remi-
niscent of Blazes Boylan, and that generally in Sirens men seem to correspond
to women. It can also be argued that the theory of the coincidence of the oppo-
sites might be affected by a congenital error, for it leads nowhere but to frustra-
tion and impotence. Apparently, at least in Sirens, it does not provide any ul-
timate solution to the dialectics of the contraries, no reunion with ones own op-
posite being possible.
The idea of human incompleteness in the episode is indeed a debt to the
Kabbalah. This can be proved on a textual level, by analysing further examples
of a direct relationship between its legacy and the atmosphere of sadness and
failure connected with music. Who are, in fact, the real sirens in the episode?
Perhaps, the Homeric Sirens were androgynous beings themselves. In the Odys-
sey, they are not remarkable for the sexual potency of their appeal, but only for
the cheating powers of their chant. This would suggest that the singers are the
sirens in the episode, in that they are the only ones who can catch the attention
of the people gathered in the Ormond bar. The two sexy barmaids pass rela-
tively unobserved if compared to the male singers. Hence, if the singers are the
sirens, then the barmaids possibly correspond to Odysseuss crowd. This seems
to be confirmed by many passages, like the one where a girl actually pretends to
prevent herself from listening, by plugging her own ears.59 A further evidence of
such an exchange of genders is the passage where Lydia Douce anticipates
Blooms most peculiarly masculine act in the whole book, his masturbation on
Sandymount Strand.60
Having stated that a natural, although fictional, exchange of genders between
the protagonists may well be the fundamental issue of the chapter, we can now
return to the starting point of the present reflection in the light of a new and
more comprehensive perspective.
We can recognise the general air of incompleteness surrounding the episode
as the result of the failed unconscious attempt of almost all the protagonists to
achieve the perfect state of androgyny, as suggested by the occult sapientia of
the Kabbalists, as well as by neoplatonic beliefs. Men and women are prevented
from reaching such perfection due to that unavoidable terrestrial barrier known
as human nature. This secret wish, shared by many of the relevant characters of

59
See U, 333.
60
See U, 369.
162 Chapter Seven

Sirens, is destined to remain unfulfilled. The awareness of such a truth is also

the ultimate reason informing Blooms own feelings of sad failure.
This inevitably produces the readers human empathy with him. The very
popular interpretation of Blooms character as feminine is poignantly explained
by Carolyn Heilbrun, who states that the woman as hero, like the man as hero,
exists in one character in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom.61 She stresses his empathy
with women, remarking that he alone in the book is sympathetically present
during childbirth.62 The scholars fascinating conclusion is that his Jewishness
in Dublin makes necessary a certain passivity and has developed in him a great
kindness.63
Blooms awareness of some of the secret doctrines of Jewish mysticism is a
clear hint at the secret truth of androgyny. His nature is then two-fold. While
textually speaking his fluid sexuality appears to be detectable in his unmistaka-
bly womanly behaviour, from an occult point of view it has to be linked to his
non-conformist Jewishness. The Sirens chapter is firmly a further anticipa-
tory key passage in the acknowledgment of Blooms double nature. Only in the
imaginary and oneiric evolutions of Circe will his occult and latent wish to
become his own opposite be partly satisfied. In the meantime, we can look at
another turning point the great book, Proteus, in which the other protagonist,
Stephen Dedalus, plays the main role. Not only is the third chapter strictly con-
nected with the occult motifs discussed so far, but it also shows that such hidden
themes involving the sphere of spirituality become really a substantial part of
the alternative ideology Joyce is attempting to construct for his readers.

61
Heilbrun, Towards Androgyny. Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, 95.
62
Ibid., 95.
63
Ibid., 95.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

PROTEUS

Proteus shows unequivocally the relevance of numbers in the secret sys-

tem of Joyces book, alongside other major hidden themes. As MacQueen sug-
gests, literary numerology is the theory of composition in terms of which an
author deliberately incorporates in the text of his work numerical patterns which
he regards as conveying precise significances.1 In this light, it is useful to look
at what Joyce said to Adolf Hoffmeister in 1933, in relation to his own obses-
sion with numbers:

Number is an enigma that God deciphers [] I have discovered the importance

of numbers in life and history. Dante was obsessed by the number three. He di-
vided his poem into three parts, each with thirty-tree cantos, written in terza
rima.2

The very fact that Proteus is the third episode of Ulysses suggests its most re-
vealing quality in the occult scheme of the book. Coopers reference work on
myths and legends informs us that Pythagoras calls the number three the per-
fect number, expressive of beginning, middle and end, wherefore he makes it a
symbol of a Deity.3 Number three is a cornerstone in the numerical structure of
Joyces book. Ulysses is divided into three parts, each having its own internal
division, which is also ruled by a ternary logic. The Telemachiad and the
Nostos are made up of three episodes each, while the Odyssey has twelve
chapters. Such an obsession with the number three can be explained partly as an
allusion to the Trine God of the Catholic theology.
If we take account of Joyces desire to exploit all the possibilities provided
by the particular ideas he explores, a further explanation comes to the surface
which involves a subtle range of allusions to Satanism. In fact, while in Dantes
Divina Comedia, the thirtythree canti of each of the three Cantiche can be seen
as a clear allusion to the years of Christ, the eighteen episodes of Ulysses may

1
MacQueen, Numerology. Theory and Outline History of a Literary Mode, 2.
2
Cited in Coggrave, Joyces Use of Occultist Sources, 105.
3
Cooper, Brewers Book of Myth and Legend, 283.
164 Chapter Eight

be pointing also to the triple repetition of the number six, the number of the
devil. For those in search of an even more fantastic explanation, bearing in mind
that Bloom is at some stage rumoured to be a freemason, it is interesting to
know that tirthythree are also the degrees of the so-called Scottish Rite, the
highest degree of the Freemasons, while degree eighteen corresponds to the rite
of the Crux Rubra, the Rosicrucian level.4 In the light of such remote connec-
tions, the relevance of Proteus as a key passage in the occult dynamics of the
book emerges.
This is not, of course, to diminish the importance of other chapters. Despite
the several opposite forces that apparently undermine Ulyssess formal unity,
the idea of totality in the book does not seem to be a matter of speculation.
Every episode has its own peculiar part to play in the game of secret and super-
ficial meanings harmonically interwoven in the texture of the narrative. How-
ever, some episodes are more comprehensive than others, which on the contrary
keep gravitating around them as in a solar system according to a chosen centre.
The difference between the already-discussed chapters and Proteus is substan-
tial. It resembles the relationship between a medieval encyclopaedia and its
various sources of information. In other words, if we look at Ulysses 3 after
having studied carefully all the other episodes with an eye to their occult struc-
tures, we eventually find out that most of their secret themes had been already
introduced in the third chapter. The very appearance of those themes in Pro-
teus looks like an overture. In the episode, many hints are dropped which need
to be picked up and re-organized coherently. The purpose is to recover a previ-
ous knowledge apparently lost.
In order to achieve a more general idea of the goals of the present reasoning,
it is necessary to acknowledge in advance the reason why the solution to the oc-
cult question in Ulysses is Circe. The decision not to end this discussion with
the final episode, Penelope (Ulysses 18) might in fact look radical at first.
While Eumaeus and Ithaca are relatively relaxing chapters after the
drunken and visionary exploits of Circe, the last episode, Penelope, is more
a solution in psychological, narrative, and human terms to Ulysses, rather than
the revelation of its hidden secrets. Although its role is fundamental in showing
Joyces subtle technique, his literary craft, and his keen understanding of the
human mind, it is arguably in the fifteenth chapter that the occult themes which
continually underflow as the rivers of Hades the surface of the book, break
through the text in a semantic explosion and become finally visible. Besides, the
two male protagonists who during the textual unfolding of the book carry the
responsibility to become the unconscious witnesses of a theory of secret mes-

4
For a similar connection between numbers and their secret masonic implications in
relation to another work of art, Mozarts The Magic Flute, see Robins Landon, H.C. 1791
Mozart Last Year. New York, Schirmer Books, 1988.
 Occult Joyce 165

sages, will be closer to each other in Circe than in any other section of the
book. Newman brilliantly assesses their psychological and quasi-alchemical de-
scent into the dark night of the unconscious, in the following terms:

The conjunction of contraries basic to alchemical theory is enacted within the

psychological design of the novel. In Circe, Blooms and Stephens faces merge
in the mirror with that of Shakespeare. In Ithaca, a keyless couple [] they dis-
cuss the similarities of the Hebrew and Irish languages and people, and Stephen
leaves Blooms house playing a Jews harp.5

Their respective journeys through the text seem to be oriented towards curious
forms of reconciliation, for as Newman again suggests, they also urinate to-
gether while simultaneously observing a shooting star.6
In the critics view, the whole process is similar to the first stages of al-
chemy, themselves a kind of descent of the matter into the unifying darkness,
before an inevitable process of regeneration. The three final stages of the book,
where such a union seems to occur, are an imaginary drunken episode such as
Circe, and what could be seen as the aftermath of a massive intake of alcohol
during the night (Eumeus and Ithaca). Such a time, which precedes indeed
the onset of sleep, may be interpreted somehow as the step before the hangover,
a time when all sorts of union become possible. Similar oneiric reconciliations
could not have happened before in the day, nor could they happen after, for as
Knowles observes, Bloom and Stephen are parallel and will never converge
[] Parallel lines are divided lines and so Stephen must decline Blooms offer
to stay.7 In fact, they are completely out of the stage in Penelope, and this
seems to justify the view that the final chapter is really something utterly de-
tached from the rest of the text.
Among the three moments of the Telemachiad, the final is no doubt the
most complexly structured, as well as the most obscurely written. The narrative
presents the reader with a huge amount of dark allusions, hardly intelligible
from a referential point of view. The majority of those hints, which Joyce drops
in a seemingly casual way in order to conceal them between the lines of his
cryptic text, do not belong to a thesaurus of knowledge shared by common
readers. The results of such a technique, which combines the elements of the
narrative as in a mosaic, are extremely easy to guess. On the one hand, the
readers expectations8 are not even allowed the chance to fail. The readers pos-
sibility to establish a dialogue with the text is in many cases negated by the re-

5
Newman, Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses, 180.
6
Ibid., 180.
7
Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 7.
8
See: Iser, The Implied Reader, 196-233.
166 Chapter Eight

mote ambiguity of those references. This compels him almost naturally to refer
to a critical apparatus of notes and interpretations, in order to get at least a su-
perficial and partial idea of what is all about. On the other hand, this dillusions
the reader as to a plain narrative coherence in the work, for the importance of
the referential function is indeed reduced to minimal terms.
Luckily enough, the third millennium reader can easily gain access to many
studies containing useful annotations and commentaries. However, in relation to
Proteus, sometimes even those valuable books fail in recomposing clearly a
united message whose pieces are scattered in a seemingly chaotic way all
through its pages. At times, despite their clarifying intentions, the various criti-
cal works make comprehension even more difficult for general readers. As it
happens, assumptions of interpretive clarity do not always account fully for ac-
tual textual opacity.
As we have seen already, such a statement proves to be true when our per-
spective is an occult one. Darkness needs only darkness to be perceived, an
occultist could say. Towards the end of Proteus we encounter an oddly sym-
bolical hint: You find my words dark? Darkness is in our souls, do you not
think?9 Here, we witness again to the texts attempt at bypassing mere referen-
tiality, in order to establish a direct contact with its readers. In what follows, I
will propose an interpretation of such a cryptic relationship, whose revolution-
ary implications, so far, seem to have been overlooked by many readers of
Joyces masterpiece.

Dyonisius, Blake, Boehme, and Proteus

Dyonisius the pseudo-Areopagite, a mystic whose influence on Joyce has
been recently one of the objects of a brilliant study by Colleen Jaurretche,10 is
responsible for a most fascinating theological theory, known as the apophatic
theory. It revolves around the possibility of coming to the knowledge of God
through the darkness and the negation of knowledge itself. In medieval times,
such a theory massively influenced the negative mystical tradition, while more
generally the Dyonisian introspection filters through the early Middle Ages to
all mystical texts.11 Some of its tenets can help us understand partly the hidden
intentions of Joyces texts, which lay lurking behind many a passage in Pro-
teus.

9
U, 61.
10
Jaurretche, The Sensual Philosophy. Joyce and the Aesthetics of Mysticism.
11
Ibid, 18. For a general overview of Dyonisiuss influence on the mystical thought of
Middle Ages see the chapter, Medieval Abstrusities, 8-37.
 Occult Joyce 167

According to Vladimir Lossky, Dyonisiuss works have enjoyed an undis-

puted authority in the theological tradition of the East, as well as in that of the
West.12 He is allegedly the author of a corpus known as the Areopagitica, some
of which are present on the shelves of the National Library of Ireland, as well as
in the Marshs Library, Dublin. That Joyce knew the essence of this theory is
confirmed by a conference paper on Blake he read at the University of Trieste in
1912:

Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, in his book De Divinis Nominibus, arrives at

the throne of God by denying and overcoming every moral and metaphysical at-
tribute, and in the last chapter falling into ecstasy and prostrating himself before
the divine obscurity, before that unutterable immensity which precedes and en-
compasses the supreme knowledge in the eternal order.13

Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite makes a timid appearance also between

the lines of Giacomo Joyce.14 A few years before, the mystic had been intro-
duced in another conference paper, Ireland: the Isle of Saints and Scholars,
given at the University of Trieste. On that occasion, he had mistaken the actual
Dyonisius for Saint Dyonisius, patron saint of France.15 Dyonisiuss mystical
theology helps us find a reasonably logical explanation of the images of dark-
ness and dark eternity haunting many famous passages in Proteus.
The apophatic theory is also known as the theory of negation, and is seen in
opposition to the cataphatic theory, or theory of affirmation. Dyonisiuss nega-
tive theology tells us that God is obscurity, and that we may come to know him
only if we negate all our intellectual or moral knowledge. According to Lossky,
such a theory fosters the view that in order to approach God it is necessary to
deny all that is inferior to Him.16 The scholar describes the whole process as
follows:

If in seeing God one can know what one sees, then one has not seen God in Him-
self but something intelligible, something which is inferior to Him. It is by un-
knowing (agnosia) that one may know Him who is above every possible object of
knowledge [...] by progressively setting aside all that can be known, in order to
draw near to the Unknown in the darkness of absolute ignorance.17

12
Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 23-4.
13
CW, 222.
14
See GJ, 1.
15
See CW, 160.
16
Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 25.
17
Ibid., 25.
168 Chapter Eight

In the above cryptic allusion to the darkness residing in our very souls, Joyce
was clearly using, and perhaps parodying, Dyonisiuss theory of the darkness of
knowledge. This is confirmed by an idea concealed behind another famous line
taken from Nestor (Ulysses 2): Darkness shining in brightness, which bright-
ness could not comprehend.18 Suffice it to say, now, that in this case Joyce is
applying Dyonisiuss mystical ideas to a terrestrial context, rather than to a di-
vine one, in a way that is much similar to his own secular re-adaptation of Swe-
denborgs system of correspondences. He is also informing us of his own obscu-
rantist techniques, besides suggesting that certain things are not worthy of eluci-
dation, for dark complexity is part of their very nature. One shall be reminded,
here, that subliminal questions often require subliminal answers.
The idea of divine darkness as expressed in the apophatic theory may in fact
illuminate another very relevant, though well-concealed, aspect of Proteus,
the hidden presence of William Blake. Many critics have comprehensively as-
sessed such a ghostly presence, and in a way we should not imagine it as an ob-
scure topic at all. Some of Blakes ideas are quite revealing in the present con-
text, for they provide interesting links to Joyces own visionary technique. They
include, for instance, a quasi-mystical attitude towards the worship of imagina-
tion, which, in the light of Joyces personality, could no doubt lead to some
quite ironic misunderstandings. It is well known that Joyce loved to think of
himself as a writer who completely lacked imagination. Such a suggestion is of
course mainly provocative, although certain aspects of his fiction, like the often-
transfigured representation of people who interested him, which shows his own
obsession with details of their lives, would somehow make us take it seriously.
The Italian scholar Emilio Cecchi, in an early study which, though never
translated into English, happened somehow to enjoy a certain fortune in Eng-
land in the first decades of the last century, explained Blakes poetics in the fol-
lowing terms:

Blake outlined the external shape, already alive though empty, into which only
later the great Romantics were to pour more determinate passion and thought.
His poetry has the effect of the appearance of the luminous contour of a dreamy
figure, in the desert mirror of the air.19

The aim of these few lines is to introduce a kind of symbolic presentation of

Blakes role in the historical shaping of the romantic sensitivity. However, they
seem to point also to the existence of what could be named the aesthetics of the
vision, which might well be one of the subliminal connections between Blake
and Joyce.

18
U, 28.
19
Cecchi, I Grandi Romantici Inglesi, 73.
 Occult Joyce 169

In Ulysses a similar approach informs various narrative features, like the in-
terior monologues, the occasional reminiscences which come to characters
minds when they are absorbed in other mental patterns, and the non-casual coin-
cidences of events, which function as latent links between various sections of
the text. The latter can be spotted in many places of the book, but constitute the
external shape, as well as the textual peculiarity, mainly of the third and the fif-
teenth episode. In this light, we can consider Proteus and Circe as two
oneiric parallel lines on which a certain continuity between the methods and the
achievements of both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake would seem to travel.
The aesthetics of the vision is no doubt suggested to Joyce by the works of
Blake, whose prophetic books owe a great deal to mystical knowledge. Blake
was in fact very familiar with the doctrines of Swedenborg and Boehme. His
more visionary works happen to reveal also a substantial debt to the theories on
perception of the Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley.
Kathleen Raine shows how Blakes firm opposition to the materialist and
empiricist ideas so strong and influential in his time is nothing but a commit-
ment to Berkeleys teachings on the coincidence of existence and perception.
Accordingly, such an outlook informed also Blakes inclinations towards vi-
sionary aesthetics. In Raines view,Blake adds only passion to Berkeleys ar-
gument.20
In Proteus, the teachings of Berkeley are indeed among the most revealing
aspects of the episode. Actually, he is one of the ghosts who appear and disap-
pear between the lines. We also encounter a direct reference to him towards the
end of the chapter.21 His thought informs deeply Stephens strange behaviour. In
one of the most famous passages of the episode, Stephens experiment on
Sandymount strand, such an odd legacy comes clearly to the surface. As soon as
Stephen decides to close his eyes and walk in the darkness, there comes a fa-
mous allusion to the dimensions of time and space in Blake:

I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it
[] Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into
eternity along Sandymount Strand?22

An authoritative interpretation of the second part of the passage, suggested to

Thornton by M.D. Paley, has it that the way into eternity is an indirect quota-
tion of an actual passage from Blakes Milton, where the protagonist reaches
Eternity through the poets left foot:

20
Raine, Blake and the New Age, 173.
21
See U, 60-1.
22
U, 45.
170 Chapter Eight

And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot,

As a bright sandal formed immortal precious stones and gold:
I stooped down and bound it on to walk forward through Eternity.23

Joyces admiration for Blake is renowned. In the Trieste library we find

three collections of his poems. In general, his pointed knowledge of Blakes
books, and particularly his fondness for the ideas of time and space frequently
alluded in them, is to be dated years before the writing of Proteus. Such an
interest is in fact already clear in some of Joyces early critical writings, like the
1912 Trieste paper on Blake. In that essay, Joyce had in fact rephrased a famous
passage from Milton24 where Blake had described the modality of access to
Eternity, in the following terms: in a space smaller than a globule of blood we
approach eternity, of which our vegetable world is but a shadow.25
If we are to accomplish the task of finding exact allusions lurking behind
Joyces words in Proteus, such a well known reference may certainly be more
illuminating than the one proposed earlier. Besides, Blakes obsession with the
various accesses to Eternity, which in fact designates a dimension beyond the
terrestrial conceits of time and space, is a common feature shared by almost all
of his prophetic books. Moreover, it is very easy to find in his works the word
Eternity introduced by a preposition suggesting an imaginary movement. For
instance, in Milton, vv. 15-16, Plate 1, we read: Say first: what moved Mil-
tonwho walked about in Eternity / One hundred years, pondering the intricate
mazes of Providence.26 Furthermore, the two verses from Milton Joyce had re-
phrased in the 1912 lecture (And every space smaller than a globule of mans
blood opens / Into Eternity, of which this vegetable earth is but a shadow)27
could well be another direct source for the renowned passage in Proteus. Fi-
nally, the following verses from Jerusalem may also have provided Joyce with
the image he was looking for:

I rest not from my great task!

To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of thought, into Eternity
Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the Human Imagination.28

23
Blake, The Poems, 518.
24
See ibid., 539.
25
CW, 222.
26
Blake, The Poems, 490.
27
Ibid., 539.
28
Blake, The Complete Writings with All the Variant Readings, 623.
 Occult Joyce 171

Given such difficulties in trying to find exact allusions to a univocal passage in

Blakes corpus accounting for the reference in Proteus, we may look for an
alternative explanation based on a different ground.
In Blakes visionary aesthetics, the general sense of the Eternity/Vegetable
World dichotomy is nothing but an apparent opposition of the two dimensions,
which utimately share a perpetual and cyclical nature. In Blakes mythology,
Eternity is imagined as the opposite of the sea of time and space, where the
soul falls because of sin. In Milton we become aware that Time is called Los by
mortals, while the name of Loss feminine emanation, Space, is Enitharmon. In
a verse many critics consider the key to the understanding of the poemTime
is the mercy of Eternity29the essentially circular nature of Blakes cosmol-
ogy is finally revealed. After the fall, the soul tries to redeem itself in the spatial
and temporal dimension, that is, in the world of Los and his emanation. The sea
of time and space is the place where humanity can rediscover its truest nature,
in order to return to the imaginative knowledge of Eternity, or in other words, to
the beatitude of Eden.
A similar idea is summed up in the ambitious epigraph of a book Joyce had
bought in 1912,30 Signatura Rerum, by the mystic Jacob Boehme:

Signatura Rerum
The
Signature of all things.
Shewing the sign and signification of
The several forms and shapes in the creation;
And what the
Beginning, ruin and cure of
Everything is.
It proceeds out of
Eternity into Time, and again out of Time into
Eternity,
And comprises all mysteries.

The title of the book is cited in the very first paragraph of Proteus. Boehmes
position on the relationship between the terrestrial and the immortal world starts
from the very assumption that Time and Eternity are contiguous dimensions,
despite their apparent opposition. They agree in general terms with the idea of
concidentia oppositorum so dear to Joyce. A passage from Signatura Rerum
concerning the true nature of Eternity may help us see the matter in a new light:

29
Blake, The Poems, 528.
30
See Introduction, n. 33.
172 Chapter Eight

Without nature God is a mystery, understand, in the nothing, for without nature is
the nothing, which is an eye of eternity, an abyssal eye that stands and sees in the
nothing, for it is the abyss.31

The idea of Eternity, the immortal place where supreme divinity reigns alone, is
here presented in connection with an image of abyss. This may lead us back to
the darkness suggested by Stephens decision to walk with his eyes closed along
Sandymount strand. What strikes the attention in the above passage is the de-
scription of the nothing, the abyss, in terms of an eye of eternity. Such a clus-
ter of theological-ontological categories linked to the sense-perception plane
through the visual dimension, brings us back to the image of darkness provided
by Dionysiuss apophatic theory. Hence, an occult interpretation of the famous
passage from Proteus becomes possible.
Stephen, who has in mind the ideas of space and time dear to Blake as com-
plementary parts of the same imperfect dimension, decides to close his eyes and
walk in the darkness. When he becomes aware that he is getting on nicely in
the dark,32 he wonders ironically whether he may be accessing Eternity along
the strand of Sandymount. Eternity, according to his farcical irony, is evidently
an ontological obscurity, which we may approach only by negating the clarity of
our knowledge. This is symbolized by the closing of his eyes, an action which
finally gives him the chance to get in contact with Eternity.
According to George Mills Harper, Eternity is another name for Eden33 in
Blakean terms. Actually, just a few lines below the above passage we encounter
Stephens mocking attempt to be put through Eden by phone. We can leave
aside for the moment the meaning of this telephone call, whose mystical impli-
cations I will discuss later on. Instead, we can now take a look at the suggestions
provided in the schematas, in order to see if we can identify further traces of a
subliminal narrative concerning other parts of the body and their occult signifi-
cation.

Stephen and the Body

In general, to take the textual clues provided in the schematas literally is of-
ten to be deceived intentionally by Joyce. In relation to Proteus, even struc-
tural features such as the primordial matter as the sense/meaningreminding
us of the mythical divinity who had the ability to continuously change his own
formare just superficial explanations. Mitchell Morse believes that most of

31
Boehme, The Signature of All Things, 22.
32
U, 45.
33
Mills Harper, The Neoplatonism of William Blake, 148.
 Occult Joyce 173

the various mutations in the chapter take place in Stephens mind, not in the
outer world.34
The ever-changing nature of words and language in the episode, as well as
all the fluid textual permutations of Ulysses, expose clearly the major character-
istic of open texts. As regards Proteus, this is also confirmed by other symbols
occurring in Linati, like word, tide, moon, evolution, metamorphosis.
Having said this, one should be sceptical of easy solutions, for they would
comply with Joyces own wish to see us, readers, utterly misled. Accordingly,
we are in need of an alternative explanation in order to come to terms with the
fatal complexity of the cluster of half-serious half-psychotic allusions of the
chapter. From an occult standpoint, one will do well to bear in mind that the so-
called universal Proteus is also another word for the Akasha, the great
memory of the word.35
In this light, we can try to explain the first major dilemma of the Linati
schema, which again has to do with the notion of organ in Ulysses. Why do the
chapters of the Telemachiad not have a correspondence with the body? The
answer to this question seems obvious, at least judging by the explanation pro-
vided by Linati, Telemaco non soffre ancora il corpo, which according to a
translation given in Ellmanns Ulysses on the Liffey means: Telemachus does
not yet bear a body.
We know that translations are always attempts to say almost the same
thing with new words. While there is no doubt that Ellmanns literal translation
interprets correctly the surface meaning of Joyces statement, the ambiguous
and half-metaphorical sense of the Italian verb soffrire in this occurrence has to
be reconsidered. Although the verb, which can indeed be translated as to suf-
fer, may mean in certain cases also to bear, suffice it to say that in this con-
text it signifies more likely to feel [something] intensely. A more reliable
translation of Joyces explanation would be: Telemachus does not yet feel the
body, meaning that he does not yet feel the legacy of the body. This implies
also that he is not aware of the bodys secret meaning.
The new translation changes things utterly. Ellmanns version would make
us believe that Stephen does not partake of any bodily dimension, or rather that
he is not ready yet for a mature psychological relationship with his own body.
This seems to be supported on the surface by the fact that he is somehow embar-
rassed by his own body (poor eyesight, rotten teeth, and so on). On the contrary,
the alternative translation points to the actual conception of the body. The only
chapters which do not have a correspondence with organs are those of the

34
Mitchell Morse, Proteus, 39.
35
See Carver, Joyce and the Theory of Magic, 202-3.
174 Chapter Eight

Telemachiad. The first question in need of an answer, now, concerns the rela-
tionship between the body as a whole and the individual organs.
As we know from the famous letter Joyce sent to Linati on September 21,
1920, in defining his book he referred to the cycle of the human body.36 Accord-
ingly, he established the various relations with the categories of the schema, si-
lently arguing that each episode is an interconnection of the corresponding
hours, organs, arts, and so on. Thus, he suggested that each adventure was sup-
posed to be one person although it is composed of persons.37 Joyce claimed to
have produced a body=book equation parallel to the organ=episode connection.
Hence, as the human body is a communion of organs, the book should be a
communion of episodes.
Such an anthropological textual system does not allow us to regard
Stephens existence as non-bodily. Even though the episode is really nothing
but a flourishing of interior monologues interwoven into an almost unconscious
narrative, Stephens actions are indeed experimental experiences. His attempts
to perceive through the senses are sufficient proofs that he exists bodily. This
statement seems to jar strikingly with the idea provided by Ellmanns transla-
tion, which instead would have it that he is rejecting all bodily experiences for
he cannot bear a body.
Of course, the explanation given in the schema points metaphorically also to
the uncompleted nature of the young artist, but again this would be structurally
incoherent, considering the realistic organ/episode parallelism Joyce had chosen
as a system for each part of his masterpiece. On the other hand, the alternative
translation (Telemachus does not yet feel the body) may help us approach the
question from a different angle. Two solutions can be offered now. Let us start
with the first.
The episodes that have no legacy of the body are representations of a fic-
tional unity. They are therefore a symbol of wholeness and completeness, a mi-
crocosm parallel to the macrocosm of the book. A similar interpretation has
been frequently applied in the text to the episode known as Wandering Rocks,
a chapter which may also be seen as a microcosmic summary of the structure of
the book. However, in that case the parallelism would not apparently involve
occult categories of knowledge. Instead, the correspondence was a superficial
one. On the other hand, Proteus provides us with the idea of microcosm in a
rather subterranean way, it being mainly an attempt to eschew referentiality in
the text-reader relationship.
This would fit very well the law of correspondences, which makes us see re-
ality as compared to its projections on a larger screen. It appears to fit also the

36
See L, I, 146.
37
Ibid., 147.
 Occult Joyce 175

explanation given by Joyce to Linati about every hour, organ, and art being in-
terconnected in the structure of the book.38 Such microcosm=macrocosm equa-
tion, alongside the evident separateness, though interconnected, between the
first part of he book and the remaining two, is also confirmed by a further cir-
cumstance. In fact, in the Telemachiad only one person of the secularized trin-
ity (Stephen/Leopold/Molly) features as the undisputed protagonist, the other
two being present only as shadows. This could not be said, of course, with re-
gards to either the Odyssey or the Nostos.
In Proteus, the ghost of Leopold Bloom appears many times between the
lines. For instance, after Stephen has scribbled his poem on a piece of paper torn
from Mr Deasys letters, he foresees Bloom who will pick it up in Nausicaa:
Who ever anywhere will read these written words?39 The same happens in the
recollection of Stephens dreams, which anticipate what will actually occur to
him later in the day, when Bloom, after rescuing him, will offer him his wifes
melon-like buttocks:40

Open hallway. Street of harlots [] That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid.
The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell [] In.
Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who.41

Not only is this a premonition of the atmosphere of Circe and Itacha, but it
also prefigures Blooms and his wifes fantasies about an affair between
Stephen and Molly.
In other places the theme of anti-Semitismsuggested by the reference to
the French journalist Edouard Adolphe Drumont,42 and by the recalling of
Psalm 137:1-2 on the exile of the Jews43anticipates oneirically the later ap-
pearance of Mr Bloom. Of course, on reading the book according to its actual
chronology, the reader is not aware of the such references as textual presages.
He is more likely to grasp similar connections only on a second reading. One
should be reminded, here, that second readings are indeed ways to read texts
backwards. Not only are second readings consistent with Joyces technique, but
they are also necessary in a critical approach to all kinds of text. This applies
especially to fantastic works, where the reader is always uncertain as to whether
he has to follow the natural or the supernatural order to things.

38
See preceding note.
39
U, 60.
40
U, n. 59.1, 964.
41
U, 58-9.
42
See U, 53. See Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses, 54.
43
See Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce. An Annotation of James Joyces Ulysses,
40.
176 Chapter Eight

As for the presence of Blooms wife, we do not find in the text similar refer-
ential allusions, for it is the episodes style itself that speaks clearly of Molly.
The Linati schema informs us that the technique is soliloquy, and in fact the
abundance of interior monologues which characterizes the chapter is parallel
only to Penelope. If we followed such a pattern of continuity in pseudo-
theological terms, we would be probably led astray by the subtle range of half-
blasphemous implications it hides. Stephen, the Son, would become the only
symbol of unity in the Trinity, from whom the other two personsa male and a
femalewould then proceed. For all the fascination of such a hypothesis, it
does look a bit too speculative, and therefore it is better to take it just as one of
the thousand possible interpretations of Joyces work.
On the contrary, other aspects like the formal unity of the third episode, or
its being a microcosm-like image mirroring the wider project of the book, are
less open to speculation. In fact, it is as if Ulysses represented the larger screen
on which the textual intentions of Proteus are cast as projections. Readers of
the episode encounter the coexistence of most of the main secret themes we
have previously spotted, like for instance a peculiar fascination for vampirism.44
In other chapters, Stephens vampire poem evokes subliminal allusions to a
kind of mocking Satanism. Such a theme is clearly connected with his own dou-
ble personality. It is an aspect of his character which always prevents him from
choosing between two opposite forces, like mysticism and scholasticism
(Scylla and Charibdis) or a saintly and a devilish nature (Proteus.) The fol-
lowing passage brings us back to some sections of A Portrait that suggest the
very same idea:

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy,
werent you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red
nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front
might lift her clothes still more from the wet street.45

Stephens ambivalent behaviour is parallel to the balance between commit-

ment and rejection, which makes him prefer rather unconsciously the ways of
the coincidentia as a means to try and solve possible psychological inconsisten-
cies. The third chapter is the very emblem of such a reconciliation expressed in
overture-like fashion.
The tension towards the reunion of the contraries is mirrored in the themes
that can be found in other sections of the book. These are for instance Blooms
reconciliatory and androgynous nature, his being an exiled man in his own
countrya condition much resembling that of the young Dedalusand finally

44
See U, 60.
45
U, 49-50.
 Occult Joyce 177

his half-unconscious tendency towards blasphemy. We have already analysed

the occurrence of the first two themes. Here we can take account of the third.
Bearing in mind the farcical correspondence of priest and eunuchs estab-
lished by Bloom in Lotus-Eaters, the following reference clarifies that
Stephen plays with a similar idea also in Proteus: The snorted Latin of jack-
priests moving burly in their albs, tonsured, oiled and gelded.46 According to
the occultist method, the coexistence of the same secret messages in the episode,
as well as in the book, allows us to define Proteus perhaps as the summa libri,
which has a higher status than a simple overture. In this light, we may propose a
first solution to the above-mentioned major dilemma of the Telemachiad.
Telemachus does not have relations with the body for the very system of corre-
spondences between organs and chapters does not apply to the first section of
the book, it being a symbol of unity and not of partition. In fact, however reveal-
ing the organ/episode correspondence may be in genetic terms, it does not pro-
vide an adequate response to all the referential as well as the structural enigmas
of Proteus, a most problematic episode in this respect.

The Centre of the Body

The second solution is perhaps more comprehensive. Stephen does not feel
the legacy of the body yet because he is not aware of its ultimate and secret
sense. As we will see, it could be argued that he has lost the knowledge of the
body. This conclusion is suggested by the almost obsessive recurrence in the
Telemachiad of a particular part of the body, which seemingly lacks a particu-
lar function in the logic of the organ correspondence: the navel.47 It is in fact
one of the keywords of the first part of Ulysses, as many critics have argued.
Still, it conceals also an inner secret significance.
A preliminary step is the question of whether there is any relationship be-
tween this part of the body and Joyces conception of organs at all. Of course,
the navel is not an organ. It is really a purposeless part of the body. Yet, by
ways of analogy, it stands for a symbol of a particular organ men lose soon after
birth: the navelcord. Then, if the omphalos is not an organ, how can we describe
it? Eventually, the first paragraph of Proteus provides an occult answer to
such a question in the reference to Boehmes The Signature of All Things.
Various commentators describe the idea of signatura as an exterior form or
surface, which requires the presence of a substance, or symbolic nature, as a
precondition to its actual existence. Boehme himself explains the concept as fol-
lows:

46
U, 69.
47
See U, 7, 20, 46.
178 Chapter Eight

The signature or form is no spirit, but the receptacle, container, or cabinet of the
spirit wherein it lies; for the signature stands in the essence, and is as a lute that
lies still, and is indeed a dumb thing that is neither heard nor understood; but if it
be played upon, then its form is understood, in what form and tune it stands, and
according to what note it is set. Thus, as the signature of nature in its form is a
dumb essence; it is as a prepared instrument of music, upon which the wills
spirit always plays; what strings he touches, they sound according to their prop-
erty.48

These words taken from a book Joyce held most dear happen to illuminate
the fictional method allowing him to conceal possible worlds behind words.
Words are signatures, and only if we play with them do they become alive and
revealing. In this sense, the omphalos is just a dumb signature, which through
the active role of the reader can become significant. It inevitably points to its
corresponding lost organ: What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing
navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining
cable of all flesh.49 Here the navelcord becomes the symbol of the possibility
for men to establish a connection with the past generations.
In other words, the navelcord is a fleshy cable, which should provide the liv-
ing with the means of an imaginary communication with the dead. Unfortu-
nately, the organ is destined to be lost as soon as man comes to life. Accord-
ingly, there seems to be no means of communication between the past and the
present generations in reality, although fictional narratives, as well as dreams,
can play with such a possibility convincingly. As Cope proposes, umbilical
cords suggest telephonic cords, and Stephens ironic joke is to call across the
cords of modern communication a plea of primitivism.50
If we take account of a precise reference occurring just before Stephen mock
phone call to Eden, the irony becomes even more evident. We should bear in
mind the correspondence between Eden and Eternity in Blakean terms, as well
as the possibility of a contact with Eden only in the darkness of knowledge. Let
us read the passage: That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in
your omphalos.51 In Lotus-Eaters, Bloom imagines to be gazing in his own
navel in the bath.52 In this regard, Maud Ellmann states that generally in Joyce
the phallus is supplanted by the omphalos, and that Blooms gazing in his
own navel testifies to his cutaneous anxieties, because the navel arks the point

48
Boehme, The Signature of All Things, 10.
49
U, 46.
50
Cope, Sirens, 236.
51
U, 46.
52
See U, 107.
 Occult Joyce 179

of rupture with the original maternal skin in which he longs to be re-

enveloped.53
The act of begetting establishes the primal relationship between the mother
and the child. The navel is just the bodily sign of such a relationship. In the con-
text of Proteus, the navelcord stands more generally also for a contact with the
people who came before us. It is a line of communication between past and pre-
sent, and accordingly the link to an imaginary ancestral unity of all the living
and the dead. In such a light, a curious kind of human non-spatial and non-
temporal way of communication between the present and the past is made pos-
sible by the signatura visible in our body. This is the meaning of the mystical
practice of gazing in ones own navel.
Accordinlgy, the omphalos is, in Boehmes terms, a signature which needs
to be played upon in order to be understood as form. In this perspective, an
occult alternative explanation is lurking in the shadow of the ironical remark
about mystic monks. Gifford attempts to complete Stephens broken sentence in
the following way: That is why mystic monks are fascinated by the navel and
gaze at it in the discipline of contemplation.54 In his annotation to the word
omphalos in Telemachus, the scholar suggests that some theosophists of the
late nineteenth century contemplated the omphalos as the place of the astral
soul of man, the center of self-consciousness and the source of poetic and pro-
phetic inspiration.55 On the other hand, Thornton reveals that gazing on the na-
vel is a typical posture of the devotee in the eastern religions.56 Such an explana-
tion displaces the meaning of the refererence, for it locates it spatially in the re-
ligious east in a way that is consistent with Joyces use of the theories of Dyon-
isius. Bigazzi, in an Italian commentary on the episode which has never been
translated into English, defines the occurrence in Proteus as follows:

It is an allusion to a system of doctrinaire and behavioural precepts widespread

among the hesychasts. Hesychasm (derived from the Greek word esichaios
meaning calm, tranquil) designates an ascetical/mystical monastic movement
well known in Byzantine and Balkan Christianity [] Through a cluster of devo-
tional practices, and through the gazing in the navel while saying ritual prayers,
hesychasts achieve an estate of ecstatic exaltation, which tends towards the con-
templation of the divine light []57

53
Ellmann, M. Skinscapes in Lotus-Eaters, 66.
54
Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce. An Annotation of James Joyces Ulysses, 33.
55
Ibid., 17.
56
See Thornton, 44.
57
Bigazzi, Proteo, 225-6.
180 Chapter Eight

Joyces subtle allusion to Hesychasm goes beyond the simple devotional prac-
tice of gazing on the omphalos, a discipline somehow ridiculed in the text. As
always, a cluster of remote meanings lies hidden behind the mask of Joyces
irony.
Hesychasm is not only a system of rules for the devotee. It is also a complex
theological doctrine, and Joyce seems to have been acquainted with some of its
peculiar teachings. In the introduction to an interesting study on the subject,
Meyendorff suggests that the term hesychasm is associated by modern authors
with the psychosomatic method of prayer, formally attested only in the late four-
teenth century.58 However, it cannot be reduced to such a curious practice. A
derogatory name for the hesychasts was omphalopsychoi, that is, people with
their souls in their navel.59 Meyendorff points out that their spiritual experience
is based on the distinction between the trascendent essence and the uncre-
ated energies through which God becomes knowable to men in Christ.60
Such uncreated energies are the necessary link to understand fully the
complex pseudo-theological system Joyce has occulted in Proteus. Lossky
explains that those energies are that mode of existence of the Trinity which is
outside of its inaccessible essence.61 Not only are they one of the dogmatic
principles of the Orthodox Church. They are also informed by the theories of
Dyonisius on the ways in which it is possible to establish a contact with the oth-
erwise unapproachable God. An analogous concept is implied in Stephens
mocking attempt to communicate with Eden by phone.
Besides, the power of the uncreated energies is curiously similar to that of
the kabbalistic sephirot, the divine emanations in which Gods power unfolds.
The contact with God, and therefore with Eternity or Eden, made possible via
both the uncreated energies and the sephirot, is mocked at in Proteus during
the imaginary phone call. The number Stephen calls is an odd combination of
numbers and letters. The letters are precisely Aleph and Alpha, taken re-
spectively from the Hebrew and the Greek alphabet. Accordinlgy, the first can
be described as a signature of the Jewish Kabbalah, while the second refers to
the doctrines of the Orthodox Church.
As always in Ulysses, letters function as signatures pointing to hidden truths.
One can imagine a final narrative overturn in Proteus. Although the episode is
crowded with surface references to the Catholic Church, as well as to the mysti-
cal and heretical tradition, what Joyce is subliminally talking about is the mysti-

58
Meyendorff, Byzantine Hesychasm: historical, theological and social problems,
without page numbers.
59
See ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Lossky, 73.
 Occult Joyce 181

cism of both the Orthodox Church and the Jewish Kabbalah. This happens
through a subtle discourse of inversions involving the spiritual sphere.
Such an interpretation, in an atmosphere determined by an utter failure of all
perceptions, makes us imagine metaphorically that only on the surface is Pro-
teus set in Sandymount. On the contrary, its imaginary action takes place in a
different part of Dublin, the Liberties, the area from which the midwives who
carry the occult organ of the chapter in a bag come from. Dean Jonathan Swift,
whose shadow in the episode merges into the ghost of Joachim of Flora, used to
live there too. Finally, it is where Joyce very likely had access to the secret doc-
trines of the Orthodox Church, in the stagnant bay of Marshs Library,62 lo-
cated just behind Swifts Cathedral. Actually, the library hosted many volumes
about Eastern mysticism as well as properly occult texts already in Joyces
times.
The tradition of the Orthodox Church continued to fascinate Joyce in Tri-
este. In a letter from there he records how he was always moping in and out of
the Greek Churches.63 This made one English teacher suggest that he might
have been a believer at heart.64 To such a charge he was able to respond that
in my opinion I am incapable of belief of any kind.65 Such a powerful state-
ment helps us see the two sides of Joyces interests in matters of spirituality: a
deep fascination for, and an ultimate negation of, belief.
However, aspects of the occult like mysticism, theosophy, and Hermeticism
became gradually instrumental to Joyces narrative. They underwrite his texts
and supply them with parallel discoursive patterns enabling him to frequently
mislead and fool his readers. Those secret strategies, as well as their representa-
tions through technical narrative devices such as the semantic overturn and the
occultist method are hidden beneath the surface of his book and wait to be dis-
covered by the reader/adept. Once they have been dug out and finally revived,
they show no legacy of commitment or belief, but rather point to a void perhaps
consistent with Dionysiuss divine darkness. It is an abyss which alone can
comprehend real knowledge for, as Joyce dutifully reminds us, darkness is in
our soul.
In the following chapter, such a ghostly discourse involving the categories of
religious spirituality will influence the representation of allegedly occult phe-
nomena pertaining to the characters unconscious. Through a visionary tech-
nique, the reader will encounter apparitions that on the one hand function as tex-
tual hallucinations, while on the other constitute real materializations of latent
contents already evoked in previous episodes. Accordingly, Circe will be seen

62
U, 49.
63
L, II, 89.
64
Ibid., 89.
65
Ibid., 89.
182 Chapter Eight

as the realization of many premonitions and presages, which turn Ulysses into
a sort of prophetic book.
 CHAPTER NINE

CIRCE

Circe has traditionally attracted more attention than many other sections of
the book. In the present context, the chapter is so revealing that it almost natu-
rally becomes the proper conclusion of the analysis of Ulysses from an occult
standpoint. Earlier on, I have described the actual final chapter of Ulysses,
Penelope, as a solution in psychological and narrative terms to the great book,
rather than the revelation of its secrets. On the contrary, Circe represents the
stage where its visionary intentions are realized at last. In a sense, one can
agree with Karen Lawrence that Penelope is a self-contained coda to the book.
The judgement is based on an analysis of the episodes style, made up of narra-
tive techniques strikingly different from those that can be identified in previous
chapters. They include the absence of the third-person narration, the unpunctu-
ated, unbroken sentences, and the representation of thought as if it were con-
tinuous speech.1
Similarly, Penelope shows also scarce connections with the rest of the
book in an occult perspective. It could be argued that one of the male protago-
nists, Bloom, whose nature is ultimately fulfilled oneirically in the ironical
achievement of androgyny in Circe, does not seem to need any reconcilement
at all with the opposite sex in the real world of Molly. Her universe is in
many ways completely apart from Blooms, which is indeed informed by a
mixed sexual identity. Blooms unconscious aim is to symbolize the Platonic
and Neoplatonic truth of the androgynous man. He is also projected towards the
myth of the Primordial man, the androgynous Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah.
At the same time, as Carolyn Heilbrun explains, Molly herself is perhaps
[] closer to a mans sexual fantasies of a woman than to a woman.2 The hid-
den message of her final drowsy monologue could well suggest a possible rec-
oncilement with the opposite sex, but this would have little to share with any
aim at a return to the androgynous ideal. At most, it could be argued that this
points to a tendency towards reunion within her own male self, her animus,

1
Lawrence, The Odyssey of the Style in Ulysses, 204.
2
Heilbrun, Towards Androgyny. Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, 95.
184 Chapter Nine

for, as Jung explains, in the unconscious of every man there is hidden a femi-
nine personality, and in that of every woman a masculine personality.3
All this is not to reduce, of course, the importance and the greatness of
Penelope, a somewhat self-contained episode, if you like. Although the last
chapter shows certain similarities with the techniques of other parts of the
bookespecially concerning the meanderings of the human mindit remains
quite independent from the rest of the great work. Suffice this analysis to say
that the the task of investigating Mollys mind in the last chapter could not
really be carried out from an occult standpoint, her universe being much too
linked to the more materialistic aspects of life. Bloom also displays materialistic
attitudes, yet they are so only on the surface. The representation of his uncon-
scious dimension ironically detaches itself from material life. Its purpose is
mostly to ridicule and secularize the spiritual sphere, which had been fundamen-
tal in the formation of Joyces background and character. Quite to the contrary,
Mollys mental wanderings, despite their comprehensiveness, have almost al-
ways precise referents in external reality and point mainly to a terrestrial dimen-
sion which has little of the occult in it.
A further illuminating feature of Circe is its inclusiveness. Like Proteus,
the episode resembles much more an image of wholeness than one of partition.
In Circe we notice the occurrence of many among the major themes and pos-
sibly almost all the characters already encountered in preceding chapters.
Kenner states that one is very likely to gather the impression that absolutely
everyone and everything in the book turns up here somewhere, animated by a
new and phantasmagoric life.4 He alludes to a certain relationship informed by
a microcosm/macrocosm logic between the episode and the book: As Ulysses
is the Odyssey transposed and rearranged, Circe is Ulysses transposed and re-
arranged.5 Rabat poingnantly sums up the situation in Circe as follows:

Voices are linked to gestures in a wild pantomime that generates the most deliri-
ous of hallucinations, while the themes developed by this staggering gesticulation
body forth myriads of symptoms all produced by an unconscious, a very peculiar
textual unconscious that can only be attributed to the preceding chapters of the
novel.6

Something similar applies also to other chapters of Ulysses, like Wandering

Rocks, for example. Nonetheless, the textual inclusiveness is also a major
characteristic of Circe, where to spot the coincidental presence of almost eve-

3
Jung, Collected Works, 284.
4
Kenner, Circe, 355.
5
Ibid., 356.
6
Rabat, James Joyce, Authorized Reader, 76.
 Occult Joyce 185

ryone in the book is even easier. Such a presence is, of course, suggested only in
oneiric terms. As we know, dreams are linked to time and space relationships of
their own. Such a spatial temporality allows even improbable coincidences of
events to materialize in what is perceived as an alternative and parallel reality.
This seems to connect the episode with Proteus in ways that deserve attention.
The two chapters, for instance, share some structural features of narration,
like the constant alternation of visionary and naturalistic interludes. Despite this,
it is not always easy to make a clear distinction between such kinds of represen-
tation in the fifteenth episode. What one is tempted to call hallucinations in
Circe often seem to merge into more naturalistic descriptions in ways that are
suspect. Kenner explains that the action may be subject to many small expres-
sionist inflections [] which it is misleading to call hallucinations. 7 In fact,
the critic believes that no one is hallucinated but ourselves.8 Such a view im-
plies that the border between the so-called naturalistic passages and the more
visionary ones is extremely transient and fluid.
Although such a systematic alternation of seemingly objective narration and
dream-like interludes links deeply Proteus and Circe, we shall not exclude
from the analysis some fundamental differences between them. These include,
for instance, the dramatic or rather pseudo-dramatic narrative technique of
Ulysses 15, which has no counterpart in the third episode. However, to say
that its pseudo-dramatic quality functions as a technique in the strict sense can-
not but create some ambiguities. Linati informs us that the technique of the
chapter is in fact vision animated to bursting point, while in Gorman we sim-
ply find the word hallucination. This is particularly significant in the light of
the interpretation proposed by certain critics, Richard Ellmann among the oth-
ers, according to whom the hallucinations of Circe resemble the dreams of
Bloom. Accordingly, all that he suppresses by day is by night allowed in his
unconscious. Ellmann explains as much in a poetic description of such a dialec-
tical relation between the complementary realms of day and night:

In the morning the sunlit world was credible, but now its devotees are asleep, and
those who still keep watch see its shapesanimate and inanimateas shadows.
The self is deprived of latitude and longitude, and becomes its own place, in itself
making of earth a hell or a purgatory. Form and reason no longer offer their help-
ing hands, incertitude and remorse having supplanted them. The eye confronts no
ineluctable modality of the visible, only unsought images of the invisible, lusts
and loathing from within claiming autonomous existence without.9

7
Kenner, Circe, 346.
8
Ibid., 346.
9
Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 140.
186 Chapter Nine

Such a view seems to fit also some dreamy plays by an author who himself
was very well-read in the works of the occultists: August Strindberg. In the ex-
planatory note to his A Dream Play, the Swedish writer outlines his literary pro-
ject in a way that very much resembles the effects, as well as the technique, of
Circe. To quote from it here may be useful in approaching the oneiric inner
world of Ulysses as is represented in the fifteenth episode, literally the manifes-
tation, or rather the apparition, of the books textual unconscious:

The author has tried to imitate the disconnected but apparently logical form of a
dream. Everything can happen; everything is possible and likely. Time and space
do not exist; on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins and weaves
new patterns: a blending of memories, experiences, free inventions, absurdities,
and improvisation. The characters spit, double, redouble, evaporate, condense,
scatter, and converge. But one consciousness remains above them: the dreamers;
for him are no secrets, no inconsequence, no scruples, no law.10

Such a dreamy frame as the dramatic skeleton of Strinbergs play also ap-
plies to a possible interpretation of Circe. Rather than a mere narrative tech-
nique, as the Gorman schema seems to suggest, hallucination is the effect at
which the art of Joyce aims. In fact, if one links the definitions we find in the
schematas back to the actual structure of the chapter, one is tempted to describe
it as a visionary or hallucinated drama. Such a perspective would establish fas-
cinating connections also with some aspects of the theatre of the Celtic Revival.
Len Platt argues that hallucinations, dreams, masking, fantasy are common
to Joyces massive extravaganza and to the Revivalists texts which he dubbed
dwarf dramas. 11 He explains that common features of Revivalist plays and
Joyces text are hero cultism, messianic traditions and apocalyptic visions,
whereas magical transformations, usually associated with pantomime traditions
in Circe criticism, are commonplace in revivalist theatre. As regards the fif-
teenth episode of Ulysses, the critic even proposes a parallel between Yeatss
Cathleen ni Houlihan, where an old crone is transformed in a young girl who
has the walk of a queen, and Circe, where we encounter Stephens fa-
mous transformation into Rudy.12
A similar view is most relevant also in the present context, for it suggests a
further link between Joyce and Yeats. It also allows us to reconsider the impor-
tance in Joyces art of the rest of the revivalists and the Dublin intellectuals he
seemingly dismissed by calling them derogatorily hermetists in 1907.13 Actu-

10
Strindberg, A Dream Play and Four Chamber Plays, 19.
11
Len Platt, Joyce and the Anglo-Irish, 18.
12
Ibid., 18.
13
See Introduction, note 46.
 Occult Joyce 187

ally, Hermes is one of the persons in the Linati schema. While the surface mean-
ing of his inclusion refers to the Greek Hermes, the dark Mercury,14 who in
the Odyssey advises Ulysses against the magic of Circe, a subliminal interpreta-
tion suggests that Joyce is also referring to Hermes Trismegistus, the father of
alchemy, and author of the tabula smaragdina:

MANANAAN MACLIR: (With a voice of waves) [] Occult pimander of

Hermest Trismegistos. (With a voice of whistling seawind).15

The textual presence of Hermes Trismegistus is here a signature of the secret

occult system of signification ruling the internal organization of Ulysses. The
kind of thought one may call hermeticbased on the Tabula Smaragdina of
Hermes Trismegistus whose main tenet is the powerful statement As above, so
belowconstitutes the very core of the law of correspondences. Such a tenet,
which in Finnegans Wake becomes the tasks above are as the flasks below,16
has influenced many philosophers and artists in history.
According to Tindall, it was also reflected, in literary terms, in the analogi-
cal correspondence between the sign and the thing signified,17 which is at the
basis of the theories of the symbolists. In such a context, the critic cites a line
from Yeatss Supernatural Songs, in which the poet refers to the Tablet.18 The
mutual use of Hermes by Yeats and Joyce is a further proof of a sort of imagi-
nary continuity between their works.
On such a ground, we may now return briefly to the distance between the
twin-episodes Proteus and Circe. While the occult referents of the third
chapter belong to different traditions of mysticism, Circe, with all its visions,
fantasies, hallucinations, and magic, has less to share with a pseudo-religious
dimension, it being much more oriented towards proper hermetic philosophy
and occultism.
As I have argued before, mysticism and Hermeticism are complementary in
Joyces inclusive view of the occult. Such a view materializes in Circe in the
occurrence of many among the secret themes already encountered in other epi-
sodes. Here their presence is, so to speak, transfigured, although it is much more
systematic than in previous sections. Those themes may well provide us with the
definitive answer to some of the fundamental questions posed by Ulysses as an
occult work.

14
U, 583.
15
U, 627.
16
FW, 263.
17
Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition, 28.
18
See Yeats, Collected Poems, 299.
188 Chapter Nine

Swedenborg, Yeats, and the New Era of Bloom

Neoplatonic ideas about the dialectic of the contraries and their final con-
junction according to the coincidentia inform the imaginary marriage of heaven
and hell in Blakes prophetic writings, as well as in Swedenborg visionary
works. This is also traceable in Circe, although mostly in ironical fashion:

Misters very select for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortu-
ary candles [...] Perfectly shocking terrific of religions things mockery seen in
universal world.19

Joyce portrays the final conjunction of the two dimensions, the terrestrial and
the heavenly, as a comical and clownish derision of opposite cultural and ideo-
logical hypotheses, rather than a mystical or intellectual achievement. He even-
tually makes fun of Swedenborg. Such a final mockery is consistent with the
previous practice of questioning and inverting the Swedes meanings of particu-
lar organs of the heavenly body.
A precise Swedenborgian organ correspondence is not easy to find in
Circe. The episode has in fact two organs, locomotor apparatus (Linati,
Gorman) and skeleton (Linati). Such confusion does not help us find a precise
connection with Swedenborgs system of relations between individual organs
and spiritual truths. As regards the reason why the Swedenborgian correspon-
dence may not work properly in Circe one can again think of two solutions.
Circe, like Proteus, provides us with an idea of wholeness well-
represented by the organ skeleton. One of the superficial meanings of the
word, according to a popular English dictionary, is a scheme reduced to its es-
sential or indispensable elements. The fact that Joyce used the term also to de-
scribe the Ulysses schematas is worthy of examination here. Let us try to apply
the mentioned dictionary definition to the textual dynamics of the occult in
Joyce. The indispensable elements may represent the obscure references of
the text, while the big idea behind them is the presence of a hidden scheme
informing the occult parallel discourse of the chapter.
The skeleton identifies in fact an internal dimension. It is the symbol of a
bodily secret, which will be revealed only years after ones own physical death.
Only when the external traits of ones persona will decay and become invisible,
will its shape come to the surface. It is rather fascinating to imagine that Joyce
might have thought about the same metaphor, when he concealed the secrets of
Ulysses behind some very inextricable nets of obscure meanings. One does not
need to be reminded of his famous statement about the years and decades pro-
fessors would have spent in trying to understand the meaning of his works. In-

19
U, 673.
 Occult Joyce 189

stead, we might take Blooms murmured commitment to the oath of the secrecy
of the Freemasons20 rather seriously here: (He murmurs) swear that I will
always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts21 The
passage functions again as yet another intrusion of the author in the text. Hence,
starting from the assumption that Circe may be a sort of internal counterpart
to the external body of Ulysses, we may draw a line from the technique (vision
animated to bursting point) to the organ of the episode.
Bearing in mind that visionary or hallucinatory states pertain to the uncon-
scious, it could be argued that a vision is something cast only on the internal. As
such, it cannot reach the minds of other persons but that of he who alone experi-
ences it. It is in fact a projection on the inner world. Thus, it becomes consistent
with the image of the skeleton, both in a thematic and in a technical sense.
As regards the second solution to the question of why Circe has not an ex-
act inverted Swedenborgian correspondence with an organ of the body, it would
be rather inaccurate to state bluntly that the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic
is out of the game in Ulysses 15. Actually, his shadow is diffracted into a fur-
ther subliminal level hardly accessible to the non-adepts. Such a phantom pres-
ence could be seen as a surrogate for the absent organ correspondence. A subtle
allusion to Swedenborg is made in Blooms mocking address to his subjects,
inaugurating the advent of the New Bloomusalem:

BLOOM: My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you
verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long en-
ter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hiber-
nia of the future.22

While the various commentators have rightly detected here all sorts of puns
on biblical passages and popular songs,23 the appellative Nova Hibernia
sounds suspicious. The occult reference is to a short pamphlet by Swedenborg,
which contains a survey of the doctrine of his New Church, as well as some
comments on extracts from the Scriptures. The booklet was published in 1758,
and is called Nova Jerosolima. It circulated in the English-speaking world as
The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine. A pocket edition of the English
version has been on the shelves of the National Library of Ireland since 1877.
The book begins with the explanation of what Swedenborg calls internal
reading. This is symbolically relevant in the present context. One might argue
that Circe, and generally speaking Ulysses, could well be interpreted accord-

20
See Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses, 377; Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce, 428.
21
U, 702.
22
U, 606. Italics mine.
23
See Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses, 377; Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce, 297.
190 Chapter Nine

ing to an internal and secret logic. In the context of occult influences, Sweden-
borgs internal reading cannot but remind one of Giordano Brunos internal
writing, that is, mnemotechnics. Bruno refers to the idea of internal writing
in the very frontispiece of his masterpiece on the art of memory, De Umbris
Idearum, i.e. On the Shadows of Ideas. There he tells his reader that the book
contains the art of searching, finding, judging, ordering, and applying. Those
arts are exposed in order to help us apprehend the internal writing and perform
mnemonic operations.24
In Bruno, the art of memory as internal writing is indeed a magical art.
Given the importance Joyce attaches to memory, and the fact that magic is the
art of Circe, one may suspect that mnemonic processes are here nothing less
than the very heart of Joyces narrative technique. After all, what is Circe if
not a magical/oneiric performance of textual memory? All characters in the
book surface there, as if cast in the big screen of the readers unconscious. The
organization of Circe resembles very much a mnemonic operation. As such,
we might consider it as the unconscious memory of the book.
The characters featuring in the episode take often the form of ghosts and
shadows. However, they are also, in a way, actors, performers, Shakespearean
shadows. No wonder that the echo of Brunos powerful statement umbra pro-
funda sumus, i.e. we are a deep shadow, which opens the book of memory as
Joyce undoubtedly knew, resounds suspiciously also in relation to Circe.25
The idea of internal reading is introduced by Swedenborg with reference to a
passage in St. Johns Revelation concerning the New Jerusalem:

What a man understands naturally they [the angels] understand spiritually. What
they understand is the true signification; and this is the internal or spiritual sense
of the word.26

As Kiberd suggests,27 in the previous passage from Circe concerning the

advent of the New Bloomusalem we should identify also an allusion to Blakes
prophetic books, and probably to the poem Jerusalem. In general, Blakes pres-
ence in Circe is detectable in the sequence of visions and hallucinations that
constitute the very structure of the episode. As we have seen already, the poets
ghost is frequently associated with that of Yeats, whose edition of Blakes
works Joyce had in his Trieste library. The works and some aesthetic theories of
Yeats may provide us with further illuminating keys to an occult approach to the

24
Bruno, Le ombre delle idee, 37.
25
The word shadow occurs some 39 times in Ulysses, and 6 times in Circe.
26
Swedenborg, On the new Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, Italics mine.
27
See U, 1133, n. 606.23.
 Occult Joyce 191

episode. Yeatss antichrist symbolism,28 evident in most of his major poems,

parallels Joyces lighter use, in Circe, of images of powerful beasts, devil-like
beings, second comings, and other apocalyptic metaphors. Moreover, bearing in
mind that magic is the art of the episode according to Gorman, as well as the
symbol according to Linati, a new interesting interpretation in the context of a
Yeatsian influence on the episode becomes possible.
Yeatss visionary aesthetic, stated in his famous essay Magic which dates
1901, is here useful. He professed to believe in three fundamental doctrines,
handed down from early times,29 which are the foundations of nearly all
magical practices.30 Such tenets are explained as follows:

(I) That the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow
into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, and a single en-
ergy.
(II) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are a
part of one great memory, the memory of Nature itself.
(III) That this great mind and memory can be evoked by symbols.31

These lines alone suffice to provide us with a useful key to understand most
of the oddities of the Circe chapter. They include some actual, though well
concealed, references to Yeats. Only a few of them are clear allusions. The first
is a kind of lapsus memoriae. We encounter it in one of Bests cues, which de-
spite its apparent casualness in the dialogue, appears to be particularly signifi-
cant and certainly volitional: A thing of beauty, dont you know. Yeats says, or
I mean, Keats says.32 Others point to the ever-present poem Who Goes with
Fergus? which first appeared in Yeatss The Countess Cathleen. In Circe it is
the ghost of Stephens mother that quotes from the poem.33 Then, it is Stephen
himself who, drunk at the end of the chapter, remembers a few scattered words
of it.34 A few lines down, Bloom echoes such an oblivious reciting, himself mis-
construing the order of the poems words and lines.35
In other places we find the shadow, though more diffused, of the early Yeats.
Take for instance the mentioned appearance of the Jester Mulligan wearing a
clowns cap with curling bell,36 or the description of Stephen as grown and

28
In relation to this aspect, see Melchiori, The Whole Mystery of Art, passim.
29
Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 28.
30
Ibid., 28.
31
Ibid., 28.
32
U, 627.
33
See U, 681.
34
See U, 702
35
See U, 702.
36
U, 681.
192 Chapter Nine

grey and old.37 The two occurrences might allow us to see veiled allusions to
the poems The Cap and Bells, from Yeatss The Wind Among the Reeds, and
to When You Are Old from The Rose, whose first line goes: When you are
old and grey and full of sleep.38
A further subtle reference is worthy of discussion here: STEPHEN: [] I
will arise and go to my.39 This, besides recalling the parable of the prodigal
son, may also very likely remind one of the first line of Yeatss most famous
poems, The Lake Isle of Inisfree. In order to take such occurrences not just as
mere casual coincidences, but as features of a bigger picture, we may reflect
upon the fact that both When Your Are Old and The Lake Isle of Inisfree
are included in The Rose, which features also the poem Who Goes with Fer-
gus? quoted so many times in Ulysses.
The Yeats legacy is also shown by dance, the science of the episode ac-
cording to Linati. Towards the end of Circe almost all the characters on stage,
the imaginary as well as the real ones, take part in a queer and possibly half-
macabre dance. This is described as follows in one of the stage directions:
Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link, each with
arching arms, in a mosaic of movements.40 In the final stages of Yeatss Rosa
Alchemica, a short story first published in 1896, whose protagonists feature
also in The Tables of the Law and in The Adoration of the Magiboth
works Joyce claimed to know by heartwe encounter the following poetical
account of a dreamy and visionary dance experience:

A half-dream, from which I was awakened by seeing the petals of the great rose,
which had no longer the look of a mosaic [] Still faint and cloud-like, they be-
gan to dance, and as they danced took a more and more definite shape [] and
soon every mortal foot danced by the white foot of an immortal [] While I
thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures.41

However, the major influence of a Yeatsian imagery on the episode is no

doubt the recurrence of powerful beasts, which create an almost apocalyptic at-
mosphere in an ironical dimension. As a matter of fact, among the persons in the
Linati schema we read the beasts. In a context such as the present, the differ-
ent animals which crowded Yeatss mature poems become relevant, for they
carry the message of an inverted second coming about to approach. In the poem
The Second Coming, written in 1919 and published in The Dial and The Na-

37
U, 682.
38
W.B. Yeats, Collected Poems (1992).
39
U, 634.
40
U, 679.
41
Yeats, Short Fiction, 195-6. Italics mine.
 Occult Joyce 193

tion in November 1920, the rough beast which slouches towards to Bethle-
hem to be born42 is the image that proclaims Yeatss apocalyptic aesthetics.
The beast is also the representative of the coming of a new era, the age of the
anti-Christ. In Circe, something similar happens in a seemingly casual refer-
ence to the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse.43
In Circe, an episode where the End of the world which precedes the sec-
ond coming of Elijah speaks with a Scottish accent,44 the man/animal transfigu-
ration is implied in the title itself of the chapter. Circe in the Odyssey is the en-
chantress who changed Ulyssess friends into swine. We might well take this as
an amplification of the animal transformations in Proteus. In the fifteenth
chapter, we find a predominance of allusions to members of the canine family.
We encounter a bawd with wolfish eyes,45 the populace described as a pack of
laughing hyenas,46 a terrier,47 an unspecified dog following Bloom,48 a re-
triever,49 a wolfdog,50 and finally a mastiff.51 The transfiguration continues
as Paddy Dignams spirit makes his entrance on stage baying lugubriously.52
He has the external features of a dog53 and claims that his new shape is due to a
process of reincarnation.54
In the Telemachiad the reader encounters the famous half-blasphemous
dogsbody pun, alluding obliquely to God. In Circe, the presence of such an
amount of dogs in so many different forms has a double explanation, and pro-
poses a symbolical dichotomy. On the one hand, it suggests again the mockery
of the divine through a process of inversion, while on the other it points towards
a satanic symbolism. The two spheres, the divine and the diabolic, are here
equally jeered at. They are the two counterparts of the same pseudo-theological
hoax.
In fact, when a dead hand writes on the wall that Bloom is a cod,55 we
cannot but be reminded of the mentioned reference to Christ in the expression

42
Yeats, Collected Poems (1989), 187.
43
U, 612.
44
See U, 624.
45
U, 572.
46
U, 589. Consider also the mythological androgynous nature of the Hyena: Thornton,
416.
47
U, 576.
48
See U, 578.
49
U, 580.
50
U, 580.
51
U, 581.
52
U, 597.
53
See U, 598.
54
See U, 597.
55
U, 616.
194 Chapter Nine

cod in a pot.56 Moreover, at some stage Bloom is hailed as the greatest re-
former,57 the messiah announcing a new era to humanity. When he is asked if
he is in fact the Messiah, he echoes Christs words in answer to Pilate,58 but also
Stephens previous mock identification with Christ: I thirst.59
Stephen is here also portrayed as one of Blooms subordinates. He is alluded
to as a spoiled priest,60 and a monk.61 He is also the son of a cardinal, Primate
of All Ireland.62 On the other hand, Bloom is described as a pig dog,63 and at
some stage murmurs with hangdog meekness.64 Since the word dog is the lit-
eral reversal of god, we may well spot a further occult connection here. Towards
the end of the episode, the character Adonai happens to scream first the word
Dooooooooooog!65 and then its reversal, Goooooooooood.66 This is inter-
esting in the light of the practice of Sir Ralegh and his atheist associates of pro-
nouncing Gods name backwards.67 Actually, a seemingly casual reference to
Sir Waler Ralegh also occurs at some stage, in the fifteenth episode.68
Just before such blasphemous screams, a character, Father Malachi OFlynn,
had pronounced the reversal of the opening of the mass: Introibo ad altare di-
aboli.69 If we put this in connection with Mulligans very first words in the
book (Introibo ad altare dei)70 we see a further reason why Circe has to be
considered the final act of the great work in occult terms. Anyway, it cannot be
denied that it concludes at least the subtle satanic discourse lying beneath the
text. In this context, the coexistence of the daemonic and the divine in the char-
acter of Bloom, within the mocking athmosphere of the fifteenth episode, can be
interpreted as the only real reconciliation possible in Joyces masterpiece.
Bloom is in fact not only a dogand therefore an imaginary inverted god
without a capital gbut also a marked man.71 We are also informed that
Beaufoys story, which had been misused by Bloom in the morning in the ab-

56
See my chapter on Lotus-Eaters, n. 48.
57
U, 604.
58
See U, 615.
59
U, 63.
60
U, 638.
61
See U, 638.
62
See U, 638.
63
U, 594.
64
U, 685.
65
U, 696.
66
U, 696.
67
See my chapter on Scylla, nn. 74-5.
68
See U, 601.
69
U, 695.
70
U, 1.
71
U, 515.
 Occult Joyce 195

sence of toilet paper, has been disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.72 There
is no need to explain the already-discussed association of the beast with Satan.
Instead, we may consider the textual occurrences linking Bloom to animal im-
ages, in order to see the bigger picture.
Beaufoy describes Mr Bloom as leading a quadruple existence,73 while in
the words of Mrs Bellingham he has the features of an ironically sophisticate
devil tempter.74 Furthermore, at some stage Bloom admits to the fact that he had
been a victim of a half-devilish relationship of temptation when still young. In
doing so, he murmus that the demon possessed me.75 Something similar hap-
pens in one of the Nymphs cues, where Bloom is portrayed as a joking Satan
who is eventually after the virtue of a virgin:

THE NYMPH: Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large stain appears on her

robe) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman.
(She clutches in her robe). Wait, Satan.76

This way of calling him Satan parallels Stephens drunken reaction when, af-
ter a box of matches falls from his pocket, Blooms picks it up and gives it back
to him. All that he can say in response to such an act of kindness is Lucifer.
Thanks.77 Stephens later attempt to celebrate a black massbesides providing
the whole book with a circularity commenced with the parody of a catholic rite
performed by Buck Mulligan in Telemachusmay also be considered as a
further act of submission to Bloom, whose connotation is ironically both devil-
ish and messianic.

Drama of Devils and Vampires

The references above illuminate the occult meaning of one of Beaufoys re-
marks referred to Bloom, a remark whose significance proves clear in the ironi-
cal context of the farcical satanic allusions that crowd the episode: Street angel
and house devil.78 A similar dichotomy, a mock coincidence of supernatural
contraries, is also alluded to by the complementary imprecations occurring in

72
U, 586.
73
U, 586.
74
See U, 592.
75
U, 659.
76
U, 662.
77
U, 665.
78
U, 586.
196 Chapter Nine

the chapter: By Hades,79 By the God above me,80 By heaven,81 so help

me fucking Christ.82
Other characters that share animal features with devilish implications are Li-
poti Virag and Bella/Bello Cohen. As regards Blooms grandfather, coming in
Draculas fashion all the way from some strange village in Hungary just to
haunt his nephews hallucinations, he gobbles gluttonously with turkey wat-
tles,83 howls,84 and finally shouts Rats!85 Some lines before, he had re-
ferred to Panther,86 a double allusion to the legend of the Roman centurion who
was said to have impregnated Mary, and to the animal that later will be associ-
ated with the vampire. Not only does Lipotis beastly appearance look half-
diabolic, but he also pronounces a powerful anti-Christian anathema:

VIRAG: (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage []) He

had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He
was Judas Iacchias, a Libyan eunuch, the popes bastard [..] A son of a whore.
87
Apocalypse.

Here the old Hungarian Jew automatically identifies with a sacrilegious being
invoking the arrival of the Anthichrist, who according to St. John will precede
the second coming.88
Similarly, Bella Cohen is also portrayed as both an animal and a devilish
character. Before she makes her entrance on stage, Zoe had warned ironically
that the devil is in that door.89 When she approaches the rest of the company,
Bloom, once devil tempter himself and now only adorer of the adulterous
rump,90 addresses her as a powerful being,91 and bends over her hoof92 to
tie her laces.

79
U, 589.
80
U, 593.
81
U, 613.
82
U, 696.
83
U, 632.
84
U, 636.
85
U, 638.
86
See U, 637.
87
U, 636.
88
About the biblical reference to the antichrist and the second coming see St. Johns
Apocalypse, I, 2:18.
89
U, 640.
90
U, 644.
91
U, 642.
92
U, 643.
 Occult Joyce 197

Up until this very moment, all that had happened was in preparation for the
advent of the great beast. After Blooms and Bellas change of sexes, Bello in-
sists on cruelly twisting her arms, while Bloom proclaims in her screams: Its
hell itself!93 It is not clear whether the pronoun it refers here to the pain she
is suffering or to the powerful beast causing it. A few lines below, Bello hap-
pens to curse his own infernal luck,94 so secretly admitting his hidden satanic
nature.
The possibility that all those references to a satanic dimension, no matter
how ironic, could be just mere accidents in Joyces text is rather improbable. On
the contrary, together with the black mass interlude at the end of the episode,95
they are part of a bigger picture. They very likely indicate the existence of a
subliminal occult signification informed by the principle of inversion, which
manages to change Ulysses into a modernist work of fantastic literature.
A further aspect of the connection between beasts and evil beings of the
chapter is the theme of vampirism. A link seems to exist between animals and
vampires in Joyces book, just as in certain nineteenth-century works by other
Irish writers. In Circe, we find three direct references, as well as many sub-
liminal hints, to the image of the vampire. The first is a straight mention made
by Stephen. It concerns a vampire man who debauch nun very fresh young
with dessous troublants.96 The second is a triumphant toast in French: Vive le
vampire!97 which promptly follows Stephens previous allusion. The third oc-
curs at the very end of the episode, when Bloom tries to wake his young com-
panion up, who still lies on the ground after Private Carr has punched him. As
soon as he awakens, on seeing Bloom he mysteriously groans Who? Black
panther vampire.98 He is probably thinking of his own poem from episode 3, in
which we find the image of a pale vampire. Otherwise, he might be still shocked
by the memory of Hainess nightmare the previous night, which involved the
dream of a black panther.99 An alternative explanation is that the blurred profile
of a black panther vampire might have been suggested to his alcohol-dulled
mind by Blooms face, which he sees after having recovered his senses. Finally,
it could be argued that the panther/vampire association has reached him tele-
pathically, for as we have seen, Lipoti Virag had earlier made a reference to the
Roman centurion Panther.

93
U, 646.
94
U, 646.
95
See U, 695-6.
96
U, 673.
97
U, 673.
98
U, 701.
99
See U, 3.
198 Chapter Nine

The latter option, given the totally oneiric encounter between Bloom and his
grim grandfather, would imply a kind of silent transmission of thoughts between
Bloom and Stephen via the ghost of Lipoti. This would strengthen the argument
of those who tend to interpret the accidents of Circe mainly as dreams of the
protagonists. It could also be an oblique allusion to the telephatic powers of a
master vampire, as happens in Stokers Dracula. As we have seen, something
similar occurs in Nausicaa between Bloom and Gerty.
One thing cannot be questioned. After Stephen has mumbled those dark
words, a particular mental association slowly takes shape in his mind. The im-
age of the vampire silently summons the memory of his own dead mother:

(He sighs and stretches himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels)
WhodriveFergus now.
And piercewoods woven shade?
[]
shadowsthe woods.
white breastdim100

The passage is illuminating. The surface allusion here is again to Yeatss

poem, Who Goes with Fergus? dear to Stephens mother. However, what
strikes the attention is the double track in Joyces text. While on a referential
level we are seemingly facing the description of a young man whose conscious-
ness is dimmed by the consumption of alcohol, a deeper level would suggest
here a new interpretation concerning vampirism. Although Stephen is drunk and
tired, and therefore cannot remember well all the words from Yeatss poem, he
who wrote the passage is in fact very lucid. What is the meaning of such a subtle
narrative technique, which plays with psychology and mental associations?
According to the present view, those scattered words occurring just after
Stephens mention of a vampire need to be recomposed in a logical order. The
terms drive, pierce, wood, and white breast are just hints to the normal
procedure for the killing of a vampire. Famous accounts of such a practicethat
is, to drive a wooden stick through a vampires breast in order to pierce his
heartare to be found in folklore as well as in literature. One should be re-
minded of the mentioned passage in Hades, where Bloom had been sadly
thinking of his dead father. There he alluded to the same bloody practice, which
according to him was applied also to suicidal people.101
If the corpse of Blooms Hungarian father might have been treated just as
that of a vampire, we are somehow tempted to see a parallelism in the fate of
Stephens mother. To sum up, the above incomplete lines refer to the dream of

100
U, 702.
101
See my chapter on Hades, nn. 10-1, 21.
 Occult Joyce 199

killing the memory of a vampire-like parent who comes to haunt the life of
his/her living son. Not only is the role of Stephens mother parallel to that of
Bloomss father, but, in the economy of the race, it becomes associated also
with the ghost of his grandfather, the Hungarian devil Lipoti Virag. It is he who
comes to torment the mind of his nephew acting in his fathers stead. In this
light, we may also understand the significance of Lipotis earlier allusion to the
Roman centurion Panther. It established a telepathic connection with the black
panther vampire imagined by Stephen, and prompted his mumbling thoughts
about an efficacious method to get rid of the haunting ghost of his vampire-like
mother.
But what could have been, apart from works like Dracula or Carmilla, the
folkloric traditions accessible to Joyce, which can be recognised as likely
sources for his use of such a vampiric imagery? A rare two-volume English
translation of a eighteenth-century treatise on apparitions and vampires by abbot
Augustine Calmet had been donated, among many other books, to the library of
the Royal Dublin Society by a Dr. Jasper Robert Joly, the one-time Vicar gen-
eral of the diocese of Tuam, Killala, and Achonry, many years before Joyce was
born. The entire deposit of Jolys library was intended by the Vicar to enable the
RDS to open a public library in Dublin, which eventually became the National
Library of Ireland in 1877. Since then, the book has been kept on the shelves of
the NLI for consultation. Its title is The Phantom World.
As early as the preface, it shows the authors intentions not to foment su-
perstitions, not to feed the vain curiosity of visionaries.102 Abbot Calmet states
clearly that he writes for reasonable and unprejudiced minds, which examine
things seriously and coolly.103 Such an attention to objectivity in the reviewing
of odd phenomena would have certainly appealed to the half-scientific mind of
the young James Joyce, a habitu of the National Library.
Calmets principal object is to discuss about the vampires of Hungary. In the
second volume, he gradually touches also on the vampires of Moravia, Silesia,
Poland, Boehmia, and Transylvania. His style, like Swedenborgs, is extremely
lucid and logical, though at times a little nave:

The revenans of Hungary, or vampires, which form the principal object of this
dissertation, are men who have been dead for a considerable time, sometimes
more, sometimes less; who leave their tombs and come and disturb the living,
sucking their blood, appearing to them, making a noise at their doors and in their
houses, and lastly, often causing their death. They are named vampires, or
oupires, which signifies, they say, in Slavonic, a leech. The only way to be deliv-

102
Calmet, The Phantom World, xxiii.
103
Ibid., xxiii.
200 Chapter Nine

ered from their haunting, is to disinter them, cut off their head, impale them, burn
them, or pierce their heart.104

A particular occurrence in Calmets discussion may support the hypothesis

that Joyce could have been acquainted with his work. A chapter of the book is
entitled Dead People who Masticate in their Graves and Devour their own
Flash. If we take account of the connection in Stephens mind between the idea
of the vampire and the image of his dead mother, we may now see in a new light
a passage in Circe where he had called her The corpsechewer!105 Much ear-
lier, he had used the words Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!106

Draculas Nightout
Not only might Calmets treatise on vampires be one of Joyces sources, but
it is also an illuminating documentation in relation to the genesis of Stokers
Dracula. Some hints in Circe happen to point to the existence of a very sub-
liminal Joyce/Stoker connection. First, one may acknowledge that Lipoti Vi-
rags provenance is at least suspect. Szombathely, which is located close to the
present border between Hungary and Austria, is not exactly in Transylvania, like
the place where Stokers bloody count is said to live. However, its position is
in the very heart of an area from where many vampire legends have sprung, by
judging on what works like Calmets book explain. At some stage, Lipoti shows
to have some knowledge of the traditions of the Carpathians: They have a
proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and
fifty of our era.107
The similarity between Lipoti and Stokers devilish count would not only be
geographic. Their haunting journeys westwards are also parallel. Certain lin-
guistic analogies in their respective manners of speaking English should be
highlighted. Kiberd remarks that although the counts English is excellent, the
fact that it is learned from books produces a strange intonation, and accord-
ingly in his speech grammar and words are circumspect.108 This could also
easily apply to his fellow-countryman, Lipoti Virag. Ultimately, just like his
father and grandfather, at a certain stage Bloom behaves like a joking vampire
himself. This happens when Zoe bites his ear gently with little goldstopped
teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic,109 and he suddenly draws

104
Ibid., 5-6.
105
U, 682.
106
U, 11.
107
U, 632.
108
Kiberd, Irish Classics, 385.
109
U, 600.
 Occult Joyce 201

back mechanically.110 Understandably, the bad smell of garlic disturbes him

immensely, and this could also point perhaps to a curious common ground be-
tween vampires and men.
However, the connection between Stoker and Joyce remains hard to prove,
especially in biographic terms. Apart from the already-mentioned reference to
Dracula and Stoker in Finnegans Wake,111 which is somehow reminiscent of the
weird night-out of Circe, there is no other proof of any direct textual contact
between the two writers. Despite this, at some stage in Circe we encounter an
interesting indirect link to Stoker, via the mention of one of his closest relations,
his elder brother. In one of Mrs Bellinghams bursts of invective directed to
Bloom, she drops a very important hint which so far has escaped most readers of
Ulysses: He closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stokers one sleety
day during the cold snap of February ninetythree.112
In this case, we can certainly rely on Tindalls wise suggestion that there is
nothing in Joyce that is casual.113 Such a general statement about Joyces art is
endorsed by many critics, like for instance Silverstein who, in a brilliant essay
on Brunos Ars Memoriae in Circe, argues that it is well known that Joyce
does not choose details casually.114 As regards the passage above, we should
follow an interpretation suggested by the mention of the year 1893, which points
to the latent ghostly presence of Bram Stoker in the episode.
Brams brother was one of the professors of Oliver St. John Gogartythe
model for Buck Mulliganand a renowned surgeon in Dublin. His transient
presence in Circe may appear casual at first. What is it that makes it signifi-
cant? There seems to be no reason for Joyce to be so precise in stating clearly
the space and time coordinates of a seemingly trivial event, especially in a com-
pletely oneiric context like the one depicted in Circe. Such accuracy in setting
the occurrence in a particular month of a particular year sounds at least suspect.
February 1893 is in fact a peculiar date in the organization of Ulysses. In that
month Joyce became eleven, the same age as Blooms dead son, who, as Ell-
mann reminds us, also died at eleven days.115 Actually, Rudys ghost appears
at the end of the episode just as a fairy boy of eleven.116
The connection between Sir Thornley Stokers and the month of February
1893, and specifically, given Joyces half-superstitious obsession with his own
birth-date, with the day in which he became eleven, February 2, makes way for

110
U, 600.
111
See my chapter on Nausicaa, n. 42.
112
U, 591-2.
113
Tindall, James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition, 33.
114
Silverstein, Brunos Particles of Reminiscence, 273.
115
Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 148.
116
U, 702.
202 Chapter Nine

an interesting discovery regarding the second organ of the chapter, locomotor

apparatus.
What happened on the day of Joyces eleventh birthday in Dublin? As the
Freemans Journal and the Irish Times both report in full-page articles, during
the sixteenth annual meeting of the Dublin Branch of the British Medical Soci-
ety held in the College of Physics, Kildare Street (just beside the NLI), Sir
Thornley Stoker had replaced Sir William Stokes as president of the association.
Stoker had worked in dean Swifts hospital. He was to have a long academic
and professional career, and was to become also Governor of the National Gal-
lery of Ireland. In relation to Circe, bearing in mind that the symbol according
to Linati is zoology, it is of some interest to know that Sir Thornley also held
the position of Inspector for Ireland under the Anatomy and Vivisection Act.117
This would help us explain again some of Mrs Bellinghams aggressive words
addressed to Bloom: The cat-o-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.118
A further example of the use of a medical jargon in the episode occurs after
a reference to the Russian scientist Metchnikoff, who inoculated apes against
syphilis.119 Soon after this occurrence, a character says: Locomotor Ataxy.120
This may well be a connection with the chapters organ, Locomotor appara-
tus.121 Rabat records how Joyce had confided to Budgen that the rhythm of
the chapter was that of locomotor ataxy. 122 He argues also that the organ es-
tablishes a controlling network that lies beneath the ataxia of the chapter.123
The Locomotor Apparatus provides no doubt a clear idea of movement.
On the contrary, Locomotor ataxy is a reference to a state of paralysis. In
medicine, it is the common prognosis that identifies the Tabes Dorsalis, or Gen-
eral Paralysis of the Insane. It could be a symptom of the final stages of syphilis.
In Circe it is Shakespeare who appears at some stage to be rigid in facial pa-
ralysis.124 As we will see, it could be argued that locomotor ataxy, besides
proposing a certain continuity with the message of Dubliners, stands also for a
further utterly subliminal allusion to Bram Stoker.
According to David Norris,125 rumours that the man who wrote Dracula had
died of syphilis circulated in Dublin soon after Stokers death, in April 1912.
The Death Certificate of Bram Stoker reads in fact Locomotor Ataxy. The

117
See Freemans Journal, (Dublin) 3.6.1912.
118
See U, 594.
119
U, 637.
120
U, 637.
121
U, 637.
122
Rabat, James Joyce, Authorized Reader, 87.
123
Ibid. 87.
124
U, 671.
125
Shepard and Power, Dracula, Celebrating 100 Years, 178-80.
 Occult Joyce 203

connection between the Stoker brothers must have been taken for granted by
Joyce, as well as by the people of Dublin, at the time of their respective depar-
tures during the same year. Both their obituaries in the Freemans Journal refer
to their family relationship. Furthermore, both include references to the fact that
Bram Stoker had been the manager of Sir Henry Irving. Curiously enough, Sir
Irving is also present in Circe with no apparent reason.126 It is not improbable
that, in making a reference to Sir Thornley, Joyce was also alluding to his more
famous brother. Thus, the reference to Thornley would become a textual signa-
ture of Bram, and also an indirect link to the underlying vampiric discourse of
the episode.
This would be structurally parallel to what happens, for instance, in the case
of the Parnell brothers in Ulysses. In fact, just as it would be hard to imagine
that the character of John Howard Parnell in the book is not an allusion to his
most famous brotherthe much lamented uncrowned king of Ireland, Charles
Stewart Parnellthe presence of Sir Thornley may well be a shadow of the
phantom of Bram, the creator of the most powerful vampire in the history of lit-
erature.
Through the echo of the obscure cause of death of Bram Stoker, as well as of
Thornleys ghostly expertise in vivisection, we may well be allowed to consider
locomotor ataxy as the ultimate secret hidden behind many cryptic allusions
in Ulysses. Furthermore, bearing in mind also the latent suspicion of syphilitic
paralysis hanging over the priest in Joyces first short story, Sisters, such an
obscure net of connections in Circe would lead the reader back to patterns of
consistency within Joyces literary career, a career whose first official step of
some magnitude was the writing of Dubliners. There paralysis was undoubtedly
one of the most powerful key words.
Through Ulysses a similar subliminal continuity could be extended also to
Finnegans Wake, a book where the complementary ideas of movement and
eternal return are nothing but metaphors of immobility. Locomotor ataxy is
the fatal affection of the organ of Circe, the most crucial episode of Ulysses in
occult terms. Accordingly, it is also the symptom of the ineluctable pathology of
Joyces visceral link with his own past, and with the hemiplegic nature of his
own truly eternal city, Dublin.

126
See U, 615.
 EPILOGUE

BEYOND THE OCCULT, BEYOND JOYCE

To read Joyces Ulysses from an occult standpoint is no doubt a risky option,

though a highly fascinating one. Such dialectic ambivalence mirrors a further
duality, which tells us a great deal about the relationship between the textual in-
tentions and the effects of Ulysses, that is, the writers dual attitude towards the
occult, which can be traced in the wise words of Stanislaus written soon after his
brothers death. Such a dichotomy, which involves the complementary catego-
ries of belief and scepticism, is a constant in Joyces character, his poetic vision,
and accordingly, his works.
Other critics have endorsed a similar view. Among them, as early as in 1965,
Silverstein also drew on Stanislaus as a very reliable source on the matter, and
commented on his recollection of Joyces dual attidude towards the circle of the
Dublin theosophists. He reminds us how Joyce was said by his brother to have
been sympathetic to a poem called Nirvana which described a state not of bliss
but rather of what mystical writers call vestation of spirit, and at the same time
how often he made fun of occultists, punning on their names.1
The eclectic and sometimes self-contradictory nature of the occult is con-
ceived by Joyce as a kind of psychic system embedded in the narrative. What
the present book has attempted to demonstrate is how his idiosyncratic attitude
towards the occult is imbricated in the belief/scepticism dichotomy, which un-
derwrites the text and characterizes the reader/text relationship.
On the one hand, scepticism is detectable in the great amount of irony, paro-
dies, and mockery concerning the occult in the book. On the other, belief, or
rather an oblique version of it, is traceable in the commitment to the knowledge
of occult matters, doctrines, and techniques, as well as in the plural herme-
neiaa process of multiple interpretations, or rather, possible translations
which Joyces writings prompt. Thus, the reader really becomes, as Newman
contends, an interpreter, or hermneus, a diviner of signatures.2
Conversely, the belief/scepticism dichotomy is informed by another struc-
tural ambivalence, a congenital aspect of Joyces temper and artistic inclina-

1
Silverstein, Brunos Particles of Reminiscence, 274-5.
2
Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 100.
 Occult Joyce 205

tions: his dual tendency towards the modern and the medieval. Such an attitude
appears to be also very Yeatsian. As Jaurretche explains in commenting on the
influence of Yeatss prose-style on Joyces critical writings, Yeatss prose also
points to the late Victorian interest in medieval heritage, history and hermeneu-
tics as an incipient form of modernist self-expression.3 She argues that Yeats
locates in aestheticism and decadence the intellectual antecedents of nine-
teenth-century medievalism and the forebears of twentieth-century introspective
literature.4 Such an outlook allows her to take account brilliantly of the rele-
vance of medieval mystical philosophy in the development of Joyces aesthetics.
A similar perspective could be applied both to the occult as a fundamental
aspect of medieval thought, and to its modern version in the works of more re-
cent writers. The act of believing and being sceptical at the same time is a fea-
ture shared by many modernists towards their own works, which left a mark
also on their inspirational processes. The two issues of belief and scepticism are
really warring contraries. They are the two sides of the same coin, and point to a
possible reconciliation. As regards Joyce, this may be seen as a modern transla-
tion of a much discussed medieval tenet of his artistic creed, the Neoplatonic
coincidence of opposites. Despite this, the reconciliation of contraries proves to
be only a precarious solution to the fragmented world depicted in Ulysses, for it
cannot avoid causing an overwhelming feeling of frustration and incompleteness
in the characters.
Since the present conclusions are mainly drawn from a textual analysis of
Ulysses as an example of occult writing, it can be useful to spend a few summa-
rizing words on how this critique was structured. A study such as the present,
accounting only for a number of episodes in the book, can be easily regarded as
partial. It can be argued that such a partiality is increased by the fact that my
critical journey through Joyces masterpiece starts with chapter 6 and ends with
chapter 15, touching only on six more episodes in what looks like an apparently
eccentric pattern. Accordingly, the present reading leaves out some of the most
important moments of the book.
With regards to the first remark, one can only say that every analysis of the
book has to be partial, given the infinite range of possible interpretations to
which Ulysses will be open for a long time to come. In fact, also other valuable
critical works on Joyces book have focused only on a selection of episodes. Se-
lection is a necessary criterion of all critiques, and of course is not per se a bad
one.
In relation to the second issue concerning the eccentricity of the present
critical wandering through the text, one shall consider that the choices made

3
Jaurretche, The Sensual Philosophy: Joyce and the Aesthetics of Mysticism, 38.
4
Ibid., 39.
206 Epilogue

here always follow an internal logic, parallel to an internal reading of the book.
It is in fact an interpretation of a cluster of hidden narrative patterns. The fact
that they are concealed beneath the surface is mainly what allows one to call the
book occult in the first place.
Properly occult themes and visionary techniques in Ulysses, taken as parallel
modes of signification, are also good enough reasons to suggest that the book is
an occult text. They are probably the most brilliantly concealed intentionally by
Joyce, between and behind the lines of his work.
Such a seemingly obscurantist inclination of the text is one of the main rea-
sons which justifies the great risk of leaving the Penelope episode out of the
analysis. According to Knowles, it is Mollys hand that rules the world of
Ulysses.5 The scholar suggests as much in a chapter of his challenging study,
where he presents Molly as realistically central in the dynamics of the book, to
the extent that she might be seen as the authoress of Ulysses in the sense that
Victor Frankenstein is the creator of his monster.6
The centrality of Molly is out of question here. However, the occult is a tran-
sient theme in Ulysses, which does not inform all aspects of the work. It be-
comes a real key to a hidden knowledge, a knowledge that fluctuates perhaps
too much to be encapsulated in any definitive scheme of interpretation. It is a
symbol of incompleteness and failure, and therefore all analyses of its textual
implications shall remain incomplete and open.
However, such open incompleteness may eventually take on positive shades.
It somehow prefigures the essence of what Franco Moretti, in treating Ulysses
alongside Faust, Cantos, and other great modernist works, calls failed master-
pieces.7 Fluidity and openness stand for the frailties of the human condition as
embodied masterly, for example, in the character of Mr Bloom. On the contrary,
despite the psychological fluctuations of her inner worlds, Molly seems to be a
figure of solid corporeity that finally achieves, or may achieve, whatever she
desires in a relatively simple way.
Here, Hamlets misogynist suggestion that frailty and woman are inseparable
entities is reversed, and could no doubt be applied also to Bloom, himself a po-
tentially androgynous man. In fact, at the end of the day he fails to reconcile
with his own opposite, whereas Molly seems to be able to reconcile quite hap-
pily with everybody around. Mollys corporeity is parallel to the corporeity of
Ulysses.
Indeed, the present reading of the text has been massively concerned with
the occult function of the body and its organs. The final acceptance of the body
in Ulysses is in fact a sort of rejection of its own opposite, that is, the spirit. It is

5
Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 104.
6
Ibid., 112.
7
See Moretti, Opere mondo, 6.
 Occult Joyce 207

rejected in favour of spirits, both in the alcoholic sense, and as pseudo-

supernatural apparitions, as happens in Circe.
In such a half-farcical context, one can certainly agree that Molly is the cen-
tral force in the book. And yet, in her ingenuous or rather unconscious attempt
to kick out spirituality from her own universe, she becomes a hidden power, a
kind of spirit herself, that literally haunts the characters, especially her husband.
Her reign is detached from the real scene of Ulysses, and this is why in the nar-
rative scheme of the book she features mainly in what seems to be a coda, al-
though a most revealing one.
One feels that Molly is somehow an absent presence in the chapters preced-
ing the last one, a bit like a god who, for those who believe, may be absently
present everywhere and forever. In this perspective, given the lay mockery of
all kinds of spirituality in Ulysses, to analyse Penelope from an occult stand-
point would have paralleled an attempt to make sense of the will of God in a
study on men who jeer at his very existence. Joyce would have hardly been the
kind of guy who appreciates such a hermeneutic hypothesis.
On the contrary, the abundance of diverse farcical versions of the spirituality
theme points clearly to his half-ironical half-serious use of occult notions. Such
a committed mockery on the one hand reaches as far as Christian mysticism and
pseudo-mysticism, while on the other it stretches towards the multifaceted uni-
verse of the occult as embodied in fantastic narratives. It is always and continu-
ously shot through with an invariable inclination towards ironical and some-
times blasphemous jokes.
Such a strange, fanciful, and absurd scenario is the visionary stage of
Circe, the final act of this study. The fifteenth episode is in fact performed by
hallucinated actors and grotesque spirits, all forming a sort of monstrous com-
pany of wandering players. However, we should not reduce the greatness and
the importance of the episode, a proper skeleton of the book, to delusional cate-
gories and vain visions. The use of ineffable themes such as occultism, vampir-
ism, and Satanism, alongside mysticism, is the signatura of a very serious joke,
which inevitably runs all through Ulysses.
Everything concerning the spiritual dimension of humanity seems to be at
stake. In this context, it is impossible not to see also a final powerful attack to
the religious system in which Joyce himself had been reared and educated. As
regards this, the final word is left to Stephen to say. In Circe he silently seems
to fling a major stone also to the Catholic tradition: Wheres the third person of
the Blessed Trinity?8
Some years later, the same stone may have been picked up by an imaginary
successor of Joyce, Flann OBrien. In The Dalkey Archive, published in 1964, a

8
U, 693.
208 Epilogue

character aims to clarify and establish Iscariot Gospel;9 another intends to dis-
cover the truth of the Jonas episode in the Bible; and finally, Mr James Joyce, a
retired barman who claims that he has never written Ulysses, wishes to join the
Jesuit Order just for the sake of expelling the impostor Holy Spirit from the
Trinity. The very nature of the Holy Spirit, he believes, is based on a philologi-
cal misinterpretation of the Greek word reuch, according to its Greek and Latin
erroneous translations.
OBriens book, which may provide us with a useful guideline to enter and
apprehend the very subtle, yet revolutionary, legacy of Ulysses in Irish litera-
ture10that is, the final rejection of spirituality as a whole, despite its age-old
cultural relevancemakes fun of Catholic exegesis, institutions and Saints, in-
cluding St. Augustine who speaks with an Irish accent. This looks like a mon-
strous comic debauch of religion. In the microcosm/macrocosm logic of Ulys-
ses, the catholic religion as well as the occult are the signaturae of the broader
category of spirituality, which is invariably the object of jocoserious jests.
However, such a committed mockery would seem to compel the author to
reject also a part of himself. Something similar happens to Stephen who, for the
sake of his own liberty, artistic fulfilment, and self-determination, is forced by
his own will to abandon altogether his mother, his family, his friends, his coun-
try, and his religion, as well as other spiritual or spiritualistic drives. After such
a sundering, symbolically testified by his own drunken non serviam in Circe,
we would indeed expect at least some forms of reconciliation pointing to a sort
of return back to a past unity. Alas, such reconciliation does not occur in Ulys-
ses. Perhaps, one will have to wait for Finnegans Wake to experience a further
mockery of a possible return to a state of harmony and reconcilement. There, the
hidden message delivered to the reader by the possible worlds of Ulysses, will
finally be achieved in the dreamy memory of a theosophic oneiric universe,
made up of words, thoughts, music, open interpretations, and indeed silent un-
derstanding.

9
OBrien, The Dalkey Archive, 71.
10
As regards the presence of Joyce in OBriens book, see: Clissmann, Flann OBrien:
A Critical Introduction to his Writings, 291-323.
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 INDEX

Adam Kadmon; 10; 160; 161; 183 81; 87; 92; 99; 129; 139; 148; 151;
Aesop; 87 159; 168; 174; 177; 187
Agrippa, Cornelius; 7; 8; 11; 15; 16; 81 Crookes, William; 66
Akasha; 64; 67; 73; 173 Crowley, Alistair; 22
Akasic records; 6; 11; 54; 55; 97 de Nerval, Grard; 130
alchemy; 7; 21; 66; 113; 124; 129; 165; Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite; 11;
187 15; 166; 167; 172; 179; 180; 181
Alighieri, Dante; 35; 80; 85; 163 Eliot, T.S.; 20
androgyny; 89; 103; 106; 111; 121; Freud, Sigmund; 18; 31; 73
122; 123; 128; 129; 147; 150; 151; Giorgi, Francesco; 15
160; 161; 162; 183 Goethe, J.W.; 109
anthroposophy; 18; 60 Gogarty, Oliver St. John; 201
Aristotle; 54; 85; 88; 105 Golden Dawn, Hermetic Order of; 14;
Berkeley, George; 137; 169 16; 20; 116; 142
Besant, Annie; 6; 12; 50; 51; 52; 53; Gonne, Maud; 122
55; 56; 57; 58; 60; 61; 65 Hermes Trismegistus; 11; 187
Blake, William; 5; 6; 11; 15; 24; 35; Hesychasm; 180
110; 112; 117; 167; 168; 169; 171; Hoffmeister, Adolph; 163
188; 190 Homer; 57
Blavatsky, H.P.; 1; 6; 11; 12; 13; 18; Huxley, Aldous; 7
19; 29; 35; 51; 60; 97; 110; 112 Hyde, Douglas; 93
Boccaccio; 85 Irving, Sir Henry; 203
Boehme, Jacob; 6; 8; 9; 11; 15; 25; 54; James VI, King of Scotland; 113
81; 117; 171; 177 Joachim of Flora; 10; 15; 35; 117; 181
and language; 34 John of the Cross; 15
Borges, Jorge Louis; 34 Joyce, Giorgio; 4
Brancusi, Constantin; 23 Joyce, James; 1; 20; 23; 25; 28; 35; 44;
Bruno, Giordano; 6; 11; 54; 81; 82; 54; 57; 77; 78; 86; 87; 88; 89; 90;
111; 190; 201 93; 108; 124; 137; 138; 173; 174
Budgen, Frank; 55 A Painful Case; 76
Calmet, Augustine; 199; 200 Ireland
Cicero; 85 the Isle of Saints and Scholars;
coincidentia oppositorum; 11; 54; 73; 167
76; 81; 82; 83; 105; 147; 148; 151; Sisters; 16
161; 176; 188; 206 The Dead; 74; 77; 110; 151; 152;
Colum, Padraic; 116 153; 154
Corelli, Marie; 113 The Holy Office; 90
correspondences; 7; 9; 35; 38; 41; 44; A Portrait; 7; 8; 11; 15; 52; 58; 59;
45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 53; 77; 79; 80; 114; 134; 145; 154; 176
218
A Portrait (1904); 9; 124
and belief; 104
and Besant; 50; 52; 58
and Blake; 169
and Bruno; 190
and Calmet; 200
and coincidences; 93
and Jung; 66
and letters; 17; 180
and religion; 134
and Shakespeare; 101; 104
and Sheridan Le Fanu; 94; 96
and Steiner; 59; 61; 63
and Stoker; 72; 145; 147; 200
and superstition; 12; 44; 120
and Swedenborg; 47; 48; 49; 50;
105; 107; 139; 154
and textual ghosts; 111
and the Kabbalah; 130; 131
and Yeats; 4; 10; 11; 117; 118; 121;
123; 192
conference paper on Blake; 167;
170
Dubliners; 16; 59; 77; 203
Finnegans Wake; 11; 26; 33; 35; 50;
55; 59; 73; 83; 94; 129; 145;
150; 154; 155; 157; 169; 187;
201; 203; 209
Giacomo Joyce; 167
June 16; 1; 2
occult books present in personal
libraries; 5; 6
occultist method; 115; 175
response to psychology and
psychoanalysis; 73
response to the occult; 2; 6; 11; 18;
22; 23; 26; 29; 36; 38; 42; 44;
50; 65; 68; 70; 103; 205
semantic overturn; 75
Ulysses; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 7; 8; 9; 10;
11; 12; 17; 19; 21; 22; 26; 30;
33; 35; 36; 43; 44; 45; 47; 48;
49; 50; 51; 52; 53; 54; 56; 57;
59; 62; 63; 66; 68; 69; 70; 71;
73; 74; 75; 76; 77; 79; 80; 81;
82; 83; 84; 85; 86; 87; 88; 90;
Index
92; 93; 94; 95; 97; 99; 100; 103;
104; 105; 107; 108; 109; 113;
114; 115; 118; 119; 120; 121;
124; 125; 126; 130; 134; 136;
137; 138; 141; 147; 148; 149;
151; 153; 154; 155; 156; 158;
159; 160; 162; 163; 164; 165;
168; 169; 173; 175; 176; 177;
179; 180; 183; 184; 185; 186;
187; 188; 189; 190; 192; 193;
194; 197; 201; 202; 203; 205;
206; 207; 208; 209
Joyce, Stanislaus; 9; 10; 15; 22; 29; 48;
205
June 16; 3; 120
Jung, C.G.; 2; 18; 24; 29; 56; 61; 62;
72; 184
and the occult; 65; 66; 67; 68; 69
the unconscious; 73
Kabbalah; 7; 15; 16; 18; 21; 33; 34; 73;
90; 120; 129; 130; 131; 142; 157;
158; 159; 160; 161; 180; 181; 183;
215
Kooti Hoomi; 11; 110
Leadbeater, C.W.; 12
Levy-Bruhl, Lucien; 130
Lewis, Wyndham; 23
Linati, Carlo; 47; 89; 90
Lull, Raymond; 15
MacBride, John; 122
magic; 143
Mallarm, Stphan; 155
Manganelli, Giorgio; 109
Marin, Biagio; 89
Marx, Karl; 134
McGregor Mathers, S.L.; 14
Mercadante, Francesco Saverio; 123
Michelstaedter, Carlo; 88; 89; 90
Miguel de Molinos; 15
Moore, George; 110
Moser, Fanny; 66
music; 59; 113; 115; 123; 132; 148;
149; 151; 152; 153; 154; 155; 156;
157; 161; 178; 209
Nicholas of Cusa; 11
number seven, the; 112; 113; 124
 Occult Joyce 219

numerology; 163 Stoker, Bram; 72; 145; 147; 200; 201;

OBrien, Flann; 208; 209 203
occult, the; 5; 28; 38; 40; 168 Dracula; 93
and literature; 29; 40 Stoker, Sir Thornley; 201; 202; 203
and symbolism; 41 Svevo, Italo; 89
as a multifaceted tradition; 6; 7; 8 Swedenborg, Emanuel; 6; 8; 11; 12;
as a parallel semiotic discourse; 30 15; 25; 41; 45; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51;
as the hidden; 31; 32 53; 63; 65; 75; 76; 78; 81; 82; 87;
belief in; 37 94; 97; 105; 107; 114; 117; 120;
in literary studies; 39 125; 126; 138; 139; 148; 154; 160;
occultism; 6; 7; 8; 14; 15; 18; 28; 29; 188; 189; 190; 199
30; 31; 32; 36; 37; 40; 41; 42; 43; Swift, Jonathan; 10; 126; 131; 181; 202
51; 52; 59; 63; 97; 109; 129; 187; Symons, Arthur; 21; 40; 130
208 synchronicity; 2; 90; 97; 120; 121
occultist method, the; 22; 26; 36; 42; Theosophical Society, the; 51
51; 56; 125; 133; 141; 142; 148; theosophy; 6; 18; 21; 26; 29; 50; 53;
177; 181 54; 56; 58; 60; 63
Olcott, H.S.; 12; 35 tritonus, the; 115
Papini,Giovanni; 89 vampirism; 21; 63; 65; 93; 94; 143;
Paracelsus; 8; 11; 23 144; 145; 147; 176; 197; 198; 199;
Parnell, C.S.; 78 200; 203; 208
Parnell, J.H.; 203 Vico, G.B.; 83
Pater, Walter; 155 Virgil; 80
Pico della Mirandola; 10; 11; 15 Weininger, Otto; 89
Plato; 85; 88; 105; 151; 153 Wilde, Oscar; 94; 102; 117
Plutarch; 6 Wyndham, Lewis; 20
Pound, Ezra; 42 Yeats, W.B.; 1; 2; 10; 25; 35; 38; 42;
Pythagoras; 112 46; 52; 55; 94; 97; 110; 111; 120;
Quintilianus; 85 122; 123; 191
Ralegh, Sir Walter; 113 A Cradle Song; 112
Rosicrucian manifestos; 17 Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop;
Russell, George (A.E.); 12; 20; 30; 35; 121
97; 109; 110; 114 Easter 1916; 116
Satanism; 21; 22; 63; 110; 113; 114; Leda and the Swan; 117
115; 132; 143; 144; 163; 176; 193; Rosa Alchemica; 9; 192
195; 197; 208 Supernatural Songs; 187
semantic overturn, the; 81; 87; 126; The Adoration of the Magi; 4; 10;
139; 148; 154; 181 192
Shakespeare, William; 21; 23; 79; 94; The Body of Father Christian
98; 101; 102; 104; 105; 106; 108; Rosencreutz; 16
109; 110; 113; 117; 128; 130; 153; The Cap and Bells; 116; 192
165; 202 The Lake Isle of Inisfree; 192
Sheridan Le Fanu, Joseph; 94; 95; 96 The Poet Pleads with the
Southey, Robert; 24 Elemental Powers; 112
Steiner, Rudolph; 6; 18; 19; 59; 60; 61; The Second Coming; 193
63; 65; 73; 113 The Tables of the Law; 4; 9; 192
220
The Wanderings of Aengus; 116
When You Are Old; 192
Who Goes with Fergus?; 191;
198
A Vision; 117
admiration for Joyce; 5
and imagination; 23
and Joyce; 13; 116; 121; 206
and Rosicrucianism; 18
and Swedenborg; 46
and the Golden Dawn; 14; 21; 142
and Theosophy; 20
Index
Cathleen ni Houlihan; 116; 186
Celtic Revival; 1
Dublin Hermetic Society; 1
Dublin Theosophical Society; 1
In The Seven Woods; 112
June 16; 1; 3; 120
response to the occult; 5; 11; 13
Reveries; 117
scepticism about the occult; 23
The Countess Cathleen; 191
The Rose; 192
The Wind Among the Reeds; 192