W.B. Yeats not only was one of the towering poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; he was a fervent devotee of magic, esotericism, and the occult. Jamie James explains the connection:
[H]ow could this supremely disciplined poet, a Nobel laureate, the founder and first director of the Abbey Theatre, a senator of the Irish Free State, ever have attached himself to such transparently bogus cults? Specifically, why would this undoubted genius dismiss the "fraud theory” about Madame Blavatsky after the debunking she had received in Madras? … No one reads the poetry of Yeats for its lucid logic; he despised rationalism. The principal source of Yeats’ power as a poet was his fabulous rhetorical gift. From the beginning he could turn an unforgettable phrase as deftly as a ballet dancer takes a leap. He devoutly believed that words were magic charms, endowed with an innate, transcendent power to raise poet and reader directly into a higher realm, just as the dancer may believe that the music lifts him soaring from the stage.
The Dish 