Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-W.B. Yeats

A Modern Mystical Analysis of “The Second Coming”

Note: This analysis is not an objective perspective on Yeats’ poem – you can find plenty of those elsewhere. Instead, I thought I would explore the relevance of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” to our current age, and to the future of humanity, as informed by mythology and mysticism.

Reading “The Second Coming” in an Age of Apocalypse

Yeats’ poem is said to describe the age in which he found himself (he wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919, just after the end of World War I). If we look at the trajectory of the world in the more than one hundred years since then, we see that Yeats’ view was prescient.

The very foundations of biological life are unraveling. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and over-extraction not only threaten the survival of our species, but of much of life on earth.

Terrible wars have broken out – again. The gap between the rich and poor widens. Fascism is being born across the world as people democratically elect those who wish to do away with democracy. Colonial violence threatens the survival of Indigenous peoples and their cultures. And all this at a time when we desperately need to come together to address the existential threats to our species.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Is this not an accurate description of the horror and chaos humanity has plunged ourselves into, and that only appears to be getting worse? As I write this, the death toll of a winter storm fueled by climate change is rising. A friend nearly lost her home last winter in an out-of-season wildfire in Colorado.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Yeats speaks of innocence as a “ceremony.” It is something sacred, something essential to the soul of humanity. And yet what parent in this modern world would not say that children are losing their innocence ever more quickly? How many children go through active shooter drills at their schools? How many are exposed to a litany of violence and hate through unfettered access to the bowels of the internet? How many more have become refugees, forced to risk their lives for a chance at growing up?

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It seems that the worst in human nature has taken the main stage. Politicians rise on the waters of hatred and division. Movements based in racism and xenophobia catch like wildfire.

The Mythic Meaning of Apocalypse

Let’s pause for a moment to look at the mythic dimensions of the apocalypse Yeats describes. Yeats’ poem reminds me of Rumi’s poem, “Love’s Apocalypse, Love’s Glory.” In it, Rumi says,

There will be no more happiness or rapture,
no more wound or cure.
Water will no longer dance with light,
wind no longer sweep the ground;
Gardens no longer abandon themselves to laughter,
April’s clouds no longer scatter their dew.
There will be no more grief, no more consolation,
no more “enemy” or “witness.”
No more flute or song, or lute or mode,
no more high or low pitch.

Causes will faint away; the cupbearer will serve himself.
The soul will recite: “O my Lord most high!”
The heart will cry out: “My Lord knows best.”
Rise up! The Painter of Eternity has set to work one more time
To trace miraculous figures on the crazy curtain of the world.

“Love’s Apocalypse, Love’s Glory” by Rumi, translated by Andrew Harvey

In both of these poems, the author begins by describing the abject horror of an apocalyptic scenario. But they don’t stop there. Both of them describe the chaos and horror of apocalypse as the passageway into something unimaginably beautiful and exalted.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The presence of such unraveling chaos must be a sign, Yeats says, of “some revelation.”

The greek word “apocalypses” has several meanings. One is “the lifting of the veil.”

If we are, indeed, living in an era of apocalypse, then it is not just a time of destruction. It is also a time of revelation. A time when the veil is lifted, not just from the shadowy forces of violence working within our world, but also in which the veil between us and reality thins.

At a time when we are seemingly farthest from our origins, could it be that we are actually closer to the center than we have ever been?

According to mythologist Michael Meade,

When the veil lifts, that’s when you see that the two things are happening at the same time. Apocalypses means ‘collapse, renewal.’ It means ‘uncovering and discovering’… We are in a moment where we can be pulled into the chaotic, collapsing part of things. And it’s the same moment in which we are closer to the thread which if we pick it up is our way of contributing to the reweaving of things.

Michael Meade

Both Rumi and Meade suggest that apocalypse is not “The End” of everything, but rather a necessary dying process during which something glorious is simultaneously born.

The Second Coming According to Yeats

Almost as soon as Yeats mentions “the second coming,” he tells us that he is talking of something very different than the religious establishment. It is not the reappearance of an avatar or savior, but something different entirely.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I liked what Poem Analysis had to say about this stanza.

Here, the Spiritus Mundi is the soul of the Universe, rattling in the wake of the coming apocalypse, delivering to Yeats the image of the beast that will destroy the world, and him with it. The beast will come, Yeats is assured of this, but not yet; by the end of the poem, the veil has dropped again, the monster is no longer, and Yeats writes that ‘twenty centuries of stony sleep / were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle’, implying that whatever is coming for the world, whatever monster, will be here soon. It is not yet born, but the world is right for it, and waiting for it, and Yeats is certain that the rough beast ‘its hour come round at last’ is only a few years away from wracking the world into a state of complete destruction.

Poem Analysis

Yeats, it seems, is predicting that time is up for humanity. That the “progress” of the past two thousand years was an illusion, and that in fact we have been careening towards our own destruction.

The Second Coming According to the Mystics

Though they reach different conclusions, Yeats and many mystics agree on a lot. This is where they agree: Humanity has created our own destruction. The supposed progress we’ve made has only spelled our own doom.

This is where they differ: Yeats’ poem implies that the doom we’ve created is simply the end. However, mystics of many traditions see another possibility: the birth of a new, divine order from the chaos. While it is not inevitable, it is still possible. And the chaos itself is the necessary precondition for this birth. Here are some examples of the mystical view.

The Shambhala Prophecy in Tibetan Buddhism

The Shambhala Prophecy from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is one example of a mystical perspective on apocalypse, and the global crisis we are currently living in. I appreciate Joanna Macy’s retelling of it.

There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. At that time great powers have arisen, barbarian powers, and although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common. Among the things these barbarians have in common are weapons of unfathomable devastation and death and technologies that lay wast to the world. And it is just at this point in our history, when the future of all beings seems to hang by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of shambhala emerges. Now, you can’t go there because it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the shambhala warriors….

“Now the time is coming when great courage is required of the shambhala warriors: moral courage and physical courage, and that’s because they are going to go right into the heart of the barbarian powers to dismantle their weapons. They are going to go into the pits and citadels where the weapons are made and deployed. They are going to go into the corridors of power where the decisions are made, to dismantle the weapons in every sense of the word. The shambahla warriors know that these weapons can be dismantled because they are made by the human mind. They can be unmade by the human mind. The dangers that face us are not brought upon us by some satanic deity, or some evil extraterrestial force or some unchangeable preordained fate. They arise out of our relationships and habits, out of our priorities. They are made by the human mind; they can be unmade by the human mind.

Joanna Macy in “ACtive Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In With Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power“

The Second Coming According to Evolutionary Mystics

Father Bede Griffiths said, “The second coming will not be the return of an individual avatar, but the rising of the golden yeast of Embodied Christ Consciousness in millions of beings to birth the Kingdom/Queendom on the Earth.”

Andrew Harvey (who studied with Father Bede), said something similar. “The real Second Coming will be the birthing of Christ-consciousness in millions of beings who turn, in the Father-Mother, towards the fire of love and take the supreme risk of incarnating divine love-in-action on Earth.”

Both the Shambhala Prophecy and the Evolutionary Mystic’s perspective rest on one principle: turning to Love or higher consciousness, and embodying that in action to transform the world.

Rumi’s Apocalypse

Rumi, too, envisions apocalypse as the harbinger of a world (or an experience) of unimaginable beauty. Following line after line about the chaos and horror of the apocalypse, he ends his poem, “Love’s Apocalypse, Love’s Glory,” with these majestic lines:

The soul will recite: “O my Lord most high!”
The heart will cry out: “My Lord knows best.”
Rise up! The Painter of Eternity has set to work one more time
To trace miraculous figures on the crazy curtain of the world.

Yeats and the Mystics

Yeats, it seems, had a starker view of the Second Coming than the mystics. And perhaps that is where they part ways. But there is a richness in Yeats’ second stanza that must not be missed. The stark view of reality, of destruction itself, is vital to the birthing process the evolutionary mystics describe.

Both mythologists and mystics speak of the transition from one era to another as one of great upheaval, destruction, and suffering. Both agree that the chaos and horror is the necessary condition for the birthing of a far more beautiful world.

Going Forth in an Age of Apocalypse

The last stage of The Work That Reconnects, developed by Joanna Macy, is “Going Forth.” After all the internal work of facing the global crisis, there is outer work to be done. We are to each find our unique contribution to reweaving the tapestry of life. Paradoxically, it is this outer work that sustains us internally, that gives us strength and hope to continue.

“There’s a song that wants to sing itself through us. We just got to be available. Maybe the song that is to be sung through us is the most beautiful requiem for an irreplaceable planet or maybe it’s a song of joyous rebirth as we create a new culture that doesn’t destroy its world. But in any case, there’s absolutely no excuse for our making our passionate love for our world dependent on what we think of its degree of health, whether we think it’s going to go on forever. Those are just thoughts anyway. But this moment you’re alive, so you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.”

Joanna Macy

If we are to face the global crisis with anything other than hopeless pessimism or blind optimism, we must each find our contribution to the mending of the world.

Carolyn Baker says that the most important question we can ask at this time is not “how will it turn out?” but “who do I choose to be?”

At this moment, there is no more compelling question than: Who do I choose to be in collapse? We will not always be the person we would like to be, but nothing matters more than returning repeatedly to the question—perhaps many times each day. That question, more than any other, will then determine what we will do in collapse.

Carolyn Baker

“What Rough Beast?”

I hope you’ll forgive me for going far beyond the confines of Yeats’ poem. I’d like to think that he wouldn’t have minded. After all, his poem does not claim to tell the future – it leaves it up to the reader to decide what will happen.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“The darkness drops again,” and we do not know what happens after that. He ends with a question. “What rough beast… slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

It is up to us to decide whether the “rough beast” is one of blind destruction, or of a death-rebirth process.