Maggs Bros Ltd. Rare Books, Manuscripts, Autographs and first editions.

Written in March, 1901, and Given to the Adepti of the Order of R.R. & A.C. in April, 1901. First edition. 8vo., original brown printed paper wrappers, uncut. April,

The most celebrated of the printed relics of Yeats' long involvement with the Order of the Golden Dawn (the mystical Rosicrucian movement with links to Freemasonry), of which the "Rubidae Rosae & Aureae Crusis" of the title was a section. There can be no more marked illustration of the differences between our times and those the young Yeats lived in than that of the influence of this secretive and strange movement. Although it claimed great antiquity, it was probably founded in the late 1880's. Its most prominent member was Macgregor Mathers, a man seriously committed to the occult and famous for having offered masses to the goddess Isis in Paris and later losing his life "as the result of a psychic duel with Aleister Crowley, a former disciple, during the first world war" (Ellman). Yeats was a fully fledged member, attaining the "inner order" of the Golden Dawn, adopting the name "Demon Est Deus Inversus", usually abbreviated to D.E.D.I. under which name this pamphlet was written, with an "imprint" of "In the Mountain of Abiegnos". Despite the opposition or at least suspicion of many of Yeats' friends, he was not discouraged, and, in the unpublished first draft of Autobiographies described the movement as the chief influence upon his thought up to perhaps his fortieth year. An excellent copy, with some foxing to the first leaf and the overlapping edges of the wrappers a little crumpled. Loosely inserted is a note on his personal card by Colin Smythe asserting that "This Copy of Is the Order of R.R. & A.C. to Reman a Magical Order belonged to W.B. Yeats."

YEATS, W.B. as "D.E.D.I." Stock Code: MO38818