Phase Four


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The attributes of the Faculties when Will is at Phase 4derived frommodified byfromdescription
Will Desire for exterior world 4
MaskTrue Passion 18BF 26 Enforced disillusionment
False Will CM 12 Emotional philosophy
Creative MindTrue First perception of character 26BF 18 The Hunchback
False Mutilation FCM 4 Fascination of sin
Body of Fate Search 12
Composite of Faculties
trueDesire for the exterior world seeks to deliver first perception of character, modified by the Hunchback, from passion, modified by enforced disillusionment, with the help of search.
falseDesire for the exterior world is misdirected into mutilation, modified by fascination of sin, bringing will, modified by emotional philosophy, separated from search.
The disposition of the FacultiesAttributes of Phase 4affectsmodifies
Will Desire for primary objects 4-
MaskT: Intensity through emotions
F: Curiosity
18-
Creative MindT: Beginning of the abstract supersensual
F: Fascination of sin
26 12 TM

4 FCM
Body of Fate Enforced intellectual action 12 18 FCM
26 TM

See AV B 109-10 & 96.


‘An old hunter talking with gods’ (from Browning’s Pauline, a favourite line quoted in Preface to Gods and Fighting Men, Introduction to Bishop Berkeley and ‘Are You Content’)


Yeats’s description of the phase from A Vision

When out of phase he attempts antithetical wisdom (for reflection has begun), separates himself from instinct (hence 'mutilation'), and tries to enforce upon himself and others all kinds of abstract or conventional ideas which are for him, being outside his experience, mere make-believe. Lacking antithetical capacity, and primary observation, he is aimless and blundering, possesses nothing except the knowledge that there is something known to others that is not mere instinct. True to phase, his interest in everything that happens, in all that excites his instinct ('search'), is so keen that he has no desire to claim anything for his own will; nature still dominates his thought as passion; yet instinct grows reflective. He is full of practical wisdom, a wisdom of saws and proverbs, or founded upon concrete examples. He can see nothing beyond sense, but sense expands and contracts to meet his needs, and the needs of those who trust him. It is as though he woke suddenly out of sleep and thereupon saw more and remembered more than others. He has 'the wisdom of instinct', a wisdom perpetually excited by all those hopes and needs which concern his well-being or that of the race (Creative Mind from Phase 12 and so acting from whatever in race corresponds to personality unified in thought). The men of the opposite phase, or of the phases nearly opposite, worn out by a wisdom held with labour and uncertainty, see persons of this phase as images of peace. Two passages of Browning come to mind:

An old hunter, talking with gods
Or sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.



A King lived long ago,
In the morning of the world,
When Earth was nigher Heaven than now:
And the King's locks curled,
Disparting o'er a forehead full
As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn
Of some sacrificial bull –
Only calm as a babe new-born:
For he was got to a sleepy mood,
So safe from all decrepitude,
From age with its bane, so sure gone by,
(The Gods so loved him while he dreamed)
That, having lived thus long, there seemed
No need the King should ever die.

(AV B 109-10)


Symbol of Phase 4: ‘figure climbing pine to grasp stars’ (see YVP 3 400-01)

See a broader view of the Phase in the consideration of the Phase Triads.


The Faculties

The Wheel

Geometry

The Phases in History

Terminology


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