Introduction

The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the key to the afterlife. For them the heart contained the intellect, the imagination, the will, the personality and the vital spark of a person. The ancient Egyptians believed that the composite soul comprised the Ba, the Ka, the Akh, the Sheut and the Ren. W. B. Yeats was deeply concerned to arrive at his own Weighing of the Heart with a heart light enough to pass the test. Yeats' knowledge of the Ba appears to go well beyond the scope of Farr's Egyptian Magic. Many of the prevalent mythic rhythms that relate to the heart in Yeats originate beyond Egypt. In Egypt, the source of much of Yeats' deepest influence, Osiris, the archetypal mummy, had his sister Isis as a consort. The life and death cycles of these mythical gods are reminiscent of the myth surrounding the sun god Apollo, considered by the ancient Greeks to be the son of Zeus.