The Creative Void
type: CreativeWork
description: Yeats wrote in his Ideas of Good and Evil. “I have often had the fancy that there is some one myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.” Unfortunately, Yeats never pointed to a myth that might unlock the mysteries of his own action and thought. I would like to suggest this one, which I summarize, from his book. Mythologies: Olioll, a child of eight or nine, asked the Brother whose duty it was to teach children, "Brother Dove, to what are the stars fastened?" Brother Dove explained the nine crystalline spheres and said that "the ninth sphere is a sphere of the substance on which the breath of God moved in the beginning." "What is beyond that?" asked the child. "There is nothing beyond that; there is God. Olioll then asked, "Why has Brother Peter put a great ruby on the side of the box?" Brother Dove answered, "The ruby is a symbol of the love of God." "why," the child asked, "is the ruby a symbol of the love of God?" "Because it is red, like fire, and fire burns up everything, and where there is nothing, there is God." Olioll failed at his lessons and was deemed a hopelessly stupid child. Aengus the Lover of God prayed for Olioll and a miracle resulted. The abbot said, "Let us go to him and bow down before him; for at last, after long seeking, he has found the nothing that is God...”
abstract: Yeats wrote in his Ideas of Good and Evil. “I have often had the fancy that there is some one myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.” Unfortunately, Yeats never pointed to a myth that might unlock the mysteries of his own action and thought. I would like to suggest this one, which I summarize, from his book. Mythologies: Olioll, a child of eight or nine, asked the Brother whose duty it was to teach children, "Brother Dove, to what are the stars fastened?" Brother Dove explained the nine crystalline spheres and said that "the ninth sphere is a sphere of the substance on which the breath of God moved in the beginning." "What is beyond that?" asked the child. "There is nothing beyond that; there is God. Olioll then asked, "Why has Brother Peter put a great ruby on the side of the box?" Brother Dove answered, "The ruby is a symbol of the love of God." "why," the child asked, "is the ruby a symbol of the love of God?" "Because it is red, like fire, and fire burns up everything, and where there is nothing, there is God." Olioll failed at his lessons and was deemed a hopelessly stupid child. Aengus the Lover of God prayed for Olioll and a miracle resulted. The abbot said, "Let us go to him and bow down before him; for at last, after long seeking, he has found the nothing that is God...”
author: Paisley, Carol Williamson
keywords: Humanities, Arts and Humanities
date published: 1976-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:05:59Z
provider: Dominican University of California
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Dominican University of California