Y-Kim, Book of : A Chinese mystical book attributed to the Emperor Fo-Hi, and ascribed to the year, 1468 B.C. It consists of ten chapters, and is stated by Eliphas Levi in his History of Magic to be a complement and an appendix to the Kabalistic Zohar, or record of the utterances of Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai. The Zohar, says Levi, explains universal equilibrium, and the Y-Kim is the hieroglyphic and ciphered demonstration thereof. The key to the Y-Kim is a pantacle known as the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. In the Vay-Ky of Leon-Tao-Yuen, composed in the Som dynasty (about eleventh century) it is recounted that the Emperor Fo-Hi was one day seated on the banks of a river, deep in meditation, when to him there appeared an animal having the parts of both a horse and a dragon. Its back was covered with scales, on each of which shone the mystic Trigrammic symbol. This animal initiated the just and righteous Fo-Hi into universal science. Numbering its scales, he combined the Trigrams in such a manner that there arose in his mind a synthesis of sciences compared and united with one another through the harmonies of nature. From this synthesis sprang the tables of the Y-Kim. The numbers of Fo-Hi are identical with those of the Kabala, and his pantacle is similar to that of Solomon. His tables are in correspondence with the subject-matter of the Sephir Yetzirah and the Zohar. The whole is a commentary upon the Absolute which is concealed from the profane, concludes Levi, but as he had little real acquaintance with the subject, these analogies must be taken as of small value.

Yadachi : or weather conjurer: (See Siberia.)

Yadageri : the science of inducing rain and snow by means of enchantment. (See Siberia.)

Yaksha or Jak : A species of Indian fiend or imp. Says Mr. Crookes : " The Jak is the modern representative of the Yaksha, who in better times was the attendant of Kuvera, the god of wealth, in which duty he was assisted by the Guhyaka. The character of the Yaksha is not very certain. He was called Punya-janas, "the good people," but he sometimes appears as an imp of evil. In the folk-tales, it must be admitted, the Yakshas have an equivocal reputation. In one story the female, or Yahshini, bewilders travellers at night, makes horns grow on their foreheads, and finally devours them; in another the Yakshas have, like the Churel, feet turned the wrong way and squinting eyes; in a third they separate the hero from the heroine because he failed to make due offerings to them on his wedding day. On the other hand, in a fourth tale the Yakshini is described as possessed of heavenly beauty; she appears again when a sacrifice is made in a cemetery to get her into the hero's power, as a heavenly maiden beautifully adorned, seated in a chariot of gold surrounded by lovely girls; and lastly, a Brahman meets some Buddhist ascetics, performs the Uposhana vow, and would have become a god, had it not been that a wicked man compelled him by force to take food in the evening, and so he was re-born as a Guhyaha.

"In the modern folk-lore of Kashmir, the Yaksha has turned into the Yech or Yach, a humorous, though powerful, sprite in the shape of a civet cat of a dark colour, with a white cap on his head. This small high cap is one of the marks of the Irish fairies, and the Incubones of Italy wear caps, ' the symbols of their hidden, secret natures. The feet of the Yech are so small as to be almost invisible, and it squeaks in a feline way. It can assume any shape, and if its white cap can be secured, it becomes the servant of the possessor, and the white cap makes him invisible.

"In the Vishnu Purana we read that Vishnu created the Yaks has as beings emaciate with hunger, of hideous aspect, and with big beards, and that from their habit of crying for food they were so named. By the Buddhists they were regarded as benignant spirits. One of them acts as sort of chorus in the Meghaduta or ‘Cloud Messenger ' of Kalidasa. Yet we read of the Yaka Alawaka, who, according to the Buddhist legend, used to live in a Banyan tree, and slay any one who approached it; while in Ceylon they are represented as demons whom Buddha destroyed. In later Hinduism they are generally of fair repute, and one of them was appointed by Indra to be the attendant of the Jaina Saint Mahavira."

Yauhahu : A spirit. (See American Indians.)

Yeats, William Butler : Irish Author and Mystic. William Butler Yeats was born at Dublin in 1866, his father being John Yeats, a talented portrait-painter whose works include a fine likeness of Synge; and during his boyhood the future author lived chiefly at his native town, and occasionally with his grandparents in County Sligo. At first he intended to make painting his life's work, and accordingly he entered the Dublin Art School; but he soon left it, having realised that his true bent was for Literature; and in 1887 he went to London, where he became intimate with Mr. Arthur Symons, and subsequently with Mr. George Moore. Prior to this Mr. Yeats had issued a little play, Mosada; and now his gifts began to develop apace, the result being sundry volumes of beautiful poetry, notably The' Wanderings of Oisin and The Wind among the' Reeds. At this time, also, the author began to show himself an eminently thoughtful critic of literature ; while in 1870 he published a collection of Irish folk tales, and in the preface thereto he observed in relation to his compatriots that "a true literary consciousness-national to the centre-seems gradually to be forming out of all this disguising and prettyfing this penumbra of half-culture. We are preparing likely enough for a new Irish literary movement." Nor was the prophecy unfulfilled, for, during the closing decade of the 19th century, the intellectuals of Ireland began to manifest a tense interest in their country's legendary lore, while simultaneously it transpired that the rising generation of writers in Ireland included many men of fine promise. Most of these last regarded Mr. Yeats as their leader, they rallied round him, he returned from London to Ireland, and anon he achieved the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin, its raison d'etre being the staging of plays by the new school of Hibernian authors.

This is not the place to detail the Irish artistic revival of the nineties of last century, and the reader may be referred to the monograph thereon by Mr. H. S. Krans, and more especially to Mr. George Moores' Hail and Farewell. Passing to speak of Mr. Yeats' contributions to the literature of Mysticism, these are mostly contained in a volume of collected essays, Ideas of Good and Evil; and prominent among them are studies of the mystic element in Blake and Shelley, while another notable paper is one concerned with "The Body of the Father Christian Rosencrux." But still more important than these, perhaps, is a long study of "Magic," contained in the same volume, and here the author begins by bravely stating his creed " I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, and what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed

After this declaration he tells how once an acquaintance of his, gathering together a small party in a darkened room, held a mace over" a tablet of many coloured squares, at the same time repeating "a form of words " ; and straightway Mr. Yeats found that his" imagination began to move of itself, and to bring before me vivid images. He goes on to descant on these visions, while in the remainder of his essay he offers some details about superstitions in remote parts of Ireland ; and also furnishes sundry examples of thought-transmission and the like, most of them fresh and interesting.

But the author's interest in the supernatural does not transpire only in his prose, and, turning to his poems, one finds them permeated by a curious kind of mysticism which is perhaps essentially Celtic. For Mr. Yeats, it would seem, is only incidentally interested in holding communications with the dead, or with the spirit-world ; yet, like old bards of his native Ireland, he seems to find inanimate nature a living reality, he seems to have a strange intimacy therewith. A dreamer of dreams and a beholder of visions, he frequently crystalises these in his verse ; but the mystic element in his output consists pre-eminently in this, that he appears to hold actual converse with all those things which to ordinary men are no more than lifeless with. flowers and trees, with rivers, lakes and mountains. W.G. B. M.

Yoga : meaning " union," is applied in theosophy to assistance rendered to evolutionary process. The theosophical idea of evolution postulates a universal consciousness from which particular consciousness has come and to which each is returning along the path of evolution. The journey along this path can be quickened by the Yoga, the union of each particular with the universal consciousness. By the concentration of thought on any particular idea, that idea, in course of time becomes worked into the constitution of the thinker, so that, if the thought be good he will correspondingly help on the process of evolution. This general principle, applied in the light of past experience to the multifarious activities of the human mind, is of vast importance and influence in the moulding of the characters both of individuals and communities.

(See The Path, Karma, Theosophy.)

Yogis (See India.)

Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph : Spiritualistic Journal. (See Spiritualism.)

Young, Brigham : (See America U.S. of.)