⢠Decodes the alchemical, Qabalistic, hermetic, spiritual, and Tarot-related references in many of Plathâs poems
⢠Based on more than 15 years of research, including analysis of Plathâs unpublished personal writings from the Plath archives at Indiana University
⢠Examines the influences of Plathâs parents, her early interests in Hermeticism, and her and husband Ted Hughesâs explorations in the supernatural and the occult
Sharing her more than 15 years of compelling researchâincluding analysis of Sylvia Plathâs unpublished calendars, notebooks, scrapbooks, book annotations, and underlinings as well as published memoirs, biographies, letters, journals, and interviews with Plath and her husband, friends, and familyâPlath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals Sylvia Plathâs enduring interest and active practice in mysticism and the occult from childhood until her tragic death in 1963. She examines Plathâs early years growing up in a transcendentalist Unitarian church under a brilliant, if stern, Freemason father and a mother who wrote her masterâs dissertation on the famous alchemist Paracelsus. She reveals Plathâs early knowledge of Hermeticism, how she devoured books on the occult throughout her life, and how, since adolescence, Plath regularly wrote of premonitory dreams. Examining Plathâs tumultuous marriage with poet Ted Hughes, she looks at their explorations in the supernatural and Hughesâs mentoring of Plath in meditation, crystal-gazing, astrology, Qabalah, tarot, automatic writing, magical workings, and use of the Ouija board.
Looking at Plathâs writing and her evolution as a person through mystical, political, personal, and historical lenses, Gordon-Bramer shows how Plathâs poems take on radically new, surprising, and universal meaningsâexplaining why Hughes perpetually denied that Plath was a âconfessional poet.â Contrasting the versions in Letters Home with those held in the Plath archives at Indiana University, the author also shows how all occult influences have been rigorously excised from the letters approved for publication by the Plath and Hughes estates. Revealing previously undiscovered meanings deeply rooted in her mystical and occult endeavors, the author shows how Plathâs writings are much broader than the narrow lens of her tragic autobiography.