Sander Oosterom, PhD

Magical Ireland

The land of heart's desire

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,

For I would ride with you upon the wind,

Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,

And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

- William Butler Yeats -

Magical Ireland: The land of heart's desire

This pilgrimage is shaped around the poetic and mythological vision of W.B. Yeats — a vision in which Ireland is not merely a country, but a land of enduring mythic presence.

Yeats described his homeland as the land of heart’s desire: a place toward which the soul is drawn, where natural and supernatural realities flow into one another. A land where the boundary between the visible world and the Otherworld remains thin, and where landscape, myth, and imagination continually interpenetrate.

More than visiting Ireland —
learning to meet the world with the inner senses.

This journey, however, is contemplative rather than literary. With Yeats as a guiding presence, we explore how Ireland’s mythic imagination remains embedded in place.

We encounter an Ireland where poetry and landscape are inseparable — and where the land of heart’s desire may still be approached as lived experience rather than distant ideal.

Dublin, Sligo, Newgrange

Ireland occupies a singular place within the mythic imagination of Europe.

Across centuries, myth, folklore, and ritual have remained active forces within Irish cultural life, shaping a worldview in which the boundary between the visible world and the Otherworld is understood as permeable rather than fixed.

This mythic orientation finds expression in places across the island.
In Dublin, layers of history, storytelling, and cultural memory converge, forming a city where literary, political, and mythological currents remain closely intertwined.

In the west, the region around Sligo — often referred to as Yeats Country — has long been associated with a living mythic tradition. Here, stories of the faeries, ancient heroes, and otherworldly encounters remain embedded in local imagination and practice.

From Dublin to Sligo, from pages to pathways —
where myth and poetry become a way of seeing.

At Newgrange, within its ancient Brú na Bóinne complex, this mythic worldview takes monumental form.
Predating written history, the passage tombs reflect an early cosmology in which time, death, and renewal were understood through symbolic alignment and ritual return.

As part of the pilgrimage, we will enter these places not as sites to be explained, but as expressions of a living mythic inheritance.
Together, they form a landscape of meaning in which story, imagination, and presence continue to exist in active dialogue today.

W.B. Yeats and the Mythic Imagination

Few figures gave voice to Ireland’s mythic inheritance as powerfully as W.B. Yeats, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Yeats was not only a poet, but a seeker shaped by mysticism, folklore, and esoteric philosophy. He drew deeply from Irish mythology, fairy lore, and occult traditions, approaching poetry as a form of spiritual perception rather than literary art.

For Yeats, Ireland was a living threshold — a land where the faeries, the dead, and the divine were not abstractions, but presences woven into hills, lakes, and ancient sites. His work returns again and again to moments of crossing: between worlds, between consciousness and imagination, between history and eternity.

Throughout this pilgrimage, Yeats’ poetry and mythological writings serve as a quiet but continuous guide. Not as doctrine or interpretation, but as an invitation to attune to a way of seeing in which landscape, symbol, and inner life remain inseparable — and where the magical dimension of Ireland can still be encountered as real and formative.

How the pilgrimage unfolds

The pilgrimage unfolds at a calm and deliberate pace.

While we move through different parts of Ireland, the greater part of our time is spent in and around Sligo. The journey is shaped around storytelling as a primary way of engaging with place.

Time is divided between walking, listening, and shared reflection, with a consistent focus on a limited number of locations rather than constant movement.
Storytelling is used as an orienting practice, linking landscape, myth, and lived experience without explanatory frameworks.
Mythological material is introduced in direct relation to place, allowing stories to arise from the landscape rather than being imposed upon it.
Periods of silence alternate with conversation and short contextual introductions, supporting attentiveness rather than interpretation.

Creative exploration and the soul book

Creative practice throughout the pilgrimage is centred on the soul book: a personal working journal in which the journey gradually takes shape.

The soul book functions as a living container. It is where impressions are gathered, images are allowed to surface, and experience is held — during the journey itself and as a lasting record to return to once home.

In this way, the pilgrimage continues beyond the days spent together.

Writing forms the primary way of engaging intuition, perception, and imagination, allowing the unconscious to speak through fragments, images, and associative language.
Storytelling and poetry readings accompany the journey, offering inspiration and refining perception through sound, rhythm, and image rather than explanation.
Lectures and workshops draw on symbolic and imaginal traditions associated with Yeats’ spiritual world, inviting a more attuned and receptive mode of seeing.
All creative work remains open and exploratory, inviting depth without pressure and engagement without expectation.

Practical notes

Duration:

Eight days, including arrival and departure

Group size:

We will travel in a small group of maximum 10 participants

Physical requirements:

A basic level of fitness is required

Season:

Spring 2027

Weather can be changeable

Language

English

Scope and Orientation

Relevance

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
— W.B. Yeats

Yeats understood enchantment as a matter of perception rather than fantasy.
He suggested that the world is full of wonder, if only we would have the eyes to see it.

This pilgrimage takes that insight as its point of orientation. In a culture increasingly shaped by speed, abstraction, and instrumental thinking, the subtle capacities of perception and imagination can quietly recede. Without opposing modern life, the journey creates a temporary counter-rhythm — a space in which attention can slow and awareness can widen.

By moving through mythic landscapes, storytelling, poetry, and creative practice, the pilgrimage offers an opportunity to refine perception. Not to adopt new beliefs, but to recover a way of seeing in which imagination and wonder are restored as vital dimensions of lived experience.

This journey may be suited for you if you:

feel drawn to myth, poetry, and symbolic language as living forms of meaning
wish to cultivate attention, perception, and imaginative awareness
are interested in a form of spirituality in which experience, art, and imagination are closely intertwined
sense a longing to re-engage the world with greater presence and sensitivity

- writing -