Phase Ten

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	Attributes of Phase 10		affects	modifies
	Will	The image-breaker	10	-
	Mask	T: Self-reliance F: Isolation	24	-
	Creative Mind	T: Dramatisation of Mask F: Self-desecration	20	6 FM 10 TCM
	Body of Fate	Humanity	6	20 FM 24 TCM

See AV B 121-24 & 97.

Parnell

Yeats’s description of the phase from A Vision

If he live like the opposite phase, conceived as primary condition - the phase where ambition dies - he lacks all emotional power (False Mask: 'Inertia'), and gives himself up to rudderless change, reform without a vision of form. He accepts what form (Mask and Image) those about him admire and, on discovering that it is alien, casts it away with brutal violence, to choose some other form as alien. He disturbs his own life, and he disturbs all who come near him more than does Phase 9, for Phase 9 has no interest in others except in relation to itself. If, on the other hand, he be true to phase, and use his intellect to liberate from mere race (Body of Fate at Phase 6 where race is codified), and so create some code of personal conduct, which implies always 'divine right', he becomes proud, masterful and practical. He cannot wholly escape the influence of his Body of Fate, but he will be subject to its most personal form; instead of gregarious sympathies, to some woman's tragic love almost certainly. Though the Body of Fate must seek to destroy his Mask, it may now impose upon him a struggle which leaves victory still possible. As Body of Fate phase and Mask phase approach one another they share somewhat of each other's nature; the effect of mutual hate grows more diffused, less harsh and obvious. The effect of the Body of Fate of Phase 10, for instance, is slightly less harsh and obvious than that of the 'enforced sensuality' of Phase 9. It is now 'enforced emotions Phase 9 was without restraint, but now restraint has come and with it pride; there is less need to insist on the brutality of facts of life that he may escape from their charm; the subjective fury is less uncalculating, and the opposition of Will and Mask no longer produces a delight in an impersonal precision and power like that of machinery (machinery that is emotion and thought) but rather a kind of burning restraint, a something that suggests a savage statue to which one offers sacrifice. This sacrifice is code, personality no longer perceived as power only. He seeks by its help to free the creative power from mass emotion, but never wholly succeeds, and so the life remains troubled, a conflict between pride and race, and passes from crisis to crisis. At Phase 9 there was little sexual discrimination, and now there is emotion created by circumstance rather than by any unique beauty of body or of character. One remembers Faust, who will find every wench a Helen, now that he has drunk the witches' dram, and yet loves his Gretchen with all his being. Perhaps one thinks of that man who gave a lifetime of love because a young woman in capricious idleness had written his name with her umbrella upon the snow. Here is rage, desire to escape but not now by mere destruction of the opposing fate; for a vague abstract sense of some world, some image, some circumstance, harmonious to emotion, has begun, or of something harmonious to emotion that may be set upon the empty pedestal, once visible world, image, or circumstance has been destroyed. With less desire of expression than at Phase 9, and with more desire of action and of command, the man (Creative Mind from Phase 20, phase of greatest dramatic power) sees all his life as a stage play where there is only one good acting part; yet no one will accuse him of being a stage player, for he will wear always that stony Mask (Phase 24, 'The end of ambition', antithetically perceived). He, too, if he triumph, may end ambition through the command of multitudes, for he is like that god of Norse mythology who hung from the cliff's side for three days, a sacrifice to himself. Perhaps Moses when he descended the mountain-side had a like stony Mask, and had cut Tablets and Mask out of the one rock. (AV B 122-24)

See a broader view of the Phase in the consideration of the Phase Triads.

The Faculties

The Wheel

Geometry

The Phases in History

Terminology

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