WILLIAM SHARP—­“FIONA MACLEOD”

A pronounced instance of the two phases of consciousness, is that of the late William Sharp, one of the best known writers of the modern English school.

It was not until after the death of William Sharp, that the secret of this dual personality was given to the public, although a few of his most intimates had known it for several years.  In the “Memoirs” compiled by Elizabeth Sharp, wife of the writer, we find the following: 

“The life of William Sharp divides itself naturally into two halves:  the first ends with the publication by William Sharp of ‘Vistas,’ and the second begins with ‘Pharais,’ the first book signed Fiona Macleod.”

In these memoirs, the point is made obvious that Fiona Macleod is not merely a nom de plume; neither is she an obsessing personality; a guide or “control,” as the Spiritualists know that phenomenon. Fiona Macleod, always referred to by William Sharp as “she,” is his own higher Self—­the cosmic consciousness of the spiritual man which was so nearly balanced in the personality of William Sharp as to appear to the casual observer as another person.

It is said that the identity of Fiona Macleod, as expressed in the manuscript put out under that name, was seldom suspected to be that of William Sharp, so different was the style and the tone of the work of these two phases of the same personality.

In this connection it may be well to quote his wife’s opinion regarding the two phases of personality, answering the belief of Yeats the Irish poet that he believed William Sharp to be the most extraordinary psychic he ever encountered and saying that Fiona Macleod was evidently a distinct personality.  In the Memoirs, Mrs. Sharp comments upon this and says: 

“It is true, as I have said, that William Sharp seemed a different person when the Fiona mood was on him; but that he had no recollection of what he said in that mood was not the case—­the psychic visionary power belonged exclusively to neither; it influenced both and was dictated by laws he did not understand.”

Mrs. Sharp refers to William Sharp and Fiona, as two persons, saying that “it influenced both,” but both sides of his personality rather than both personalities, is what she claims.  In further explanation she writes: 

“I remember from early days how he would speak of the momentary curious ‘dazzle in the brain,’ which preceded the falling away of all material things and precluded some inner vision of great beauty, or great presences, or some symbolic import—­that would pass as rapidly as it came.  I have been beside him when he has been in trance and I have felt the room throb with heightened vibration.”

One of the “dream-visions” which William Sharp experienced shortly before his last illness, is headed “Elemental Symbolism,” and was recorded by him in these beautiful words: