Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi

Yeats unfolds a tale of spiritual danger and mystical descent in these two interconnected stories. The narrator becomes entangled with Aherne, a friend who has come into possession of a heretical book by the medieval prophet Joachim of Flora, a text so dangerous the Pope ordered it burned. Aherne has fallen in with a mystical sect led by the enigmatic Michael Robartes, and over a decade, the narrator watches his friend transform into something unrecognizable. When Robartes meets some terrible fate, Aherne descends into conviction that he alone cannot be saved. The narrator flees after experiencing a vision that shatters his faith forever. Then three ancient brothers arrive at his door with their own story: a spirit identifying as Michael Robartes appeared to them, demanding worship. These are stories about what happens when the search for divine truth crosses into territories best left unexplored, and what it costs to witness a friend's soul unravel in the pursuit of forbidden knowledge. Yeats draws on his own deep involvement with the occult to create something genuinely unsettling, a meditation on the boundary between religious experience and spiritual danger, and how the hunger for transcendence can become a form of damnation. For readers who crave literary fiction that feels like a descent into shadow.