1. Only for convenience do we label these complementary powers ‘male’ and ‘female’.

2. The suggestion that Baphomet was a god of wisdom comes from several different sources. Using the Atbash cypher, Dr Hugh Schonfield, a Hebrew scholar and a researcher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, translated ‘Baphomet’ as the Greek word ‘Sophia’ (wisdom). Idries Shah in The Sufis ( Anchor, NY, 1971. pp. 254 - 5) discusses the name as a corruption of the Arabic word ‘Abufihamat’, which means ‘Father of Understanding’, ‘the transmuted consciousness’ and ‘the complete man’. Others claim the name is made up of the Greek words ‘Baph’ and ‘Metis’, meaning ‘Baptism of Wisdom’.

3. The Endnote to this chapter contains comments on Ted’s insertion of three poems into the list of poems which he had originally sent to Faber and Faber in 1997. ‘A Pink Wool Knitted Dress’ was one of these poems.

4. During the Second World War, in 1941, the ‘Utility Mark’ was patented to identify clothes and furnishings which the British government endorsed as being of reliable, controlled quality at a reasonable price. The Utility Scheme lasted until 1953, and serviceable items marked with the distinctive Utility Mark survived for many years after that.

5. A copy of this picture can be found at the Uffizi’s site on the Internet. There are also interpretations of this myth by many other artists.

6. Since this was Ted’s Parish Church at that time, the normal practice would have been for bans to be read at morning service on three consecutive Sundays, publicly announcing the wedding and naming the prospective bride and groom. If this is not possible, a Special License signed by the Head of the Church of England may be granted in exceptional circumstances. Presumably, time constraints related to Aurelia Plath’s visit to England were accepted as a valid reason for issuing a Special License for Ted’s and Sylvia’s wedding.

7. Sylvia explained to Warren all the reasons for this secret wedding and her plans for another, much bigger, wedding in Wellesley the following June (SPLH 18 June 1956).

8. Sylvia wrote of “the curate as a second witness” (SPLH 18 June 1956), so perhaps Ted was deliberately altering the facts in order to make this connection with death in the poem.

9.Chimney sweeps, because of their association with fire and soot, have long had a folklore association with fertility. In May Day celebrations, they were often dressed in ribbons and greenery to represent the Green Man. And Saint George, too, in many parts of Europe is associated with fire. Presumably because of his power over the fire-breathing dragon, he became the patron saint of firefighters, yet the dragon (which is also the Uroborus serpent) is an ancient symbol of fertility.

10. Myers, L. Crow Steered Bergs Appeared (p.88). Myers writes that whilst Ted and Sylvia were living in America Ted wrote a number of letters to him in which he discussed a variety of issues, ranging from “the characteristics of mind beyond the personal mind to the inner life”. These letters, written between August 1957 and September 1959, are now amongst the Hughes manuscripts held in the Woodruff Library at Emory University in Atlanta.

11. In Sylvia’s story, a stag, not an elk, appears in a silvery, moonlit radiance and flashes “white” in their headlights. They are “consoled” by the sound of its galloping hooves and almost immediately they see the lights of the camp centre, and arrive there “laughing” with relief “like giddy adolescents” (JPBD 101).

12. Ted had written to Lucas Myers of the way in which American Society “had the property of disabling your contact with the natural world”, whilst “the real world… retreated, sterilized, under cellophane” (CSBA 90).

13. ‘That Morning’ R 72; NCP 265.

14. ‘The Bear’ W 41; NCP 64.

15. ‘The Grizzly Bear’ UNS 30.

16. ‘The Bear’ W 41.

17. ‘The Grizzly Bear’ UNS 30.

18. This “see-saw” balance sums up the strong element of duality and ambivalence which pervades this Path of the Devil, the numbers of which (Tarot 15 and Cabbala 16) magnify the energies of the Path of the Hierophant (Vau) by ten. Both Paths, too, hold the element of sacrifice which is always associated with the acceptance of Divine energies.

19. ‘Daddy’ was one of Sylvia’s original titles for the collection of poems which was eventually published in 1965 as Ariel (‘Collecting Sylvia Plath’ (WP 172)).

20. Ekbert Faas notes that Sylvia began to write a story called ‘The Hypnotising Husband’ some time in 1958, and Ted, in his interview with Faas in 1977, said that he often used to hypnotize Sylvia to sleep (UU 210).

21. The Paris Review, Vol. 37. No. 134. Spring 1995. pp. 55 - 94.

22. Ted identified ‘The Stones’ (SCPC 136 - 7) as the poem which marked this first ‘birth’ in late 1959. But this birth was not as complete as it seemed and much work had still to be done before the voice of Ariel became truly free (WP 186).

23. SPJ 29 March 1959.

24. Sylvia told her mother this in the letter she wrote on 7 Dec. 1961 (SPLH). There may well have been additional reasons for her depression at that time but her sensitivity to world affairs was always acute.

25. Jacob Böhme, Theosphische Wercke, Amsterdam, 1682. Trans. Thomson, and included in Robb, The Hermetic Museum, Taschen, 1997. p.245.

26. Bruno, De Gli Eroici Furore, Apresso Antonio Baio, Parigi, 1585. Part 2. Dialogues 2-7, Trans. Paulo Eugene Memmo Jr. 1964.

27. Marsilio Ficino, Part 2. Dialogues 2-7, Trans. LSES students, Shepherd-Walwyn, London, 1978. Letter 7: ‘On Divine Frenzy’.

28. Sylvia’s parents lived quite close to Boston Harbour; her grandparents (with whom she often stayed) lived nearer to the Atlantic Coast, at Point Shirley.

29. Ted included some of these memories in ‘Flounders’ (BL 65 -66), which is one of the poems on the earlier Path of the Lovers. The “pre-Adamite” horse-shoe shell of ‘The Prism’ also appears in that poem but it is linked there with Venus-Aphrodite, rather than with the God who was her father.

30. The self-chosen, earthy shackles which bind Sylvia, just as the small figures on the Tarot card for this Path are loosely bound to the Devil’s alter, are nicely suggested by the “earthenware earrings” she wears. Ear-rings which pierce the ears (as Sylvia’s probably did not) have a long folk-lore and folk-medicine connection with good eye-sight.