1. Leonardus Thurneiser, Cabala, The Looking Glass of Art and Nature in Alchemy, Sloane ms.3676. British Library.

2. T. Burckhardt, p.89.

3. Calcination is the first of the seven operations discussed in Ch. 4. These are Calcination, Putrefaction, Solution, Distillation, Conjunction, Sublimation, and Congelation.

4. T. Burckhardt, p.140.

5. Philalethes, psuedonym of the seventeenth century Alchemist, Thomas Vaughan, quoted by Nicholl, p.175.

6. Bonus of Ferrara, The New Pearl of Great Price, (edited by Janus Lacinius, Venice, Aldus, 1546), A. E. Waite (trans. and ed.) (Vincent Stuart, 1963), p.306.

7. Arnaldus de Villa Nova, ‘Practica Arnaldi de villa nova of the Stone Philosophicale, and of the Regiments of fire in the divers degrees of Decoctions, unto the Coagulation of the Stone’, Sloane ms. 630, Theatrum Chymicum, volume iii, p.137. The British Library.

8. George Ripley, The Compound of Alchemy, (London, 1591): Facsimile : ‘Of Putrefaction’ lines 6–9, The English Experience, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., 1977.

9. Ripley, ‘Of Putrefaction’, line 2.

10. Common in alchemical texts.

11. Grossinger, p.64.

12. Unless otherwise indicated, these notes by Hughes describing the events of the poem are those which accompanied the ‘A’ sequence of the Exeter drafts. See Table 2 for details of the various sequences. A similar list of titles and notes can be found in Sagar, ‘Appendix II’, Poet and Critic, British Library, 2021, pp.293–5.

13. Hughes’ notes for the Ilkley Festival performance call him “an innocent. That is, a guilty one”.

14. A.E. Watts , The Metamorphoses of Ovid , North Point Press, 1980, Book I, pp.4–5.

15. Hughes’, ‘Note’ to A Choice of Shakespeare’ s Verse, p.193. WP.115

16. The significance of this portent of death, and of the protagonist’s complacent attitude to it, may be seen in the importance attached to the “gravestone slab” in ‘Mount Zion’ (THCP.480), where he writes of it as “my first world-direction”.

17. The Book of Job illustrated by W. Blake.

18. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

19. Hirschberg, p.163.

20. Erdman, The Illuminated Blake, Anchor Press, 1974, p.357.

21 Damon, A Blake Dictionary, Brownes University Press, 1965, p.172.

22. Hughes’, ‘Note’ to A Choice of Shakespeare’s Verse, p.192. WP .114.

23. Erdman, p.357.

24. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

25. Bracketed words show deletions made by Hughes in the Exeter draft notes.

26. Damon, William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols, Dawsons, 1969, p.224.

27. Damon, A Blake Dictionary, p.217.

28. Oak is the oracular tree of Hercules/Jupiter who, alchemically, dominates the first step in loosening the Soul from elemental chaos. Ad de Vries, p. 347.

29. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

30. It is not the “birth–cry” the Advocate comes to defend but the sacrificed self, (See version C, Photocopy 1, Exeter drafts).

31. Graves, The White Goddess , Faber & Faber, 1977, p.125.

32. Ad de Vries, p.118–9.

33. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

34. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Hamlyn, 1969, pp.23–4, 46–7, 81.

35. Hughes: letter to author, 3 November 1984.

36. ‘Acteon’ is included only in the B sequence (ED). It was published in Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 1976.

37. Hughes: letter to author, 3 November 1984

38. Wright, Blake’s Job: A Commentary, Clarendon Press, 1972. p.29.

39. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

40. Blake, Laocoon Plate.

41. A.E.W. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians. Vol 2, Dover, 1969, p.144.

42. Sagar’s published version has ‘ease’. My own copy, a late typescript from the Exeter drafts, has ‘east’.

43 This Plate number is that given by Erdman in his The Illuminated Blake, Anchor, 1974, p.121.

44. The Bible, Book of Daniel, IV:33.

45. Damon, A Blake Dictionary, p.297.

46 A. Skea, unpublished M. Litt. dissertation Myth, History and Religion in the work of Ted Hughes, 1981, pp.109–10.

47. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

48. Encyclopedia of World Mythology, Peerage Books, 1975, p.34.

49. Hughes, ‘Asgard for Addicts’, WP.p.40–1.

50. Graves, The White Goddess, p.41–2. Hughes knew Graves’ book well, he also owned a copy of The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, Dent, 1902, p. 88, which is now in his library archive at Emory University.

51. Graves tells the story of ‘Math the Son of Mathonwy’, pp.308–16. Guest: The Mabinogion, ‘Math the son of Mathonwy’, p.87.

52. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Vol.1, pp.418–420.

53. Sagar, The Art of Ted Hughes, p.243.

54. Eliot, Four Quartets, ‘East Coker’, IV, line 162.

55. B. Jowett (trans.), ‘Phaedo’, The Dialogues of Plato, Sphere Books, 1970, pp.174–5.

56. Jowett, p.175.