Spiritual Imagery in The Root Doctor of Rock N Roll and The Second Coming

Both Yeats and Quincy Troupe used spiritual imagery in their poetry. Both “The Root Doctor of Rock n Roll” and “The Second Coming” are full of spiritual imagery, but the main pieces used were the sphinx, the apocalypse, the spiritual interconnectedness of all people, and the “Root Doctor” or supernatural healing power.

In William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming”, he used an immense amount of spiritual imagery, most likely because this was a poem about the apocalypse, which is a spiritual concept. The poem describes what would happen at the end of the 2000 year cycle of the reign of Christ, when the anti Christ would rule. He describes a very horrific scene, where complete anarchy is in action and the world as we know it is falling to pieces.

Yeats writes, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats 884). This is a very eloquent way to show the complete and utter chaos that he believed would happen when the Christian age came to its end. It means that all good people will give up hope, and the worst people will be full of “passionate intensity”, or extreme motivation. This is a pretty scary concept, as well as a good piece of spiritual imagery. He also talks of viewing an image from the “Spiritus Mundi”, or Great memory. This is an image of a creature with “a shape with lion body and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.” (Yeats 884), or better known as the Sphinx.

This Sphinx a good piece of spiritual imagery because it represents a very apocalyptic being, with the head of a man but the body of a lion. This represents having the intellect and cunningness of a human, but the raw ferocity and killer instinct of a beast such as a lion. He sees this image not because he is there when it arises, but through a universal storehouse of symbolic images from the past. This is a key universal spiritual concept that is also discussed in Quincy Troupe’s “Poem for the Root Doctor of Rock n Roll.”

Both poems speak of the way in which we are all spiritually connected. Yeats’s method is slightly more universal than Troupe’s, but both methods speak of how you can acquire information from others, through a spiritual storehouse. This can be seen in Troupe’s poem when he says “back to the magical hookup of your ancestors, their seamless souls threading your breath, their blood in your sluicing strut.” (Troupe 868). This implies that his ancestors are feeding him his music through some sort of spiritual tie. This is similar to how Yeats uses the Spiritus Mundi. They both use this great spiritual storehouse to access information, an image of the destructive sphinx for Yeats, and music for Troupe.

Another piece of spiritual imagery discussed is the Root Doctor. This is a hoodoo term used to describe the healer, or shaman of a group of people. These people are extremely important in the hoodoo religion, and their insight is highly regarded. The very title of the poem speaks volumes, because if you call Chuck Berry the “Root Doctor of Rock n Roll”, you’re implying he’s the healer or head spiritual leader of the religion of “Rock n Roll”. This would also mean that his music would have healing power, which Quincy troupe believed. This is present when he says “the poetry of hoodoo down & you were the mojo hand of ju-ju crowing.” (Troupe 867). A mojo hand was a bag of spiritual items used to protect an individual from evil and rid them of sickness, so if it is said that Chuck Berry was the mojo hand, it means that he has the supernatural healing powers that the mojo hand does.

Troupe also takes a stab at the “white devils”, or men who took Chuck Berry’s music and made it their own for profit. He uses spiritual imagery to paint these people in a negative light, stating that they “never duck-walked back in the alley with you & Bo Diddley, Little Richard & The Fatman from New Orleans” (Troupe 868) meaning that they weren’t there from the beginning, to experience the roots of it, or the spirituality from where it originated. This makes them evil, and if you were to describe them using spiritual imagery, you would call them devils, as Quincy Troupe does.

These authors were worlds apart, yet they both used spiritual imagery, and very similar spiritual imagery at that. What does this mean? Clearly, regardless of your nationality, culture or how you were raised, spirituality is an innate characteristic in all human beings.