William Butler Yeats Ghost Flower Ritual

Part One: The Ghost Flower's Call

12/9/2021

Palingenesis

For me, the Ghost Flower ritual started with two dreams. The first was a daydream that I had about doing a poetry reading where a flower (or bouquet) would be burned as a "sacrifice." I thought this idea coolly theatrical but also disappointingly pointless.

Being a self-initiated magician from childhood, I'd developed a strong distrust of magical ideas that seemed gratuitous or incomplete. Because I saw nothing more to my imagined Flower Sacrifice than stage-antics steeped in romantic imagery, I left the daydream to hover in the aether only to be haunted by it periodically over the next seven or eight years.

The second dream took place about two months ago while I was sleeping, in which a woman remarked to me that I should read the "Magickal Works of Yeats" soon.

Interestingly enough, I had made a conscious decision in my early twenties to "save" Yeats to read until I was fifty years old. I was intimidated by the breadth of his art and magickal knowledge and thought it best to wait until I'd reach a greater stage of maturity to encounter his works.

But after having the dream, I tumbled out of bed, turned on my computer and set out directly to find out about Yeats's involvement in magick.

Before I'd so much as peed or eaten breakfast, I'd read an online article in Lapham's Quarterly called "W.B. Yeats, Magus." This article contained the following reference: "Yeats’ main interest, however, was conducting magical experiments. He replicated one he had found in the works of an eighteenth-century astrologer; it involved burning a flower to ashes, then placing them under a bell jar in the moonlight for a certain number of nights. If the experiment was successful, “the ghost of the flower would appear hovering over its ashes.” Yeats formed a committee, which “performed the experiment without results.”1

This brief reference was the missing link in my own previously daydreamed conception of a "flower sacrifice." I now determined to follow Yeats's working and complete the ritual by placing the burned ashes of a flower under a bell-jar in moonlight.

As soon as I had determined to do this, I felt a sense of excitement and freedom. I also began to sense in an almost subliminal way, the presence of a kind of silver light that permeated the world and was in some inexplicable way tied to the idea of the Ghost Flower ritual. I began to notice silver around me on fixtures, cutlery, car fenders, and fences.

The next afternoon, I started off in search of the flower that would be burned.

1. James, Jaime. "W.B. Yeats, Magus." W.B. Yeats, Magus, para. 13.

Part 2

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Daniel E. Blackston