"Wales Visitation" An Alchemical Interpretation

“Wales Visitation” by Allen Ginsberg
An Alchemical Interpretation
In July of 1967, the American poet Allen Ginsberg took a trip to Wales. The
word trip in this case is a double entendre, because Ginsberg traveled to
Wales, took a dose of LSD and went walking through the ancient hillsides.
The poem that emerged from this experience is entitled, Wales Visitation.1
It’s a powerful meditation on the experience of fermentation.
WALES VISITATION
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow

Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine
The word “visitation” is a reference to the wanderings of the Welsh bards,

who went once from village to village orating the ancestral legends and
rhyming the latest news and gossip.
1
For a moving and inspiring reading of the poem by the author, please enjoy this video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKBAJYceQ54
Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
Many of Ginsberg’s poems contain the ghosts of poets long since dead, like
his doleful yearning for Walt Whitman in A Supermarket in California.
But Wales Visitation is not a search for the ghost of a dead poet, but is
instead an experience of invoking and merging with the legends of
English Romanticism, including Samuel Coleridge, William Blake and
William Wordsworth. These are Ginsberg’s ancestors, speaking through
him with the light of poesy.
the wisdom of earthly relations,

of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as light bulbs
For Ginsberg, LSD was not merely a form of intoxication; rather it was a
tool for investigating the nature of mind, providing an approach that he
called “the old yoga of poesy.” His use of LSD for the purpose of writing
this poem is part of the Romantic spirit, recalling Coleridge’s use of
laudanum to compose Kubla Khan.
In Wales Visitation, Ginsberg experiences a daydream of the Welsh

countryside, where everything is illuminated and alive!
No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
His poem is born from the living union of heaven and earth: the wild and
numinous experience of the elements. He sees the world as a Hermeticist
does, through the eyes of mother Earth where every living thing is
perfection and every new flower tells an ancient story. This is the light of
the logos sparkling through the poet’s mind.
O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!

Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed-
As the poem draws to a close he reflects upon what it is he has witnessed,

saying:
What did I notice? Particulars!
Particulars of an ever present holistic divinity that animates everything: it

can be found within in your dreams and without through science. Either
way, it permeates all.
The vision of the great One is myriad-

smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.
Allen Ginsberg reflected upon the creation of this poem from the
perspective of an alchemist, who is dreamer, artist and scientist. Having
been so strongly influenced by the Romantic tradition, he came to the
realization:
“...that me making noise as poetry was no different from the wind making noise
in the branches. It was just as natural…The fact that there were thoughts
flowing through the mind is as much of a natural object as is the milky way
floating over the isle of Skye. So, for the first time, I didn’t have to feel guilt or
psychological conflict about writing while I was high.”

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“Wales Visitation” by Allen Ginsberg

It’s a powerful meditation on the experience of fermentation.

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow

The word “visitation” is a reference to the wanderings of the Welsh bards,

the wisdom of earthly relations,

In Wales Visitation, Ginsberg experiences a daydream of the Welsh

O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!

As the poem draws to a close he reflects upon what it is he has witnessed,

What did I notice? Particulars!

Particulars of an ever present holistic divinity that animates everything: it

The vision of the great One is myriad-

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