Observations placeholder
Yeats, Georgie - A Vision - Sweet smells
Identifier
001823
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This is synaesthesia, but what is interesting is the source of the input causing the perfume. Is it an emotion or a spiritual input?
A description of the experience
W B Yeats – A Vision
Sweet smells were the most constant phenomena, now that of incense, now that of violets or roses or some other flower, and as perceptible to some half dozen of our friends as to ourselves, though upon one occasion when my wife smelt hyacinth a friend smelt eau-de-cologne.
A smell of roses filled the whole house when my son was born and was perceived there by the doctor and my wife and myself, and I have no doubt, though I did not question them, by the nurse and servants.
Such smells came most often to my wife and myself when we passed through a door or were in some small enclosed place, but sometimes would form themselves in my pocket or even in the palms of my hands. When I took my hands out of my pocket on our way to Glastonbury they were strongly scented, and when I held them out for my wife to smell she said 'May-flower, the Glastonbury thorn perhaps'. I seldom knew why such smells came, nor why one sort rather than another.