I'd been reading Milton and Blake and had become interested in Blake's interpretation of Milton and the light it shed on Blake's attitude to liberation. So I wondered: if we wanted a communication from a great, dead writer, how could we get something that wasn't as trite as channelled communications often tend to be?

I came up with the following.

Taking the letters of Blake's name I made a pictorial sigil; and then, taking its phonemes and playing around I made an aural sigil: abernaberkabe.

A classic ouija board - the type used for this working.

Next, I took a copy of Blake's poem Milton and wrapped it into a brown paper parcel, and drew the sigil on the front and back. Then I took the parcel to a magical gathering, along with a ouija board and a stylophone.

I explained to the magical brothers and sisters that we were going to communicate with a writer whom I was calling abernaberkabe rather than by his or her usual name, in order not to prejudice our results. To ensure we were in contact with the correct spirit, and not some ahrimanic time-wasting entity, we all placed our fingers on the planchette of the ouija board and asked to speak with abernaberkabe.

After a first response had been obtained I asked abernaberkabe whether, in life, he was the author of the book inside the parcel.

The answer came back YES.

Then I explained to the spirit the method of communication we were about to use and asked firstly if it was acceptable, and secondly if it would produce a valid result.

The answer in both cases was YES.

Finally, I asked the spirit an open-ended question to which William Blake would know the answer: 'In which city did you live when you were alive?'

The answer spelled out very slowly: L-O-N-D...

'Is that LONDON?'

The response was: YES.

We thanked the spirit and closed the ouija session.

Using the ouija board like this allowed us to determine that connection had been established with the correct spirit, and that it was able to communicate using the method we proposed.

For the next part of the working I sat in a corner of the temple space with a pen and notebook, ready to transcribe the results. The rest of the company sat in a circle in the centre, apart from Alan, who sat in another corner with stylophone at the ready and his back toward everyone else.

A stylophone. Like an electronic equivalent of greaseproof paper over a comb.

The parcel with the book inside was passed from person to person in turn, around the circle, whilst Alan played tunes on the stylophone. (He is a very gifted stylophone player, we have discovered.) At random moments Alan would cease playing, at which point the person who found the parcel in their hands was obliged to say out loud whatever image, word or impression happened to arise in their mind at that moment.

It had been explained in advance that mental images arising in the mind of the group were the means by which the spirit would communicate, and so it was important not to censor anything that came to mind, or regard it as too random or trivial.

We were, in effect, playing a version of the children's party game 'pass the parcel' in order to obtain our result. We continued with the game until it started to become boring – which is always to be regarded as an important signal that a magical working may have reached its conclusion.

The communication from William Blake was as follows:

• Goat.
• Merciful.
• Lost property junkie.
• Fire.
• Leather wallet.
• Bamboo.
• A lamppost.
• Drain by the side of the road.
• Cars.
• Bright light.
• Bee.
• A blue plate.
• A storm at sea.
• Grain blowing in the wind.
• Red desert.

After the meeting had ended I caught the late train home and re-read the list, over and over, allowing its images to work on my imagination. (The woman sitting next to me seemed to find the list intriguing too.) Gradually a story took shape based on the images, and over the next few days I wrote it up.

This seemed an appropriate means of obtaining a communication from the spirit of a writer. I wouldn't claim that William Blake somehow 'wrote' the story, because writing is among the myriad things that dead people don't do. But what's clear is that the story wouldn't have been written if I hadn't performed the ritual, invoked Blake's spirit, and opened my imagination to the results obtained.

According to the doctrine of reincarnation, what is passed from one life to the next is not a 'self', 'soul' or 'a consciousness', but karma, the consequences of actions performed during a person's life. The biological organism that bore the name 'William Blake' is long gone and destroyed forever, but the deeds he performed produced effects that persist to this day. What we call Blake's 'reputation', for instance, is one example of a karmic trace left in his wake. It is these kinds of meaningful echoes that the working allows us to collect and bring to life through an imaginative reworking.

This ritual can easily be adapted for use with other dead writers, artists and thinkers. It could also be extended to pictures and music as well as words.