Synopsis Revised

Google Art Project

Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy

St Peter and St James with Dante and Beatrice

Paradiso XXV, 13-24. St James appears from out of the sphere containing Christ's first vicars and joins Peter. He questions Dante on Hope, just as Peter had questioned him on Faith

First posted April 2007

Ram Horn'd with Gold by Larry Clayton

Although most of us who are religious types may struggle our whole lives for those precious moments of God consciousness, William Blake had a direct pipeline to the Beyond. Heavenly visions dominated his mind in an overwhelming way. His wife had only one fault to find, "Mr. Blake spends too much time in Heaven."
And in spite of derogatory remarks made by critics as late as T.S.Eliot he probably knew more about human culture than any man since the Renaissance.

This book is an introduction to Blake's thought with primary emphasis on its spiritual dimension. Recent Blake literature has come largely from secular interpreters. The religious community for the most part have totally ignored Blake. Nevertheless he was a profoundly spiritual man. This introduction to Blake focuses on his spiritual life as expressed in his aesthetics, politics, and psychology. 

CHAPTER ONE
in a short biographical sketch recounts those events which largely determined the shape of his career. It also gives the first thumbnail outline of his work.

CHAPTER TWO  

provides the reader with some of the basic equipment he will need to begin to read Blake with comprehension. 

CHAPTER THREE 

Some simpler Blake poetry (Simple only in the sense that some meaning readily emerges.)

 

CHAPTER FOUR 

interprets Blake's faith as it developed through the circumstances of his life. My distinctive view of that development includes a change of direction or attitude toward Christ in Blake's early forties. 

 

CHAPTER FIVE 

traces Blake's struggle with God through the early images of Nobodaddy, Father of Jealousy, Urizen, and the God of this World, to his "first Vision of Light" and the resulting commitment to what he called (among other things) Jesus the Imagination. 

CHAPTER SIX

explains Blake's understanding of the Bible, his primary source. Blake cast light on biblical ideas, and conversely the Bible explains Blake. Redemption history, the struggle between Jehovah and Astarte, the symbology of Ezekiel and Revelation are some of the topics dealt with. 

CHAPTER SEVEN

details Blake's relationship to the established church, his view of church history, his attitude as a dissenter against a state church and other forms of inauthentic authority, his relationship to Quakers, Methodists, and Deists as well as his personal associations, seen imaginatively as a religious community. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

treats Blake's sexuality, his attitudes toward prevailing sexual mores, his incorporation of biblical viewpoints toward sex, especially in the symbology of the heterodox tradition. 

CHAPTER NINE

describes the development of the mythology that forms the framework of Blake's major works.

The primary sources for this work were Blake's poetry and pictures and the Bible. The most significant secondary sources were Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry, Milton Percival's Circle of Destiny, Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition, John Middleton Murry's William Blake, and C.G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.

Primer

Introduction

Death

Myth

Bible