William Blake (1757-1827)

Blake is a mythmaker and a mystic. He imaginatively creates his own symbolic world which is related, though not allegorically, to the real world. His work explores the disintegration, and eventual reintegration, of man both outwardly in the world and inwardly in the spirit.

Blake felt that individuals were born in a state of innocence, which he associated with Beulah in the outer world and sensation in the inner world—symbolized by Tharmas. But individuals, and societies, must grow and enter the state of experience. In this state reason (Urizen) controls and restrains the inner world while mankind lives in the outer world of Generation. This was the state in which society had become mired in the eighteenth century. Blake felt that Urizen (which he also associated with God the father) had become so powerful that individuals’ and society’s progress were blocked; this complete dominance by only one of man’s inner qualities was evil and the cause of evil in the world.

Blake was therefore a revolutionary, seeing in the American and French revolutions signs of mankind’s rebellion against the stultifying repression of Urizen and the society he represented. Blake felt that revolution was the next, necessary step in man’s progress toward reintegration, or Eden. This stage is represented in the outer world by Orc, equated with Satan, the greatest revolutionary, and in the inner world by Luvah, or emotion. Blake is thus the true romantic, in complete rebellion against reason, practicality, good advice—all those things which tend to destroy, enslave, restrain, or repress the emotions and spirit

It is only through emotion that mankind can reach Eden, in the inner world represented by Los; Los represents imagination and inspiration, the highest power which individuals can achieve. It is the state in which the diverse elements of experience are brought together in a synthesis, where one achieves that mystical vision of the world and all experience as one, a unity, and sees the essential goodness and rightness of all things. In this state the individual experiences joy, for reason and emotion, sensation and inspiration are united and balanced.

To see a World in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.

from Auguries of Innocence