Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination

I myself wanted to discover what Blake was driving at. I live in South London, near where he and his wife, Catherine, lived for a decade of their long marriage together. Just down the road from my house is also the site of a famous incident from Blake’s youth when he saw a tree full of angels. A pub nearby, “The Angel Oak”, still commemorates the vision.

My own history with religion, and Christianity in particular, is also in the mix. I used to be a priest in the Church of England, though left, in part, because I felt the mystical forms of Christianity were not much appreciated in the church. That can sound an odd thing to say, but the Church of England is preoccupied with other concerns, such as social justice. That is a good thing, of course, but – to quote the psychologist William James – is inclined to confuse “fruits with roots”. I wanted better to know the roots of the spiritual path, which I agree with Blake have grown shallow today.

Another way of putting it is that Blake was fascinated by inner life – not only the inner life of the human individual but the inner life of others and the rest of the world around us. He did not experience the cosmos as mindless but as replete with all manner of living intelligences with which we interact, for good and ill.

Since leaving the church, I have worked as a psychotherapist as well as a writer. I feel that one of the great challenges for psychology today is how to recover a felt connection with the wider world. I suspect that a lot of the distress that people suffer is due to feeling alienated and isolated from the surrounding vitality. I have found that Blake can help awaken that broader sense of things in me.