AWAKE! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination is a celebration of Blake’s genius and a practical guide for living with greater awareness, creativity, and hope.
Exploring this brilliant thinker’s passionate writings, arresting artworks, and fascinating life, the author Mark Vernon illuminates Blake’s vivid worldview. Like us, Blake lived in a tumultuous era of war, discontent, rapid technological change, and human estrangement from nature. He exposed the dark sides of political fervor and social moralizing, while unashamedly celebrating love and liberty. But he also conversed with prophets and angels, and was powerfully, if unconventionally, religious. If we take this seriously — not easy, in secular times — then Blake can help us unlock the transformative power of imagination.
The author Dr Mark Vernon wears many hats. He is a writer, podcaster, philosopher, psychotherapist, and former Anglican priest whose work focuses on spirituality, ideas, and the evolution of consciousness. With a background in both theology and ancient Greek philosophy, Vernon has dedicated his career to examining the ways in which imaginative thought influences our understanding of the world and exploring the spiritual dimensions of creativity and the human experience. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including A Secret History of Christianity, The Meaning of Friendship and Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey.
A Conversation with Mark Vernon, author of AWAKE! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination
What inspired you to write Awake! and focus on William Blake’s imagination as a central theme?
Blake is widely loved but not so widely understood and, in my view, also regularly misunderstood by writers about him. His view on the imagination is a case in point because he tells us that no-one has imagination, not even a great creative like him. Instead, we all live in great flows, even floods, of imagination that shape and, in current times, distort our experience of life. He explicitly worked to awaken our perceptions, and I think we need that expansion now. I also live in south London, near where William and Catherine Blake lived, so he is my local prophet.
You present an argument for viewing Blake as a religious figure rather than merely a poet. What compelling evidence from Blake’s life and work supports this perspective?
Right from the earliest days of his work, Blake developed a sharp critique of the kind of worldview that sidelines God. He argued that human creativity and self-transcending intelligence, in the arts and sciences, is only explicable with access to a source of imagination and vitality beyond human capacities – with which people can resonate via inspiration. His Christian way of articulating this presence was in the person of “Jesus the Imagination”, who manifests the “human form divine”, though Blake drew on other religious traditions, too. He also increasingly felt that the conviction that human problems must be solved without drawing on divine wisdom was a dangerous delusion, so much so that he called the deists of his day, who were the ancestors of the atheists in ours, “Enemies of the Human Race”. This is strong stuff but aside from the fact that Blake conversed with celestial beings probably daily, he also felt that in our understanding of God, nothing less than the flourishing of humanity was at stake.
One of Blake’s most famous lines is “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” What does it mean, and how can modern readers apply this concept to their own lives?
The heart of it is to trust your imagination and perceptions and learn to develop and discern them. Then, the world will continually open up to you. Blake had a developed critique of the idea, still dominant today, that our brains generate our consciousness, whereas he was clear that our minds share and meet the consciousness that surrounds us. In practice, this means following your feelings and intuitions. The Sun warms you because its light livens you. The birdsong delights you because its music is yours. Your friend loves you because you share a common soul. You perceive the world around you because you are part of it, as it is of you.
Blake: Complex and Enigmatic
Blake’s work is often considered complex and enigmatic. How did you approach making his ideas accessible to modern readers?
Two elements of Blake’s work are often overlooked that are fundamental to turning him from being a bemusing companion to a revelatory friend. First, he was a very sharp thinker, engaging and often critiquing the great thinkers of his day who have profoundly shaped ours. Second, he was a brilliant observer and portrayer of inner life, so understanding how he can be a mirror to our own inner lives is also key.
What is the most misunderstood aspect of Blake’s life or work?
There are undoubtedly two. First, that he was probably at least a little bit crazy, whereas I think he was one of the sanest humans of his time and realised that the craziness lies in the stark materialism of modern life. Second, that he didn’t see entities like angels as he claimed but suffered from some kind of psychopathology. In contrast, I think he saw the vitality and intelligence of the living world around him and sought to convey that to us. One of his best known quatrains says as much. “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.”
Blake frequently reported seeing angels and other spiritual beings. How do you interpret these experiences in the context of his creative process?
I used to work in a psychiatric hospital and worked, on occasion, with people who regularly saw demons and angels. But what was striking was that whilst such experiences could be florid and alarming, they also trapped the individuals — which is to say the visions were a product of their suffering. Blake is wholly different — along with other great minds who had ethereal companions, like Socrates. For him, these entities were greatly expansive of his life, freeing him to think, paint, and write — and moreover in such a way that people still find the work inspiring 200 years on. To borrow the thought of Blake’s near contemporary, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Blake did not have private fantasies but shared in the imagination that ultimately originates with God.
Deeply Personal
Blake’s spirituality was deeply personal and unconventional (you note, “you could say that he was too religious to go to church.”) How will his views on Christianity resonate with contemporary spiritual seekers?
Blake affirmed two things. First, that spiritual perceptions and convictions are real. Second, that people need a mix of wisdom and freedom to explore and deepen them. Strangely, that combination is often hard to find in the church, because churches are mostly concerned with other good things, like social justice or maintaining communities — moral concerns, you might say. But Blake says that whilst morality matters, a shared intimacy with the divine and the imagination matters more.
How can Blake’s concept of contraries, such as innocence and experience, help us navigate modern challenges?
Living with tensions is inevitable, Blake was clear, but he also realised that tensions can become “contraries” that, like the poles of a magnet, generate a field of energy that can charge our imaginations and continually spark our interest. Take a common contrary like whether something is morally right or wrong. If instead of coming down one way or another on, say, abortion or homosexuality, you temporarily suspend judgement in a debate or discussion, then there is a chance you’ll see the human person behind the issue — and maybe see more of yourself too. Your judgement may become more humane, which means no less moral but less moralising. Alternatively, in psychotherapy, the aim is often to hold the contraries of people’s feelings together — the love and the anger they feel, the care and the jealousy. That capacity allows a less tortured stance towards others and life to emerge, though it is often very hard to do when contrary feelings and hurts are strong. In general, there is always something new to discover when faced with but not immediately acting on a contrary — a third thing, which when detected helps us to break free of familiar patterns, opposing positions and dull, deadening habits.
Blake’s critique of materialism and consumerism feels especially relevant today. What lessons can we draw from his views on money and progress?
The striking thing about Blake was that he recognised that the mercantilism of his times, which has become the capitalism of ours, was both a great blessing and a curse. He wanted to be successful and sell his work in the booming empire-town that was London. But he also saw that the great risk with material gain is losing touch with why money and progress are good. They can become ends in themselves rather than serving and freeing us not to enjoy life by accumulating stuff but by, well, enjoying life. Blake remarked that “More, More is the cry of a mistaken soul.” But he was also clear that “less than All cannot satisfy Man.” We do desire. The question is whether what we desire can satisfy us.
Blake’s concept of imagination as the “Human Existence itself” is profound. How can this idea transform how we view creativity and human potential?
For Blake, the imagination is not an optional extra that some people have and some people don’t. Imagination is a superpower shared by everyone, but it can be turned against the interests of the soul. He thought that modern science was inclined to do that because whilst the discoveries of science are extraordinary feats of imagination, that very genius has also cooked up a view of the cosmos as inert and mechanical. The truth is that it takes a lot of imagination to see the world in that way because, when you look, the natural world is actually full of beauty, striving, and purpose. Using imaginative powers to regain that awareness, including through a re-expanded science, was a key aim of his work.
Blake: Eccentric or Mad?
Blake was often dismissed as eccentric or mad during his lifetime. How has his reputation evolved, and why is he so influential today?
His reputation today is at once immense and often, perhaps inadvertently, belittled — a paradox stemming from the tendency to pathologise him and diagnose his vision as some kind of hallucination or perceptual malady. But he is one of those rare artists and prophets whose insights are so powerful that they can never be entirely dismissed. He is influential today because even when not understood, he stirs revelations, renewal, and energy.
If Blake were alive today, how do you think he would respond to the state of the world—politically, socially, and spiritually?
He would surprise you by his response because he wouldn’t be readily shoehorned into the usual cliches with which people grapple with our troubles — not least because he himself hated tribes of the left or the right (and he lived through the French Revolution when politics first became polarised in that way). Politically, he would get us to ask what politics is for — that being, at heart, doing the minimum required to support people on their paths. Socially, he would say: Forget the tribalism and discover an expansive unity born of the extraordinary differences human beings display. And this would be possible because, spiritually, he recognised that every finite person and thing is a reflection of an infinite, divine array.
How do your experiences as a psychotherapist and an Anglican priest inform your understanding of Blake’s spirituality and imagination?
I am a former Church of England clergyman who tried but couldn’t put God down, though also couldn’t really find the part of Christianity that inspires me in the church — which might be called the mystical side. This is the approach that focuses primarily on inner life, which is where the link to psychotherapy comes in. In fact, I think psychotherapy arose because of the decline of living mystical traditions in the West. Blake is one of the most important mystics since the Reformation, and he has greatly helped me deepen my spiritual life — something that we need desperately to develop both as individuals and as a culture.
Do you have a favorite work or quote from Blake – something that acts as a guidepost for your own life?
“He who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.” This insight is about believing life is abundant, not scarce, so needn’t be possessed but celebrated and served. It conveys the possibility of living selflessly and happily, which at least in moments I hope to do.
What do you hope readers take away from Awake! about Blake’s relevance to our modern lives?
That he is an invaluable, transformative guide for our times. He understood what was going on in depth, and he also was able to use the troubles of his times, which have evolved into the troubles we face, as a kind of catalyst. This knowledge could release enchanted, dynamic perceptions of our inner lives and the inner life of the whole of reality and greatly inspire us now.
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And read more on Ben’s Poetic Licence blog here.
