The Visionary Life of William Blake

A conversation from History with Chris Harding.

In Mark Vernon's new book "Awake!", he argues that we’re missing something from our view of the great visionary artist William Blake.

It’s that word - ‘visionary.’

Mark argues that Blake’s extraordinary art reveals an expanded experience of the world that Blake lived with every day: angels, fairies, realms beyond our own. Blake wasn’t, in other words, making it all up…

Mark says that we shouldn’t be afraid of the ‘supernatural Blake.’ We should embrace him - and even aspire to live a little as he did.

00:00 Introduction to William Blake
02:45 Blake's Life and Context
04:32 Blake and India
08:45 The Nature of Perception
13:06 Childhood Experiences and Spirituality
19:50 Blake's Relationship with Institutional Christianity
24:43 The Role of Forgiveness in Jesus' Teachings
26:05 Blake's Vision of the Human Form Divine
28:00 The Sacrificial Nature of Spiritual Awakening
29:28 Blake as a Social Critic 
31:30 Blake and Science
35:21 The Dangers of Abstraction 
36:19 Blake and consumerism
43:06 What does Blake offer us now?