Homebrewed Christianity

Mark Vernon: Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination

Sep 1, 2025
Mark Vernon, a scholar and psychotherapist, sheds light on William Blake’s radical vision and how it can guide our spiritual reawakening today. He emphasizes Blake's call to cultivate 'innocence' as a deeper perceptual openness rather than a naive escape from reality. The conversation navigates Blake's critique of modernity, proposing imagination as a powerful antidote to a mechanistic worldview. Vernon also discusses Blake’s unique interpretations of Christianity, stressing the transformative potential of collective understanding and creativity.
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INSIGHT

Imagination Narrowed By Modernity

  • William Blake offers a critique of modernity by diagnosing a narrowed imagination focused on material reality.
  • He argues our imagination has been hijacked into producing technological power at the cost of spiritual perception.
INSIGHT

Innocence As Perceptual Openness

  • Blake's 'innocence' means openness, not naivety, and partners with wisdom rather than ignorance.
  • Cultivating this discerning openness restores receptivity to beauty, truth, and the infinite.
ADVICE

Treat Visionary Claims As Experiments

  • Take Blake's reports of angels and spirits seriously as challenges to modern presuppositions rather than dismissing them diagnostically.
  • Test their claim by adopting a disciplined openness and seeing if perception and meaning shift.
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