William Blake and the Myth of Secularism by Ron Dart

William Blake and the Myth of Secularism

Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street.                 

(William Blake) 

I read, when in my twenties, most of William Blake’s writings from cover to cover and spent many a quiet moment meditating my way through his evocative paintings. Needless to say, Blake is not the easiest poet and painter to interpret, so I took the time to read and correspond with some of the leading Blake scholars. Allen Ginsberg sent me a copy of his booklet, Your Reason and Blake’s System (1988). Northrop Frye, author of Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947), and I corresponded. I enjoyed many a letter from Kathleen Raine who wrote Blake and Antiquity (1963). My interest in Thomas Merton was largely initiated by the MA he wrote on Blake in 1939 called Nature and Art in William Blake: An Essay in Interpretation (1939). I was also, when doing my PHD at McMaster in the 1980s, delighted to attend the many lectures by E. P. Thompson whose book, Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (1993) is a must read keeper.   

There are many other writers, of course, that have commented on Blake, but there can be no doubt that Merton, Frye, Raine, Ginsberg and Thompson have certainly done much to put Blake’s many wise and probing insights on the spiritual, artistic, literary and political map.

The West has, to some degree, seen fit to either banish religion from life or reduce the religious vision to the private and personal spheres of our all too human journey---this is what is often called secularism. The secularist myth can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but the right wing of the Enlightenment, doffing its cap to rationalism (and its twin scientism), tended to pit religion against reason-science in an either-or conflict. Religion was seen as the oppressive problem, reason and science as the enlightened liberator—such is a type of secularism----genuflect to reason and science, oppose religion as the superstitious problem. The myth became, for some, a new sacred way of interpreting existence. The priests were Marx, Freud and Nietzsche--such high priests had their antecedents and many followers in the 20^th century.

William Blake lived at a period of time in which the myth of secularism was taking shape and about to become the dogma and defining doctrine for many in the West. Blake, being the imaginative poet and artist he was, saw through the myth with acute clarity.  Blake countered the prejudices and parochial nature of modern secularism with a unique imaginative system. This was spelled out, in utmost clarity, in his prophetic books and many sketches and paintings. How was Blake’s counter myth to secular modernity more expansive and attractive, more open minded and comprehensive?

Blake suggested that there are four aspects (or Zoas) to the human soul and life journey. Each of these organs or faculties must be balanced for the good of both soul and society to operate in a harmonious and just manner. We all have a body which Blake called “Tharmas”. We are also beings of emotion—Blake called this “Luvah”. There are imaginative and mythic depths in the human soul, and Blake called the imagination, “Urthona”. We are also thinking beings, and Blake called reason, “Urizen”. Blake made it abundantly clear that when our bodies (Tharmas), emotions (Luvah), imagination (Urthona) and reason (Urizen) heed and hear one another, in a respectful and responsive manner, Albion (the new world) will emerge and arise. But, when any of the faculties seek to dominate, manipulate and control the other, we become victims of the dark satanic mills.

Blake was convinced, and history has confirmed his conclusions in many ways, that a form of extreme reason (right wing of the Enlightenment) has come to shape and control, dominate and determine how we know what we know and sits in the highest levels of politics. In short, Urizen has come to sit on the throne and brooks little or no opposition from Tharmas, Luvah and Urthona. The sheer dominance of Urizen as a totalitarian tyrant has meant balance has been lost and the other faculties have been colonized by rationalism and scientism. Blake sought to break the dark spell that had been cast over the western world by Urizen. It should be noted that Blake was not against reason----he merely protested against a form of reason that sought to silence and enslave the other Zoas (faculties).

William Blake, the prophet of imaginative insight and wisdom, did more than most to deconstruct and expose the monarch of rationalism. He called, like the prophet he was, the West to return to a more classical notion and understanding of the balance between reason imagination, emotion and the body. In this sense, Blake was one of the most pre-eminent thinkers and activists of the 18^th century who clearly saw where secularism, rationalism and scientism led, and it was a reductionist place. The new atheists such as Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are merely latter day children of Urizen, and those who see through the cleansed eyes of Blake see through such hollow men with little difficulty. We should be more than grateful for Blake---his understanding of the prophetic goes much deeper and further than those who idly or superficially use the term these days.

I began this missive by quoting from one of Blake’s better known aphorisms: Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street. The Greek word for mountain is ‘oros’ from which we get the word oracle. There can be no doubt that Blake understood the relationship between mountains, oracular insights and the balance needed for a sane soul and society. Needless to say, the secular prejudices and narrow approach to thought and life do not emerge from the place where men/women and mountains meet---such secular ideas come from those who only jostle in the streets. 

Montani semper liberi

Ron Dart              

Comments

[Ron]

The right wing of the Enlightenment tended towards the rational,
logical, inductive and deductive way of knowing and being---a certain form of science (scientism) and reason (rationalism) dominated the day--many forms of Christian apologetics pander to this approach. The reaction to the rationalist form of the Enlightenment was the romantic response--romantics hold high the arts, poetry, intuition, myth, symbol, narrative and a parabolic ways of know and being. Needless to say, the rationalist and romantic wings of the Enlightenment include and exclude valuable ways of
knowing and being---in short, each tendency both reveals and conceals insights.

The humanist wing of the Enlightenment attempted to synthsize the best of the intuitive and heart way of knowing with the best of the rational and head way of knowing---Blake definitely leaned in the romantic direction, but he was a sophisticated romantic---he was certainly not anti-intellectual---The well known Canadian, Charles Taylor, embodies the best of the humanist wing of the Enlightenment.

[Idrian]

Thanks for the reply, Brad

[Susan McCaslin]

Concise and eloquent, Ron, as well as timely. Blake's distinction between true reason and science versus scientism and the domination of a materialist reason are more needed than ever. Also, I love his notion of the integration of the Four Zoas or soul powers in humanity. His voice comes out of the future rather than just the past as far as I can tell. I'm a Blakean from way back.

[Brad]

Speaking for Ron, as I've understood him, the Enlightenment included a rational right wing, a romanticist left wing (Blake) and a humanist centre that tried to balance the two.

bj

[Idrian]

If extreme reason is the right-wing of the Enlightenment, what is the left-wing then?