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