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Episode #5: Imagination as Divine: Blake's Revolutionary Spirituality: William Blake (part two)
Manage episode 474028822 series 3639398
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William Blake's visionary poetry represents a revolutionary approach to spirituality, offering a third way between rigid religious dogma and cold scientific materialism through the power of imagination as a divine faculty.
• Blake's poem "The Book of Thel" processes the loss of his daughter through miscarriage by imagining conversations with short-lived creatures
• Even the smallest creatures in Blake's poetry understand they are cherished by God, revealing a profound view of divine love
• Blake's concept that "we are put on earth a little space to bear the beams of love" offers a meaningful purpose for existence
• The complementary poems "The Lamb" and "The Tiger" represent two facets of human experience - innocence and experience
• Blake's prophetic imagination anticipated modern problems, including the alienation of industrialization ("dark Satanic mills")
• The 1960s saw a revival of Blake's work through artists like Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and The Doors
• Blake challenges both religious literalism and scientific reductionism by elevating imagination as a spiritual necessity
• The concept that "it's easier to get to the head through the heart than to the heart through the head" captures Blake's approach
• Blake's mythological characters in his longer poems represent psychological states and cosmic forces, similar to modern Marvel characters
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Contact: [email protected]
Instagram: @subversiveorthodoxy
Host: Travis Mullen Instagram: @manartnation
Co-Host: Robert L. Inchausti, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is the author of numerous books, including Subversive Orthodoxy, Thomas Merton's American Prophecy, The Spitwad Sutras, and Breaking the Cultural Trance. He is, among other things, a Thomas Merton authority, and editor of the Merton books Echoing Silence, Seeds, and The Pocket Thomas Merton. He's a lover of the literature of those who challenge the status quo in various ways, thus, he has had a lifelong fascination with the Beats.
Book by Robert L. Inchausti "Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise" Published 2005, authorization by the author.
Intro & Outro Music by Noah Johnson & Chavez the Fisherman, all rights reserved.
Chapters
1. Blake as Inner Explorer (00:00:00)
2. The Book of Thel: Processing Loss (00:02:57)
3. Worth All the Pain: God's Love (00:10:18)
4. Life as Bearing the Beams of Love (00:17:52)
5. Dark Satanic Mills and Modern Relevance (00:22:47)
6. Songs of Innocence and Experience (00:28:45)
7. Imagination vs. Literalism (00:39:22)
8. Blake's Mythological Characters (00:44:38)
9. Blake's Enduring Vision (00:50:24)
7 episodes
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