Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Did William Blake See Aliens?
William Blake (1757-1827), best known perhaps for his "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience," was also an advanced mystic. Even as a child he saw angels, and he "channeled" volumes of esoteric poetry, which scholars sometimes dedicate whole years to interpret. When his beloved brother died, he saw his spirit ascending to heaven, clapping his hands as he went. His brother's departed spirit became Blake's own guide, and his brother even gave him the formula for the engraving method that Blake subsequently used to dramatic effect.
Blake was an artist, and, when another of his spirit guides appeared to him, he was able to draw his picture. The form he drew was not truly humanlike. Dressed in the clothing (male) of the age, the figure had a face suggesting an insect or reptile. Blake was on close terms with his guide, but the appearance of the latter makes one reflect on accounts or at least speculations that aliens from other realms might in fact have an appearance resembling insects or reptiles (some speculate that this is the reason they do not appear to humans--for fear we might be too disturbed by this appearance. Others claim to have seen figures with reptilian features moving among us today.)
Blake got little encouragement or recognition (and less money) during most of his lifetime, but he is now rated as one of the greatest writers of his time.
“To see a world in a grain of sand And a Heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an Hour.”
"If the doors of perception are cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern."
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
"Blake's greatest disciple . . . W. B. Yeats, announcing the end of a cycle and the advent of the 'rough beast,' was but following Blake. 'The rise of soul against intellect, now beginning in the world,' announced by Yeats, has brought with it a return to the excluded knowledge -- Neo-Platonism, alchemy, astrology, Cabbala -- besides the more recent studies of Indian metaphysics, comparative mythology, psychical research, and the psychology of the unconscious. All these and other related fields of knowledge, once dismissed piecemeal, are now seen to belong to a coherent way of understanding and exploring what we choose to call 'reality.'"
Kathleen Raine, "Blake and Antiquity"
Obviously, ours is also an age of "return to the excluded knowledge." This return began in the fifties, with renewed interest in the areas such as tarot and astrology that Raine lists above.
