William Blake & Jacob Boehme: Imagination, Experience & the Limitations of Reason by Kevin Fischer - HTML preview

Blake & Boehme: Imagination, Experience and the Limitations of Reason

humanises us, places us very much in the world as human beings, and puts us in touch with all the possibilities that brings with it. And when this happens, true Reason can function. In his early work All Religions are One, Blake spoke of imagination as the ‘Poetic Genius,’ which he saw as

the true Man, and . . . the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius . . .. As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius.123

The all-embracing fecundity of the inward spiritual man is the source of the ‘infinite variety’ in the outward. Exploring our potential through imagination, Boehme and Blake both encourage and urge us to make new discoveries and to create new forms for the life of the spirit. Both worked against the circumscription of reality. For both, reality is inexhaustible and often lies at depths beyond surface appearance; and any predominant form of thought and understanding is only partial. In Blake’s words, there is ‘no Limit of Expansion . . . no Limit of Translucence’.124 And for Boehme, ‘The word . . . which began with the beginning of the world, is still yet . . . creating’.125

122. Four Zoas, Night 9, p. 135:21, E403. 123. All Religions Are One, E1.

124. Jerusalem pl. 42:35, E189. 125. Mysterium Magnum 10:56.