William Blake & The Ancient of Days
A painter, a poet, a radical visionary of the Romantic era, William Blake (1757–1827) has left a monumental impression on the Western mind. His influence echoes in the works of T.S. Elliot and Martin Scorsese; Jim Morrison and The Doors named their band after Blake’s ‘Doors of Perception’ quote; his poem ‘Jerusalem’ evolved to become a popular Christian hymn. Although shunned and derided as a “madman” by the critics of his day, he rose in popularity post-mortem, and the above painting, ‘The Ancient of Days’, is his best known work (and his own personal favourite).
Despite Blake’s mainstream appeal, few are familiar with the meaning of his art and its surreal inspiration: Blake recorded having waking visions of angelic entities, such as Gabriel and Mary. When he was four he witnessed God looking at him through a window. Aged nine he saw “a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.” He even claimed to have been personally guided and encouraged by Archangels on his artistic quest. Today we would describe Blake’s peculiar condition as hyperphantasia, which granted him the capacity to perceive things imagined as vividly as things in the waking world.
Amid the cruel industrialisation of 18th century London, as the landscapes were marred by the “dark, Satanic mills”, he espoused virtues of tolerance and pity, expressing a great love for the poor children of his era, as well as being an advocate for the equal rights of the sexes. Like many people of his day, Blake’s thought was rooted within the Christian soil, and he was intimately familiar with Biblical stories. However, due partly to his personal visionary experiences, as well as the systemically repressive state of the Church, he decried traditional Christian doctrine as anti-imaginative. Blake made it his life’s work to capture the mystical truth within his own expansive and multi-layered mythological narrative, the profundity of which can hardly be understood without an appreciation of the mystical thread with which it is woven.
The painting itself makes an obvious Biblical reference to the prophetic book of Daniel.
I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. — Daniel 7:9
‘The Ancient of Days’ painting was an illustration — conjured up by a vision Blake had over a staircase — to his book of poems titled ‘Europe, a Prophecy’. It depicts a figure he named Urizen (your reason), the embodiment of reason and law. Urizen is using a compass to measure out and set clear the boundaries of reality, and because of this people often misinterpret this squatting old man, with his mighty mane blowing in the wind, as God. Blake, however, characterises Urizen as what God is not, as opposed to the prophecy of Daniel that attempts to describe and frame the eternal form. Truly, Urizen is anything but God; he is the fallen state of man, prideful, a master of his domain, a calculated judge; he is, in some sense, Satan himself.
As a counter to Urizen, at the core of Blakean mythology is the spirit of imagination, represented by Los. Los is the anagram of Sol (meaning sun in Latin) and he is referred to as the “eternal prophet”. As such, he fills the necessary polar opposition to Urizen/Satan as an emulation of Jesus Christ. Los is understood to be a smith, wielding his hammer on a forge, which is a symbol of the beating heart. Blake writes of an encounter with this deity: “Los descended to me… trembling I stood… in the vale of Lambeth; but he kissed me and wished me health.”
The public tends to misinterpret Blake, sometimes in ironic and amusing ways. In 2019 Urizen was projected onto the dome of St. Pauls cathedral in London; while the British Library’s courtyard displays the bronze statue of Blake’s ‘Newton: Personification of Man Limited by Reason’, a painting that urges us to transcend the knowledge learned through the written word.
How, then, are we to interpret the mind of such a man, who casually converses with angels? What are we to make of his belief that while God created man, man also created God? Today’s scholars remain astonished by the perplexing depth of Blake’s symbolically expressive repertoire, and some would claim that not even Blake himself was wholly admitted into the esoteric sanctuary of his own making.
