One of my all-time favorite poets is William Blake (1757-1827), a London born creative known to most for his widely read poems The Lamb and The Tyger. His verse is full of vivid imagery, gorgeous language, and a keen sociopolitical awareness. However, the thing I adore the most about a lot of his artistry is its connection to the spiritual aspects of existence; the hidden things perceived only when one reaches beyond the limits of their physical senses and opens themselves to secret realities and higher truths. Throughout his life, Blake reportedly had various encounters with the spirit realm. For example, at the age of nine, he claimed to have seen "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars," and at forty, numerous angels descending on a ladder from Heaven to his cottage at Felpham on the Sussex coast. …show more content…
In a letter to Thomas Butts concerning Milton, his dreamscape of an epic, he stated, “I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty lines at a time, without premeditation and even against my will.” It was due to outlandish claims such as this that many of his contemporaries branded him a madman. Nevertheless, he continued to embrace his bond with the invisible world regardless of what others said about him. Like Blake, I have been interested in mysticism, mythology, and the occult for as long as I can remember; and it was my admiration of these ideas, as well as the profound insights they offer into the inner workings of the world, that led to my adoption of a mystical practice. This means I, through a variety of methods, actively work toward an absolute connection with The Divine, which I find present in Nature’s personifications—i.e. Love, Knowledge, Light,