Angels-BLAKE, WILLIAM

The work of the English mystical poet and artist William Blake
(1757–1827) is full of visions of angels. Blake, who is known to many
for his poem “ Tiger! Tiger! Burning Bright,” was born in London. He
attended Henry Pars’s drawing school in the Strand, and at the age of
fifteen he was apprenticed to the engraver James Basire. After ending
apprenticeship in 1779, he went to the Royal Academy, where he first
exhibited a picture in 1780.
In 1783 his friends paid for the printing of Poetical Sketches, and in
1784 Blake married Catherine Boucher, who was destined to be very
important for his work. In 1789 Blake issued Songs of Innocence, the first
considerable work to be executed by his novel method of “illuminated
printing,” combining text and decorations on a simple etched plate.
By 1795 Blake had lived through the American and French revolutions,
which left a deep impression. His Songs of Experience (1794)
are permeated by undertones of indignation and pity for the human
state. These poems also show the strong influence of mystical writers
such as Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme, and Emanuel Swedenbörg.
Among Blake’s illuminated books are The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell (1793), a work mixing satires on Swedenbörg with metaphysical
and religious discussions; The Book of Thel (1789), a delicate allegory
of the descent of the soul from eternity into mortal life; Visions of the
Daughters of Albion (1793), in which free love is defended; The First
Book of Urizen (1794), containing an account of the creation of the
material world and of mankind burdened with the problem of evil;
Europe: A Prophecy (1794); The Book of Los (1795); The Book of Ahania
(1795); and The Song of Los (1795).
Two later and longer poems are the symbolic “Milton” (1808) and
“Jerusalem” (1804–20). In “Milton,” the whole problem of an evil
world is correlated with Blake’s own psychological struggles. It is in this
poem that Blake asks whether Jerusalem could have been built amid
England’s “dark, satanic mills.” In the epic “Jerusalem,” man awakes
from error and is finally redeemed by union with God. His last major
poem, The “Everlasting Gospel” (ca. 1810), is a series of fragments
expressing his unorthodox view of Christianity and the life of Christ.
Blake painted and produced occasional engravings for booksellers.
On the suggestion of the painter John Linnell, Blake engraved his
own designs for Inventions to the Book of Job (1826). For the astrologer
John Varley, Blake drew many “visionary heads,” portraits of imaginary
visitors, usually historical characters. Among these was the celebrated
“Ghost of a Flea.” He also worked on one hundred illustrations
for Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Bible was always his favorite source
for subjects, and when illustrating the poets, such as Milton or Bunyan,
he chose semireligious themes.
Blake’s works, both his writings and his drawings, are full of
angels, and much of his imagery and symbolism are adopted from
Böhme and Swedenbörg, both of whom deviated from prevailing theological
opinion. Böhme was a mystical and theosophical writer,
whereas Swedenbörg was a scientist who devoted himself to studies
arising out of what he claimed to be persistent communications from
angels and other agencies in a spiritual world. Blake was influenced by
Böhme’s idea that there are three principles—heaven, hell, and our
own world—and that every spirit is confined in its own principle, the
evil angels in hell and the good in heaven.In the frontispiece to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake
shows each kind of spirit in its own dwelling, one of either fire or
light. In the drawing entitled Good and Evil Angels, he represents the
Devil as blind and thus unable to see the Good Angel, whom he is trying
to approach but cannot, since neither can perceive the other, one
bathed in the light of God and the other covered by blackness and
encompassed by burning fire.
Blake was a Platonist and was also knowledgeable about reincarnation
and the karmic principle. He saw angels, good and evil, as the
real forces behind the weaknesses and the triumphs of mortal men and
women. Blake insisted that eternity is complete harmony, and therefore
angels and spirits are androgynous, with no separate principles of
male and female, but only the one of humanity.