ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE by William Blake W.

B was a writer who didn`t respect the English Church,although the basis of his literature was the Bible.The subtitle of this work is a line from the Bible-`` The Voice of one crying in the Wildriness.``Blake uses this phrase from the Bible and regards himself as a new prophet who would warn people of dangers. In this work Blake deals with the imagination and man`s creativity.He emphasizes the importance of imagination by stating that ``Poetic Genius`` (imagination)and our creative potentials are what make us human and the whole world is the product of imagination and not of God.For him all people(although in some aspects different)are the same because of the similar imagination they own.The truth for him comes from our hearts although it isn`t the same as the truth that our senses see.Further he discusses the philosophical system which also comes from the imagination.He recognizes the value of philosophy ,but criticizes people`s desire to learn easy,because only weak individulas reach for philosophy which provides them with rules and limits their creature potentials.Instead,people should use their own imagination and creativity and not satisfy themselves with traditional knowledge but strive to learn and discover unknown.He saw religion and the Christian interpretation of the Bible as limiting man`s creativity.He hated Christian God,but he loved the Bible and respected it as man`s highest creative work,not as the evidence that God exists.He thought that the origin of religion is Poetic Genius and man`s unlimited creative power.It is man who created God,not vice versa.Man is God,All religions have the same source,they are one,the same products of human imagination. THERE IS NO NATURAL RELIGION by W.B This is the work where Blake strongly attacked the 18thc beliefs and the Deism known as Natural Religion.Deists were the one who saw the Universe as a mechanism created by a supreme being God,accorrding to certain rules which man should not try to disobey but accept them as they were.For Deists the evidence that God exists was the physical,material world created as a prefect mechanism.Blake opposed that belief and thought that man and his imagination and unlimited creative power created God.The Age of Reason insisted on the Reason as the most important human capacity,but Blake saw it as something that limits man.Man is limited by senses and its perception of the material world,but mans perception should depend on its sixth sense-imagination.The Enlightenment insisted on general nature ,but Blake says that reason also changes with the growth of knowledge.Man shouldnt satisfy with what he already knows but strive to learn more.Nothing is impossible,and man shouldnt limit his desires. Conclusion: If there werent poets,the world would be governed by philosophers and scientists and it would be limited,dull and repeatable.God equals man and vice versa,so therefore God equals imagination. THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL by W.B This work is regarded as Blakes manifesto of his spiritual independence from all dogmas imposed by the state,church or all other 18thc institutions which he opposed.Also it is the story about how man gt to this position and a kind of prophecy of an apocalypse that follows.Blake strongly opposed the Orthodox

Churchs view of reason and restraint as good,and energy and desires as evil which must be conquered by good.In order to fight such a view ,Blake uses Biblical symbols of Devil and Angel and through marriage reconciles the two contraries ,which in the orthodox religions view requires the submission of evil to good.In order to justify his own view and prove that desire and energy are not absolute evil nor restraint and reason absolute good,he confuses the roles of God and Satan,and compares the Devil (symbol of evil) and Christ (symbol of good)who both rebelled against the established authority. Therefore,the Devil and Christ must be the same.Further,if desires and energy are evil,that means that Christ who was also full of energy is evil.and if reason is always good then,Satan also must be good because he reasons.The world is not only black and white. PLATE 3: Blake opens this plate with the sentence As a new heaven is begun,and it is now thirty three years since its advent:the Eternal Hell revives.What Blake meant by this is clear-the Revolution in France and America.Another coinidence was his age-thirty three ,the age when Christ was crucified. In this plate blake refers to Swedenborg,calling him Angel sitting by the tomb of Christ and alluding to the falsity of Swedenborgs writings.This is followed by the sentences in which Blake states his system of contraries that ends in irony:Good is Heaven.Evil is Hell.(The main point at which he parted with Swedenborg was his view of the Angel as a supporting conventional thought and religion,which is bad,because Blakes Devil personifies energy,which is good.)Without contraries is no progression. Blake says that contraries are to be reconciled but are not to be absorbed one another.He opposed the dogma of traditional Christianity which stresses that Good is the passive that obeys Reason and that Energy is bad.But Blake thought that these contraries are necessary to human existence.He states that Energy and Reason ,Love and Hate,Attraction and Repulsion are contrastive human categories,and that human soul is not divinized idea but our passion,imagination,feelings and man can be fulfilled only through the senses and imagination.The world is in a constant struggle between the contraries and one loses its meaning without the other. PLATE 4:The subtitle of this plate is The Voice of the Deviland contains two sets of sentences with the second three answering or negating the first three ,as the errors of All Bibles or sacred codes.The voice of the Devil is actually Blake,the poet himself who speaks as a reformer against those who interpret the Bible.According to him the first error was that thr Church divided man in two parts,mans body and soul.Blake strongly protested against this dualism and believed that body and soul are not two distinctive categories.He turned the 18thc existing world upside down and God who stood for reason and repression was set against Satan,who stood for energy and freedom.The plate ends in celebration of energy (imagination and creative power)which was seen as superior to the reason. In this plate Blake also introduces one of the great paradoxes of the poem: weakness is evil,concluding, after his reading of Paradise Lost,with the note: The Reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God,and at liberty when of Devils and Hell,is because he was a true poet and of Devils party without knowing it. The meaning of the note is that energy of desire cannot be separated from the poets creative energy,the imagination.The implication is: if Miltons Satan outshines Miltons God,the poet outshines the philosopher. THE PROVERBS OF HELL: It is a kind of metaphor for human life.What blake wanted was to pay attention to the reader that there was time for everything and there is no period in human life which is passive because passive obedience is bad.What a man should do is not to look back on tradition and old

knowledge,but to destroy all traditions and create his own system.For Blake obedient,prudent and virtues people are weak people incapable of anything because they surpress their energy and desires.The true virtue is the ability to express yourself and be creative. PLATE 11: This plate is the most revolutionary one and it starts with the description of the origin and history of religion.The old,Ancient Poets were the creators of first religion.They enriched objects by calling them Gods or Geniuses and placing them under their mental deity.It was man who created God ,not the other way around.The poet had that creative power(imagination) which is unlimited and was able to perceive the world around him in a different way.But when the system was established and thats the Church and its laws,priests took advantage of what was originally poetic.The story about the creation of human being ,in order to manipulate and enslave people mentally.According to Blake, religion and the worship of God separated the creator and man. All deites reside in human breasts.Blake wanted to remind people that salvation is in their hearts and points out that people should search for good and evil within themselves.What makes us both divine and human is imagination. PLATE 14: This is how Blake explains his version of understanding Apocalypse.According to religion,the original sin was mans disobedience of God.But for Blake the Fall,the original sin is the rejection of imagination and projection of peoples creativity into God.As a result,the world is fallen and corrupted. Blake suggests that we stop depending only on our five senses,and expand our consciousness. Blake announces Apocalypse and is joyful about it because it would bring about positive transformation of the world. PLATE 16:Here Blake introduces us with the Giants, mythological figures who were the first inhabitants of cosmos and created the world we perceive.But they are also symbols of creativity and irational energy, and Blake compares them with the poets and creative people in general.But they are now in chains,enslaved by the weak(cunning coward)people,who keep their energy under control,and it is the most important task to free our energy from reason.The major opposition in Blakes mythological sustem is the opposition between two types of people:the Prolific (full of energy and very creative) and the Devourer (people who keep their energy under control and use their reason only). Religion by trying to reconcile them ,in fact,seeks to destroy their existence.What blake suggests is not the reconcilation between these two opposites nor the abolition of reason,but to accept the fact that they need each other and should stay in opposition. PLATE 5: What he was doing in this plate was to interpret the work of Milton whom he saw as a reformer and a rebel and his Paradise Lost.Blake didnt criticize Miltons intention but rather thought of it as a democratic idea.milton in his Paradise Lost created the character of Satan as a rebel ,as a human being fighting for his freedom.It was actually the Satan,not the God ,the true source of Energy and symbol of prophetic fire.So,the true poet must be on the side of Devil,on the side of creativity, energy,desire.Blake criticized those who were weak and restrained their desires which he saw as unlimited.The only limited aspect of human being was reason which Blake coinsides with God.Blake is deliberately confusing the rules of God and Devil.Devil is the symbol of energy,desire,rebellion,a symbol of artists.