The most inspiring place I’ve visited this year… fetzer.org/case-study/g...

Near NW3? In NW3! Do come along tonight - @waterstones.bsky.social Hampstead with @RupertSheldrake #WilliamBlake

Join @askwilliamblake.bsky.social and Rupert Sheldrake in conversation about ‘Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination’ next week at Waterstones Hampstead!✨ 🗓 23rd September ⏰ 6.30pm BST 🎟️ tinyurl.com/ynz66p5j

Why perpetual wars? “The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars,” wrote William James. Adam Smith gave less often aired and no less insightful reasons for conflict too... markvernon942268.substack.com/p/war-what-i...

William Blake as a case study, in my post for @The Culturist. What made his genius? His “spiritual friends”, he said: supernatural inspiration - the only kind of inspiration there is. www.theculturist.io/p/what-makes...

William Blake on President Trump and division...

“The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up; Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field: Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air.” Lines from #WilliamBlake’s poetic paraphrase of the American Declaration of Independence.

That time of the month again. Settling down with the new Idler magazine.

London and Manchester this week, talking #WilliamBlake. Do come by. He much matters.

#WilliamBlake will only really be a Romantic should #Romanticism come of age, to use #OwenBarfield’s way of describing a Romanticism that isn’t primarily a heartfelt yearning or ethical protest, but a remade consciousness of humanity’s participative role in the divine cosmos.

Albion despairs frequently in #WilliamBlake’s works, “in terrible combustion clouded rage, Drinking the shuddering fears & loves of Albions Families, Destroying by selfish affections the things that they most admire. The soul drinks murder & revenge, & applauds its own holiness.”

William Blake’s original printing of “And did those feet…” is about the only way, if you’re lucky, to hear the words without that tune, great as it is, irresistible in your ear. #lastnightoftheproms

How ritual and myth shaped our evolutionary story. And against the relentless utilitarianism of most Big History. (Funny how a technological age presumes technological striving drove our ancestors...) markvernon942268.substack.com/p/human-the-...

Another excerpt from Awake! - a section reflecting on the spiritual dimension that Blake argues is core to a positive environmentalism, @jricole.bsky.social www.juancole.com/2025/09/envi...

Delighted to announce that Rupert Sheldrake will be joining me next week @waterstones.bsky.social!

An excerpt from Awake! @thefrumiousone.bsky.social on #WilliamBlake, revolution and the Eternals… www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/10/a...

Chimeras feature in #WilliamBlake’s imaginary. The rooster-man sat glumly in the sunset is, at first, quite odd. But I think Blake intimates: remember the cock who heralds the rising sun even in the blue hour before dawn, anticipating the light, the new day, the resurrection.

“At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell,” writes #WilliamBlake. The shell looks thick. The babe or cherub looks up ready to fly. I take the cartoon to be an encouragement. Breakthroughs come in time.

On display #WilliamBlake’s @V_and_A: Mary, Jesus, John and a lamb, though the lamb is not a symbol of Jesus’s death. With Blakean imagination there are no symbols. Rather, the lamb and Jesus, Mary and John, display a feature of being: offering life for others. #cosmosofsympathies

Reflecting on the #WilliamBlake’s on view @V_and_A in London: The Virgin and Child - with Raphael’s Mackintosh Madonna for comparison. Blake loved Raphael, who was unfashionable at the time, the influence also stressing his devout, searching Christianity, often questioned today.

I enjoyed Human, the new Big History, on the BBC. Natural history is so beautifully filmed! But, honestly, the story of our species is deracinated by the dogmas of materialistic science. A spiritual story can be told - one with plenty of evidence, to boot. open.substack.com/pub/markvern...

No #WilliamBlake images on display @tatebritain until 2027, the 200th anniversary, I learnt today. The recent works on show need exposure rest (as works on paper, I gather). So in London, the place to go is @V&A, where these four tempera works are in the Paintings room.

“Innocence for Blake was not a kind of naive ignorance, but an open-minded perception that instills wisdom.” Interview online talking #WilliamBlake deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/2025/09/q-wi...

The genius of Dante and Blake’s understanding of anger is that there are two types. One externalises: anger locking onto an enemy, ideally to share the mutual loathing. A second internalises: anger consuming the energy of the individual who lives, as it were, slumped in life.

“The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea.” William Blake

‘Twas a joy to be on the programme with my brilliant supervisor Angie Hobbs talking about friendship back in 2006! #inourtime #melvynbragg www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

How can William Blake’s vision of imagination help us see life in a new way today? Tune in Thursday, September 4th at 1:06pm PDT, 4:06pm EDT, for an inspiring discussion with Mark Vernon on his new book, Awake! See www.kmet1490am.com to listen online.

Hinterland is a different kind of space, on Turner Street, Manchester. Places much effect how the evening goes, so I’m looking forward to talking William Blake here on Sept 18th. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/awake-imag...

Do think of coming by the Hampstead @waterstones.bsky.social for an evening on #WilliamBlake!

Two William Blake images. 1. Albion being stripped of cosmic connection by the daughters of memory. 2. Jerusalem siding with the daughters of inspiration who offer connection. In short: memory, representation, data tend to separate. Imagination, experience, spirit participate.

"The best book on Blake out there!" With thanks to Robert Rowland Smith.

William Blake's living cosmos. I talk with Robert Rowland Smith about the really very remarkable extent of Blake's fourfold vision. youtu.be/8mJEbi2F63k

10 top William Blake images: #1. Los crosses a threshold, into a darkness, with a light of spiritual fire. The frontispiece to the epic poem “Jerusalem” dares us to step into Blake’s work, too. His promise: the lantern of imagination guiding us to Eternity. AWAKE! Out today in US

On the eve of the U.S. release of AWAKE!, a QnA about William Blake and the book at my Substack. #williamblake markvernon942268.substack.com/p/energy-is-...

10 top William Blakes: #2. Illustrations to the Divine Comedy: Lucy, saint of light, bears Dante, with Virgil. It’s the first night on Mt Purgatory and Dante dreams a rape. He’s distraught. But here, even darkness aids liberty, the dream showing the reach of divine forgiveness.

Not a trainspotter, yet… Harlech beech.

10 top William Blake images: #3. The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea is chilling. The merciless intent and dominating presence of the monster contrasts with the equally energetic but liberating gaze of the Angel of the Revelation: good and ill powers that surround us.

10 top William Blake images: #3. The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea is chilling. The merciless intent and dominating presence of the monster contrasts with the equally energetic but liberating gaze of the Angel of the Revelation: good and ill powers that surround us.

10 top William Blake images: #4. Blake worked in the golden age of caricature and clearly enjoyed satirical prints. Here’s one of his on the emerging consumerism of the times, carrying a resonance into our own space age. Childish yearning? Admirable aspiration? Note to Musk?

I’m never quite sure exactly where a rainbow is. But I’m no less very glad they are.

10 top William Blake images: #5. The heroine, Ololon, leads the other living intelligences who surround her in prayer and praise. The image goes to the heart of Blake’s ecological vision: human beings are part of nature and can discover a particular transforming agency within it.

U.S. release date approaching on Monday! Do join us for this live event - youtube.com/@platospodca...

10 top William Blake images: #6. “Jacob’s Dream” is a first in art: the ladder as a spiral - to me stressing Blake’s sense that transcendence is immanent, a heaven in a wild flower; and that tho’ we may sleep unperceiving, a continual commerce of angels and souls sustains life.

Interest in Owen Barfield keeps growing…

10 top William Blake images: #7. This b&w Albion Rose is bold. The Vitruvian-paragon energetic Albion, we read below him, “danc'd the dance of Eternal Death”, “Giving himself for the Nations.” A shed chrysalis and moth stress an alternative kind of freedom, less commonly cheered.

10 top William Blake images: #8. Los and his bat-like spectre - the blood-sucking, secretly desperate narcissism that with relentless “reasoning power” offers faux-control that eclipses divine vision. The spectre is subdued and then annihilated by Los’ stronger selfless devotion.

10 top images: #9. William Blake was with Jesus on the Parousia, I think, saying “whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgement passes upon that Individual”. His cyclical Last Judgements convey it: the movement of each of us around the one divine centre.

The reign of reductive, material abstraction is remarkably persistent. It brings an appealing power, but at the loss of a felt connection with life called presence. William Blake has an analysis that is also antidote and reconnection. New Substack essay… open.substack.com/pub/markvern...

10 days until Awake! is released in the US. 10 top William Blake images. Today #10 - Dante, Virgil and Statius sleep, from Blake’s illustrations to the Divine Comedy. They are high on Mt Purgatory, their third night, a moment of supernal calm. And Blake captures it beautifully.

William Blake’s brooding frontispiece to America A Prophecy, on the revolutionary war, ranks high in the art of conflict. The angel of the rank of Principalities, caring for regions or nations, is bound physically and spirituality. The woman and her children live but traumatised.