A New Year, A New Self, A New Politics

Thank you to everyone who’s followed the posts this year, left comments, suggested ideas, and supported thehumandivine project in its first year. Over the last twelve months we’ve posted a new blog each week, covering everything from Kabbalah and Brexit to neuroscience and the sexuality of God – all united by an approach rooted in William Blake’s imaginative and radical take on God. We hope this will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to explore Blake’s alternative vision and its relevance for today.

But in 2017 thehumandivine is changing! From January the site is going to develop in new and exciting ways: instead of weekly articles there’ll be more in-depth monthly posts exploring key passages from the Bible (Book of Job, Ezekiel, etc) from a radical Blakean perspective, to help illuminate them and also to suggest their relevance to what’s happening today, and how these narratives and thought systems continue to shape both our inner and outer lives.

Blake read the Bible not as “the word of God” to be followed literally but as a profound record of the psychological evolution of humanity – its terrifying psychic splits and dissections, its self-alienation and state of “exile”, its fall into “division”, its capacity for forgiveness, and its longing for integration and wholeness.

We’re also hoping to develop the themes of the website in practical ways: there are plans to organise a conference next summer to explore the implications of Blake for contemporary theology and to see if the Church can be shifted more in a Blakean direction. The theme of the conference will be Blake’s observation: “The Vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy” – and what he means by this. Watch this space!

 

Here’s a selection of some of the highlights from 2016:

NICK CAVE: The Flesh Made Word: A Poetic Interpretation

ROD TWEEDY: William Blake, Brexit and the Re-Awakening of Albion

IAIN McGILCHRIST: William Blake and the Divided Brain

SHAMS TABRIZI: The 40 Rules of Love

PETER ANDERSON: Poetry & Madness: Blake, Eigen & the Psychotic God

CHRISTOPHER Z. HOBSON: Anarchism and William Blake’s Idea of Jesus

ERIC PYLE: Blake’s Illustrations of Dante’s Hell

E.M. NOTENBOOM: From Hell: Alan Moore and William Blake

ANDREI BURKE: The Secret World and Sexual Rebellion of William Blake

SUSANNE M. SKLAR: Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

 

Happy Christmas!!