William Blake and the depth of our error

To read William Blake's work with sympathy, with empathy - as I am currently doing - is to discover an exposure of cultural error of far, Far greater depth and extent than is currently acknowledged almost anywhere.

Blake sees the deep problem in a way of thinking - 'system': which is adopted for all kinds of reasons that boil down to power; and all kinds of reasons that reduce to an evasion of Christ's deep teachings.

The way of thinking that Blake excoriates has been given so many names - reductionism, positivism, scientism - but if considered as system thinking, or thinking in terms of abstract models, then it is pervasive among intellectuals as far back as history goes.

The thing is... modern culture is so familiar by Blake's kind of insight that people are bored by it. Presumably they regard 'system' as unavoidable - and certainly it is necessary to civilisation. We know it, and 'know' that nothing can be done about it - so we would rather not think about it.

But with system comes the absolute necessity of alienation, compulsion, the use of men as functionaries, the degradation of men to something much less... To accept system to to accept all this. To accept system is a fundamental statement of human priorities.

And with system, generation upon generation, cumulatively - as system becomes bureaucracy, all bureaucracies link, and bureaucratic system expands into every corner of life, in finer and finer detail - monitoring and regulating and defining thought - comes loss of our true selves (replaced by selves which serve the system, or react-against it).

Comes the destruction of any possibility of a true relation of our-selves to reality...

And comes a frantic state of distraction, of displacement activity, of despair and of a state of inner deadness that is almost indistinguishable from death - Man as walking dead: Man as zombie.

Hardly any individual - and no group or institution - stands outside this corruption. The Christian churches were apparently overcome by system not long after the death of Christ, and all modern churches are systemised, massively, too.

System has, indeed, infected and swiftly overcome all movements intended to expose, critique, or destroy system; such that all 'escape routes' merely loop-back-into the system... such are the temptations of power.

(This we see in the counter-cultural radical movements of the 20th century, many of whom embraced Blake as a hero - somehow ignoring that Blake's work is saturated in lived, experienced, primary Christian sensibility. Because Blake rejected Christianity as system - they supposed that he rejected the primacy of Christ!) 

But system is not inevitable, it is not a part of the human condition, Blake depicts the opposite to system in his works, and it is not just attainable - but natural to everybody. Instead, we persist in a metaphysics which generates system, we persist in asking questions that presuppose system, we assume system almost as our first assumption - then lose sight of this primary assumption...

If Man's future depends on discarding and going beyond system-thinking, as Blake assumed and I agree; then we have a long way to go before we reach a point at which such a colossal decision could be made and held-to.

But we can glimpse such a situation in the work of Blake - if we are prepared to approach it empathically and individually; and not merely to re-systemise it...

"I must create a system", said William Blake... But systems are never Good - and yet...

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." 

So said William Blake - and he did; he created an idiosyncratic and incomprehensible system of assumptions, archetypes, and analogies; as expounded in the very long and obscure "prophetic" books.  

William Blake - 1757-1827 - lived at the very beginning of the first Romantic era; so he was among the first to experience and express the inner need to escape from the toils of the already-existing systems of knowledge. 

And surely he was right? Surely there is no tyranny more complete than that of a system of thinking, a religion, an ideology? 

But it is apparent that creating one's own system is not an answer - not even to oneself. 

The creating of a new system is, indeed, a creative activity; but once the system has-been made... Well, then it really is just another system.

What happened with Blake has happened innumerable times since. Nowadays, almost everybody experiences the oppression of the system; yet among those who desire and are determined to escape it, and make their won system - the process ends in... just-another system. 

It happens even to creative geniuses such as Joseph Smith, HP Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner... They start out with exciting and apparently liberating spiritual experiences and insights; but end-up with ludicrously-complicated and vast systems. Systems that their followers are supposed to learn and obey; in a way that never applied to the originators of those systems, while they were originating them. 

In sum; those who themselves successfully follow Blake's advice and create a system to avoid enslavement by another-man's system; have merely created another system. And the new system them process to enslave first of all its originator; so we see the creative genius struggling to impose his system on himself! And then... anyone else who chooses to follow the founder. 

So that the creative genius becomes merely a leader -  a bureaucrat of the new system; and his followers merely functionaries of the new system; and/or corrupt and/ or careerist manipulators, who try to use the system for their own this-worldly benefit.   

The same trajectory applies to movements of renewal and awakening within the stale and empty forms of established religions. 

At first the founder of the movement is creative, and the process of making a system is exciting, enlivening... 

But to the extent that this is successful, the system crystallizes; and presses upon any individual; crushing, and incrementally killing, the soul. 

It seems that we follow the same loop over and again. We recurrently hope, and may believe, that Goodness can be captured in a system: Goodness can be made-into a system.

And either that the latest system has finally succeeded in capturing Goodness; or else that some old system has never yet been properly tried, but would capture Goodness is properly implemented. 

People are temporarily energized and motivated; by trying to develop and impose their system - believing that This Time they have got-it-right...

That this time, this system really will made this world a better place, if only people would do it. 

But it never happens; and it never can happen - because systems are the problem. 

And yet (as Blake saw, so long ago), we must have a system; we can't avoid them. There is no alternative in this life and world as it actually is - which is why creative pioneers always end-up with just another system. 

The situation is that what we most-want and most-need - is not possible in this mortal life and on earth. 

Is life, therefore, forever and inevitably a tragic paradox? 

Or; is what we want and need possible to all of us who understand the problem - but someplace else: maybe after death, and in Heaven?

This seems to be a problem well-worth solving; seeking the answer to which is an activity well-worth our best and most serious effort. 

Two problems with Mystical Christianity (e.g. Swedenborg, Blake, Whitman, Steiner) under modern conditions

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Since I advocate and practice a type of Mystical Christianity, I need to point out the severe problems with this kind of spiritual life, under modern Western conditions.

The problems are specific cases of Conquest's, or Charlton's, Second Law:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/charltons-second-law-to-replace.html

Which is that - nowadays - unless an institution or organization or church is primarily Christian, it is not Christian at all, but instead some version of New Leftism, Liberalism, Progressivism or Socialism.

This applies to mystical practice, as it does to everything else from charities, through educational institutions, and science and economics, to arts and hobbies.

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1. People who take the mysticism, and leave the Christianity.

In other words, they gain the partial benefits of mysticism - in feeling more alive in a living world - but stop at that point. They do not proceed to the Christianity. They never achieve or accept an understanding of the purpose of life; but live in transcendental moments that lack any discernible meaning, and which are typically (almost invariably) de facto threaded-together by mainstream secular Leftism, including the perspective of the on-going sexual revolution.

2. People who focus on the mysticism in order to be able to ignore the ethics. They use their mystical knowledge and experiences in order to discard moral constraints that are part of real traditional Christianity - especially where these liberations are validated by modern mainstream Leftism; and especially when they are motivated to take advantage of sexual liberation (various kinds of sex outwith traditional marriage) for themselves.

In effect, they use mysticism as a rationale for rejecting (they would say transcending) the basic ethical constraints of traditional Christianity.

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For example,  the poet and illustrator William Blake was a mystical Christian, but the large academic industry based upon him are not Christian - but instead use Blake to validate a primarily socio-political agenda.

For example, Jacob Bronowski wrote an early and very influential book which was instrumental in the late 20th century re-discovery of Blake - William Blake: a man without a mask. Bronowski was hostile to both Christianity (becoming a very well know atheist humanist), and he was also hostile to mysticism. His book (beautifully written and very informative) yokes Blake to a radical, revolutionary political agenda.

Later Blake scholars approved Blake's mysticism, but not his Christianity - Kathleen Raine (with her eclectic 'spiritual values') would be a representative of this. Among the millions who have studied Blake at college over the past couple of generations, I would be surprised if any had been converted to Christianity since that basic of Blake's thought is relativized into insignificance, grossly de-emphasized - and generally simply disregarded.

Something similar applies to Walt Whitman - although Whitman's Christianity seems to have been less profound and foundational than was the case with Blake.

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Similarly, the religious and spiritual organizations founded by Steiner are now dominated by typical Leftist concerns of a New Age type (progressive education, alternative medicine, organic horticulture and environmentalism). Steiner himself focused everything in his vastly detailed system of Spiritual Science firmly and explicitly on Christ - but that has become an optional extra, and in practice left-out.

I suspect that Swedenborgians have gone the same way - but I am not sure.

(For some Westerners, Eastern Orthodox is treated in this kind of way - because Orthodoxy minus living in an Orthodox country - with an Orthodox monarch and church-focused way of national life - can be seen as simply a de-ethicized, eclectic, pick-and-mix Christianized spiritual option. 'Celtic' Christianity would be another version.)

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Mystical Christianity is - in and of itself - valid. It is just that in our modern cultural context, in practice, it is extremely prone to corruption.

Therefore, to recommend any type of Mystical Christianity is very risky.

However, I believe it is a risk that needs to be taken - because for some people this is the essential path-into Christianity. For these people, if there is no Mystical Christianity, then they will not be Christians.

So, cognisant of the risks, I want to develop a path through mysticism and into Christianity.

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The apparent corruptibility of Mystical Christianity is therefore a serious problem, but one which I hope may be tackled and solved. Because (to reiterate) for many disaffected people in modern life, the main problem is alienation, feeling cut off from Life - and that is what most demands to be addressed.

This is why the likes of RW Emerson, and Jung, and Joseph Campbell have been of such interest to Westerners - because they address the most pressing problem.

In The Power Of Myth Campbell hit the nail: People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about. 
My position is that Campbell was dead right when he said 'that's what we're really seeking'; and dead wrong when he said 'that's what it's all finally about'. Campbell's perspective offers real and immediate spiritual benefits; but its built-in anti-Christian perspective means that the adherent then 'gets' stuck'.

The very effectiveness of mysticism - although only a partial effectiveness, indeed may serve to prevent the next step, into Christianity.

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I know this from personal, lived experience. I was in that position for a long time - more than two decades, during which I pressed forward all the time towards a completing and fulfilment within this 'Romantic' Transcendentalist position but never got any further because - from this perspective - there is nowhere to go.

One is simply told to be satisfied with a life without purpose - a life of isolated epiphanies.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/firkins-on-emerson.html

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What is required is a spiritual discipline that starts with mysticism in a Christian frame, which presents the path as a seamless progress from mysticism into Christianity - this being set out from the beginning.

But my impression is that this path is not available in any institutional, organizational or church setting; it is therefore a path which must be traversed alone.

Therefore, my current advice (for what it is worth!) would be for would-be Mystical Christians to embark on the spiritual path, but always with the aim of a specific denomination in-view - e.g. to become a mystic en route to becoming an Evangelical, Western or Eastern Catholic, Mormon or whatever...

This may, or should, help to keep the mystic within the protections (if not on-the-rails) of real Christianity; I mean, within bounds of moral teachings and focused upon Christ - and away-from the siren seductions of New Leftism and the 'liberations' of the sexual revolution.    
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Jerusalem in Albion: William Blake and prophecy

Prophecy comes-into the stream of primary thinking - and its expression should be in that context; which implies that the expression of prophecy intends to recreate the stream of thinking including intuitive and prophetic insights. Thinking and noting occur together; prophecy is creation in real-time - and perfectly consciously (no unconscious speaking or automatic writing here and now, however matters were in past eras...) The result may be, probably will be, first-draft, instantaneously recorded, and unexplained.


English people are unaware of their positive values, explicitly those which hold Albion together - they are, indeed, unaware of what is Albion; of our bounds and content.

These were made by past genius - and not by known work, but ultimately by the thinking of past genius; these discovered, remade, added to the soul of Albion.

William Blake wrote poems, such as Jerusalem - which is widely known and sung; he painted and illustrated, composed lyric poems, aphorisms, and vast prophetic verses... But Blake's true role in Albion was to remake the nation at so deep (or high) a level that it is beyond perception; and not fully-knowable as a communication.

The principle act of Blake was his direct knowledge of reality, and then his shaping of reality... The reality of God's creation; that reality which can be known directly by you, or by me, or by anybody (now, or in the future). This is the imperishable legacy of Blake - and there were other as well as Blake (Langland, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton...).

So Blake's poem Jerusalem (to take an example) is true - when it was conceived it became true because it was written-into creation; that is the nature of prophecy.

For you and I to talk or write or read about creation involves us in indirectness, in symbolism, in 'communication'. But we can understand each other when both of us stand-before the poem Jerusalem as it is written into creation.

(Everything else is indirect and second-order; to contemplate creation alone is primary, sure; because direct.)

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And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire;
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold;
Bring me my Chariot of fire.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.

Priddy in Somerset; a green, cloudy, hilly place that the young Jesus is supposed to have visited in ancient time,
with his uncle Joseph (of Arimathea) 

William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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Blake was a mystic - was divinely inspired - had direct access to and received evidence of reality.

Mystics provide us with what might be termed objective evidence; but most mystics are just as prone to misunderstand, misinterpret, and falsely-systematize objective evidence evidence as are you and I.

Blake was also a Man, of knowledge incomplete and fallible, and (perhaps more than usually) prone to hatred and resentment.

So, we can benefit greatly from the inspired wisdom of Blake - but need also to recognize that Blake's own understanding of Blake's own wisdom was rather poor - which is why so much of his writing is essentially meaningless (and hardly even attempts to be meaningful).

But if we consider The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from " Without Contraries is no progression" up to the end of the Proverbs of Hell "Enough! or Too much!"; then we are confronted with as profound and as concentrated a catalogue of truth as human hand has penned.

(With the exception of the Apostles.)

http://www.bartleby.com/235/253.html

Our task is to regard this as divinely-inspired evidence; but to edit-out Blake's own false interpretations and systematizations of this evidence.

And this is what we must do with all (true) mystical insight - whether from the Prophets and Saints; or from other modern Christian (or at least self-identified Christian) mystics like Pascal, Traherne, Swedenborg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudolf Steiner and William Arkle.

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William Blake by William Wildblood

A moulded mask of Blake's head, made during his life

Over at the Albion Awakening blog; William Wildblood provides the latest evaluation in our on-going discussion of the prophet, artist and poet (and Albionist!) William Blake.

Don't try to explain evil by self-interest - evil is malice (William Blake)

Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves. 

A knavish character will often say - 'Of what interest is it to me to do so-and-so?'

I answer - 'Of none at all, but on the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this: hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act, not from interest, but from malice - even to your destruction'.  

William Blake - from Descriptive Catalogue (re-punctuated and emphasis added)

So many people, so often, regard self-interest as the prime evil, and try to explain the evil in this world as due to persons and institutions motivated by self-interest...  

Everything gets explained that way; so people will seek-out why such and such an action benefits the person that did it. And when this isn't obvious, then remote and indirect self-interest will be wheeled-out.

Contrariwise; if self-interest is not obvious - or if the chain of explanation is disbelieved - then it is assumed that there was no evil but merely some inexplicable coincidence, or incompetence - bad things are confidently ascribed to the sheer 'randomness' and uncontrollability of things.

Those who do this are what Blake termed knaves - cunning, dishonest, deceitful, cowardly, traitorous. In other words knaves are themselves those who are motivated by malice, by spite, by their taking of pleasure in the misery of others.

Northrop Frye (in Fearful Symmetry p56-7) amplifies Blake's passage thus:

By turning away from the world to be perceived we develop an imaginative idleness which spreads a sickness and lassitude over the whole soul, and all vices spring from this... Murder is obviously an expression of the same death-impulse that suicide is, and all evil acts are more or less murderous...

This death-impulse, this perverted wish to cut down and restrict the scope of life, is the touchstone not only of all the obvious vices, but of many acts often not classified as such; like teasing, instilling fear or discouragement, or exacting unthinking obedience.

It is quite inadequate to call self-interest a motive of evil conduct, though the death-impulse may be disguised in that form. Self-interest implies a good deal of control: in all extreme vices there is a mania in which one is hagridden by a 'ruling passion'.

As so often, children understand perfectly that evil is spite and malice; it is only in a culture so sophomoric, so adolescent, so knavish as ours - that we claim to see-through the 'obvious (and true) explanation such as to regard evil as an expression of mere self-interest (most often specifically economic self-interest).

Yet self-interest is universal - and so is no explanation at all; especially in a world where 'goodness' is defined in 'utilitarian' terms of publicly-observable and quantifiable 'altruism' (e.g. raising money for 'charity') - such that altruism is itself the grossest form of self-interest. 

Furthermore, the focus on self-interest serves to disguise real evil; because the 'mania' that drives a 'hagridden' doer of malicious evil will often bring about his downfall - and in modern culture that makes him a 'victim', worthy of sympathy. Instead of seeing self-destruction as a hallmark of the murderous nature of true evil, it engages our sympathy - and thus we are corrupted.

This is vital to bear in mind when so much of modern evil is bureaucratic, such that responsibility for evil is eluded, and we seldom know even the identities of those whose malice drives the evil. But, whether we know them or not, we can be sure that they are there.

How could Christianity be Romanticised? What went wrong?

Romantic Christianity made a brilliant start with Novalis, William Blake and ST Coleridge - and then nothing-much for many decades until Rudolf Steiner became (strange sort of) Christian in about 1898; to be followed by Owen Barfield and William Arkle in later generations - and there is William Wildblood and myself among current writers. But there have never been many Romantic Christians...

Why so rare, and what went wrong with the intermediate generations? Of course there were plenty of Romantics - but among them hardly any Christians; indeed most of them were either atheists or spiritual anything-but Christians.

A pre-eminent example was Ralph Waldo Emerson; who was an arch-Romantic and who began as a Unitarian minister - Unitarians being, at that time, like Emerson, Christians on-the-way-out. He ended-up as a kind of deist, flavoured with what he had gathered of Hinduism and Sufism.

Emerson was known for his elevation of the intuitive, epiphanic, 'moment' of insight to the highest possible valuation; like most Romantics, he required that all knowledge be derived from direct personal experience. SO why did Emerson not do the same for Christianity as he did for everything else? Why did he not develop a Romantic Christianity built from the kind of direct intuitive insights that fuelled the rest of his wide-ranging creativity? This will be answered below.

My guess is that Emerson accepted the evaluation of most Churches that Christianity must be derived from external authority - or else it is not Christianity. Catholics demand that the individual conform to the teaching of the Church authorities, or the traditions of the lineally descended ancient Church. Protestants demand conformity to the canonical scriptures of the Bible.

But what unites all churches is the assumption that whatever Christianity is, it is located outside the individual. The insistence is that Christianity does not come from within - not from individual experience, not from personal intuition.

Ultimately the task for the individual is to conform to external authority. The church judges the individual. 

If this is true; then Romanticism and Christianity are incompatible. So, how did Novalis, Blake and Coleridge come to believe that they had developed a Christianity based on their inner knowledge? It is mostly a matter of their basic and ultimate assumptions, of metaphysical assumptions. These authors believed that the individual could have direct knowledge of Christianity without it being derived from any intermediary at all; not rooted in church authority, without canonical scripture, traditional, philosophical theology or anything else.

Or, at least, and in conformity to Romanticism; that this direct form of personal knowing should serve to evaluate all other knowledge claims. So the individual judges the church; and may (like Blake, Steiner and Arkle) dispense with all churches - although Coleridge and Barfield were both, in later life,' communicating' (communion-taking) members of the Church of England.

We can see, then, why Emerson did not remain a Christian - because he apparently accepted the assertion that a real Christian must be under the authority of a church. (The only dispute was about which church/es it was correct to regard as really Christian.) It seems that, for Emerson, anyone who claimed to be a Christian outside of a church, was not really a Christian.

But there may be more to it than this - because Emerson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus; therefore real Christians were in error. Emerson's idea of deity was abstract - 'The Over Soul' - and therefore infinitely different-from a Man. The only union of Man with deity, therefore, was for Man to surrender his self and 'melt-into' the infinitude of deity.

So Emerson was a hopeless case! Ultimately, he did not want what Jesus offered; and preferred what Eastern religions offered. And what applies to Emerson, also applies to many other Romantics since. Some Romantics are materialist; but among those who are spiritual - it has mostly been an Eastern spirituality; which ultimately regards the individual self and our mortal world as temporary illusions.

This is the source of the paradox by which Emerson valued the moment of insight above all; yet ultimately he regarded each epiphany as evanescent, soon to be lost in time - and therefore worthless.

Other Christians have had strong Romantic impulses, but retained the conviction that the individual judgement must be subordinated to church authority - GK Chesterton is an example. Chesterton regarded the 'catholic' church (at first the Anglo Catholic wing of the Church of England; then in his late middle age, the Roman Catholic church) as the source of knowledge, of truth. For Chesterton Romanticism was the proper attitude each individual ought to adopt towards this truth.

For Chesterton, therefore, the individual did not have direct and personal intuitive access to knowledge; except for the knowledge that the church was true. The only primary knowledge was that the church was the only source of knowledge. 

Something similar could be said for CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They were Romantics and also Christians - but their Romanticism was secondary to their Christianity - and was at most understood to be a good and proper (perhaps even necessary) attitude towards their Christianity. The Romantic intuition was not, for them, a primary source of knowledge: that was revelation as communicated by  their churches.

This is why Romantic Christians - by a strict definition - have been so rare. Most Romantics were not Christians, but among those that were; Romanticism is regarded as an attitude but not as a source of knowledge.

It was the great contribution of Owen Barfield - posthumous disciple of Steiner, best friend of CS Lewis, and fellow Inkling with Tolkien - to clarify and emphasise this vital distinction.

The triumph of William Arkle

I was musing on the Owen Barfieldian theme that mankind has not yet passed from spiritual childhood (Original Participation) to adulthood (Final Participation); but remains arrested in an adolescence that was intended (by divine destiny) to be merely transitional.

And I was trying to think of anyone who seems personally to have made this transition; to have moved into spiritual adulthood and Final Participation - and I could think of no one more-completely successful than William Arkle; a man who consistently writes-from that FP perspective of daily awareness of universal livingness, consciousness, meaning and purpose.

Of course, I don't know how much of Arkle's daily living was spent in this mode of thought - and because it is a subjective state this is anyway very difficult to determine. Still, Arkle was the most plausible candidate I could come-up with - other candidates included William Blake, Goethe, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield himself; but Arkle comes-across in his writings (and paintings) as more of an advanced practical and fully-self-aware mystic than any of these.

Regular readers will know that I have been blogging about William Arkle for about three and a half years, since the death of Colin Wilson reminded me of his work. I later set-up a blog to post this material - this is my introduction:

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/william-arkle.html

I was surprised yesterday, on reviewing the blog statistics for the first time in a good while, to discover that it had received 48,000 Hits; which is about 1000 a month on average. This was pleasing - especially given that the main Arkle web resource (billarkle.co.uk) has seemingly been 'down' for maintenance/ improvement for about a year (although much of it can still be accessed via The Wayback Machine).

The fact is that, although apparently quite a few people have looked at my blog, William Arkle remains almost-wholly obscure. Nonetheless, after three-plus years of intense and close-reading; I would regard him as one of the deepest and truest writers on spiritual Christianity I have ever encountered.

Just over the past couple of weeks I have been working on some liner notes for a forthcoming CD of William Arkle's music, as orchestrated and performed by Robert John Godfrey and The Enid (a progressive rock band which began in the 1970s, and which also used an Arkle painting for one of its albums); a copy of which I will post later.

But in the meantime, somebody has posted on YouTube a sample of this music, which is well worth a listen. Composed before 1968, it was a precursor of what would now be called 'ambient', and somewhat in the genre of minimalism - but I would describe it sounding rather like as Brian Eno meets Frederick Delius! If you enjoy it, you might look-out for my notice of the full CD album:
 

Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion? - William Blake

Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion! Can it be? Is it a truth that the learned have explored? Was Britain the primitive seat of the Patriarchal Religion?

If it is true, my title-page page is also true, that Jerusalem was, and is, the Emanation of the Giant Albion.

It is true, and cannot be controverted. Ye are united, O ye inhabitants of Earth, in One Religion—the Religion of Jesus, the most ancient, the Eternal, and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to Wickedness, the Righteous to Righteousness. 

Amen! Huzza! Selah!

‘All things begin and end in Albion’s ancient Druid rocky shore!’

By William Blake - from Milton

[See also: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/sacred-places.html]

The lineage of Romantic Christianity in England (a sort-of manifesto: a testimony)

To define Romanticism with precision has proved impossible - because it is a movement, a phase in human consciousness; but those who feel it will recognise it when we see it.  

To be included in this list, one must be both Romantic and Christian (and be someone whose work I personally respond-to):

William Blake
William Wordsworth
ST Coleridge

Then came several generations during which the Romantics were not Christian, and the Christians were not Romantic. Exceptions include George Macdonald and GK Chesterton, who link between the early Romantic Christians and the Inklings. Both of these I somewhat like, especially GKC - but I am unable to engage whole-heartedly.

Charles Williams
JRR Tolkien
CS Lewis
Owen Barfield

William Arkle

Current representatives of whom I am aware include Jeremy Naydler, Terry Boardman, and the Albion Awakening bloggers: William Wildblood, John Fitzgerald and myself.

Comments:

The influence of Rudolf Steiner is evident; since although Anthroposophists are extremely rare in England - Barfield, Naydler and Boardman are all of that ilk. This is evidence that Romanticism fits most comfortably with heterodox Christianity - despite that Tolkien (Roman Catholic) and Lewis (Church of England) were orthodox in their practice. Indeed; Blake, Barfield (for much of his life), Arkle and most of the currently alive people - are (I believe) essentially unaffiliated Christians; whose religious and spiritual practice is mostly and in-principle individual rather than communal.

The Steiner link is also important because Germany (in the sense of the Central European German-speaking culture - including Austria and Switzerland, and some culturally-Germanic cities not nowadays in Germany) was the other great origin of Romanticism - with Herder, Goethe, Schiller etc. However until Steiner's 'conversion' in about 1898; the German Romantic literary tradition was not really Christian. An exception is Novalis - the father of Romantic Christianity in Germany.

It might also be argued that CG Jung (1875-1961) is also part of the German tradition of Romantic Christianity - although (as so often with Jung) his status as a Christian is ambiguous - overall, I would say that by the end of his life, Jung should indeed be regarded as a Christian.  

There are not many on this list; because I don't know of many Romantic Christians. It is a job still to be done, by each individual - since Romantic Christianity must be experiential (knowing 'about' it does not suffice).

However, I regard both Barfield and Arkle as having essentially done the necessary work and, uniquely, achieved Romantic Christianity: both in their theory and in their living.


Mainstream Christianity still tends to regard Traditionalism as a 'safe' path to salvation; and theosis as too 'risky' - and Romanticism is about theosis.

But for the Romantic Christian there is no 'safe' path in the modern world; and traditionalism has in fact become impossible (judged at the deepest level of motivation); as well as sub-optimally desirable. We feel that, in modern conditions, salvation requires theosis; so a purely salvation orientation can only be a kind of 'rescue' procedure.

Because ultimately Romanticism is not a 'reaction' against the Industrial Revolution, modernity and bureaucracy; rather, Romanticism is a positive path of divine destiny, concerned with human evolutionary-development of consciousness.


The aim of Romantic Christianity is (implicitly) to attain the divine form of cosnciousness (what Barfield termed Final Participation) as the primary goal of mortal life at this era of history. In different words: the aim is to restore the unity of Life - including the healing of the split between mind and matter, subjective and objective... to cure the malaise of alienation.

Romantic Christianity is both theoretical (metaphysical) and practical (experiential) - ideas and living both need to change; because otherwise the two aspects will be at contradictory, at war - and therefore unattainable in life.

The Romantic Christian demands that life be Christian - as its root and frame; and also demands that life (including Christianity) be Romantic - therefore it cannot accept the ultimate of primary necessity of System, organisation, institution, bureaucracy... these are all to be regarded as evils; even if, sometimes (in mortal life); expedient or even temoprarily-necessary evils - evils that challenge us to love, faith and hope; and to grow.

Love and creativity are the goal; with creativity as located in thinking, and thinking regarded as universal and primary. 

Why do so few Outsiders end-up as Christians?

I was an Outsider more than thirty years before I became a Christian - having read Colin Wilson's book in 1978. Wilson himself never became a Christian, despite getting very close to it in his first two books (The Outsider of 1956 and Religion and the Rebel the year after).

Why should this be? - why should the inner-motivated Man, who regards himself as set-apart (for good, or more often for ill), perhaps having an unusual destiny, the 'existentialist'... why should such a person fail to recognise that his only satisfactory terminus lies in the truth of Christianity?

I think the reason is partly to do with the Outsider wishing to hold-onto his favourite vices (drink, drugs, promiscuous extra-marital sex and the like) but it is also the fault of Christianity - which has become identified exclusively with specific churches (with, quite often, each one stating that it uniquely holds the keys of salvation).

The Outsider sees Christianity as a choice of churches only. Now some Outsiders - such as GK Chesterton or TS Eliot - do find a home inside one of the established Christian churches (the Roman Catholic church being a favourite in the early 20th century). But they are clearly a minority.

There is insufficient awareness of the possibility of being Christian outside of any specific church. And/ or of becoming a Christian before, or without ever, joining a church.

For instance William Blake is an Outsider hero, and Blake was an absolutely devout and explicit and focused Christian in his Life and all-through his work. And (not 'but') Blake was a non-church Christian who was extremely unconventional/ heterodox/ heretical. Since Blake regarded himself as a solid and inspired and proselytising Christian outwith any church and with an unique set of convictions and practices; so too can any Outsider.

Furthermore, many churches conflate (link-inextricably-together) the possibility of believing in God, Christ and the immanence of God-in-all-things including ourselves (such as The Holy Ghost).

As that great non-church and heterodox Christian Rudolf Steiner said: to disbelieve in God is to be, in a real sense, insane; in other words, it is to disbelieve any possibility of coherence, meaning and purpose - which is to regard all of life as a delusion.

The reality and significance Christ is the only source of hope and ultimate happiness - all other religions are - if true, at their best and by their own account - miserable by comparison with Christianity.

And to deny God within us and the world is to live earthly life in a state of detachment - since we can only observe and never actually participate in reality: we can never know.

For an Outsider everything must, sooner or later, be tested by intuition in its widest and deepest sense; there must be a solid sense of personal conviction and relevance. With a church orientated Christianity, this is applied only to the question of whether a particular church is the one path to truth, reality and salvation.

Clearly, most Outsiders have the intuition that such claims are untrue, and therefore cannot and do not even wish to join a church for which they do not feel any such conviction.

But if existential conviction is the truest test, then it ought to be applied to sub-parts, and not merely to 'the whole package' as put forward by a specific church. Thus, an Outsider may be intuitively sure that there is a God who is creator.

He may additionally be sure that (in some vital sense) Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our saviour and central to our ultimate happiness (even though the exact meaning of the key terms is something he will need to strive to elucidate).

And the Outsider may also realise that his knowledge depends on there being something like the Holy Ghost - a divine spirit inside himself, and everybody else, and every-thing else - which makes possible true understanding and knowledge; and works over time to guide us to a more divine salvation.

Any Outsider who becomes a Christian is highly-likely to be heterodox, or regarded as heretical by many or most church members - but he ought not to be put-off by this: he should still become a Christian, simply because it is true (true in a real sense, albeit a sense that needs working-on).

Without Christianity, the Outsider is doomed to be merely a psychologist - since the most he can say in favour of anything is that it tends to make people happier... or at least to suffer less.

If the Outsider is to be able to use the concept of 'ought' then he needs to be a theist; and if he is to be someone who regards mortal life as important he needs to be Christian; and if he is to regard his own freedom and creativity as important, he needs to believe in the possibility of direct, unmediated contact with the divine.

What the Outsider gets from this kind of direct apprehension of the truth of Christianity; is great assistance in finding, sustaining and growing his true self - and then in discovering and pursuing his destiny.

He may well also become happier, more motivated and more confident in Life - but these are side-effects and never the primary aim.

In sum - the core reason for becoming a Christian is to convert an Outsider from being merely a Psychologist to becoming a real Prophet.

Ingwaz is the essence of Romantic Christianity

The word Ingwaz seems a useful term, that I invented a few years ago, but haven't much used for emphasising that Romanticism is not a static-state of things; but a be-ing, a develop-ing, a perpetual becom-ing.

Ingwaz could be translated as 'process', or that word used instead - but I find that word to be too abstract and to have too many misleading connotations derived from physics. (Also there have been and are 'process theologies of Christianity that are Not what I mean.)

To be a Romantic is to engage in Ingway with respect to reality; that is, one rejects the objective and systematic account of external reality as primary; and begins the business of 're-imagining' it in personal experience.

But Ingwaz is not a means to an end but the end in itself; it does not aim at any final point because it is the participation in divine creation; and creation has no end. So, when applied to Christianity, Ingwaz is the grappling with given aspects - such as scripture, doctrine, creeds, institutions, morals; in order to appropriate them to the distinctive, here-and-now, living individual experience of the Christian.

To be Good, Ingwaz must - of course- be well-motivated; in brief it must be motivated by the desire for truth, beauty and virtue. It must Not, therefore, be motivated by (for example) the desire to adapt Christianity to one's own sexual or political desires, or to the desire for power or pleasure.

But this means that it is an error to look for any fixed and final statement from Ingwaz. It is to be judged on whether the practitioner is succeeding in vitalizing Christianity - firstly in himself, secondly in the reader or onlooker. 

This can be illustrated with poetry. For example William Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell is engaged in Ingwaz. e.g.

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plough.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloak.

Blake is engaged in an argument with himself, is hammering out partial statements from inner insights. He is making Christianity live for himself as he composes, for us as we read (assuming we are able to appreciate his work).

So long as we are satisfied with Blake's intent; to then extract dogmatic statements from Blake, and to evaluate him in terms of Christian orthodoxy is both crazy and ultimately self-destructive of real Christianity.

By my understanding, such attitudes from Christians have been a partial but significant cause of the demise of Christianity in the West; since they drive-out net-well-motivated creative Christians, often and tempt them into apostasy. 


If we take Ingwaz as a correct description of Romanticism, we can find Romantic Christianity in some unlikely places; such as the early poetry of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid - who is better known as a highly political and materialist writer, a Communist and Scottish Nationalist who advocated permanent revolution; and who said many hostile things against Christianity generally, and specifically the Scottish Free Kirk brand of his upbringing.

But in his first three volumes of Scots language lyrics of 1925-7 - Sangshaw, Penny Wheep and the epic A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle; which contain by-far his best work - MacD engages in Ingwaz applied to Christianity in most of the most powerful poems and sections.

In a little-known longer-poem from Sangshaw; MacDiarmid engages in an extraordinary, beautiful and inspiring 'cosmic' exploration of God, death and creation. I lack the patience to type in the whole poem, but here are a few stanzas (I've translated a few key words in [square brackets]:

I was as blithe to be alive [happy]
As ony man could be, 
And felt as gin the haill braid warl' [whole broad world]
Were made yince-yirn for me. [especially]

I wot I kept my senses keen, 
I wot I used them weel. 
As God felt when he made the warl'
I aye socht to feel. ...

O I wist it was a bonny warl'
That lies forenenst a' men, [over against all]
But it's naething but a shaddaw-show
To the warl' that I saw then. ...

Wae's me that thocht I kent the warl' [knew]
Wae's me that made a God, 
My senses five and their millions mair
Were like bones beneauth a sod. 

For the world is like a flourishing tree, 
And God is like the sun; 
But they or I to either lie, 
Like deid folk in the grun'. [dead, ground]

There are all kinds of ways that this poem could be criticised from an orthodox Christian position, not least for collapsing the distinction between God's creation and that of a man; the world especially made for the poet; the general pantheistic feel etc. It might be assumed that the 'shadow show' reference was a positive statement of Platonism. The idea that Heaven and Hell are (merely) perspectives on mortal life is also put forward...

Well, this is the crux of what confronts us, here and now and for the past two centuries plus.

Are we to take our deepest convictions from outside, from that dead materialist external world which is what modern Man experiences outside of his own subjectivity? Or are we to make a new synthesis of inner and outer, each for himself, from our own thinking and based on intuition (that is, God within each of us - present because we are his literal children)?

If we are to live by experience in the real world that is God's creation; I believe that we need to engage in Ingwaz, as applied to all aspects of Christianity that we personally find essential; in sequence, perpetually.


Sadly, MacDiarmid was corrupted away from this, by his radicalism and the usual modern combination of sexual and political revolution. The reason was probably that his motives had always been too mixed, and various temptations were too much to resist and were not repented.

McD discarded Christianity as conflicting with sex (and alcoholic intoxication and continual cultural conflict, advocated as sources of vitality) and Communism (advocated on the basis of Lenin and Stalin being more realistic saviours than Christ); and embraced earthly and mortal utopianism as a goal... while simultaneously (paradoxically) asserting that ultimately things would never become any better... while continuing to assert a kind of anti-rational mysticism, but one that was metaphysically without foundation. 

Well, such is life. But there are several artists, writers, philosophers and other culturally creative persons who went through a phase of Romantic Christianity en route to becoming (usually) mainstream materialist Leftists of one or another flavour. JK Rowling is perhaps the best current example.

Yet, their work is available for us to benefit from, if we wish.

John Fitzgerald's essay Resistance and Renewal

On his blog Deep Britain and Ireland, John Fitzgerald has a written version of a talk he presented a few days ago to a small gathering that was partly inspired by the Albion Awakening blog (currently dormant) which was a joint venture of myself, John and William Wildblood. Also present were Terry Boardman and Andy Thomas, whose work has featured here.

(Unfortununately, I couldn't be present because my chronic health problems prevented the necessary travelling to the far end of England.)

This essay is a major piece of work, and deserves full attention. I recommend copying, pasting and printing-out a version - as I did.

Here is a taster from the concluding section towards the end, which I hope will inspire you to read it:

Christ tells us in the Gospel that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed then we can move mountains. Faith is the most important element of all - far more than any head-based strategising or planning. It's difficult, because the anti-religious, anti-traditional currents of contemporary life claim the opposite, but we have to believe in ourselves, in each other, and in our country. All three levels - the personal, the communitarian, and that of the country or homeland - were conceived in the mind of God and have a divinely-imprinted destiny to fulfil.

Countries are real. They are living, concrete entities, not abstractions or so-called 'imagined communities'. Lewis shows us this brilliantly at the end of the final Narnia story The Last Battle, where, from the vantage point of eternity, we see all the countries in all the worlds - including England, including Narnia - jutting like spurs from the mountains of Aslan's country, shining like jewels, more solid and real than we ever perceived them down here in the Shadowlands.

Each country has its own inner essence - its charism, its individual gift - which needs, for the good of the whole world, to be drawn out and championed. As Ransom puts it, 'When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China - why, then it will be spring.'

The Imagination - with a capital 'I' - is what we're especially blessed with in Albion, I feel. We see it in William Blake, of course, in Shakespeare, Milton, and Traherne, and, in more modern times, poets such as Kathleen Raine, George Mackay Brown, Edwin Muir, and David Jones. Tolkien, Williams and Lewis, as is well-known, conveyed profound Christian truth through the media of poetry and story. How right Williams was then, to portray Logres as the eyes - the visionary hub - of his reimagined Byzantine Empire.

Imagination, however, is not exciusively or primarily concerned with the writing of novels and poems. These are the fruits of our Imaginative labour but they are not its most essential aspects. What is absolutely key is the ability to see through and beyond the Sturm und Drang of daily political and social life and dig down deep to what is truly real. This is just what Ransom does in That Hideous Strength. To MacPhee's annoyance, he doesn't react to the grubby power-plays of the NICE. He doesn't launch a raid on their premises or expose them to the government or call in help from overseas. He refuses to be drawn. He declines to play the game on this tactical, newspaper-headline level. He knows that he is engaged in a spiritual conflict and that the real war goes on in Heaven. He waits, therefore. He watches and prays. He sits at the Lord's feet with Mary, while Martha (MacPhee) complains. Like Taliessin in Mount Badon, he sinks into contemplation and receives the help he needs from planetary angels who operate at a level far above that of the parry and counter-parry of political strife.

The problem, as I see it, is that all these figures - poets, novelists, fictional characters, ourselves too - have been swimming against the tide for a long time now; since 1066, in fact. My contention is that King Harold's death at Hastings was the moment when this country lost its spiritual bearings, and this turning away from the Good has become increasingly pronounced ever since. The Normans brought an expansionist mentality with them and a certain rapaciousness, which had previously been absent in England's ruling class. However noble - jumping forward a few centuries now - the motives behind the Reformation and the challenge to Charles I's authority might have been, the net result, in my view, was to encourage and exacerbate this mindset, flinging open the door to that mercantilism, industrialism, and mechanistic thinking, which Blake railed so mightily against and with which we continue to contend with today.

It hasn't always been this way though. In the last few hundred years before Christ, as Blake well knew, Britain, through the strength and influence of the Druids, was a centre of great spiritual power, with a reputation for the numinous which stretched far beyond Albion's rocky shore. This age came around again - on a higher, deeper, baptised point of the curve - in the Anglo-Saxon era, after the arrival of St. Augustine at Cantiisburg. The island then became a land of genuine saints and scholars, with monastic founders like St. Aidan, St. Hilda, and St. Cuthbert, and missionaries to Europe such as Willibord of Northumbria, Boniface of Wessex, and Alcuin of York, who became Charlemagne's chief adviser. We had high class historians and writers, St. Bede of Jarrow being the shining example here, who penned the highly influential History of the Church in England, plus artists of the highest calibre, as can be seen, for instance, in the wonderful patterns and pictures of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

King Alfred the Great, after the depredations of the Danish invasions, rebuilt our schools, had old books copied out, rewrote the law, and established excellent relations with the Pope and other European monarchs. His sons, Edward and Athelstan, were warriors and statesmen who created the conditions for political and national unity, while the reign of Edgar the Peaceable (959-975) saw a remarkable reform and revival of monastic life across the country.

This is the best of Britain, I feel. This, deep down, is what we're all about. These are the saints we need to pray to and the sovereigns we should strive to emulate. This is the mentality and worldview to tap into if we are to see the dawn of a third golden age - a synthesis of the previous two - a harmonisation and taking up of Britain's Christian and pre-Christian patrimonies. Lewis, again, shows us the way in That Hideous Strength, where Christ (Maleldil, as he calls Him) stands at the centre of the universe like the Sun, with the old gods - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter - circling around Him in the guise of the planetary angels, working in concert with Him for the transfiguration of our fallen world.

Read the whole thing...

Getting beyond embarrassment, and pretentiousness...

It is my impression that many who have communicated their philosophy of life, have been more or less seriously impaired in this work by a kind of embarrassment: a fear of damaging their social status and self esteem because of saying or doing something.

This embarrassment leads to an attitude of guardedness, defensiveness - the embarrassed Man develops a continual self-filtering of communications to try and avoid spontaneously revealing something that might be used against him, or might lead to him being rejected. 

Such embarrassment can blend with attempts to impress others - with pretentiousness; but it can also be found in an almost purely negative form by a sense of inhibition. 

This is so common as to be normal - yet when it comes to the communication of matters of the greatest depth, embarrassment can provide a formidable barrier to generating what ought to be as clear and comprehensible as possible - or else it probably will not be understood.

When I consider some of the influencers and 'mentors' who led to my Romantic Christian perspective; I can see that William Blake was a Man who was free from embarrassment, and who communicated in a spontaneous and bold fashion - apparently without caution against being misunderstood, or mocked.

Another of this ilk was William Arkle; who seems unconcerned about making an impression, who seems unguarded in his attitude - and whose communications appear to flow without going-through a filter of caution. 

A third 'William' of this type, is Bill Ryan of Project Avalon; who is unembarrassed about revealing and discussing his strange experiences with ETs - and many other unusual subjects - without regard for how such comments will strike other people. 

Bill Ryan (although not a Romantic Christian) is helpful in understanding this, because I knew him some forty-seven years ago; and can therefore recognize that his candid spontaneity seems to have been characterological, innate - a gift of nature. Yet a gift he still retains at the age of seventy. 

And I think the same applies to Blake and Arkle - they were 'made this way', from childhood, presumably from birth - yet also they 'stayed this way', throughout the stresses and temptations of their long lives. 

Therefore; the achievement of the Three Williams has the quality of retaining that which was, in origin, a natural confident unguardedness.

There are far more examples of writers whose work is hampered by - greater or lesser - degrees of embarrassment. 

One is CG Jung; who was mostly a confident and bold thinker; but who would (again and again, as he approached his conclusions) back-away-from the direction of his reasoning and the implications of his thinking; exactly as if he had suddenly become embarrassed, and feared the effect of his words. 

For Jung; this negative tendency to take away with one hand what had just been given by the other, was exacerbated by a positive desire to impress people, a pretentiousness. He would back-away from clarity and honesty, partly so as to impress others, and gain the rewards of higher status. 

But embarrassment can impair communication even among those who are wholly lacking in any pretentiousness; such as Owen Barfield. 

By all accounts, and confirmed in his writings, Owen Barfield was a very modest man - although with a great inner strength that was generated by intellectual mastery, deep thought, and inner confidence. 

Yet I find that Barfield's ability to communicate clearly is impaired by what seems like embarrassment - a diffidence at expressing anything that might seem like boasting, a reluctance to speak simply about the deepest matters of his understandings - such as the nature of God, God's nature and purposes. 

Just as Barfield approaches his conclusions, again and again he veers off into defensive abstraction - or excessive brevity - so that his argument is set out with meticulous clarity, but the final 'answer' is ambiguous, unclear, difficult to understand.  

The writer Charles Williams was someone who was remarkably unembarrassed in all social situations - even when mixing with the rich, prestigious, and famous; but also one who pretentiously desired to impress people. 

His life and work were both impaired by this pretentiousness: because it led to a strong element of play-acting, and indeed dishonesty, in his social relationships.

While in Williams's poetry, theology and novels there is a strong element of deliberate obfuscation and obscurity - a striving to appear profound.

Well, we are what we are - at least to begin with; and only a few of us have been blessed with unselfconsciousness. 

But character is a beginning only - and innate disposition can either be corrupted by choices made and habits developed; or it can (to some extent) be overcome by effort and practice. 

For myself; I had an original disposition somewhat the opposite of Owen Barfield and more like that of Charles Williams; in that I did not suffer much from embarrassment (i.e. negatively, I did not much care about how other people might react in a negative sense); but I tended towards pretentiousness - (i.e. I positively wanted to impress people - or, at least, some people). 

This was an obstacle to communication - because anything is an obstacle to communication that interferes with the primary desire to communicate. 

On the one hand, we cannot help the way we are; but on the other hand we are here (in this mortal life) to learn. Part of this is learning about ourselves. 

Often, our strengths are the obverse of weaknesses; but by recognition and striving we can move in the right direction. 

Conversely, by failing to recognize and acknowledge our defects; the modern world has a strong and pervasive tendency to corrupt people, to encourage people to ignore their deficits and instead regard them as strengths. 

Thus (as we sadly observe among family, colleagues, acquaintances and friends), however they start-out, most people get worse.

And these applies even to those who are innately and naturally Good. 

Thus the originally confident and unembarrassed child becomes a self-conscious and peer-group dominated adolescent - and never goes beyond this... 

While the 'show-off' child becomes the pretentious adult; more concerned about the impression created and rewards obtained than making actual achievements.   

These are among the lessons of life that we need to learn - and we can learn them from our own experience, and also by sympathetic yet honest understanding and critique of the lives of others.

Albion Awakening - a new blog

I have begun a new blog, with John Fitzgerald and William Wildblood as collaborators, on the theme of spiritual Britain, and especially England - potentially awakening from centuries of slumber.

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk

The blog sees itself as working in a lineage of 'Romanticism' which I perceive as including (but not restricted to) the likes of William Blake, ST Coleridge, William Wordsworth, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Owen Barfield, William Arkle; and (currently) Jermey Naydler and the fictional worlds of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell...

(John and William will be adding to this list from their distinctive personal experiences.)

That is, English Christians of creativity and intuition who are especially concerned with the transformation of human consciousness. 

We sense a time of stirring, and perhaps an impending moment of decision; and the blog is primarily intended to provide clarification, inspiration and daily encouragement to those who hope for that new and spiritual England we can call Albion.

My sleeve notes to a newly-issued CD: The Music of William Arkle, performed by The Enid

Sleeve notes to The Music of William Arkle - written by Bruce Charlton 

(Slightly corrected by using information I have since obtained from discussions with his son Nick Arkle.)

William Arkle – who was called Bill by his friends - was born in 1924, and died in 2000. As well as composing music; Arkle was a spiritual philosopher, painter, poet, teacher and visionary.

Bill Arkle was a friend of the writer Colin Wilson and attracted a small group of dedicated students. During the nineteen seventies he published two books, was the subject of a local television documentary and collaborated with the progressive rock band The Enid. However, despite this modest celebrity; Arkle was never famous and he remains an obscure figure. (The figure whom Arkle most brings to my mind is that other visionary English ‘William’ – Blake; who died in almost equal obscurity but is now recognised as one of the greatest lyric poets and also an influential illustrator).

I know about Bill Arkle mainly because I lived nearby as a child: my sister knew his wife and daughter via ‘ponies’; and his next-door neighbours were my good friends. I also met him once, briefly, when visiting his son. I had dipped into the work from nearly forty years ago; however, it was only after a series of ‘synchronicities’ and having become a Christian in late life that I eventually made the effort to engage with Arkle’s work in a serious fashion – and discovered that he was one of the most inspiring spiritual philosophers of the twentieth century.

Arkle’s life was spent mostly in-and-around the city of Bristol. He served in the Royal Navy during the 1939-45 war, and trained as an Engineer – an unusually scientific and practical background for a visionary, but one which had a lasting effect on the way he expressed his spiritual ideas, often using metaphors drawn from optics, atomic physics, computers, holograms etc.. After the war Arkle became an art student in Bristol and married Julia Rae Hubbard in 1947. This marriage was short lived, and Bill married Elizabeth (Liz) in 1954. They later had two children called Nick and Rose.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Bill participated in spiritual and Christian discussion groups in Bristol and produced a lot of paintings on mystical themes. He typically used ordinary household acrylic paints on hardboard, deployed luminous pastel colours, and his characteristic theme was of ordinary and everyday scenes transfigured by light to show-forth their inner reality.

At first the family lived in Clifton, then Alveston, in Bristol, making money by renovating and re-selling houses - apparently Liz was the business brain and Bill put his craft skills to good use. They later moved to Backwell Hill House, about 7 miles south west of Bristol – a dilapidated ‘mansion’ that had previously been a monastery (with a large chapel) and stood in large grounds. They had horses and various other animals.

Through the 1970s and into the 1980s the household was large and included people visiting to work on spiritual matters with Bill, and also people who helped with the horses and running the household. Bill made money from selling his paintings from a shop in the Whiteladies Road in Bristol, and from picture restoration – including pictures of horses.

In 1974 Arkle published A Geography of Consciousness, which had an introduction by Colin Wilson. The Great Gift, a book of his pictures with commentary and some essays, was published in 1977. In the same year BBC West broadcast a location-filmed TV program called William Arkle in the series Life Story.

In the mid-1980s the Arkle’s moved to the Cotswolds, then after some years moved back to Somerset in a house called Pigotts in Chelvey Batch (very near to Backwell Hill House). In 2000, Liz Arkle died, and Bill followed a few months later.

Right up until his death at the age of 76, Arkle remained active, creative, optimistic and spiritually aware. His final writings are, indeed, his happiest and most positive statements concerning the human condition. If a man’s abstract philosophy is to be judged by its practical effect on his own life, then William Arkle’s ideas must be counted a success.

I will attempt briefly to summarise Bill Arkle’s ideas. He regards the universe as created by Heavenly Parents (i.e. ‘God’) and inhabited by their children (men, women and angels). The divine children are free individuals each of whom is offered the gift of developing to full divinity in their own unique fashion. Thus, our mortal lives on earth are a mixture of joy and horror, encouragement and hazard, love and fear and so on – each person’s life with its own pattern. Life is set-up to provide each of us with those experiences that we most need to achieve the fullest, all-round, knowledge – and such that eventually we can work towards fully-divine status; to become friends of God on a level footing and participate in the work of creation in a spirit of family love. (Jesus has a vital role in this work – which is why Arkle must count as a Christina; albeit of an unorthodox type.)

Arkle’s understanding can be encapsulated as based-on the fact that we each have a spark of divinity; by means of which we can all potentially (if we are able to attain the necessary, undistracted and real form of consciousness) directly-know something of God’s true nature, mind and benign intentions. For Arkle; life is Good at its root and when correctly understood, because the world was made, and continues, for our ultimate benefit. What makes Arkle a mystic in that he personally had a vivid and immediate perception of God’s reality and activity in the world.

As many of his paintings depict; Arkle perceived life (ordinary, everyday; working, married and family life) as a communication from the divine and permeated by spiritual influences. Various paintings show a teapot and cups on a table by a window, a mountain landscape or a seascape, a bowler-hatted businessman, people doing holiday things – sitting, dancing, playing a flute… these typically illuminated by inner light; or with a mysterious glow or sparkle; or with large spiritual (and smiling) faces or enfolding hands invisibly present and waiting but unacknowledged.

(If this type of painting sounds simplistic, sentimental even saccharine; then this is indeed how they strike many modern people. But they arise from a base of tough resilience and immersion in practical life – and ought to be regarded as a higher, but true and realistic, vision of actual Heaven.)

In essence; Bill Arkle’s world is one of meaning and purpose, a world of experiences and learning (he often terms Life a ‘university’); and ultimately one underpinned by that unselfish loving affection we may know from our glimpses of ideal family living in which parents nurture and sustain the individuality, growth and freedom of each of their children. Each child is encouraged to grow-up, if and when ready to do so; and despite that the process necessarily entails suffering and loneliness; because the objective is an adult, autonomous child who voluntarily chooses to becomes a friend, colleague and collaborator in the endlessly creative work of reality. This is a partial-microcosm of Arkle’s Heaven – a dynamic world of evolution of absolutely-unique individuals, cohering by pure love.

Arkle’s friends have told me that the most characteristic and complete expression of his vision was to be found in semi-improvised multi-media presentations of visual, verbal and musical material. I have been studying Arkle’s writings and pictures intensely for the past five years; and find them an inexhaustible source of insight and encouragement. But until now, I have not heard any of his music.

This reissue of The Music of William Arkle, from the era of his collaboration with The Enid, is therefore very welcome to me; as rounding-out a more complete picture of this multi-faceted and inspiring man.

Why are so many modern spiritual people left/ liberal in outlook?

This is the question addressed by William Wildblood in a recent blog post to which I have contributed a comment:

http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/question-on-justice-and-mercy.html

It is an important observation that modern spiritual people are indeed notably left/ liberal in outlook; because it leads to the recognition that they are left/ liberal with greater intensity and conviction than they are spiritual. Their spirituality is eclectic, flexible, changeable - their leftist politics is dogmatic, solid and often fanatical. It is easy to see which they are most serious about. 

I became interested in New Age type spirituality from the late 1990s (i.e. before I was a Christian), in the sense of reading some of the recent and still active US writers. Up until then I had read a great deal of CG Jung, upon which much of New Age is based; and a lot of Colin Wilson - who never quite fitted into this category but overlapped with it. But from 1998 I read John Hanson Mitchell, James Hillman and some of his 'disciples' such as Daniel C Noel and Thomas Moore; and a smattering of others across the field, including most of the best known writers. 

At that time I was a libertarian centrist in politics - and would have been a Republican if I was American; and I noticed in interviews and personal reminiscences that these and other writers came across as fanatical Democrats of the most partisan type for whom even the mildest libertarian or conservative ideas were demonised - and on the other hand openly advocating seedy, corrupt, dishonest careerist Democrats as if they were spiritual exemplars leading the world to a higher future (e.g. the likes of Al Gore!).

And New Age writers were typically, almost universally, utterly in thrall to New Left concerns - and structured their theories inside such a world view. For example Ecopsychology (look it up) was supposed to be a fundamental biological-spiritual perspective on the earth - but in practise made all kinds of recent and ephemeral leftist socio-political assumptions - and seemed to operate as a Left Wing pressure group. 

A book that I read with great attention - the Soul of Shamanism, by Daniel C Noel - structured its entire analysis and argument within a context of politically correct 'sensitivity' to the imagined perceptions of 'indigenous peoples' - with an intensely moralistic inflection to this demand that stood in complete contrast to the 'amoralism' of the spirituality being advocated. I mean, those individuals who were deemed to have behaved disrespectfully to the supposed sensitivities of American Indians (by 'appropriating' their spiritualities and adapting them for modern Western usage) were 'damned' pretty strongly!

This happened so often that I eventually realised that it was structural to New Age spirituality; and undercut the depth and validity of that spirituality. The New Age was, in fact, being led by people whose own spirituality was at best shallow and insincere; and at worst merely a front for their primary aims which were Left-political. 

Nowadays, I see one of my main tasks as resynthesising spirituality with Christianity, in a Christian frame - i.e. with Christianity as primary but spirituality given full value as a necessary modern priority. 

And in this task I realise that very little of modern spirituality is relevant, because very little is worthwhile. Those authors who are worthwhile are those for whom politics is a very secondary concern - the likes of William Blake, ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield; and more recently William Arkle, Colin Wilson, Jeremy Naydler, and William Wildblood himself. 

By no coincidence these are also those whose spirituality is honest, sincere, often deep: and primary.
                                             

Jacob Bronowski interview - the utopia of work?

This is a fascinating interview from 1973 with Jacob ´Ascent of Man´ Bronowski, who was at the time and for many years afterwards a great hero of mine. I watched and rewatched Ascent of Man many times, read and re-read his books many times -- indeed in about 1997 I even contacted his daughter offering to write a proper biography (she rebuffed me and said there was already somebody on the job; although a biography still has not appeared).

Bronowski was a man with great qualities as is, I think, apparent here - also a man of rather significant limitations as is also apparent. But the interview itself is remarkable. This is prime Saturday evening TV with Britain´s best known ´chat show´host ever, and the pace and depth of the discussion is remarkable. Partly this was how things used to be, partly it was due to the way that Bronowski, by strength of character and natural authority, was able to impose his own agenda on mere ´entertainment´.

It can also be seen how the scope of public discourse has been shut-down since - in relation to the discussion of race and intelligence (and bearing in mind, as is obvious enough, that Bronowski was a man of the left - close to being a pacifist and a communist or communist sympathizer like the great scientists JD Bernal and JBS Haldane, both of whom he mentions).

What you get from this is some real Old Left philosophy, based on atheism and an ingrained radicalism such that history is seen as a prolonged conflict between progressive enlightened forces, and theocratic dogma. For instance Bronowski wrote an influential book about the poet William Blake, which paints him in highly political terms and essentially ignores Blake´s blatantly obvious and in-your-face incandescent, visionary, mystical, heretical Christianity´.

For whatever reason, in the discussion of artistic bohemianism and how it contrasts with his image as a scinetist, Bronowski doesn´t mention his time on Mallorca in the 1930s living as a young poet with Robert Graves and Laura Riding, and with a mistress Eirlys Roberts (who later founded The Consumer Association) -- a life of fairly extreme bohemianism by the standards of that time. A touch of the whitewash there, perhaps?

But most telling is the near-final remark on his idea of utopia. Bronowski amplifies his point that he deeply believes that people want to work rather than be idle but are thwarted by the lack of meaningful work - so his utopia is a world where everybody has a satisfying job which he or she is good-at. This absurdity is a view which I shared as a teenager (under the influence of people from Bronowski´s generation) but by the time I was twenty had had thoroughly purged out of me by a crushing avalanche of counter examples from personal experience.

I continued to hold modified versions of this view for quite a while longer but was forced to abandon it when I realized that I was actually talking about myself and a tiny minority of others who are creatively motivated - and in fact hardly anybody is self-motivated, even under ideal conditions. Nearly everybody would prefer not to work. At the very least, most people need a strong social ethos of work to ´want´to do it, nearly everyone does work for rewards or to avoid punishments; and not for intrinsic satisfactions.

But the idea that such would be any kind of utopia is quite extraordinary now! - yet in 1973 was not unusual (as evidenced by the round of applause from the audience) and indeed the ecology (EF Schumacher) and self-sufficiency (John Seymour) movements added a considerable boost to this idea from around the time of this interview and for several years (Andre Gorz was another proponent). I mean the idea that the main political imperative ought to be the provision of Good Work. I think the idea came from the early socialists, reformers, and builders of model communities - perhaps especially William Morris.

I think this view was possible because that generation had been brought-up religiously, so their aethism carried a strong residue of belief in transcendental goods such as beauty, virtue, and honesty - values which Bronowski mentions specifically. And indeed he did indeed adhere to them and defend them strongly; furthermore he developed an integrated philosophy of life based around transcendentals which he expressed powerfully in his books and The Ascent of Man.

The trouble was, the next generation of cradle atheists abandoned all transcendental goods, and became selfish, short-termist and expedient in their actions. They knew about the transcendentals - in theory they approved of them - but lacking any deity could see no reason why they should adhere to them when it was inconvenient or risky. Thus we get the current world of lying careerist bureaucrats and lying public relations pundits which has swallowed-up professional science and the arts (and everything else large scale) until almost nothing remains.

They (we) became unprincipled cowards and slackers - and why not?... When God is dead and was never alive, religion a manipulative lie or a pathetic delusion, and fanatical religiousness (in practice, specifically Christianity) is seen the primary source of all evil through history and continuing (as Bronowski, and his like, taught us most thoroughly).

Anyway - I recommend this interview as containing a great deal of good material, and also revealing the seeds of error and pride which have led to such a pathetic collapse of art, science, politics and all serious human endeavour - in a way which would certainly have appalled Bronowski; although he would most likely have misdiagnosed its cause.