Blake And Others
Jun. 19th, 2023 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo We've had a lot of rain, also some thunder and lightning. It was raining when we came out of the Meeting House and Jim and Trish offered to run us home in Jim's van. I rode in the back, sitting on the floor- in the dark- which is an experience I've not had before.
Always up for new experiences, me, I am- just so long as they're not too dangerous.
Blake is on his last legs. It's gratifying to read how in his sixties he was taken up by a bunch of younger artists- Linnell, Varley, Palmer- all of them distinguished, all of them treating him with loving respect. Varley- a heroically jolly man- was an astrologer and, by all accounts, a very good one. He once forecast a catastrophe for himself so stayed in bed all day- out of harm's way- and far from being distraught when his house caught fire under him, was thrilled that he'd got the prediction right. In pursuance of a book he was preparing on astrological types he had Blake draw the visionary portraits of numerous "worthies"- ranging from Biblical heroes and Grecian poets to near-contemporary criminals. The two men would sit in a darkened room, Varley would suggest a "target" and Blake would see it and sketch it. The so-called "visionary heads" are striking, bizarre and sometimes beautiful. A goodish selection of them can be found on wikimedia commons. When someone suggested that the head of Socrates resembled Blake himself, Blake replied that this was because he remembered having been Socrates- or perhaps Socrates' brother, but anyway someone who had known him...
I had no idea there was so much occult experimentation going on in the early 19th century. Varley and Blake's procedures aren't so very far removed from what we now know as "remote viewing". The greatest star of the remote viewing programme run by the CIA in the late 20th century was the visionary painter and writer Ingo Swan- an unworldly man who, now I think about it, even looked a bit like Blake. Makes you think, doesn't it...
Always up for new experiences, me, I am- just so long as they're not too dangerous.
Blake is on his last legs. It's gratifying to read how in his sixties he was taken up by a bunch of younger artists- Linnell, Varley, Palmer- all of them distinguished, all of them treating him with loving respect. Varley- a heroically jolly man- was an astrologer and, by all accounts, a very good one. He once forecast a catastrophe for himself so stayed in bed all day- out of harm's way- and far from being distraught when his house caught fire under him, was thrilled that he'd got the prediction right. In pursuance of a book he was preparing on astrological types he had Blake draw the visionary portraits of numerous "worthies"- ranging from Biblical heroes and Grecian poets to near-contemporary criminals. The two men would sit in a darkened room, Varley would suggest a "target" and Blake would see it and sketch it. The so-called "visionary heads" are striking, bizarre and sometimes beautiful. A goodish selection of them can be found on wikimedia commons. When someone suggested that the head of Socrates resembled Blake himself, Blake replied that this was because he remembered having been Socrates- or perhaps Socrates' brother, but anyway someone who had known him...
I had no idea there was so much occult experimentation going on in the early 19th century. Varley and Blake's procedures aren't so very far removed from what we now know as "remote viewing". The greatest star of the remote viewing programme run by the CIA in the late 20th century was the visionary painter and writer Ingo Swan- an unworldly man who, now I think about it, even looked a bit like Blake. Makes you think, doesn't it...
