William Blake at the Getty Center

Hear the cutting of the trees,

The loud metal machines.

shredding softer bark and home

Of birds and Opossum.

Nature is often raped.

And with no thought

But a job to be done.

No morality or awareness

Kindness or prayer.

My heart breaks.

Again, and aging.

So, I offer this prayer.

To the trees

Of the east, south, west, and north…

I love you and I am sorry.

That so many humans

Are so cruel and uncaring and slow to your suffering.

Holly D. Cornell 3/21/2024

William Blake

I asked two people what brought them to see Blake today ?

An older man with a cane and a hat looked at me obtrusively and said,

“Why not?”

A middle aged woman told me,

“I have been drawn to the colors in his watercolors.”

A man with a bright English dialect was very polite when we shared some words in front of Blake’s Divine Comedy watercolors.

“Larger than I suspected.” I declared.

He responded,

“I am here with my daughter and her friend. I think he will like this. His name is Dante.”

I danced through the images as I scanned it all with my soul’s eye!

So much Blake is like too much cake.

I’ve spent the next day reviewing and recovering.

I did not find his glowing eyes nor did I see an angelic being.

There in the museum,

as I do in my simple imagination.

Content.

#WorldPoetryDay 3/21/2024

The good bridge of balance

The William Blake Tarot Cards of the creative Imagination `- ED Buryn

Foresight, foreknowledge, prescience, divination, premonition, clairvoyance, presentiment. omniscience, sixth sense.

I was born with foresight. It was a natural part of my DNA, and it cursed me because no one from my family explained it to me. I found the answers through books, TV and others with this value of seeing life.

A curse because there are things in our lives that hold certain degrees of pain that cling to us. For me it was foresight. Knowing things before they happened. An intuitive knowing that plagued me without being able to put words to what it was.

Then in time I learned to hold on to my foresight. Waiting for found explanation to my confusion. Other friends and family looked at me cross-eyed with wonder or doubt.

Now that I am 65 years old, I see it as a gift of foresight, for that is what it is now, it reveals to me that I was OK.

I can use my active imagination to go back and be the person that listens and tries to understand. Because the youthful me needs to be heard.

It has come around to be a blessing that I will confirm as good. Now is a time to reap what I have sown. Building on this magical nature that many of us share.

It is my Cornish character, maybe. I hope to encourage others here to listen to their foresight. It is so human and feminine. An honorable part of who we are.

To bend back and embrace all the past, present and future.

The good bridge of balance.

William Blake is a friend who helped me along the way to believe…

William Blake died on August 12th 1827.

https://blakesociety.org/product/meeting-blakes-grave/

My heavenly shower

  My heavenly shower is a sacred place of hot, warm or cold water.  It is there for me in worst of times bones ache and chills of fever cleaning a dark soul quality away.  I sing, talk and compose there I talk to my medicine animals there and say my prayers.  It is an old shower with a whacked head yet the water cleans me inside and out my holy shower that sings me sweet words.

Jerusalem

“For life moves out of a red flare of dreams
Into a common light of common hours,
Until old age brings the red flare again.”

~ The Land Of Heart’s Desire, William Butler Yeats

Retrospective action is part of a process which helps us find solutions to human problems. So much is going on in the world and in my personal world. Where does one seek or find balance? Meditation maybe? Exercising and eating properly, that might be part of the answer. There is more to hypertension than the human body. It seems a common reality in these dark political times shared by many!

While putting together some positive moves towards balance, I came upon a few old friends. One is a meditation site called freeMedation and an old poem by William Blake entitled Jerusalem. Yes, going back to healthy practices and inspired ideals.

Shocked by the inclusion of this particular rendition of Blake’s poem on this site, it is still very endearing to me. It is a poem set in a place and time that one can transcend using retrospective meditation.

The poem speaks to us. For is not Jerusalem the palace [place] of our heart’s desire?

Below is an image, a facsimile, from my Blake collection. It has vast symbolic layers.

“When the morning Stars sang together. & all the Sons of God shouted for joy”

Side stepping biblical perspective, this image holds reference to three important elements: The stars known as the Pleiades, humanity, and the cosmos. Our foresight needs to put roots into the ground as a solid anchor. This need is achieved by reaching with retrospective action. Thus, bringing together the past, present and future. A balance for our crazy times.

The image shows me understanding revealed in meditation. Therefore, I love Blake’s work.

Jerusalem by William Blake

Retrospective
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/afterthought/

Astraea: “Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna”

A layperson’s study of William Blake and other reflections….

“The darkness of our world

Is not knowing and understanding;

Light can only come, when we

Make it our business to find it.”

~ Socrates ca. 470-399 B.C.

“A vision of the Last Judgement. It is an endeavor to restore what the ancients call the Golden Age.”

The above image is the star goddess. She is part of the earth and the sky. She is like many images of justice, Aquarius and the golden stars of the night sky. I find she is an archaic image that echoes of a Golden Age. If you do much reading of myths or ancient stories, you’ll find the Golden Age mentioned there.

Astraea is the bright star that reveals our insight into the Golden Age. She is needed in helping to restore our “universal humanity.” Of brighter days ahead in the dark times we face.

As Virgil says,

“Astraea returns, returns old Saturn’s reign”

And maybe she does. Like a spiral the same and something different. The continuity of the stars and planets in the cosmos reflect in our watery psyche. If we become aware of this, very possibly, hopefully and surely, the two circles of psyche and cosmos meet within us. We will find the bright star there.

Albion William Blake

“In his late works, he embodied these and other ills in the nightmare ridden figure of the cosmic giant Albion, or universal humanity, who has fallen into deadly sleep of mundane existence. In humanity’s coma, the divine is a remote and forbidding sky-god: nature a sterile heap of atoms, lovers and family members, enemies; and one’s own innermost being, an unrecognized alien.”

~Blake’s Poetry & Designs ` A Norton Critical Edition.

Albion Rose!!

“Here Albion as shown as a joyful and vigorous young man freeing himself from the shackles of materialism. In Blake’s world view, Albion could still be saved by the triumph of individual liberty, imagination and spirituality over social, political and religious oppression.”

1880-william-blake-1757-1827-albion-rose.html

My visit to the Los Angeles Getty Museum to see William Blake~ A short Documentary by Hudley Flipside

The mysterious distance….

(Update it seems a lighting strike came through my soul and we went to San Francisco the end of May 2017… my joy overflowed… )

Catalogue 65, William Blake, “Always In Paradise ~ John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller

Proof Sheet The Trianon Press

Inferno The Divine Comedy

Trianon Press Facsimiles and I…

“to give relief or deliverance to for a time…”

“the soul waits….”

Melancholy William Blake Date: 1816 – 1820 Style: Symbolism Series: Illustrations to John Milton – L`Allegro and Il Penseroso Genre: religious painting

I thought we would be driving up to San Francisco to see some of William Blake’s art at The William Blake Gallery located at the John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller. My pilgrimage to see Blake’s work has taken a big reprieve. Time to rethink this again.

Planning a journey to the United Kingdom, in a few years, might be the best way to see his work. A well planned out journey can be done. Giving us plenty of time to research museums and places to stay in the U.K. I will start a Blake fund/budget. Setting goals, reading, and planning are wonderful ways to take on a reprieve from my need to see his real authentic work

Besides today is a cloudy cool day in May. My kind of weather. Almost as if San Francisco has come to us, this weekend, instead of us going to San Francisco.

Melancholy is a type of reprieve or realization. Time is given to focus within ourselves. Where we can be participating with our imagination and become creatively involved. That is, if we engage our Sun and Neptune in the right way, astrologically speaking of course.

Something within is stirring. I don’t know what is going to happen? I can wait and see what the future will bring. It is a good bright hope that will be born from an inward reprieve.

William Blake Gallery

http://www.johnwindle.com/shop/windle/WilliamBlakeGallery.html?id=xmZgSBWw

PLaces in europe and the united kingdom to see Blake’s work.

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/the-best-places-to-see-william-blake-s-art

Interesting past exhibition on Blake and who he influenced.

http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/view/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/william-blake-in-the-age-of-aquarius.html

http://www.blakesociety.org/

I am not a U2 fan but they always come up in regards to William Blake’s work… I do not judge…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/reprieve/

The Seminary of Praying Mantis Grace

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

~William Blake

A Grace for your pleasure, she is one of three that inspires the Muses of the arts…

a rich character

Headaches, no sleep and a palpitating heart with rain and thunder and the dark of an endless night. Today the wind makes sounds ancient and whispering as the Celtic Bards of long ago.

He has a rich character, our dear Joseph Campbell. His insights into myth, history, art, religion, and our unconscious are telling us such old stories. A book that is a necessity for every person to read is Goddesses, Mysteries of the Feminine Divine.

For anyone who wants to know where they came from and solutions to the problems of our current modern times. I recommend this book. But be careful and beware, this book is not a fairy-tale ride at Disneyland.

It is deeper than our DNA contained in a place beyond time. As above so below, this knowledge is mystical and enchanting. Which is to say between life and death. It moves one into another place beyond time as the Celtic Bards did. Stories are real and part of all our history. A lovely escort to any study of art, history, science, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and religion!

“When Dante was going through the stages of hell, the first and least horrendous was that of the carnal lovers. Among them were Tristan and Iseult and Lancelot and Guinevere, all the great lovers of all time. And he recognizes one couple, Paolo, and Francesca, and like a good sociologist he called Francesca down and asks,

“How did you get into this condition?”

In the most poignant line in the whole poem [The Divine Comedy], she answers,

“We were reading the book of Guinevere and Lancelot. And when we came to the meeting of the eyes, we looked at each other and read no more in the book that day.”

There they are in what looks like hell to us but the wonderful wise miracle man, William Blake, said in his book of aphorisms, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,

“I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyment of Genius, which to Angels look like torments and insanity.”

I think that’s the answer. So, what Tristan accepted was the fire of this agony that is love for eternity, and that will be his life in eternity. “

~Pg. 245 Goddesses, Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, Joseph Campbell.

essence of our limitations

William Blake Image form The William Blake Tarot Cards. ~ Ed Buryn

I captured this very small image on a William Blake Tarot Card. I enlarged the image on my iPhone camera. I have a magnifying glass to look over all of his images. There is always something on the cards hiding. This is on the card entitled “EXPERIENCE.”

It is inevitable that I will accumulate experience by living my life. Moving forward even if only sitting in a chair. I value experience over anything.

I have learned that part of growing as a human being is living with paradox, polarity and something more.

That is why I love Blake, he gives me something more. A vast view of life where opposites blend. I then understand my own limitations. There is an inevitable message Blake puts into his work. If I look close enough I joyfully grasp his messages.

“The urge to cure the incurable keeps us from recognizing the essence of our limitations, and the limits that come with the psychopathic essence of personality.”

~ Praxis Pg. 167, The Dream and the Underworld – James Hillman

An inevitable experience was hearing this song played on the Drive In Speaker between movies in the 1970’s. Glad I found it.

All Stars that Fell…

My favorite William Blake Tarot Card

Renewal of hope. Feeling connected with cosmic or universal energies. As Above, So Below. Opening your eyes to the highest potential or your situation. Getting in touch with your own creative powers. Self-esteem. Far-reaching effects. Receiving recognition for your abilities. “Doing your own thing,” no matter what.