A Ruby Bright as Fire: William Blake and the Esoteric Tradition
by P.T. Mistlberger
Illustrations by Caroline Chernega
Featuring numerous originals by William Blake
Thence feathered with soft crimson of the ruby bright as fireSpreading into the azure wings which like a canopyBends over thy immortal head in which Eternity dwells.—William Blake (Jerusalem 86:7-10).
William Blake lived in relative obscurity for the duration of his life, despite producing an extraordinary body of writings and visual art. For those with eyes to see his psychological acumen and spiritual depth are clear, but for many others, including the public of his time, he seemed to wander in the lands of madness.
It was not until many decades after his death in 1827 that Blake began to slowly gain appreciation for his immense and profound creative output. The poet and Golden Dawn-trained ceremonial magician W.B. Yeats, who once claimed that Blake was his master, helped rescue the English mystic from obscurity when he published, along with his friend Edwin Ellis, the totality of Blake’s known works for the first time in 1893. Their efforts, though regarded as uneven by later scholars, nevertheless blazed a path for a small army of researchers and historians to begin exploring the vast body of work of the tireless English poet who labored for so long while barely recognized, later to be buried in an unmarked grave.
Most of the scholarly studies, with the exception of a few, steer clear of Blake’s more mystic and occult sides. The present work, written by a lifelong student of both Blake and the great esoteric wisdom traditions, seeks to explore Blake’s lesser-known role as a teacher of perennial wisdom, and one who accomplished such teachings via a sublime artistry.
Examined in the book are aspects of Blake’s work such as his famed The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and its remarkable foreshadowing of ideas from 20th century psychoanalysis, Blake’s affinity with great historical mystics such as Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus, his complicated association with Swedenborgianism, his shamanic visions so severely misunderstood by his contemporaries, concealed teachings in his famous poem The Tyger, his role in the Romantic metamorphosis of Satan, his powerful though largely unrecognized system of inner work, his remarkable resonance, especially via his renowned Proverbs of Hell, with the notorious 20th century occultist Aleister Crowley, as well as his marked influence on 20th century poets, visionaries, novelists, and musicians.