Converse in the Spirit: William Blake, Jacob Boehme, and the Creative Spirit

"Converse in the Spirit is a comparative study of the writings of William Blake and the German visionary philosopher Jacob Boehme. While exploring the influence of Boehme on the poet, it focuses on the relationship between creativity, imagination, and spirituality. Blake and Boehme shared an unorthodox and radical view of the spiritual, rejecting all conventional, literal views of an overseeing God in His Heaven. Underlining the importance to both of a living, creative, and spiritual tradition, "Converse in the Spirit argues that the relationship between Blake and Boehme was a meeting of like minds that transcended place and time, that each regarded himself as part of a community of vision and aspiration, and believed that any predominant form of thought and understanding was only partial. Through this, Boehme is used to illuminate the more esoteric aspects of Blake, and Blake those of Boehme. Their writings are not a simple or direct description of the movements of divinity nor of what divinity is or is not, but a medium for approaching it. This view in turn works toward a fuller appreciation of both the imaginative and spiritual possibilities afforded to the reader through an active engagement with Blake and Boehme, an ongoing "converse in the spirit."