Loved listening to you two spiritual people having such a great conversation, neither stepping on the other's toes but rather finding points of congruence. I hope you can do it again. Thankyou.
Thank you both, this was so interesting. The Machine itself tried to censor you, it seems!...
Re. Dark Satanic Mills: not that the Industrial Revolution was in any way unSatanic, but John Higgs say in his wonderful Blake biography, William Blake vs The World, that Jerusalem, in its context- embedded in the preface to Milton- refers not to literal mills, but to the Universities. I summarised Higgs in my piece Air-Floating Bone as follows:
"Higgs: "In the preface, Blake does not waste time warming up before delivering his opinions. It starts as a full-on rant… [and] very quickly becomes a rabble-rousing rallying cry to all those who want to overthrow the insipid, uninspired establishment of Britain, and replace it with the inspired and the brilliant:
’Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, & the University[…] We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever…”
Then Blake goes into verse. Jerusalem emerges: And did those feet in ancient time etc.
Higgs: “It is hard now to separate those words from the stirring, patriotic music that Sir Hubert Parry composed in 1916, while the First World War raged on. That this hymn is a favourite of English public schools is one of the great ironies of the William Blake story, because in the context of the preface it is basically a demand that such institutions be overthrown.”
(My piece is here- it's mostly about beach-combing.
“The ‘dark Satanic Mills’… are sometimes said to refer to Oxford and Cambridge, the great universities of the age that were churning out constrained, uninspired minds blind to the divine nature of human imagination… Satan himself is ‘Prince of the Starry Wheels’ and ‘The Miller of Eternity’, grinding time and space into their constituent parts. The fine particles of dust produced are separate, broken and have lost their spiritual component. It is these Starry Mills of Satan that generate the ‘Single Vision & Newtons sleep’ that drive the Age of Enlightenment.”
I was mildly shocked to see you smoking Rhyd, and also at Paul's and your comments about it. When we're talking about reconnecting with nature, tending and caring for the natural world, surely this includes being in tune with our bodies, tending and caring for them? No judgement, just surprised.
I so enjoyed listening to this conversation. Watching you, two people from different perspectives talking with warmth and respect, I feel better about the world. Thank you.
The problem is that without science we wouldn't be able to cure the sick or make the disabled walk again. I'm not against religion but it can't give us such miracles as antibiotics, anesthetics, vaccinations, reliable contraception and...the list goes on.
Great conversation, thanks for putting it together. I enjoyed hearing perspectives from two different spiritual tracks.
Loved listening to you two spiritual people having such a great conversation, neither stepping on the other's toes but rather finding points of congruence. I hope you can do it again. Thankyou.
Thank you both, this was so interesting. The Machine itself tried to censor you, it seems!...
Re. Dark Satanic Mills: not that the Industrial Revolution was in any way unSatanic, but John Higgs say in his wonderful Blake biography, William Blake vs The World, that Jerusalem, in its context- embedded in the preface to Milton- refers not to literal mills, but to the Universities. I summarised Higgs in my piece Air-Floating Bone as follows:
"Higgs: "In the preface, Blake does not waste time warming up before delivering his opinions. It starts as a full-on rant… [and] very quickly becomes a rabble-rousing rallying cry to all those who want to overthrow the insipid, uninspired establishment of Britain, and replace it with the inspired and the brilliant:
’Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, & the University[…] We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever…”
Then Blake goes into verse. Jerusalem emerges: And did those feet in ancient time etc.
Higgs: “It is hard now to separate those words from the stirring, patriotic music that Sir Hubert Parry composed in 1916, while the First World War raged on. That this hymn is a favourite of English public schools is one of the great ironies of the William Blake story, because in the context of the preface it is basically a demand that such institutions be overthrown.”
(My piece is here- it's mostly about beach-combing.
https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/beach-combing-journal-air-floating)
Higgs also says- I found it in my footnote!
“The ‘dark Satanic Mills’… are sometimes said to refer to Oxford and Cambridge, the great universities of the age that were churning out constrained, uninspired minds blind to the divine nature of human imagination… Satan himself is ‘Prince of the Starry Wheels’ and ‘The Miller of Eternity’, grinding time and space into their constituent parts. The fine particles of dust produced are separate, broken and have lost their spiritual component. It is these Starry Mills of Satan that generate the ‘Single Vision & Newtons sleep’ that drive the Age of Enlightenment.”
I was mildly shocked to see you smoking Rhyd, and also at Paul's and your comments about it. When we're talking about reconnecting with nature, tending and caring for the natural world, surely this includes being in tune with our bodies, tending and caring for them? No judgement, just surprised.
I so enjoyed listening to this conversation. Watching you, two people from different perspectives talking with warmth and respect, I feel better about the world. Thank you.
The problem is that without science we wouldn't be able to cure the sick or make the disabled walk again. I'm not against religion but it can't give us such miracles as antibiotics, anesthetics, vaccinations, reliable contraception and...the list goes on.