CHESMAYNE
Imagination
William Blake: his book ‘Songs of Experience’
(1794) includes some of the purest lyrics in the English language, which
express his ardent belief in the freedom of the imagination. What he valued above all was imagination and
its power to liberate the human spirit from its earthly confinement. Some of his finest work was inspired by visions
other than his own, especially those of the Bible and of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.
He himself said: ‘The imagination is not a State: it is the Human
existence itself’. Christian dogma was
one of history’s imagination dampers.
The measure of a soul is the unlimited activity of the mind and
the grandeur of imagination. Chimera: a
fire spewing creature with a lion’s head, goat’s body and a dragon’s tail (each part having its
own head) and killed by Pegasus. Nowadays it is seen as a vague flight of the
imagination. “Must then a Christ
perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination”.
It is impossible to see the
symbolic meaning of myths without using the myth-making faculty, namely the imagination. When men and women’s faculties are working
at their optimum they can usually be assumed to work in accordance with each
other. Hence it is no wonder
that somebody of exceptional abilities and gifts is eventually widely appreciated. Faculties of the mind are much like limbs of
the body, in that they wither if not used.
Imagination has been variously judged as an appalling deviation of the
human intellect, or the mind’s highest and most creative
faculty. The imagination must be left
quite free. The unconscious expresses
itself in images. By understanding the
images you are coming to terms with the myth-making part of the mind. Illusion ie: fata morgana. Reality is imagination made real. To develop your power of association link
facts with something else in a witty and imaginative way.
Fly Away:
Artist:
D.L. “Rusty” Rust. Pieces: 500. Size:
19” Round.
Edgar Cayce: the imaginative forces are specifically related to the
hormonal activities of the pineal gland.
The pineal gland is especially associated with the autonomic nervous
system and with it the subconscious mind.
The Cells of Leydig is connected with the Kundalini
forces within the spiritual centers of the body (higher consciousness).
Cherubim: angels
represent idealized projections of positive human imagination. The imagination is one of the most important
and active functions of the human mind.
It should be developed, regulated and utilized. The human mind has the power to receive inspiration and
to reflect such visions in works of true imagination.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of magination all compact.
The poet’s
eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the
poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives
to airy nothing
A local habitation and a
name.
Ruth Ross: “All prosperity
begins in the mind and is dependent only upon the full use of our creative
imagination”.
