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Minute Particulars

Vol. 49 no. 4: Spring 2016

All Religions are One: A Note on Sources

  • Robert W. Rix
DOI
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.167
Submitted
15 April 2016
Published
15 Apr. 2016

Abstract

William Blake’s early tract All Religions are One was etched on ten copperplates c. 1788. In seven “principles,” Blake sets out to prove that a spiritual dimension of man, which he names the “Poetic Genius,” exists, and that this has been the origin of all religions. The gnomic principles have remained somewhat impenetrable because scholarly criticism has lost sight of the intellectual context in which the tract was produced. This short note is an attempt to recover the most important discourses to which Blake provides a response.