Observations placeholder
Blake, William - His death
Identifier
010860
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Colin Wilson - Mysteries
William Blake-as might be expected - 'died in a most glorious manner'. Blake had always possessed the faculty of seeing disembodied spirits and 'elementals', and accounts by his contemporaries show that he meant he saw them literally,not through imagination. His friends Varley and Linnell used to sit beside him for hours as he stared into space and drew portraits of
people he claimed to be able to see quite clearly. At Felpham, on the coast of Sussex, he remarked that ' voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen''.
Of his death, his wife wrote 'Just before he died his countenance became fair - his eyes brightened and he burst out in singing of the things he saw in heaven'.