The Tree of Life [antikvár]

Image for the CosmosThe Tree of Imagination'The Nature of Visionary Fancy or Imagination, is very httle known, the Eternal nature permanence of its ever Existent Images is considered as less permanent than the things of Vegetative and Generative Nature; yet the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce, but its Eternal Image Individuality never dies but returns by its seed; just so the Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought.'Since 1810, when William Blake wrote these words, the whole of mankind's imaginative life, as expressed in myth and symbol, has opened out before us. Thanks to the rapid advance in communication provided by modern technology, a glance through the pictures in this book is enough to confirm the truth of Blake's statement that 'the Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought.' Throughout the world, at all times and in all places, men have pictured, in one form or another, the imaginative image of the tree.But what exactly does Blake mean by 'imaginative image' ? Evidently he is alluding to a special way of seeing, a mode of vision different from the one by which we normally 'see' the world. A statement by a modern American Indian, a visionary, whom Blake would have hailed as a brother, can help us here. He too 'saw' a tree:'Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the centre grew one mighty