The Ancient of Days
WILLIAM BLAKE
WILLIAM BLAKE, 1794
William Blake was tormented by visions. From his early childhood he saw, as clear as day, God’s face pressed against his window, angels playing amongst haystacks, the prophet Ezekiel standing in his room. For him, imagination, reality, God and human existence itself were all one. The Ancient of Days begins his book Europe, one of Blake’s ‘Prophetic Works’. It is not a vision of the future, but of the present, as seen by the honest and the wise. The figure depicted is Urizen, holding a compass over the dark void below him. Urizen was the embodiment of Law and Reason, and here he casts, with violence and mathematics, order onto the world below him. Blake saw this image in his reality, and made the print patiently awaiting the rest of the world to see it too.