The Blake Society

The Bible of Hell – a Blake Birthday Event!

7.30 pm Wednesday 30 November 2011

St James’s Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL

Tickets £10 only available at the door, no booking – free for Members of the Society

This event celebrates Blake’s birthday and the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. In a conversation chaired by Lucy Winkett, Philip Pullman and Chris Rowland will discuss Blake’s argument with the Bible.

‘Both read the Bible day & night

But thou readst black where I read white’

Christopher Rowland is Dean Ireland Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and published ‘Blake and the Bible’ in 2011

Philip Pullman’s trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’ has been published in 39 languages and he is the author of ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ (2010)

Lucy Winkett is the Rector of St James’s Church and published ‘Our Sound is Our Wound’  in 2010, which was adopted by the Archbishop of Canterbury as his Lent book.

The authors’ books will be available for sale, and perhaps signing, afterwards.

At Midnight on Tuesday 18 October 2011, the Society gathers at Blake’s only surviving London house to recreate the friendship between Blake and John Varley who sat up through the early hours together to await the appearance of those visions known as the Visionary Heads. Leave behind your scepticism. Bring a candle!

For more details see  Events

Midnight Tuesday 18 October 2011

House of William Blake, 17 South Molton Street, London W1K 5QT

Visionary Heads  is not a typical monthly event. It won’t be a lecture or a performance or an artist‘s tribute.  We are not sure what it is. Transfiguration often turns upon something you have never experienced before, or a vision.

The venue is 17 South Molton Street, Blake’s only surviving London home where he lived with his wife Catherine for 18 years, and where he painted A Ghost of a Flea – perhaps his most famous visionary head.

Around the years 1818-1820, Blake and John Varley, the watercolour artist and astrologer, would meet up together late at night and wait for the arrival of those visitors, long dead, who survive in the sketchbook known as the Visionary Heads.

Their concepts of what vision is differed amply, yet in these gatherings they found a common ground through art and friendship  for a vision to be made manifest.

So what is vision? How or what or who do you want to see, and how great is your desire? Do you see with words or images or arguments? Will it be someone dead long ago, someone who has never existed, a memory, an event, or a landscape, an architecture,  or the spectre in your life that you have never dared to face?  Or are visions just a vehicle for breaking through society’s conventions to explore a deeper friendship with another person? Or are visions real and it’s we who are the chimera?

We hope that the evening will touch on the essence of what vision means for each of us. If we are steadfast and inspired, we may be granted a vision in the small hours …

For reasons of space, there can only be ten of us present at this event.

The event will end at 3 am.

Please bring a candle.