"Complementary Opposites"

Blake was a visionary and believed in the illuminating power of his visions. The two most important literary influences were the Bible and Milton.

His Christianity, however, was not ascetic, liturgical or moralistic. He believed in the reality of a spiritual world but regarded Christianity, and the Church especially, as responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness and dualism characterizing man's life. To his view he substituted a vision made up not of "contraries" but of "complementary opposites". He stated: "Without contraries there is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human Existence" The possibility of progress, of achieving knowledge of what we are, lies in the tension between opposite states of mind, not in their resolution by one gaining supremacy over the other. The two states coexist not only in the human being but also in the figure of the Creator, who can be at the same time the God of love and innocence and the God of energy and violence.