William Blake and the Vintage of the Nations

Introducing Ronald L. Grimes's The Divine Imagination, and His Foray Into Blake's Eschatology.

May 01, 2025

One of my stated goals is to expose a relevant work in the public domain with each of my posts. Today I want to talk about Ronald Grimes 1972 work, The Divine Imagination: William Blake’s Major Prophetic Visions. This book is rarely read, and before its copyright expired it was impossible to get a copy. But now there is a copy on the Open Library: here. What happens is that when a book’s copyright expires, the book gets kicked out of university library shelves and hard copies hit the used books market. Google almost always produces an electronic copy, and often, the book will be scanned into the Open Library, or other internet copies will appear. Books that turn 50 all of a sudden become available that no one knew existed. That’s why many of the books I expose are about 50 years old, give or take.

Also, I want to introduce the subject of eschatology, the study of how the world will end, and to showcase Blake’s contribution of his own myth to the subject. Those that have been with me from the early days understand that I transcribed King James’s A Paraphrase Upon The Revelation, which exposed the King’s reading of that most eschatological of books. That work remains in my archive, and you can check it out if you wish. My perspective is that Revelation is real prophecy, and that Jesus appeared to John of Patmos, and that the apostle faithfully wrote as Jesus commanded him. The tradition of prophecy runs from Amos, about 2,900 years ago, to William Blake, who wrote around the turn of the 19th century. I view the Revelation as connecting the prophecy of the Old Testament with the later day prophecies of William Blake in a single tradition of prophetic writing (Blake was himself steeped in biblical tradition). The spirit of prophecy we still have with us. It is the spirit of truth-telling, and calling for social justice. That’s what Amos and William Blake are all about, as well as Jesus himself (who was killed as a reprobate).

There is another prophet that I must mention in the same breath with Blake and eschatology, and that is Enoch. Anyone who’s read Blake and Enoch knows that they are the two scariest, bloodiest, most violent authors ever. Both were prophets. Like The Book of Enoch, William Blake’s prophecies are a real horror show. Enoch was a real man who was shown many things, and perhaps I should consider that Enoch is the father of prophecy, predating Amos and all the others. He and Blake are not considered to be prophets because they aren’t canonized in the Bible, but that was not my decision. My bible is a lot bigger than most people’s. It contains a ton of literature from the later centuries, that I find to be much more important than the unpoetic sections of the Old Testament. There are certainly many learned souls that disagree with me, who claim that the Book of Enoch is fabricated and expanded from the barest of biblical framework, and that copies vary wildly in content. There is certainly an academic effort to minimize the importance of The Book of Enoch. Blake’s prophetic works remind me of Enoch’s, and I’m unwilling to discard Enoch’s narrative (his myth), as I am unwilling to discard Blake’s myth. The myth is where the meaning is.

According to Blake, the prophet is reprobate, and his role is to antagonize the elect (who I identify as the priests). The modern whistle-blower is a prophet of sorts, and he or she often suffers the same fate as the old Hebrew prophets. They get killed for telling the truth (for countering the lies of the priests).

William Blake’s “A Vision of the Last Judgement,” bottom section.

A continual theme in Blake’s prophetic poem Milton, is the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations. It’s imagery is taken from Revelation 14: 15-20:

¹⁵ And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.¹⁶ And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped.¹⁷ And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.¹⁸ And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.¹⁹ And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.²⁰ And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

When Blake borrows the imagery of the winepress for his Great Harvest and Vintage of the Nations, he is claiming Revelation as poetic and mythic, as well as prophetic. He uses Revelation as a source of poetic symbolism. The enduring image of entire nations being pressed together for their gore is unsettling, but this derives also from the classical tradition that the favorite drink of the Gods, ambrosia, is nothing else than adrenalized human blood, pressed fresh for their pleasure. That’s what we’re talking about. Gods stomping us and squeezing out our juice. Relishing our roasted flesh straight off the bone, and inhaling the fresh roasted smoke of our interstitial fats straight from the spit and fire, while we writhe upon the coals. Yes, the real horror, that there is to be a great banquet, and we will all be compelled to come in.

Grimes asks us to read Blake’s eschatology in a more atavistic sense. The world ends in a great consumption of the creation. The rocks, trees, as well as all the animals give up their independent wisdom and awareness, and join as one in the awakening of the ancient giant Albion, whose sleep originally imposed its world upon us. For this reason, Milton descends into the world: “Seeing that judgement is imminent he [Milton] fears that he will be caught with his demonic selfhood still unannihilated, and his emanation still separate. Milton, descending into the world, is accompanied by the seven protective Eyes of God. That his descent is of eschatological significance is indicated by his being called the “eighth,” who follows the Seven Eyes. Jesus as a historical man, is the seventh eye [of God]. The eighth is Jesus as the Divine Vision in which humanity and divinity are one.”1

Grimes notes that Albion plays a similar role in Blake’s system to Adam Kadmon in the Cabala. For Grimes, Albion functions as a psychological and cosmological unity. He is the grandfather of humanity. The alpha and omega of human experience. “Sometimes referred to simply as “The Fallen Man,” Albion lies asleep throughout The Four Zoas…. Albion’s sleep is a means of avoiding a vision of The Divine Image, which—if he only knew—is but a vision of himself resurrected into wakefulness.”2

I’ve probably gone deeper into the academic weeds than I intended to, but I want to draw some parallels between the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations and current events, you know, to make it even scarier and more real. Where has 1/2 the population of China gone? Why are Chinese city streets and subways empty? They all died of covid? Or were they all processed for blood and parts? What happens to the homeless people of America? Do they get a bus ticket to Vegas? Or do they get rounded up and processed, like wild horses? It’s been going on for years. Shipping containers full of human remains have been discovered. There are patented cement recipes that call for ground up human remains. I think the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations has been ongoing for some time now.