The Great Code of Art

The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.

(William Blake)

Some believe that poets and other artists are the first creators of symbols. But the Prophets precede the poets.  Artists create cultural symbols, but the prophets give us sacred symbols.  What is the difference?

The word symbol means to throw together.  The origin of all symbols is a division in need of reunion:  the two become one, yet remain separate.  Learning, too, starts with perceiving difference, with making distinctions. What is identical to you cannot be known by you.  Distinctions made in perception are combined through symbols into knowledge.  Symbols throw together levels of reality and allow the mind to move freely between them.  But the question is: How many levels are to be connected?  The spiritual mind says three: divine, human and natural.  The secular mind says two: humanity and nature.  The poetic symbol can connect the human with the natural. Yet, since the human spirit longs for the transcendent, a union of human thought with only nature ultimately leaves the soul feeling incomplete and looking for more. 

Such was the attitude stated by a contemporary of Blake’s, the poet and critic Coleridge.  He wrote in his notebook on April 14, 1805: “In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering thro' the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking, a symbolical language for something within me that already and forever exists, rather than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling as if that new phenomenon were the dim Awakening of a forgotten or hidden Truth of my inner Nature…”

Spiritually, religion starts with a communication from God, with the revelation of the Word.  This communication from the Divine calls humanity back to Him and to itself from a state of separation.  Psychologically, religion starts within human beings with a sense of alienation from oneself and separation from God.  Their reunion is re-ligia. Only the sacred symbol connects the three levels of the sacred cosmos.  But it all starts from above.  I mean that if the Divine informs the human from above, it must then send down the codes that enable the human mind to read and unlock the secrets of creation.  The first act of the human intelligence in relation to the sacred is, therefore, to receive.  

Scripture is the symbolic code of the spiritual world, which is the essence of nature and of us.   Sacred symbology is the means of reconnecting all things, for it unites the essential spiritual forms of things with their manifest material forms, the B and E joined and knit together.  Poetic metaphors are reflections and imitations of the sacred symbols revealed in scripture.  It is in this sense that religion may be called the highest order symbol system—the one by which other symbol systems are ultimately founded and legitimized.  

Blake’s “great code” comment, then, states exactly the relation of the divine Word with human knowledge from a spiritual perspective.  Art creates symbolic reality, but scripture is the great code of that poetic work.  'Abdu'l-Bahá said the same thing: "All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God." (Quoted in The Chosen Highway: 167)

Baha’u’llah not only saw this relation between sacred symbols and human poetic ones, as did all the Manifestation, but also He recreated and renewed that relation.  He wrote: “The Sun of Truth is the Word of God upon which dependeth the education of those who are endowed with the power of understanding and of utterance. It is the true spirit and the heavenly water, through whose aid and gracious providence all things have been and will be quickened. Its appearance in every mirror is conditioned by the colour of that mirror. For instance, when its light is cast upon the mirrors of the hearts of the wise, it bringeth forth wisdom. In like manner when it manifesteth itself in the mirrors of the hearts of craftsmen, it unfoldeth new and unique arts, and when reflected in the hearts of those that apprehend the truth it revealeth wondrous tokens of true knowledge and discloseth the verities of God's utterance.” (Compilations, The Importance of the Arts in Promoting the Faith)

Art in all its forms and expressions, the metaphors, analogies, images and figurations which are its tools and creations, manufacture symbolic codes of perceived reality.  But the Holy Books create the Reality perceived.   They are constitutive of reality.  The Quran notes:

And with Him are the keys of the secret things; none knoweth them but

He: He knoweth whatever is on the land and in the sea; and no leaf falleth

but He knoweth it; neither is there a grain in the darknesses of the earth,

nor a thing green or sere, but it is noted in a distinct writing.  (Qur'an 6:59)

 

And Baha’u’llah states: “The Word of God is the king of words and its pervasive influence is incalculable. It hath ever dominated and will continue to dominate the realm of being. The Great Being saith: The Word is the master key for the whole world, inasmuch as through its potency the doors of the hearts of men, which in reality are the doors of heaven, are unlocked…It is an ocean inexhaustible in riches, comprehending all things. Every thing which can be perceived is but an emanation therefrom.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 173)

Blake’s poetic vision, based upon his reading of the Bible, was vast.  Writing during a time when materialistic science was just getting started on its self-appointed task of collapsing a spiritual cosmos into a physical universe, he wrote his friend Thomas Butts on Nov. 22, 1802:

Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
‘Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newton’s Sleep!

What Blake means by single vision is Nature as purely objective reality to man; a cold, indifferent, mathematical thing as seen by the Newtonian science of Blake’s day.  The two-fold vision is the connection of the human mind and Nature in a creative symbolic union, as Coleridge wrote; three-fold is this human and natural symbolic connection plus the layers of human subjective life with which we also have the relation of conscious/unconscious.  These layers of imagination, dream, and feeling, do provide a basis for creative art, but can lead potentially to the fallacy of psychologizing spiritual realities, making the illusion of their human creation.  Blake’s four-fold vision sees the spiritual as an objective Reality above and nature as objective reality below man, but both in true creative and symbolic relation with humanity as signs of God, as the human soul is.  Blake saw it all.  He fought all his life to restore in poetic form the wholeness of spiritual vision. 

A holy world is a whole one, for holiness comes from wholeness.  An unholy world is one whose parts are disconnected and fragmented.  We see in our fragmenting world not only the eclipse of spiritual thought within human consciousness, but also, as a consequence, the fracturing of a unified culture.  Likewise, the inner world of human consciousness itself is fractured when it loses connection with the spiritual dimension.  Because of this fracture we have lost the ability to read the creation symbolically as a sacred form, as Blake could, and are left only with a deep sense of incompleteness.  The Holy Books can teach us how to read symbolically again, for they are “the Great Code of Art.”