The Physiology of Blake’s Hallucinations

The underlying physiological characteristics of Blake’s ‘visions’ fall into several types and were experienced in both auditory and visual modes. Far from treating them with suspicion or fear, he seems to have welcomed them. No doubt, taken over a lifetime, their gradual emergence helped sustain his belief in the special nature of his artistic calling. Whether he thought of them as one single continuum of ‘visions’ or as several different types is difficult to know but it seems likely that, as a painter, he would have especially valued those occurring in visual modalities. As far as this chapter is concerned, two initial types of visual hallucinatory experience can be identified as distinctive enough to demonstrate something of their phenomenological diversity. Of course, these are far from being the only ‘visionary’ phenomena he experienced within his visual field. While one was transient, perhaps referring to only a single moment in Felpham, Sussex, in 1800, the other may have been the source of a set of stimuli which persisted across his entire lifetime.