In this day of new age mysticism, a quick look into Blake’s most captivating work, The Book of Thel centers the new thinker into the soul of Biblically inspired mysticism.  Let us be specific. As an opening look into divinity through the eyes of genius: Why does Thel seek “the secret air.’? The seeming simplicity of action is interwoven with a most perplexing question. Let us discover the secret of Blake’s Thel.  For those unfamiliar with Blake, Thel is living in Beulah land and chooses to become human.  As such she can be seen as the spirit of God choosing mortality through the person of Jesus.

If mortality is a choice that Thel has complete choice over, why the insistent desire to discover the world of flesh when she has such deep misgivings? But she seems to already have some idea of the flesh,

Why fade these children of the spring? Born

But to smile and fall (Thel 1:7,69)

If Thel has not tasted of mortality as yet, why does she lament so painfully,

I vanish from my pearly throne,

And who shall find my place (Thel 2:12.80)

Thel is desire living in Beulah land. She has the little flowers and the warbling birds, but Thel (from the Greek for I want) seeks fulfillment.

But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away.

And all shall say, without a use this shining woman liv’d

Or did she live, to be at death the food of worms (3:21-23,81)

If Thel can be seen here to be weighing her options, it would seem that she is debating leaving eternity to live. But is life only the path to becoming food for worms? She is, I think, not relating in terms of soul but in terms of the body and the decay of the body.

I think that Thel wants experience, but she wants it on immortal terms. When she comes as a bride, she wants mortal life on everlasting conditions. But is the world ready for that kind of vision? Thel entered existence and found only her grave plot as the symbol of her being She sits on her grave and hears the lament of the body bewailing its own decay.

Is it any wonder that she starts up from her seat and runs shrieking from mortality back to the safety of the vales of Har!  Is that not what the soul itself would do when released from the bonds of the flesh?  Thel’s time of seeing the fulfillment of bodily and spiritual existence has not yet come.

Perhaps, those religions that espouse the souls choice in returning to existence might understand Blake and his genius more deeply than most critics of Blake’s work.