{"id":228,"date":"2011-02-03T09:41:12","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T09:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/2011\/02\/thoughts-that-breathe-words-that-burn.html"},"modified":"2011-02-03T09:41:12","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T09:41:12","slug":"thoughts-that-breathe-words-that-burn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/02\/thoughts-that-breathe-words-that-burn.html","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts that breathe, words that burn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blake<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!<\/i><\/div>\n
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov’ring o’er,<\/i><\/div>\n
Scatters from her pictur’d urn<\/i><\/div>\n
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.<\/i><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The lines are from Thomas Gray’s Progress of Poesy<\/i>. The image is derived from William Blake’s illustration, originally rendered in ink and watercolor over pencil drawing. You can view the original in the Blake Archive at Yale here<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In the beautiful William Blake Tarot of the Creative Imagination, Blake’s vision of Bright-eyed Fancy is borrowed for the 7 of Music, or Fancies; the suit is equivalent to Cups in the familiar version of Tarot. As Ed Buryn, the creator of the William Blake Tarot, explains:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In the Blake Tarot, the four Creative Process Suits are named after Blake’s four “arts in Eternity” – Painting instead of Pentacles, Science instead of Swords, Music instead of Cups, and Poetry instead of Wands. These evocative and action-oriented suit-names stimulate awareness of our godlike powers of creativity and healing through art. <\/i><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Here I want to stay with the one simple, arresting image. We see the poet-musician strumming his lyre as his muse pours, from a cornucopia, a host of baby-like “fancies” who are bringing him gifts of inspiration. As the fancies flit around him, the poet’s imagination, winged by these emissaries from his muse, produces fresh words and new music.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
What a marvelous depiction of the source of creative inspiration! We learn from it to place ourselves where we are ready to receive and co-create. This is different from passive channeling. The poet will be charged and driven by “thoughts that breathe” and “words that burn”. But he is not taking dictation. In heightened awareness, with his passions aroused and his inner senses all in play, his instrument in his hands, he will bring forth new creation. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Blake’s picture reminds us how closely the creative act resembles the act of giving birth. In a remarkable inversion of our conventional ideas of conception, it is the feminine muse who is inseminating the poet with the “fancies” who resemble babies who are going to be born through him. We are reminded why dreams of having a baby<\/a> – when something other than rehearsal for a literal birth – are so often about birthing something new in our lives and our world. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy, hov’ring o’er, Scatters from her pictur’d urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. The lines are from Thomas Gray’s Progress of Poesy. The image is derived from William Blake’s illustration, originally rendered in ink and watercolor over pencil drawing. You can view the original in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,36,40,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-myth","category-poems","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nThoughts that breathe, words that burn - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/02\/thoughts-that-breathe-words-that-burn.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thoughts that breathe, words that burn - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy, hov’ring o’er, Scatters from her pictur’d urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. The lines are from Thomas Gray’s Progress of Poesy. The image is derived from William Blake’s illustration, originally rendered in ink and watercolor over pencil drawing. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}