by William Blake
All Religions Are One was etched by William Blake around 1788, when he was thirty years old. It is the earliest of his philosophical tractates — a series of nine propositions engraved onto copper plates in the same "infernal method" he would later describe in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The work has survived in only a single copy, held at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
Blake's argument is simple and total: the faculty of genuine knowing is not reason but imagination — which he calls the Poetic Genius. This Genius is the true human being; the body is derived from it, not the other way around. And since all people share the Poetic Genius, all religions share one source. The doctrine of a perennial unity underlying all traditions here receives perhaps its most compressed statement in English.
The text is reproduced from standard scholarly transcriptions of Blake's illuminated plates, following the William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org) and the textual tradition of the Yeats-Ellis Complete Works (1893).
The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness
The Argument
As the true method of knowledge is experiment the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of.
Principle 1st
That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius.
Principle 2nd
As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius
Principle 3rd
No man can think write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual
Principle 4th
As none by traveling over known lands can find out the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists
Principle 5th
The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.
Principle 6th
The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation
Principle 7th
As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) So all Religions & as all similars have one source The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius
Colophon
William Blake (1757–1827). All Religions Are One was etched in relief on copper plates by Blake around 1788 and survives in a single known copy held at the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. It was never conventionally published in Blake's lifetime. The text was first printed in Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake (London: Macmillan, 1863), and later in the Yeats-Ellis Complete Works (1893). This archival text follows standard scholarly transcriptions of Blake's illuminated plates, primarily as presented in the William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org). Blake's original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been preserved throughout.
Companion text: There Is No Natural Religion (1788).
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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