This article seeks to explain some of the intersections between Blake's visionary ideas and his experience of mythological ideas that were current in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The value of scrutinizing these ideas is to reveal some fresh insight into Blake's aesthetic theory and to respond to the thesis that either writing or art begins with the effacement of mythology or art equates with mythology. The article reveals that Blake's approach to mythology is such that myths become subsumed within myths, and that from a desire to critique the art of the mythographers from his period, Blake was able to deepen his own enquiry into his aesthetic theorization, so that by the time he produced his own public exhibition, and had started composing his long poem, Jerusalem, he was aware that in order for the classical mythological remnants of the past to be cleared away, to develop his own mythology, he had to challenge some of the more ancient systems of belief such as Druidism, which predated most forms and then demonstrate how his own mythology had to change and become flexible enough to eradicate the possibility of mythical ossification.

The ossification of mythology is an idea that particularly interests me at the moment and I am keen to know how Blake's aesthetic practices helped him both to maintain the freshness of his vision over a long time period and how he learned to adjust his own perspective in opposition to the theoretical, philosophical and psychological opinions of his day. As my thesis consists in researching Jungian psychology and Blake's ideas about medical knowledge and forms of mental disturbance, I am particularly interested in the study of archetypes inherent in a variety of mythological research and stories in both Blake's day and other historical periods.