William Blake, the poet, artist and mystic, was a prophet of the imagination, and Kathleen Raine, the renowned Blakean scholar, introduces his work in her article. This gives us an opportunity to remember and appraise Blake. For him, life was imagination itself. War, environmental degradation, social breakdown, consumerism and umpteen other crises of our time stem from the lack of imagination. David Nicholson-Lord reports on this Academy of the Earth.
Imagination is the foundation for ecological, social and spiritual renewal.
As Thomas Berry explains in his interview, we are members of the Earth community, rather than masters of it. Stephan Harding too, in exploring the workings of Gaia, shows how our entire existence is a web of relationships. The Gaia theory is one of the most imaginative scientific concepts of our time. This leap of imagination gives us a bigger vision of humanity and its place in the natural world. In one way or another, every article in this issue points toward a more poetic, creative and imaginative way of conducting our activities in everyday life.