We may see Heaven and Earth, Heaven and Hell, Male and Female, Sun and Earth, Good and Evil or any number of contraries.
"Without Contraries is no Progression" (MHH). Life begins with these contraries, but ends with a Unity. ("Everything that lives is holy"; end of MHH).
Blake's culture and our culture as well are patriarchal and have been in the Western World for a great many centuries. But go back earlier, and you may find a matriarchal one. That was the contribution of Sukie Colegrave, a Chinese-British woman of the second half of the 20th Century. Her book was entitled Uniting Heaven and Earth. Anthropology suggests that matriarchal cultures generally precede patriarchal ones.
The Perennial Philosphy points to the Sun as God (or Zeus) and the Earth as materiality, and to an Earth Goddess (There's a tremendous variety of Greek ones).
Jesus pointed to our loving Father in Heaven beginning the Lord's Prayer, and prayed that His will might be done on Earth. Charles Williams, a sort of Blakean writer wrote He Came Down from Heaven. (An autodidact like Blake, Williams' writing shows an uncanny relationship to Blake; one might call him a 20th century Blake!)
Blake's life was a continuous endeavor to raise Heaven on Earth. His wife complained about it, although as a faithful wife she supported him whole heartedly. He was called by one writer a Stranger from Paradise.
Michael Gormley commented as follows:
ReplyDelete"So, the Priest, acting "In Personna Christi says, "This IS My Body" (Matthew 26:26), and in so doing, calls down "The Word" with his word, and the Holy Spirit transubstantiates the bread and the wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ (CCC 1353, 1357).
Jesus Christ has now come down from heaven to earth, and has humbled Himself, so that He may be seen, and touched, and consumed, under the appearance of simple bread and wine. We consume Him, and He assimilates us. We become uno, union, in communion with Him.
Heaven and earth have been joined . GOD has sent an abundance of gifts of Himself from heaven for us on earth for almost 2000 years.
"To the offering of Christ are united not only the members still here on earth, but also those already in the glory of heaven..."
Mike, I respect your faith and publish the above as your witness, but we don't publish links to Catholic propaganda.
Click on Gates of Paradise, Picture 12, and you may hark back to what Blake said about priests in MHH (Plate 11):
"Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast",