Blake's Myth II

A most significant key to Blake's symbolism came to light only in 1947 when Arlington Court was bequeathed to the British National Trust. Among the furnishings there was a large tempera by Blake, called alternatively The Sea of Time and Space or The Cave of the Nymphs. This treasure had been hidden from public eyes for a century.

(Most of us are unlikely to see the original, but Blake and Antiquity by Kathleen Raine offers several glimpses of the picture with a detailed account of the symbols it contains. There is no better way to begin an understanding of Blake at the deeper level than to read carefully and study this small and accessible book.)

The picture contains the essential symbolism of Blake's myth; the theme goes back to Homer, then to Plato and Porphyry. (To understand Blake's myth one would be well advised to study this link with care--at least the first part of this article on Thomas Taylor.)

Blake and Taylor were approximately the same age and as young men close friends. Many people think that Taylor introduced Blake to the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions. It seems certain that Taylor's On the Homeric Cave of the Nymphs deeply influenced the painting of the Arlington Tempera. Some of Blake's most common symbols can be found in this picture.

Another good introduction to Blake's myth is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It comes from an angry young man pouring his scorn on the conventions that cripple us; the language is pungent, the words are pointed, provocative, and outrageous.

A conventional person will find this whole work offensive and repulsive, but the young person at the stage of life where he's ready to kick over the traces, is quickly attracted-- if he has enough wit to understand irony and not take everything at face value.

We might call it an ironic satire. In 1789 Blake was 32, at the height of his physical (though perhaps not mental) powers. He had experienced the Divine Vision

He knew it was meant for mankind, but so far limited to Jesus and a few others. But with the advent of the French Revolution he foresaw its spread throughout the world. (Of course in that he was soon doomed to disappointment-- with the appearance of Madame Guillotine.) Nevertheless with a peak of spiritual exuberance he proceeded to announce the coming New Age:

"The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.... If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." (Plate 14 of MHH)

For this gem Blake drew upon Genesis and Plato.

Blake knew that the Divine Vision depended upon your ability to avert your eyes and attention from the material and to focus upon the Spiritual, the Eternal, which can only dwell in the Imagination (for Blake the Imagination was everything!). The society of Blake's day uniformly failed to do that, as does ours! Blake desperately, emphatically, and continuously endeavoured to awaken us to a spiritual consciousness, to break the 'mind forg'd manacles.

Pursuant to this aim:

How do you know but every bird that cuts the air Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? (Plate 7; E35)

And look at Plate 13:

I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? he answered. the desire of raising other men into a perception of the Infinite. (E39|

Back in 1788 with There is No Natural Religion he had disposed of a sense-based consciousness as any kind of arbiter of the meaning of life:

Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. He percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.

Look at Section VII of NNR. Reason or the ratio are his terms for comfining one's mental activity to the senses. And he thought less and less of it as he grew older. In notes on Vision of the Last Judgment he wrote:
"I assert for myself that I do not behold the Outward Creation and that to me it is hindrance and not Action it is as the Dirt upon my feet No part of Me.
"What it will be Question'd When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea? O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty."

On MHH (Plate 16 Blake tells us about the prolific (prophetic types, creative people who grasp the Eternal) and the devouring (those who worship the created good). Of course he counted himself among the prolific. Middleton Murry has pointed out that in this moment of the everlasting 'good-and-evil' in which we live Blake may have projected the 'evil' upon the public who had uniformly ignored him. Murry suggested that it was a necessary "moment in his life".

If that be true, we have the record of the moment when Blake "came to himself" to the point where he confessed that his Selfhood continued to dominate him. He eventually came to realize that one cannot operate in the Sea of Time and Space without the Selfhood; thus he faced the necessity to continually annihilate and regenerate it with his alternation between Heaven and this vale of tears in which we live. (As Christians understand, the selfhood is brought into subjection and becomes the servant of the Self (Christ)).

In Plate 24 he promised to the world the Bible of Hell. John Middleton Murry described it as follows:

The first book of these, The Book of Urizen , is to a large degree a parody of Genesis. The Book of Ahania corresponds precisely to Exodus. The third book is The Book of Los (1795).

MHH was prior to Blake's myth proper, like a preamble or preface. It defines ideas and terms that are to be understood as the myth evolves, a special language you have to learn to get into the major works (The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem).

Blake and Antiquity

Someone asked me what I would recommend reading beyond the Works of Blake. After considerable thought I suggested Kathleen Raines, Blake and Antiquity; it's actually a very condensed version of a much larger and more famous book entitled Blake and Tradition which one is hard to get and expensive. On page four of Blake and Antiquity Raine recapitulated the discovery of Blake's symbology with these recommendations:

Damon in William Blake: His Philosophy and symbology,

Percival's William Blake's Circle of Destiny,

Harper's Neoplatonism of William Blake.

Turning back to the 18th and early 19 centuries, Blake sent a letter to his friend and patron, Flaxman; he named what he perceived as his primary sources:

"Now my lot in the Heavens is this: Milton lov'd me in childhood and
show'd me his face;
Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave
me his hand;
Paracelsus and Behmen appear'd to me; terrors appear'd in the
Heavens above"

Both of Raine's books are primarily about Blake's mythological sources. Raine was steeped in Greek Mythology, and she discovered the Blake was, too. She also knew that Blake was acquainted with Thomas Taylor, named by his contemporaries as The English Pagan; he was one year younger than Blake. In an early lampooning work entitled An Island in the Moon Blake mentioned "Sipsop the Pythagorean"; Damon identified him as Taylor.

Taylor introduced Platonic thought to the 'Enlightened' 18th century, and received much derision; but Blake wasn't wedded to the Enlightenment, and he received Taylor's work gladly (at least for a time; he had a habit of turning his critical faculty on any new discoveries sooner or later). Taylor called upon "the young men of the new age", a term that Blake used in his Preface to Milton; he asked them to 'rouze up" and shortly thereafter broke into the famous hymn that has been called Jerusalem and came to be adopted by the English Labor Party as their theme song.

Of course early in his life Blake had been tuned to Swedenborg, who proclaimed the New Age, the New Church, and the New Jerusalem. (The only Church Blake would ever proclaim was the Church Universal).

Blake and Antiquity gives a lot of coverage of Blake's last great picture. (Keep this in another window so you may confer back to it from what follows:) She pointed out that he had brought together two moments in the Odyssey.

In Book Five you may read this:

"A goddess, Leucothea, appears to him in the form of a bird. She counsels him to swim for it. "Take my veil, tie it around your waist as a charm against drowning. When you reach shore, be sure to throw it back into the sea." (In the picture you can see Odysseus with his eyes averted throwing something out to see.)

In Book Six you may read:

"Odysseus had washed up in the land of the Phaeacians. Athena now intervened to make these people foster his journey home". (In the Picture you see Athena behind Odysseus point to the southern gate to his (and our) Heavenly Home.)

My Spectre (n)

'Night and day...he follows my way'
How many posts have already been written on the Spectre? And why again? Well it's ever with me; that's why?

I may annihilate it, but it comes back--every time I leave my bed. Actually it's a necessity for life, tantamount to living in the world, swimming in the sea of time and space. Is that why newborn babies cry (immediately)?

There's a way out; Odysseus found one; but he didn't do it by himself; it came to him, courtesy of Leucothea. With her help he reached dry land where Athena directed him to the southern gate of the Cave of the Nymphs.

All of these myths have inner meanings completely other than the obvious literal meaning. In this instance they have analogs in the Bible as well. Here Leucothea represents the Savior who rescues us from the spectral Sea of Time and Space. (This is called the mythopoeic meaning.)

The story of Odysseus is a story of everyman: we all go through the same type of adventures that he did. We all at least are thrown out into the Sea of Time and Space, generally at birth or shortly thereafter. It happened to Jesus, too. You may recall him walking in the water once; Peter (representing you and me) aspired to do the same, but for him it was a hard matter).

Once on dry land Odysseus got further direction (from Athena perhaps) to "the southern gate of 'return' where worthy mortals ascend into the higher realm of immortality".
Christians call that heaven (and I think Blake did, too).

Sin and Salvation that's the Bible's story and Blake's story: the Spectre, Experience, the Sea of Time and Space, the Selfhood: Blake's names for sin; our universal experience; what comes next? it's up to you.

It came naturally to Blake in childhood and youth; then came The Fall.

My spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way.
My emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.

A fathomless and boundless deep,
There we wander, there we weep;
On the hungry craving wind
My spectre follows thee behind.

He scents thy footsteps in the snow,
Wheresoever thou dost go
Through the wintry hail and rain.
When wilt thou return again?

Dost thou not in pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn,
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears?

Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereaved of their life.
Their marble tombs I built with tears
And with cold and shuddering fears.

Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay,
And seven more loves attend each night
Around my couch with torches bright.

And seven more loves in my bed
Crown with wine my mournful head,
Pitying and forgiving all
Thy transgressions, great and small.

When wilt thou return & view
My loves & them to life renew
When wilt thou return & live
When wilt thou pity as I forgive

Never Never I return
Still for Victory I burn
And when dead l'll be thy Grave

Thro the Heavn & Earth & Hell
Thou shalt never never quell
I will fly & thou pursue
Night & Morn the flight renew

Till I turn from Female Love
And root up the Infernal Grove
I shall never worthy be
To Step into Eternity

And to end thy cruel mocks
Annihilate thee on the rocks
And another form create
To be subservient to my Fate

Let us agree to give up Love
And root up the infernal grove
Then shall we return & see
he worlds of happy Eternity

& Throughout all Eternity
I forgive you you forgive me
As our dear Redeemer said
This the Wine & this the Bread 

(E 475)

A Turning Point

The Moment of Grace
Life is made up of turning points, but if you're fortunate, then somewhere along life's crooked path you may take a most significant turning point to the right:

"When he came to himself"(verse 17): the fundamental biblical archetype), and there have been other similar ones since Jesus spoke those words.

In our poet's life that Moment has for me an endless fascination. He might have been a famous man, teacher to the Royal Family, world wide artist; he might have dedicated his life to the Main Chance, but he found a better way. The critical Moment (the darkness before the dawn) came when Hayley had given William and Catherine, a comfortable cottage, a comfortable care free life as a miniaturist, but "he came to himself". He returned to London, penniless, but free. Thereafter the main chance ceased to be a temptation. Blake celebrated that decisive Moment in letter 16 to his true (spiritual) friend, Captain Butts (the First Vision of Light):"...O thou Ram hornd with gold Who awakest from sleep").

He also mentioned it in another letter, this one Letter 51, to William Hayley....
"I have entirely reduced that spectrous Fiend to his station, whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last passed twenty years of my life. He is the enemy of conjugal love and is the Jupiter of the Greeks, an iron-hearted tyrant, the ruiner of ancient Greece.......I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by window-shutters.

The prints of that Moment fill the pages of his poetry:

In the 9th Night of The Four Zoas (in Erdman 395-6) you may read of the regeneration and awakening of Vala, the sinless soul" the incorrigible female (this passage owes a lot to the Greek myth, Cupid and Psyche).

After the Moment of Grace annihilation of the Selfhood became a primary theme for Blake. In Milton he put these words in the mouth of the hero returned from Heaven, addressed to Ololon, his emanation:

"But turning toward Ololon in terrible majesty Milton Replied. Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Man
All that can be annihilated must be annihilated
That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery
There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary
The Negation must be destroyd to redeem the Contraries
The Negation is the Spectre; the Reasoning Power in Man
This is a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal
Spirit; a Selfhood, which must be put off & annihilated alway
To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-examination.

[Milton PLATE 41 [48]:
To bathe in the Waters of Life; to wash off the Not Human
I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration
To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour
To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration
To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering
To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with Imagination
To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration"
(Erdman 142)

Milton is a difficult poem, but Blake must have written it shortly after his Moment of Grace.

Blake celebrated the (miraculous?) turning point in Odysseus (my, your, Albion's, Everyman's) with his famous Arlington Tempera, called the Circle of Destiny.

In Blake's poetry, above all autobiographical, he marked the moment of truth for Los and all the rest of his characters who made up various elements of his psyche, of mine, yours, Albion's.

Gates of Paradise Picture 14

The couplets of this picture and the last one go so closely together that I've posted them here:

"13. But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,

14. Thro' evening shades I haste away
To close the labours of my day."




You have met Christ; you are saved; but there is still much to do. What is the chief labor of our day? to annihilate the Selhood? yes, that goes on ceaselessly; at least it has for me. The groves, the shadows, the "mind forg'd manacles" have to be cleared away one by one. Paul said "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13). All this is "the labors of my day".
(And what God is this that Paul speaks of? Why the God within of course, that of God in you. That was Blake's God.)

That's the work of Los, the Imagination, the 'Zoa' with whom Blake was most closely identified. Like Jeremiah he was called to build up and tear down. How many things did Edison have to try before he got the incandescent light? He learned to work continually and snatch a moment of sleep while one of his experiments was cooking. Such was Los; such was Blake.

Digby page 48: The Traveler "hastens to conclude the labors of his day; that is, the concerns that were so important for him...now appear to him as delusions to which he had been quite wrongly subservient. He has a new sense of direction and a new sense of his rightful task as a man."

If we look at Homer's myth, we see that it took many years for Odysseus to return from the escapades of the Trojan adventures. But finally having experienced about everything that could happen to a man, he escaped from the sea of time and space (with the help of the sea goddess, Eno), and was directed upward into the Eternal realm.

Heaven's Gate

Among other things this abiding image provides a
link between Blake and Dylan.

Once again:
I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
Jeusalem (E 231)

What about the gate? Can you go in? go out?
The Arlington Tempera offers visual instruction
in the matter. From the beginning of time
there have been two passages: to and from
Heaven. The northern passage leads down into
the Sea of Time and Space; the southern passage
leads back up to Eternity. This is the crux of
Blake's myth, and of the Judeo-Chistian one as
well.

If you apply 'gate' to the concordance, you
will find 262 of them. Quite a few gates of
Hell! Two noteworthy gates are (1) at the little
poem, To Morning (E410):

"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,
Unlock heav's' golden gates, and issue forth;
Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light..."

And then Thel notably traversed the gate in
both directions. From the Vales of Thar (a
region in Heaven) Thel considered the subject
of mortal life, and decided to give it a whirl:
" The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the
northern bar. Thel enter'd in & saw the
secrets of the land unknown."

But seeing the horrors of 'this vale of tears'
Thel screamed and "Fled back unhinder'd till
she came into the vales of Har."

From the Arlington Tempera you may notice a
maiden holding her bucket and making her way
upward against the stream. Like Thel she had
seen enough and refused mortality.

-----------------------------

"O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, 0 Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessed feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ."

Hymn by John Masefield. How Blakean can you get!

ROBES OF BLOOD

Larry wrote:  KNEELING MAN AT THE SHORE
The features and meanings in the
 Arlington Tempera  are subject to various interpretations; that's true in fact of all works of art.  In particular color representations of this picture reveal things lost to monochrome viewers. The kneeling man at the shore wore a crimson robe. The red robe contributes to Damon (A BLAKE DICTIONARY) seeing the red-robed man kneeling on the shore as Luvah, the Zoa who represented the emotions to Blake. Raine viewing the scene from the Greek mythological perspective, saw him as Odysseus, Digby (SYMBOL AND IMAGE IN WILLIAM BLAKE) saw him in a function of Blake's larger mythological structure as Albion and Jesus who represent the total Humanity.

The contrast between Raine's (BLAKE AND TRADITION) and Digby's interpretations of the picture show how full is the meaning conveyed by the artist to two scholars in very different disciplines. The Greek origin of the setting comes out in Raine's identification of the images(and the total story) as very clearly an adaptation of the Odyssey. Cave of the Nymphs  Meanwhile the same images lend themselves in a more direct sense to the system that Blake created; to a great degree a psychological one. (Digby perceived the Greek story told here in strictly Jungian terms.)

In all likelihood Blake portrayed this image to convey all three facets of the complex character: the red robed man on the shore should be seen as by Damon as Luvah; and as by Raine as Odysseus; and as by Digby as Albion and Jesus. Since the kneeling man is wearing a red robe he suggests to Blake readers a recurring image whether we see him as Odysseus, Luvah, Jesus or Albion.

Blake used 'robes of blood' as a major symbol in his poetry. Look at:

FOUR ZOAS 1-13.8-9; E308:
"Eternity appeard above them as One Man infoldedIn Luvah[s] ROBES OF BLOOD & bearing all his afflictions"

FOUR ZOAS 2-32.13-14; E321
"The heavens were closd and spirits mournd their bondage night and day And the Divine Vision appeard in Luvahs ROBES OF BLOOD"

FOUR ZOAS 7a-87.43-4; E369|
"Turn inwardly thine Eyes & there behold the Lamb of God Clothed in Luvahs ROBES OF BLOOD descending to redeem"

Blake undoubted knew well the account in Rev. 19 of the appearance of the Christ at the end times, including verse 13: "And he was clothed with a VESTURE DIPPED IN BLOOD: and his name is called The Word of God." (KJV)

And finally we come to plate 42 in MILTON including:

"Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felphams Vale
In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful thunderings
Into the Fires of Intellect that rejoic'd in Felphams Vale
Around the Starry Eight: with one accord the Starry Eight became
One Man Jesus the Saviour. wonderful! round his limbs
The Clouds of Ololon folded as a GARMENT DIPPED IN BLOOD
Written within & without in woven letters: & the Writing
Is the Divine Revelation in the Litteral expression:
A Garment of War, I heard it namd the Woof of Six Thousand Years"

We may suppose that Digby's acquaintance with these accounts led him to name the man on the shore Albion - Jesus.
Would anyone care to exegete this last passage? (Damon suggested spiritual war)

Ellie's reply:
I've heard it said that life is a struggle. We can't expect to get through it without being battered and bruised. In our daily relationships we endure wounds and inflict wounds, inadvertently as well as deliberately. Most of our wounds are to our psyches, both our own and those whom we attack through our own unconscious defensiveness or projection.So we ourselves can be seen as the bloodied robes. Our psyches as well as our bodies are 'a clothing for the Soul Divine'. Joy and Woe In as far as we can see ourselves as members of the 'body of Christ'(1st Corinthians 12:27), as participants in the Divine Humanity which Blake called Albion, we also are the bloodied robes which Blake spoke of in regard to Luvah and Jesus. Sacred though these raiments be, they can be washed and mended and rewoven into unsullied garments suitable for entry into Jerusalem.