TRUST

In reading Blake one frequently encounters the idea that there are things that one may not trust. Among these are:
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The senses

MHH, Plate 5, (E 35)
"How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

Book of Urizen, Plate 27, (E 83)
"No more could they rise at will
In the infinite void, but bound down
To earth by their narrowing perceptions"
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The reasoning mind

Milton, Plate 32 [35], (E 127)
"The idiot Reasoner laughs at the Man of Imagination
And from laughter proceeds to murder by undervaluing calumny"

Everlasting Gospel, (E 520)
"When the Soul fell into sleep,
And Archangels round it weep,
Shooting out against the light
Fibres of a deadly night,
Reasoning upon its own dark fiction,
In doubt which is self-contradiction?"
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The established authority

MHH, Plate 26, (E 44)
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust,
loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying
Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease.
Chorus
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren whom, tyrant, he calls free; lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not!
For every thing that lives is Holy

Jerusalem, Plate 30 [34], (E 176)
"What may Man be? who can tell! but what may Woman be?
To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave.
There is a Throne in every Man,it is the Throne of God
This Woman has claimd as her own & Man is no more!"
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The systems developed by others

Jerusalem, Plate 10, (E 153)
"The Spectre weeps, but Los unmovd by tears or threats remains

I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Mans
I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create"

Jerusalem, PLATE 11, (E 154)
"To labours mighty, with vast strength, with his mighty chains,
In pulsations of time, & extensions of space, like Urns of Beulah
With great labour upon his anvils, & in his ladles the Ore
He lifted, pouring it into the clay ground prepar'd with art;
Striving with Systems to deliver Individuals from those Systems;
That whenever any Spectre began to devour the Dead,
He might feel the pain as if a man gnawd his own tender nerves."






In pursuing his great task, Blake felt compelled to tear down before he could build up. He wanted to demonstrate to us what we could not trust before we could replace the unreliable foundations with solid rock upon which we can build lasting avenues to the Infinite.






Jerusalem, Plate 5, (E 145)
"I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination"

WITNESS to TRUTH

Stuart Curran in his chapter in Sublime Allegory (page 341) says, "Except for the apocalyptic concluding plates there are few distinct events in Jerusalem, which is why the reader feels himself caught in a labyrinth, fated to return again and again to the same land marks without discovering an egress." It is not about truth and falsehood, good and evil, consistency and confusion. Curren states that, "Los's striving is for comprehension, and progression in Blake's epic derives from the slowly maturing consolidation of error by which Los defines the logic of man's fallen state. What Los consolidates, significantly enough, is archetypes, and the underlying structure of Jerusalem is a single archetypal pattern successively repeated until Los can fathom the symbolic meaning of its 'Universal Attributes' (90:32) and use it to transfigure the fallen into the regenerated. The mind expands within like a spiral that at last encompasses the universe."

Jerusalem, Chapter 1, Plate 5, (E 148)
"For the Male is a Furnace of beryll: the Female is a golden Loom

Los cries: No Individual ought to appropriate to Himself
Or to his Emanation, any of the Universal Characteristics
Of David or of Eve, of the Woman, or of the Lord.
Of Reuben or of Benjamin, of Joseph or Judah or Levi
Those who dare appropriate to themselves Universal Attributes
Are the Blasphemous Selfhoods & must be broken asunder
A Vegetated Christ & a Virgin Eve, are the Hermaphroditic
Blasphemy, by his Maternal Birth he is that Evil-One
And his Maternal Humanity must be put off Eternally
Lest the Sexual Generation swallow up Regeneration
Come Lord Jesus take on thee the Satanic Body of Holiness

So Los cried in the Valleys of Middlesex in the Spirit of
Prophecy
While in Selfhood Hand & Hyle & Bowen & Skofeld appropriate
The Divine Names: seeking to Vegetate the Divine Vision
In a corporeal & ever dying Vegetation & Corruption
Mingling with Luvah in One. they become One Great Satan

Loud scream the Daughters of Albion beneath the Tongs & Hammer
Dolorous are their lamentations in the burning Forge
They drink Reuben & Benjamin as the iron drinks the fire
They are red hot with cruelty: raving along the Banks of Thames
And on Tyburns Brook among the howling Victims in loveliness
While Hand & Hyle condense the Little-ones & erect them into
A mighty Temple even to the stars: but they Vegetate
Beneath Los's Hammer, that Life may not be blotted out.

For Los said: When the Individual appropriates Universality
He divides into Male & Female: & when the Male & Female,
Appropriate Individuality, they become an Eternal Death.
Hermaphroditic worshippers of a God of cruelty & law!
Your Slaves & Captives; you compell to worship a God of Mercy.
These are the Demonstrations of Los, & the blows of my mighty
Hammer"

Blake's goal was to transform the world and he relentlessly pursued that goal. He knew that he could not impose his vision on the world or reach enough ears with his message to convince mankind of his truth. He knew that man will transform his world through transforming himself. So Blake left his testimony of what went on is his own soul as he was transformed through the Imagination within him.

Blake invites us to enter the struggle he underwent knowing that each individual will undergo his own struggle not a repeat of that of Blake. That is why Blake left no recipe or set of instruction for developing spiritually. What ever speaks to your inner being from Blake's accounts is what Blake has to provide for your development. What can any of us do but be a witness to the truth that became manifest through our experience? Blake was gifted in seeing into his own depths, and in communicating in images. His message has been broadcast, we have receivers to acquire the signal and put it to use.

Looking Down or Looking Up

YOUR SYSTEM

Blake absorbed ideas from everywhere, but he didn't accept them uncritically. He was a synthesizer. He wanted to figure out things for himself. He didn't mind sharing his insights with others, but he didn't expect others to accept them without thinking about them.

He would expect the same of us - that we 'hunt' for ideas, that we evaluate and sift through them, that we form our ideas into a valid system of thought, and that we share them with others.



Image from Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 2, furnished by Adelaide e-books

A Descriptive Catalog, Page 44, (E 544)
"Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not [P 45] worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or impossible. His opinions, who does not see spiritual agency, is not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable, must reject all History and retain doubts only."

Blake's Purpose

1. "Would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets"; Blake quoted this verse at the end of the Preface to Milton. (It was quoted from (Numbers 11:29).)

This is very close to Blake's primary purpose. What
did Blake mean by 'prophet': a person who has a vision
and who shares it.

2. "What it will be Questiond 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" (Vision of the Last Judgment E566)

Now what in the world does this mean? Read the
things: not the corporeal, but the visionary.

The Task of Los is to "transform the round glob into living forms." (Erdman)

3. Look also at the end of Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
"Everything that lives is holy". How do you read that?
I think by holy he means the visionary, the Beyond
accompaniment or source of everything material -- such
as the sun.

Look at what immediately follows the 'Holy,Holy,Holy
passage:
"I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any
more than I would Question a Window concerning a
Sight; I look thro it & not with it."

As Above, so Below Hermeticism? you bet. Actually
the idea goes way, way back in Greek thought.

4. Here's another indicator of Blake's purpose. In his
visionary meeting with Ezekiel he asked the old prophet
why he did certain very extravagant things: Ezekiel's
answer (and Blake's) was "the desire of raising other
men into a perception of the infinite;"

So we may think materially (with the 'Vegetative Eye'),
or we may envision. These are the two contraries!

What is your vision?