The Fall I

I need at least 8 posts to do justice to The Fall as Blake understood it. The Fall (as a preliminary to the Redemption and Return is a fundamental facet of his myth. Throughout his Complete Works he presented it in a thousand ways. It has been discussed repeatedly in this blog (look first at Urizen's Confession, which actually deals with the Fall and the Rise).

The Four Zoas might well be considered an initial sketch for Blake's myth, and it has much to tell us about The Fall:

Albion went to Beulah for R and R; he divided into the Four Zoas. Albion fell asleep after delegating the leadership to Urizen;
In Night V we hear Urizen's confession:
"O Fool could I forget the light that filled my bright spheres
Was a reflection of his face who calld me from the deep?
I well remember for I heard the mild & holy voice saying
'O light spring up and shine' and I sprang up from the deep
He gave to me a silver scepter & crownd me with a golden crown and said
Go forth & guide my Son who wanders on the ocean."
The golden crown and the silver scepter (signifying love) signified the leadership; it included the material sun signifying Light; Urizen was the charioteer of the sun pulled by the horses of Light (instruction and a few other things).

On a fateful night of drunkeness Urizen gave Luvah his "steeds of Light":
"I went not forth. I hid myself in black clouds of my wrath
I calld the stars around my feet in the night of councils dark
The stars threw down their spears and fled naked away.
We fell"
Four Zoas, Night 5, 64:20-28, (E 344)

We fell! What a pregnant statement! The course of the Fall was thuswise; according to Damon (p. 419):
"the cause of Urizen's downfall into the state of Satan was that of the traditional (Miltonic?) Satan: the desire for dominion" (to attempt to dominate others is a way to fall into a state of Satan).

Urizen's loss of his "immortal steeds of light" to Luvah is a central metaphor mentioned often in 4Z. Some of its incidents may be explored in another post, but here is one of Urizen's emanation, Ahania's laments that revealed to some extent what happened:

"Ahania bow'd her head & wept seven days before the King [Urizen of course]
And on the eighth day when his clouds unfolded from his throne
She rais'd her bright head sweet perfumd & thus with heavenly voice
O Prince the Eternal One hath set thee leader of his hosts
Leave all futurity to him Resume thy fields of Light
Why didst thou listen to the voice of Luvah that dread morn
To give the immortal steeds of light to his deceitful hands
No longer now obedient to thy will thou art compell'd
To forge the curbs of iron & brass to build the iron mangers
To feed them with intoxication from the wine presses of Luvah
Till the Divine Vision & Fruition is quite obliterated
They call thy lions to the fields of blood, they rowze thy tygers
Out of the halls of justice, till these dens thy wisdom framd
Golden & beautiful but O how unlike those sweet fields of bliss
Where liberty was justice & eternal science was mercy
Then O my dear lord listen to Ahania, listen to the vision
The vision of Ahania in the slumbers of Urizen
When Urizen slept in the porch & the Ancient Man was smitten"
(Erdman 326-7)

REASON & EMOTION

Erdman, in The Illuminated Blake
says: "Phaeton-like, down hurdle a naked man and sword and a horse with saddle cloth and broken chariot wheel...The man's spread hands are braced to hit the ground, but it is already in flames. Reason must have forgotten to let the horse do the pulling; a sword is not a bridle. But Energy must have restraint. Between them they have let the sun fall, connoting universal ruin."




The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was written in 1791 when Blake was a young man; he might be called an angry young man.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 5, (E 34)
"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs
is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or
reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restraind it by degrees becomes passive
till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the
Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the com-
mand of the heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan
and his children are call'd Sin & Death
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd
Satan. For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was
cast out. but the Devils account is, that the Messiah
fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the
Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason
may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible
being no other than he, who dwells in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a
Ratio of the five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when
he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of
Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and
of the Devils party without knowing it"

Blake was continually striving to free his imagination from constraints. The internal constraints of which he was most aware (excluding the selfhood) were misguided reason and emotion. In Plate 5 of Marriage of Heaven and Hell he expresses the concern that reason will succeed in restraining the emotions to the point that the imagination is bound. Emotion or desire is the source of energy which is required for the creative process.

As a poet, Blake identifies with Milton whose Paradise Lost was of consuming interest to Blake. In this Plate Blake deals with the poet's work (his own and Milton's), Biblical characters who becomes fictional characters for both the poets, and the abstract ideas of reason and emotion.

Blake became so interested in correcting the misconceptions of his friend (his spiritual, intellectual but not corporeal friend), that he addressed the issue in his poem Milton. Since Milton died 83 years before Blake was born, this was a friendship on the level of Eternity; time was not of the essence.

The crux of Milton's error in Blake's system is stated concisely as:
"But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!"

In Blake the Father is the Divine Humanity, in whose Image man is created; the Son is the Divine Vision, God in Man, the Incarnation; and the Holy Spirit is the Divine Body, the Human Imagination, the activity of expressing the Divine.

Or in other terms for Blake:
Father = Urizen = reason
Son = Luvah = emotions
Holy Spirit = Los = intuition or imagination
Unified man = Tharmas = body

FIERY ORC

None of Blake's characters is more complex or contradictory than is Orc. You may remember him as the first son of Los and Enitharmon who so aroused his father's jealousy that he was taken to a mountainside and chained to a rock. Los as prophecy was jealous of Orc as revolution. However Rintrah (just wrath), Palamabron (pity), Theomorton (frustrate desire), and Bromion (logic) are also identified as Los's first four sons which Damon explains as representing an analysis of Orc. (A Blake Dictionary, Page 309)

Orc's body became so enrooted to the rock that when his parents later tried to release him, they were unable to do so. As this passage notes he was the embodiment of the 'fires of Eternal Youth'.

Milton, Plate 29 [31], (E 127)
"But Rintrah & Palamabron govern over Day & Night
In Allamanda & Entuthon Benython where Souls wail:
Where Orc incessant howls burning in fires of Eternal Youth,
Within the vegetated mortal Nerves; for every Man born is joined
Within into One mighty Polypus, and this Polypus is Orc."



In this picture Orc is both the chained youth in the cruciform position and the figure enclosed underground in a fetal position. Orc has taken on his function as revolution which must be controlled. The potential for revolution which has erupted in the colonies and threatened Europe was expresed by Orc in the book America. Revolution which had been attractive to Blake in theory became repulsive to him when he saw it in actual practice in France.



America, PLATE 8, (E 54)
"The terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath'd round the accursed tree:
The times are ended; shadows pass the morning gins to break;
The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro' the wide wilderness:
That stony law I stamp to dust: and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume in bottomless
deeps;
To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to their
fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof.
That pale religious letchery, seeking Virginity,
May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty
The undefil'd tho' ravish'd in her cradle night and morn:
For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd;
Amidst the lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass,
His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast and head like
gold.
And Satan is the Spectre of Orc & Orc is the generate Luvah"

As the generate form of Luvah (emotion) which came into being as a result of the fall, Orc came under the dominion of Urizen the great lawgiver. As the dragon form, 'red Orc' is supressed energy seeking release. Suffering under the restraints of Urizen's system Orc explodes into revolution.

Milton Percival in William Blake's Circle of Destiny gives us this insight: "But, though the rational mind fears the fiery form of Orc, the imaginative mind knows that it is not evil, but rather an indictment of evil, a revelation of the mistaken character of the authority which has brought it into being. Orc is the personification of a deathless phenomenon, the spirit of revolution that arises when energy is repressed."

Urizen diverts Orc's energy into false religion, the Tree of Mystery, whereon Orc becomes the serpent and subsequently enters the state of Satan.

Four Zoas, Night viii, (E 380)
"The State namd Satan never can be redeemd in all Eternity
But when Luvah in Orc became a Serpent he des[c]ended into
That State calld Satan"

In the apocalypse Orc reverts to his eternal form Luvah and joins Jesus in ushering in the new age.

As always we can see the psyche of Blake being dealt with in his characters. Forces within seek expression in Blake's life; prophecy or imagination cannot let revolution take over dominance. The energy or revolution is a valuable asset but unfortunately cannot be released at will. Reason the conventional, conservative force may be able to control revolution, but to do so revolution's energy must be diverted in another direction since it can't be eliminated. This may lead to deeper degrees of error, since error given the freedom to act, will go to the extreme. Revolution is not permanent; it either subsides or or leads to a breaking up of the cycle and the initiation of a new paradigm.

Posted By ellie to William Blake: Religion and Psychology at 5/28/2010 06:41:00 AM

ALBION & LAZARUS

The plight of Albion as he falls from his original unity as an Eternal, is portrayed in Night the First of the Four Zoas.

PAGE 21
"Then those in Great Eternity met in the Council of God
As one Man for contracting their Exalted Senses
- 310 -
They behold Multitude or Expanding they behold as one
As One Man all the Universal family & that one Man
They call Jesus the Christ & they in him & he in them
Live in Perfect harmony in Eden the land of life
Consulting as One Man above the Mountain of Snowdon Sublime

For messengers from Beulah come in tears & darkning clouds
Saying Shiloh is in ruins our brother is sick Albion He
Whom thou lovest is sick he wanders from his house of Eternity
The daughters of Beulah terrified have closd the Gate of the
Tongue
Luvah & Urizen contend in war around the holy tent

So spoke the Ambassadors from Beulah & with solemn mourning
They were introducd to the divine presence & they kneeled down
In Conways Vale thus recounting the Wars of Death Eternal

The Eternal Man wept in the holy tent Our Brother in Eternity
Even Albion whom thou lovest wept in pain his family
Slept round on hills & valleys in the regions of his love
But Urizen awoke & Luvah woke & thus conferrd

Thou Luvah said the Prince of Light behold our sons & daughters
Reposd on beds. let them sleep on."

It is confusing but enlightening that Blake brings to our minds a reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus's friend Lazarus by including familiar words from the story as told in John's Gospel. Lazarus is Jesus's friend whom he loves. Jesus knows his friend is sick but holds back from visiting until Lazarus has been in the grave four days. Jesus weeps over his friend and then brings him back to life.

John, Chapter 11

When Jesus revives Lazarus it is a four stage process: he has the stone removed from the entrance to the grave, he wakes him up, he removes the grave clothes that restrain him, then he calls him forth.

Albion will be brought back from the brink of Eternal Death, but it will be a multi-stage process involving the four Zoas, the Emanations, the Spectres, and ultimately Jesus himself.

In John, the account of the raising of Lazarus is followed immediately by the passage in which the determination is made by the priests and Pharisees that Jesus must be killed.

Blake, through the retelling of the Christian myth using psychological and mythopoeic methods, aims to follow Jesus as described in this verse:

11:4 - When Jesus received the message, he said, "This illness is not meant to end in death; it is going to bring glory to God - for it will show the glory of the Son of God."

The raising of Lazarus as shown by Blake in three different ways:

Lazarus in No Natural Religion

Lazarus in Tate Gallery

Lazarus in Young's Night Thoughts

FALLEN ZOAS

Albion in His Fallen State

Before Los initiates the process of restoring Albion to the
Humanity Divine, each of the four Zoas has fallen to the
point that his outlook is totally opposite to his role in eternity.

Jerusalem, Plate 38, (E184)

"They [the Four Zoas] saw their Wheels rising up poisonous against Albion
Urizen, cold & scientific: Luvah, pitying & weeping
Tharmas, indolent & sullen: Urthona, doubting & despairing
Victims to one another & dreadfully plotting against each other
To prevent Albion walking about in the Four Complexions."

Urizen, meant to be the active intellect involving itself in interfacing with information and developing understanding of relationships, has become cold and detached. He has reduced interactions to measurements, and objective descriptions from his frozen mind.

Luvah, meant to be the source of empathy and delight through the expression of emotional attachments, has been reduced to regret and depression. The spontaneous outpouring of approval or disapproval no longer flows from his detached heart.

Tharmas, meant to be energetic and active, involved in giving outer expression to inner dynamics, is passive and lifeless. The energy which should be generated through sensory perception and the impetus to create life is not flowing in his lethargic body.

Urthona, meant to be faith and vision, the connective function which holds together disparate parts, has lost the 'blessed assurance' and fallen into a dark pit of isolation. The connection of the body with the wholeness of purposeful living finds no expression without imagination.

One's greatest gifts can turn into one's worst liabilities if not recognized as gifts and put to work in the service of the giver. The Zoas will recover their gifts as Albion is restored to Eternity through the work of Jesus and Los.

The Four Zoas

A Subjective Reading
A Personal Experience

(A valued friend put me on to a discussion of 4Z found
on pages 203-32 of Blake's Sublime Allegory. Most
[or all?] of this post derives from that essay: On Reading the Four Zoas by Mary Lynn Johnson and Brian Wilkie. Hopefully there may be other posts to come on 4Z.)

"...we want most to encourage the sort of visceral and
personal response to this deeply introspective poem
that we believe Blake demands of his readers." (203)

"...we must recognize that the movement of the poem...yields its meaning in proportion to our
willingness to examine what happens within us."

After those lines on the first page the writers proceed
with a cursory statement of the plot; that's revealed
in the first page of 4Z:

"Four Mighty Ones are in every Man;
a Perfect Unity
(John XVII c. 21 & 22 & 23 v)

Cannot Exist. but from the Universal
Brotherhood of Eden
(John I c. 14. v)

The Universal Man. To Whom be
Glory Evermore Amen"
(John I c. 14. v)

The Universal Man of course is Albion-- representing
an eternal Great Britain, representing the people of
the world in Eternity, representing the perfect you.

"Albion looks up, rises from the rock in just wrath and is about to walk 'into the Heavens'" (Erdman)

The "Four Mighty Ones" (the four Zoas) are Tharmas,
Urthona, Urizen, and Luvah. Blake "begins with
Tharmas..", but before the "beginning " he tell us about
Los (the worldly version of Urthona), "Urthona was his
name", who represents here all the Zoas, in Eternity
with "days and nights of revolving joy", then the plot
is announced:

"His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity His
fall into the Generation of Decay & Death & his
Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead."

It's the old, old story everyone can read in the Bible;
In 4Z Blake gave us his version of it -- one of course
of many.

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.

Blake's Image of Saints in Dante

Toward the end of his life William Blake began a series
of illustrations for Dante's DIVINE COMEDY for his
patron and friend John Linnell. Blake left 102 of these
watercolor illustrations when he died: seventy-two for
the Inferno, twenty for the Purgatorio, and ten for the
Paradiso. Blake's designs are said to be not mere
illustrations but commentary on Dante's text.
(Martin Butlin)

One illustration for the Paradiso particularly caught my
attention in the Blake Archive:
Link to Blake Archive

In Martin Butlin's WILLIAM BLAKE, published by the
Tate, he makes these comments on the picture I noticed:
"Blake illustrates the successive appearances of
St. Peter, St. James and St. John. St. Peter, who
questions Dante on Faith, is represented by Blake's
type for Urizen; St. James, who questions Dante on
Hope, as Luvah; and St. John, who questions Dante on
Love, as Los or the Poetic Genius. Together they
represent Reason, Feeling and Imagination. The
overlapping of the three globes in which they are
shown, embracing Dante and Beatrice whose echoing
gestures reflect harmony, is a marvelously vivid image
of reunion of Man's various elements that is requisite
of true salvation."

Quite a summation of the Bible, Blake's myth, religion
and psychology!

The picture named 'St. Peter, St. James, Dante and
Beatrice with St. John also' can be found at:

Blake's image from Dante

In this picture it is fascinating to see how Blake
integrated Dante's poetry into his own visual
vocabulary.

Dante's three conversations with St. Peter, St. James
and St. John about faith, hope and love respectively
are amalgamated into one scene. Blake himself
wouldn't be left out of the creative process, so he gives
the three saints correspondence to three of his Zoas.
He skews the character of the Zoas to align them with
the saints .

Urizen is a pretty good fit with St. Peter since Blake has
identified Urizen with the fallen church consistently.
The association of Urizen with faith is perhaps by his
building a structure to try to make sense of being.
Peter's first recognition of Jesus as the Messiah is a
prime example of his faith. The identification of Peter
with Urizen is implied by his facial appearance which is
congruent with multiple images of Urizen as he is
associated with the vengeful God of the Old Testament,
and by the faint image of the scroll which Peter holds in
his left hand.

For a rare image of the Four Zoes together, see:

4z's in Book of Urizen

If Luvah is paired with St. James, it might be on the
basis of putting into practice the spiritual truth we
receive, which is emphasized in the New Testament
'Letter of James.' I don't know why hope would be
associated with either St. James or Luvah.

Los, the Eternal Prophet, pictured as the descending
Holy Spirit becomes in the picture, St. John, the author
of the Apocalypse or 'Book of Revelation.' Although it is
not the characteristic usually assigned to Los, love is
entirely appropriate to him in his role as the Poetic
Genius opening the world to imagination. St. John
exemplifies love as the author of the gospel stressing
unity among men, and between God and man.

In his characteristic way of making his figures
ambiguous or subject to multiple interpretations, Blake
may have been thinking of the lower central image of
Dante and Beatrice as Albion, (Humanity as realized in
the one Man) or as Tharmas the fourth of the Four
Zoas, who can be associated with the senses or the
physical body.

Better students than I, of Dante, Blake and the Bible
should be able to see much more in this picture than I do.