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.)

MENTAL TRAVELLER 4-6

Text for Blake's The Mental Traveller


This post is a continuation of comments on Mental Traveller 1-3.


4)
"She binds iron thorns around his head,
And pierces both his hands and feet,
And cuts his heart out of his side
To make it feel both cold & heat."

The image Blake creates is not limited to the situation he directly describes. He insists that we think of Jesus, Albion, Orc and Prometheus as well. In Jesus we see the crucifixion, and the lamb which is sacrificed to the demanding God. In Orc we see spirit of revolution which is ready to explode into conflagration. In Prometheus we see the thief of fire who suffered for his gift to humanity.

Blake uses symbols and images to suggest more than he says in words. The words suggest crucifixion to some. The word 'binds' suggests to me the situation when Los and Enitharmon bound Orc to the rock because of Los' jealousy. It is an easy jump from Orc to Prometheus and from there to the broader story of Prometheus stealing fire, being bound to a rock, suffering from heat and cold, having his liver eaten by the eagle, and being associated with Pandora.

It is with great difficulty that the old woman who is past her time of strength and influence can subdue the vigorous boy. In her weakness she asserts all the powers she has acquired through the ages.

For a time the energies that the boy represents can be suppressed through forceful measures. As long as her strength endures, the old woman keeps each of his abilities under her control.

5)
"Her fingers number every nerve
Just as a miser counts his gold;
She lives upon his shrieks and cries—
And she grows young as he grows old,"

Recently I was reading about the Mental Traveller in Raine's Blake and Antiquity. She includes it in a section called The Myth of the Great Year. She sees an alternation between the spirit and the material as an age is born and matures and dies.

What I picked up from Raine focused on the image of spiritual development and material development as being opposed movements, each of which follows the same path as the human body from birth and infancy through maturity to aging and death. However the culture that is old in spirit is young in material and visa versa. Each aspect nourishes the other and is nourished by the other, but they compete for resources and power and for 'air time'.

In these four lines of the poem, the aging civilization (conservative and materialistic) had depleted her own sources of energy. The babe is potential energy which she aims to tap into in order to replenish her own diminished supply of ideas and initiatives. Spiritual life in its infant stage may make a lot of noise and be disturbing in its exuberance. The old culture may be able to apply this to her own ends. (She may even be able to use it to start wars, or to get the other party elected.)

The infusion of energy enhances the old organization, but it diminishes the freshness and vitality of the new.

6)
"Till he becomes a bleeding youth
And she becomes a virgin bright;
Then he rends up his manacles
And pins her down for his delight."

The bleeding could be the red of torture, of passion, of fire, of wine, of war, or of sacrifice.

To continue the civilization metaphor a point has been reached where the old and young each have something to give and something to receive. When a balance is reached the male, spiritual interest asserts itself and becomes dominant. This exchange of positions is no healthier than the previous one, because of the oppression and suffering which has taken place has left wounds and scars. (The child who grows up abused may not be healed by achieving his freedom.)

These three verses develop the idea of force and struggle. There is not any agreement between this male and female. Each uses whatever force is available to him/her to dominate the other. This demonstrates the paradigm that the use of force perpetuates itself and that force cannot be overcome by force. Other strategies can undermine the force in power.

BLAKE THE MYSTIC

Wise and Foolish Virgins
In Defending Ancient Springs, (page 73), Kathleen Raine comments on the essay William Butler Yeats wrote an 'On the Necessity of Symbolism'. In this section, using quotes from Yeasts, Raine explains some of the basis for understanding Blake as a 'mystic'.

" He begins by asking what a symbol can communicate which the dialectics of modern philosophy cannot? The answer lies, he says, in the Swedenborgian doctrine of 'correspondence', the 'as above, so below' of the Smaragdine Table, to which doctrine Blake had also made his appeal before him. 'Sense impressions may indeed be used in poetry and prophecy as a key to unlock religious truths, but "correspondence", as Swedengborg called the symbolic relationship of outer and inner, is itself no product of nature or natural reason, beginning as it does with a perception of something different from natural things with which they are to be compared.' Since this very ground of all symbolic art is denied by the positivist philosophy which has created the climate of thought which most academic critics write at the present time, it is not surprising that most commentators, both of Blake and Yeats, seem more exercised in explaining away than in explaining the meaning of symbols which imply, one might say by definition, a spiritual world.
This 'absolute difference may be described as the first postulate of all mystics', Yeats continues: and already in this essay he has realized that 'the chief difference between the metaphors of poetry and the symbols of mysticism is that the latter are woven together into a complete system.'"

Below is Blake's single mention of the Smaragdine Table. Here the Spectre uses it to draw Los down into the 'reasoning abstract.' The Smaragdine Table uses symbols from alchemy which enacts physical processes to demonstrate spiritual activity. This reference in Jerusalem indicates that Blake was acquainted with the ideas presented on the tablet.

Jerusalem, Plate 91, (E 251)
"The Spectre builded stupendous Works, taking the Starry Heavens
Like to a curtain & folding them according to his will
Repeating the Smaragdine Table of Hermes to draw Los down
Into the Indefinite, refusing to believe without demonstration"

Going to Blake's Milton we find him talking about 'spiritual causes' as being the origin of what happens on Earth.

Milton, Plate 26, (E 123)
"For the various Classes of Men are all markd out determinate
In Bowlahoola; & as the Spectres choose their affinities
So they are born on Earth, & every Class is determinate
But not by Natural but by Spiritual power alone, Because
The Natural power continually seeks & tends to Destruction
Ending in Death: which would of itself be Eternal Death
And all are Class'd by Spiritual, & not by Natural power.

And every Natural Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not
A Natural: for a Natural Cause only seems, it is a Delusion
Of Ulro: & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory."

And in Vision of the Last Judgment Blake speaks directly about the patterns in the Eternal world which are reflected in the natural world. From the Smaragdine Table this is the section Blake refers to in Vision of the Last Judgment:
"that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for performing the miracle of the One Thing;"

Vision of Last Judgment, Page 69,(E 555)
"This world of Imagination is the World of
Eternity it is the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after
the death of the Vegetated body This World is
Infinite & Eternal whereas the world of Generation or Vegetation
is Finite & [for a small moment] Temporal There Exist
in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing
which we see are reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature
All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the
Divine body of the Saviour the True Vine of Eternity
The Human Imagination who appeard to Me as Coming to Judgment."

Throughout Blake's work it is the Eternal, unseen, Divine reality underlying the physical world and providing merciful structures to lead man back to Eternity which he strives to reveal to his reader. This is the pursuit of a mystic.

Jerusalem, Plate 49, (E 199)
"The Lord
Jehovah is before, behind, above, beneath, around
He has builded the arches of Albions Tomb binding the Stars
In merciful Order, bending the Laws of Cruelty to Peace.
He hath placed Og & Anak, the Giants of Albion for their Guards:
Building the Body of Moses in the Valley of Peor: the Body
Of Divine Analogy;"

ALBION & ARTHUR

THE SLEEP OF ALBION is a chapter in Kathleen Raine's book, Golgoonoza: City of Imagination. In it Raine explores the relationship between King Arthur and Albion (the oldest name for Great Britain) in the mind of the British. She shows how Blake's Albion partakes of the legends surrounding King Arthur. As the legends of King Arthur end, he is entombed but not dead, sleeping until he is called to return to 'restore just rule to his kingdom and repel its enemies'.

Blake writes:
(Descriptive Catalogue, Number V, (E 543)):
"The giant Albion, was Patriarch of the Atlantic, he is
the Atlas of the Greeks, one of those the Greeks
called Titans. The stories of Arthur are the acts of
Albion, applied to a Prince of the fifth century, who
conquered Europe, and held the Empire of the world
in the dark age, which the Romans never again
recovered."

In Jerusalem, it is the Giant Albion who is "imagined in the similitude of Arthur". Albion's sleep is the sleep of Arthur. Raine says, "in recounting the 'acts of Albion' [Blake] considered himself to be recounting the sacred history - the inner history of the British nation from ancient times, with prophetic foresight of that future when Albion, like Arthur, is to wake from sleep."

To Raine the 'sleep' of Albion "is conceived by Blake not as the mere passage of time but as a state of apathy, of lowering of consciousness, of forgetfulness of higher things...Blake tells the story of how the nation has come to lapse into spiritual ignorance and forgetfulness...

"Blake is quite specific in his diagnosis of England's national disease: it is precisely that secular materialism ... upon which modern Western civilization is founded...

"Our society is forever thinking in terms of changing our circumstances; Blake's revolution will come when we change ourselves. From inner awakenings outer changes will follow...

"When Albion awakens he will find himself in his lost kingdom restored to its former glory; for the kingdom is ourselves...

"Paradise is not a place but a state of being, the lost kingdom to which the sleepers of Albion must someday awake."

Descriptive Catalogue, NUMBER V, (E 542)

The Ancient Britons:

"In the last Battle of King Arthur only Three Britons
escaped, these were the Strongest Man, the
Beautifullest Man, and the Ugliest Man; these three
marched through the field unsubdued, as Gods,
and the Sun of Britain s[e]t, but shall arise again with
tenfold splendor when Arthur shall awake from sleep,
and resume his dominion over earth and ocean."

Jerusalem, Plate19, Albion 'in pain & tears'

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.