Blake's Sources 7

                                               This from Tuesday, November 20, 201

                                                     Church 2

                 Neoplatinism

       The Church Fathers congregated in Rome, but Gnosticism had its center
in Alexandria, a marketplace of competing religious and philosophical ideas.
There in the third century a man named Plotinus gave birth to  Neo-platonism, 
an amalgam of the best of Greek thought with the ethical teachings of Christ.

Extremely eclectic, drawing on currents of thought from Rome to India,
Plotinus's teachings became the religion of some of the later Roman Emperors.
  

     During the fourth century the religion of Neo-platonism disappeared as a 
rival of the Church. However it deeply influenced the shape of Christian
theology, most notably through the mind of St. Augustine. Augustine in his
spiritual journey passed through a Neo-platonic stage, which left its mark upon 
his Christian life and writing. Augustine occupies an anomalous position in the history 
of the Church: he is both a Church Father of impeccable reputation and the spiritual 
forebear of many theologians whose Neo-platonic bent put them on  the fringe of orthodoxy:

       Erigena, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Meister Eckhart are a few of
these Neo-platonic Christians. Some of these thinkers succeeded in remaining
within the umbrella of the authorized tradition; some were partially or totally
cast out. Among them they preserved to theology a breadth and a poetic
dimension that burst open the priestly cocoon with the 15th Century
Renaissance and the 16th Century Reformation.

---

And this at AND THIS AT THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11
                       
                           Thomas Taylor, the Grecian                         

According to the letter that Blake wrote to John Flaxman, Milton, Shakespeare, Boehme and  Paracelsus were his teachers, but there were others:

Unlike the ones above Thomas Taylor was Blake's own age.  About 1784 Taylor gave 12 lectures at Flaxman's home on Neoplatonism. Blake undoubtedly attended (at least some of) these lectures.

Blake hitherto had frowned on Plato, but he was impressed by Taylor's lectures. He found a new world in Plotinus and the others; they exercised a marked influence on his poetry and pictures.

On page six of Milton Percival's Circle of Destiny he quoted this passage from Plotinus:
"No: our reasoning is our own.  We ourselves think the thoughts that occupy the understanding--for this is actually the We--but the operation of the Intellectual Principle enters from above" (sounds remarkably like WB).

The same year (1784) Blake wrote his satiric parody: An Island in the Moon: he referred to Taylor as Obtuse Angle and to himself as Quid:

" Obtuse Angle came in Oh I am glad you are come said quid......
Obtuse Angle giving a grin said Voltaire understood nothing of the 
Mathematics and a man must be a fool ifaith not to understand the 
Mathematics .........

"But Ob[t]use Angle, entering the room having made a

gentle bow, proceeded to empty his pockets of a vast number of
papers, turned about & sat down   wiped his [head]
 with his pocket handkerchief & shutting his eyes began to
scratch his head--well gentlemen said he what is the cause of
strife   the Cynic answerd. they are only quarreling about:
Voltaire--Yes said the Epicurean & having a bit of fun with him.
And said the Pythagorean endeavoring to incorporate their souls
with their bodies 
  Obtuse Angle giving a grin said   Voltaire understood nothing
of the Mathematics and a man must be a fool in faith not to
understand the Mathematics"  

Read it!

---

And this at the post called Blind Enion:

Raine (Blake and Tradition) :
Enion, the emanation of Tharmas becomes matter without association with spirit. Raine calls Enion the "first matter out of which all things are generated  .........................."
Raine finds the antecedents for Enion in Platonic metaphysics. She quotes Plotinus: "matter is neither soul nor intellect, nor life, nor form, nor reason nor bound, but a certain indefiniteness ... of itself invisible, and avoiding the desire of him who wishes to perceive its nature." In a reversal of the way we may have been trained to perceive, spirit is substantial and matter has no substance. Enion in her fallen state neither sees nor is seen; she resides close to non entity which she fears. 

More information about  Neo-platonism may be found here 
".....certain strands of Neoplatonism influenced Christian thinkers (such as Augustine, Boethius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Bonaventure),.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
In the seventeenth century in England, Neoplatonism was fundamental to the school of the Cambridge Platonists, whose luminaries included Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Benjamin Whichcote and John Smith, all graduates of Cambridge University. Coleridge claimed that they were not really Platonists, but "more truly Plotinists": "divine Plotinus", as More called him."

CRYSTAL CABINET IV

To complete this series of posts on the Crystal Cabinet, let's consider what I call the psychological meaning. We will look at the poem solely as it concerns interior mental processing.

The Crystal Cabinet, (E 488)
"The Maiden caught me in the Wild
Where I was dancing merrily
She put me into her Cabinet
And Lockd me up with a golden Key

The unconscious, innocent is caught by the beginning of awareness.

This Cabinet is formd of Gold
And Pearl & Crystal shining bright
And within it opens into a World
And a little lovely Moony Night

The altered consciousness takes possession of the mind and begins to reveal the unknown.

Another England there I saw
Another London with its Tower
Another Thames & other Hills
And another pleasant Surrey Bower

The ability to see more and differently expands ordinary perception.

Another Maiden like herself
Translucent lovely shining clear
Threefold each in the other closd
O what a pleasant trembling fear

The original experience becomes an avenue to further experience.

O what a smile a threefold Smile
Filld me that like a flame I burnd
I bent to Kiss the lovely Maid
And found a Threefold Kiss returnd

Head, heart and loins are sensitized, reinforcing the experience.

I strove to sieze the inmost Form
With ardor fierce & hands of flame
But burst the Crystal Cabinet
And like a Weeping Babe became

The spontaneous experience is destroyed when an attempt is made to possess it.

A weeping Babe upon the wild
And Weeping Woman pale reclind
And in the outward air again
I filld with woes the passing Wind"

The return to the previous consciousness feels like a loss and regression.
The outer world is sullied in comparison to the imaginative world which has been revealed.

Image - Book of Thel, plate 4


Blake as usual leaves his statement open-ended. Where do 'I' go from here? Is the altered state of consciousness attractive enough that I want to pursue it? Is seeing the pale, reclining, weeping woman a result of visiting the Crystal Cabinet?
The carefree boy of the first verse has become burdened with woes he cannot control, but a world of possibility has been opened to him.



Marriage of Heaven and Hell, PLATE 12 (E 38)
A Memorable Fancy
"Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite
organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in
every thing, and as I was then perswaded. & remain confirm'd;"

I am reminded of this statement from Fritjof Capra in The Web of Life.
"At a certain level of complexity a living organism couples structurally not only to its the environment but also to itself, and thus brings forth not only an external but also and inner world. In human beings the bringing forth of such an inner world is linked intimately to language, thought and consciousness."

INTRODUCTION TO OUR BLOG

This is a repost of an earlier post intended to help Blake students get started:

An anonymous reader has asked that we provide more information in our posts. So I will try to explain what we are attempting to do in our Blake blog.

First we want to focus our attention on William Blake and his writing.

We are not experts but students of Blake. We follow our own interests. We are interested in sharing what we have learned of Blake and would would like to tailor our posts to the interests of the reader. We hope readers will let us know what interests them about Blake.

There have been posts which attempt to introduce the reader to studying Blake especially using the resources on the internet. The links to the text of Blake's poetry and prose, and to his graphic works are provided. A link to Larry's online book which includes a primer is also a useful tool. (These files can be electronically searched for specific topics.) Within the posts we often provide links to external files which expand the study to wider sources.

None of Blake's work is simple to understand. Beginners can start with Songs of Innocence and Experience. Marriage of Heaven and Hell grabs the attention of many with its irony. The major prophecies can be approached a little at a time rather than entire. If you are visually oriented, the visual images can be used as an avenue to draw you into reading the poetry.

Blake's body of work is large and complex. On our blog we have not attempted a systematic study. We are giving clues to solving the mystery. Analysts of Blake's work often tell us that Blake expected the reader to go beyond what was stated in the text, to perceive the underlying meaning. We hope our readers will sift through the blog posts looking for cracks or doors or highways through which they may enter Blake's mind and heart and imagination.

Reading Blake may expand your mind, nourish your spirit, or enrich your imagination; don't expect it to put money in your pocket, expand your social circle or impress your professors.

Here are some earlier posts which may help the neophyte.

Bible
Perception
Vision
Emphasis
Help
Fourfold
Idealism
Reader
Plates
4Z's




I can't end without a quote from Blake as well as the picture.
Liberty or Stems of Vegetation

Jerusalem, Plate 60, (E 209)

"within the Furnaces the Divine Vision appeard

On Albions hills: often walking from the Furnaces in clouds
And flames among the Druid Temples & the Starry Wheels
Gatherd Jerusalems Children in his arms & bore them like
A Shepherd in the night of Albion which overspread all the Earth

I gave thee liberty and life O lovely Jerusalem
And thou hast bound me down upon the Stems of Vegetation"

Female Love

What does it mean? Understanding what Blake meant by Female Love is a vital key to the meaning of Blake's poetry and pictures; the same thing is true for the more general case, love (he only used the word 782 times!). What did he mean??

It helps when you realize that unlike the great majority of members of the Enlightenment Age, Blake's vocabulary was informed by millennia of intellectual tradition, dating back to the pre Socratic age and earlier ones from Egyptian and Asian cultures. These ideas were subjects of contempt and ignorance to his neighbors--as are ours for that matter. But not for Blake; for him they were his bread and butter, the stuff of life. Once you understand that about Blake you're in a position to query 'female love' without outraged feministic feelings.

So what did he mean? In the ancient traditions (the perennial philosophy) masculine is active, feminine passive, with a masculine sky God and a feminine Earth Goddess. In another pair masculine and feminine relate to thinking and feeling; this came down in Blake to Urizen and Luvah, and more like 'common English' in Jung's two similar functions.

In Blake's system we find the two in their fallen state. In the beginning of his myth we meet among others Urizen (who presumes to be God and is actually the Prince of Light), and Luvah who gets possession of the Sun (symbol of Light) so that he acts as Prince of Light.

If this sufficiently confuses you go on. (As Blake said, 'if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise'.) MHH, Plate 7, (E 36)

Many of Blake's poems need to be translated into 'common English' in order to grasp what love meant for Blake. However Blake's love meant different things at different times as he went through life. Near the end of his career he got around to using 'common English' with "I've a Wife I love & that loves me" (Notebook; Erdman 481). But in earlier days the word meant several things very different from his mutual love to and from his wife.

Love, like all things, has contrary senses, in fact many senses--for example an ironic sense: speaking of something very repulsive: "Oh I just love that". Blake's love was generally not quite ironic; it was more like 'sick love', The Clod and the Pebble give us a basic introduction into two contrary uses of 'love'.

He used love in a more innocent way with The Little Black Boy which ends with: "And be like him [the white boy], and he will then love me" (Songs of Innocence; Erdman 9).

The Torments of Love and Jealousy, the subtitle of The Four Zoas, is an entirely different matter: selfish love, Love as Power, control, and much such unpleasant reality appears over and over in The Four Zoas.

Wisely or not Blake called that 'female love'.It was embodied in some unsavory women like:

Rahab, (taken from the Bible), the biblical Rahab had more character than the Blakean one. Blake used Rahab as a symbol for a fallen Jerusalem.
Tirzah, ('what have I to do with thee"); this of course is a direct quote from John 2:4; traditionally the mother concerns physical well being while the father represents spirit.

(The fallen) Vala: In Erdman's plate 32 of Jerusalem you will see a shadowed Vala on the left side of the picture. She represents all of the sick kinds of love, such as the Net of Religion (Urizen, plate 25.22 Erdman 82).

Taken together all of these symbols are exemplars of female love:

"Till I turn from Female Love
And root up the Infernal Grove
I shall never worthy be
To Step into Eternity
.....
Let us agree to give up Love
And root up the infernal grove
Then shall we return & see
the worlds of happy Eternity"
......

All in all love was a bad word for Blake,
although occasionally as we've seen he slipped back into the language of Zion. But 'female love' represents those kinds of 'bad love' that we've mentioned.

BLAKE & ALCHEMY

The symbolism of alchemy runs through Blake's writings and will be apparent to those who seek it out. The basic symbolism of alchemy is of transformation. Although the original object was to produce gold from base metals, the discipline was later spiritualized to that of becoming transformed oneself by the processes which were developed in the laboratory for transmuting elements.

Click on this picture from MHH Plate 14 to enlarge an image of transformation by fire.

There is a chapter on Alchemical Symbolism in Milton O Percival's book, William Blake's Circle of Destiny. William Blake's acquaintance with alchemy was primarily through Paracelsus and Boehme whom he acknowledges as influential in his thinking. Among the prominent patterns of thought in alchemy which are noticed in Blake are:
>The four elements - air, water, fire and earth,
>The original state is unified,
>The centrality of reunifying male and female,
>Fire as the liberating and regenerating agent,
>That all things are alive and sentient,
>Achieving life through death,
>Transformation of body into soul.

In my post on Angel & Devil, in the passage I quoted, the Angel at the point of transformation undergoes mutations of color which are the primary indication that the crisis has been reached. Color changes were outward manifestations that hidden change were taking place in the alchemical processes.
MHH plate 22
"The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering
himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then
replied,"

Los' work at his furnaces is the work of the alchemist. Here is a quote from page 212 of Circle of Destiny:
"Los handles the purification of the contraries in the furnaces in accordance with alchemical tradition. As in alchemy the imperfect triple body (salt, sulphur, and mercury) has to be broken, and the masculine sulphur and the feminine mercury freed for purification in the fire, that they may be united in the one only essence, so must sinful man, his doubting head and cruel heart selfishly combined into a mortal body, be subjected to trial by fire, that his divided selves may be reunited in the one man Christ. But, though man himself is metaphorically the sum of all that is in the furnaces, the forms (or bodies) which Los continually breaks down should be thought of as forms of government, of religion, of what you will - forms constructed by a crafty head or a cruel heart. The intellectual life (the theory, the dogma) of these forms must be broken down in order that the chastened emotions may be set free for a new fixation under the guidance of a liberated intelligence. In alchemical parlance, two must be drawn out of the three and separately purged before the transforming union can take place."

Blake writes of a world in need of renewal and regeneration. He uses the symbols of alchemy in presenting his complex myth of breaking down the destructive systems and opening the way to transformation to the new age.

Jerusalem, Plate 78, (E 233)
"Los with his mace of iron
Walks round: loud his threats, loud his blows fall
On the rocky Spectres, as the Potter breaks the potsherds;
Dashing in pieces Self-righteousnesses: driving them from Albions
Cliffs: dividing them into Male & Female forms in his Furnaces
And on his Anvils: lest they destroy the Feminine Affections
They are broken. Loud howl the Spectres in his iron Furnace

While Los laments at his dire labours, viewing Jerusalem,
Sitting before his Furnaces clothed in sackcloth of hair;"

ANGEL & DEVIL

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 22-24, (E 43)
"A Memorable Fancy

Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire. who arose before an
Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words.
The worship of God is. Honouring his gifts in other men
each according to his genius. and loving the greatest men
best, those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there
is no other God.
The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering
himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then
replied,
Thou Idolater, is not God One? & is not he visible in Jesus
Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of
ten commandments and are not all other men fools, sinners, &
nothings?
The Devil answer'd; bray a fool in a morter with wheat. yet
shall not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the
greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now
hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the
sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn
away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of
others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making
a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples,
and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against
such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist
without breaking these ten commandments: Jesus was all virtue,
and acted from impulse: not from rules.
When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out
his arms embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose
as Elijah.

Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my
particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no.

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression"

June Singer, in The Unholy Bible, has worked out some of the meanings in The Marriage of Heaven Hell. Singer has followed and scrutinized the struggle between the Angel and the Devil to reach the point where the contraries of reason and energy can accommodate one another allowing the most complete expression of the creative forces. I hope these quotes from her will help you to understand the reasoning she presents in explaining plates 22-24.

The dialog between the angel and the devil is drawing to its conclusion. The resolution of the conflict between the contraries of reason and energy will come to a climax on these plate. The resolution hinges on the idea that, "Except as man experiences God in his own life, God is incomprehensible to him."..."The angel is shocked and angered by the blasphemous words of the Devil. But in its very emotional reaction, the beginning of a transformation takes place."... " The Angel takes into himself some of that fierce, energetic force which must affect the status of his conventional belief. The Angel becomes "volatile," active and participating, and when he speaks out for the traditional morality supposedly sanctioned by Jesus, it is the last proud rallying cry in defense of a citadel which is already falling."..."In Jesus Christ as the fulfiller of the law and Jesus Christ the lawbreaker, a bridge is formed upon which two contraries, represented by Angel an Devil can approach one another. Out of their intimate confrontation arise the imagination and the vision which make it possible to relate reason and restraint to energy and desire.
The Angel accepts the fire and embraces it, and vision tells us the he is consumed and arises as Elijah." ..."Blake proposes that the two aspects of man, Devil and Angel, be joined together and that they participate in coming to new and revolutionary understandings. The Bible formerly the Angel's book, is not discarded; rather it is read in the diabolic - that is, the original poetic sense."...

"The Protestant passion for the Bible as the possession of the individual, to be read finally by the inner light of each believers spirit, is Blake's most direct heritage from the radical elements in English religious tradition. Blake's "Bible of Hell," the sequence of his engraved poems, is the first of the great Romantic displacements of the Biblical revelation into the poetic world of the individual creator." (Quotes from pages 163-171)

REASON & DESIRE

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake was exploring the nature of the contraries and the relationship between contraries. June Singer ( The Unholy Bible) explains Blake's writing of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in terms of his desire to tap into the energy which he recognized in the Satan which Milton wrote about. The restraint which conventional rational thinking could place on the liberty with which Blake wanted to live, and the expressiveness with which he desired to write, was what he wanted to explore. By adopting the position of the Angel's contrary, the unrestrained, uninhibited outlaw - the Devil - he sought to access the source of energy which was unavailable to reason.

On Page 71 Singer states:
"Blake now proposes to follow Milton's Devil, that is, to pay attention to his own desire and permit the impersonal voice of that Devil to speak through him. With this commitment he enters upon the hero's quest, the night sea journey, the dark night of the soul, the voyage that has been called by many names but which all must travel if they are driven toward the goal of realizing their creative potentialities. It is the way of travail and hardship, where the traveler is exposed to the attacks and seductions of worldly and spiritual pleasures because he is open to everything he may perceive, to sights and voices and all the impressions of the senses, and even to extrasensory impressions...

"This section of the Marriage is a crucial one, for it comments upon the change of attitude which marks the creative man's departure from tradition and from the limiting bounds of Reason. To walk with Satan and his children, called Sin and Death, takes courage and an overwhelming necessity of desire. Those whose desire is weak enough to be restrained will never experience either the tortures or beatific visions which alternatively appear to the traveler on the way to individuation."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, PLATE 4, (E 34)

"The voice of the Devil
All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a
Soul.
2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that
Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is
the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight

PLATE 5
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."

Other Posts based on Singer's work.

Complete Marriage of Heaven and Hell as online book on Wikisource.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell as a video on youtube by Ulver.

UNHOLY BIBLE

IMAGE FROM PLATE 3 MHH
June Singer, a Jungian psychologist, wrote several books on psychology but only one book on Blake. Her first book which developed from her thesis for her analysts diploma from the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, is titled The Unholy Bible: Blake, Jung and the Collective Unconscious. Although most of the book is a psychological analysis of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, she provides insight into the later prophetic writings as well. In this passage she explains The Four Zoas in terms of individuation. The quote from Blake represents the reassembling of the pieces after 'all things are changd'.

"The long poem , The Four Zoas, describes the many aspects of man as they are differentiated from one another.The symbolism amazingly parallels the analytic process of differentiating the many unconscious contents from the other, and then gradually reintegrating them into a new and productive unity. The parallel is even more impressive when we consider that Blake uses the schema of nine nights of dreams, since dreams in analytical psychology provide the key to understanding the unconscious processes. It is with this key that Blake has unlocked 'the doors of perception' as he promised he would in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. At the end of the ninth night man beholds the infinite vision, and he sings the Ode to Joy (we recall the first two lines, first uttered by the enslaved wives and children of America): [Four Zoas, Page 138, (E 406)]

'The Sun has left his blackness & has found a fresher morning
And the mild moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night
And Man walks forth from midst of the fires the evil is all
consumd
His eyes behold the Angelic spheres arising night & day
The stars consumd like a lamp blown out & in their stead behold
The Expanding Eyes of Man behold the depths of wondrous worlds
One Earth one sea beneath nor Erring Globes wander but Stars
Of fire rise up nightly from the Ocean & one Sun
Each morning like a New born Man issues with songs & Joy
Calling the Plowman to his Labour & the Shepherd to his rest
He walks upon the Eternal Mountains raising his heavenly voice
Conversing with the Animal forms of wisdom night & day
That risen from the Sea of fire renewd walk oer the Earth

For Tharmas brought his flocks upon the hills & in the Vales
Around the Eternal Mans bright tent the little Children play
Among the wooly flocks The hammer of Urthona sounds
In the deep caves beneath his limbs renewd his Lions roar
Around the Furnaces & in Evening sport upon the plains
They raise their faces from the Earth conversing with the Man

How is it we have walkd thro fires & yet are not consumd
How is it that all things are changd even as in ancient times' "

LOST & FOUND

Early in 2010 the Tate gallery announced that it was purchasing a set of Blake prints which had long been lost. The group of eight prints was in the possession of Blake when he died and was inherited by his wife Catherine. An inscription on the back of one of the pictures indicates that they were given by Catherine to Frederick Tatum with whom Catherine lived after William's death. They did not surface again into public view until the were found in a secondhand railway timetable purchased in a used book sale in 1978. The owner offered them for sale as a set to the Tate Gallery which purchased them for 441000 pounds.

The group of eight includes six images from the Book of Urizen, one from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and one from The Book of Thel. The images are etchings from plates produced for the earlier works. They are finished with pen and ink, watercolor and tempera to be viewed as individual works of art. Text was left off of the engravings. Have a look for yourself courtesy of the BBC.

Keri Davies has studied the pictures since they were first shown at the Tate in 2007 and suggests that they were a part of Copy B of the Small Book of Designs. She provides the captions which appear on the newly discovered set which are absent in the set called Copy A. The pictures go on exhibit at the Tate this month and will be included in an exhibit at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, Moscow in November 2011.

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

Gates of Paradise Picture 12

The couplet reads:
"And in the depts of my Dungeons
Closed the Fathers and the Sons."

Picture 12 inspires considerable thought: who are these people? we might suppose the old man is the inevitable Urizen or perhaps the God of Genesis 3. They seem to be in some enclosure like a prison cell. You might imagine that the two figures in the foreground could represent Adam and Eve, and perhaps the shape they were in right after the 'apple eating' incident.

Following that theme the remarkable thing is that God is in the same place as his two subjects. How could that be? It could never be that for a transcendent God, but Blake gave little or no thought to such a thing; In Marriage of Heaven and Hell, adapting the sobriquet of a devil he had this to say:
"The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best: those who envy or calumniate great men hate God; for there is no other God. "And in Jerusalem he wrote, "There is no other God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity". Many Quakers speak of "that of God" in you and me (called an immanent God), and that is pretty much Blake's God as well.

The theme and a very similar picture are found in Plate 16 of MHH where Blake states that "God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men."

These pictures describe the fate of those "caught in the toils of the world [who, poor men] fail to to develop or allow the expression of the divine spark within" (Digby 46).
Beneath the picture you might be able to read:
"Does thy God O Priest take such vengeance as this?"

Thy God O Priest! You might 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",which happened to those trusting (in priests) souls seen in this picture.

CONTRARIES

THE MARRIAGE of HEAVEN and HELL, Plate 3, (E 34):

"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence."

In the passage below we see the contraries at work personified in Los and Albion. What I see here is Los being forced into contrary positions by Albion's behavior. 'Albion sat...Brooding on evil'.

Albion was trapped in a self destructive mental state from which he could not extricate himself. Albion accuses Los and makes demands. Los' opposition begins the breaking down of the intractable disease with with Albion was afflicted. Albion begins to reflect on the consequences of his misguided decisions.

Milton, PLATE 42 (E 189)
"Thus Albion sat, studious of others in his pale disease:
Brooding on evil: but when Los opend the Furnaces before him:
He saw that the accursed things were his own affections,
And his own beloveds: then he turn'd sick! his soul died within
him
Also Los sick & terrified beheld the Furnaces of Death
And must have died, but the Divine Saviour descended
Among the infant loves & affections, and the Divine Vision wept
Like evening dew on every herb upon the breathing ground

Albion spoke in his dismal dreams: O thou deceitful friend
Worshipping mercy & beholding thy friend in such affliction:
Los! thou now discoverest thy turpitude to the heavens.
I demand righteousness & justice. O thou ingratitude!
Give me my Emanations back[,] food for my dying soul!
My daughters are harlots! my sons are accursed before me.
Enitharmon is my daughter: accursed with a fathers curse!
O! I have utterly been wasted! I have given my daughters to
devils

So spoke Albion in gloomy majesty, and deepest night
Of Ulro rolld round his skirts from Dover to Cornwall."

Albion is his self righteous desire to be the object of mercy forces Los to direct his mercy to those whom Albion may harm, rejecting Albions pleas. Albion by not showing mercy, forces cruelty on Los. Albion demanded righteousness and justice for himself with no thought for the harm that his failures were causing others. Albion could not be healed of his sickness by being affirmed in the symptoms he was displaying. (Think of the alcoholic and the enabler.) Los provided the contraries so that progress might take place.

"Los answerd. Righteousness & justice I give thee in return
For thy righteousness! but I add mercy also, and bind
Thee from destroying these little ones: am I to be only
Merciful to thee and cruel to all that thou hatest[?]
Thou wast the Image of God surrounded by the Four Zoa's
Three thou hast slain! I am the Fourth: thou canst not destroy
me.
Thou art in Error; trouble me not with thy righteousness.
I have innocence to defend and ignorance to instruct:
I have no time for seeming; and little arts of compliment,
In morality and virtue: in self-glorying and pride."

In this little tableau contrariness was the result as well as the cause of progress. Error has not been removed but progress is being made in recognizing and defining it. The process must continue because 'One Error not remov'd, will destroy a human Soul."

'Why should Punishment Weave the Veil with Iron Wheels of War
When Forgiveness might it Weave with Wings of Cherubim' Jerusalem, Plate 22