Blake seeks to provide the Golden String which can lead us through the labyrinth of our experience or his own poetry.

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Larry's MHH

Blake Archive
Original in Fitzwilliam Museum
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Plate 1, Copy I

From Larry's Blake book:
          
Blake wrote a strange document called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which he stood the dominant consciousness on its head.

          The Marriage of Heaven and Hell embodies new communicative skills which Blake used to raise consciousness, not among his contemporaries, few of whom ever saw it, but among later generations.  In Marriage of Heaven and Hell and in subsequent prophecies he describes a world of thought, imagination and reality foreign to the socially conditioned mind.  He deconditions us and reprograms us, or in his language he attempts to raise us "into a perception of the infinite." (Cf Blake's conversation with Ezekiel in Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Erdman p. 39)

          Marriage of Heaven and Hell celebrates Blake's discovery of his identity as a prophet and of the use of irony, which he likely learned from Isaiah.  He called himself a devil, but that does not have the satanic implications that simpletons have ascribed to it; all his life Blake showed implacable enmity to Satan.  Still perhaps his greatest weapon was the ability to turn conventional ideas upside down and let us see another reality beside the prevailing group-think. "Without Contraries is no progression". (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3; Erdman p. 34)

          For example laws are for the protection of society - or sometimes for the advantage of those who make them.  Wealth is virtue - or sometimes thievery.  Worship is life giving - unless it's idolatrous. War is terrible - but also profitable.  These are called antinomies.  Blake called them contraries, and the "Proverbs
of Hell" in Marriage of Heaven and Hell express his realization that much of the world's thinking is illegitimately one sided. In a strange way Blake's vision showed him the other side of the coin.  This is what he shared in the decades when he fought back.

 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 22, (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 [PL 23] 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 im[PL 24]pulse: 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"

Monday, July 28, 2025

MEMORABLE FANCY


Harvard University, Houghton Library
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Plate 4, Copy G

The overall goal of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was to break down habitual patterns of thought which orthodox teachings instill. Blake used unorthodox techniques to tear down our paradigns of thinking which limit and restrict our ability to develop out imaginations. How better to teach us to think imaginatively than to display his own ability to create a work which introduces fresh and shocking means of writing poetry. He identified himself with the Devils instead of with the Angels; he provided the Proverbs of Hell to give question to traditional good advice; he created scenarios which invert accepted roles with which we identify. We may be left a bit confused but willing to consider whether "every thing that lives is Holy."

Marriage of Heaven and HellPlate 6, (E 35)
"A Memorable Fancy.                        
   As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of buildings or garments.
   When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a
flat  sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty
Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. 

   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?"
In Blake's Apocalypse Harold Bloom sheads light on Blake's statements in the above passage. On page 82 he states:
"To walk among those fires is to compose a poem or engrave a picture, and to collect the Proverbs of Hell, as Blake proceeds to do, is to express the laws of artistic creation in a series of aphorisms.  When Blake came home from his proverb-collecting "...on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds: hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.    

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?"

Bloom, on page 83, continues to expand our understanding of Blake's poetic
language:

"The Devil is the artist William Blake, at work engraving the Marriage, and the
corroding fires refer metaphorically both to his engraving technique and the satiric
function of the Marriage. The flat sided steep, frowning over the present world, is
fallen human consciousness... The stony cavern of the mind has been broken open
by Blake's art; the imagination rises from the mind's abyss and seeks the more
expanded senses than the five making up that abyss.
...The idea of raising our intensity of perception and so triumphing over nature
through nature is the central idea of the Proverbs of Hell."

Saturday, July 26, 2025

SATAN REVEALED

First Posted  February 2012

LEVIATHAN & BEHEMOTH

Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job
Butts Set 1805
From Wikipedia Commons


Northrop Frye gives an explanation of the roles played by Leviathan and Behemoth in the chapter Blake's Reading of the Book of Job in Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake, edited by Angela Esterhammer. On Plate 15 Job is shown the monstrous forms of Leviathan and Behemoth. Frey's key to extricating oneself from the control of these forces is a change of perspective. Accepting the view of the world from within these monsters distorts vision. Seeing them for what they are is achieved by distancing oneself and looking from outside the system at the sources of destruction.

Page 377
... "The next step is to realize that Satan is the enemy of God, that his rule is not inevitable but is to be fought by God's creative power, and that this creative power exists nowhere at present except in man's creative power. At that point we pass into plate 15, where there are only two levels, God and Job united on top, and below them the cycle of nature inhabited by Behemoth and Leviathan.

"These monsters are identical with Satan, except that, being Satan revealed instead of Satan mysterious and disguised as God, they represent, not so much the natural miseries of drought and famine and pestilence, as the social and political miseries symbolized mainly, in the Bible, by Egypt and Babylon, and in the Book of Job itself by the Sabean Raiders. Ezekiel (chapter 29) identifies the Leviathan with the Pharaoh of Egypt, and Daniel (chapter 4) tells how Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon turned into Behemoth, the subject of several Blake pictures. The political aspect of the monsters is brought out in the phrases emphasized by Blake on Plate 15: Behemoth is 'chief of the ways of God' and Leviathan is 'King over all the Children of Pride' [Job 40:19, 41:34]. As the power in man that makes for tyranny rather than civilization, they can be, if not destroyed, at least brought under some measure of control, like the Blatant Beast in Spencer. At the same time the root of tyranny, for Blake, is still natural religion, the establishing of the order of nature, whether theistically or atheistically regarded, as the circumference of human effort (the original meaning of 'Urizen'). Hence we are all born inside the belly of Leviathan, the world of stars and indefinite places, but those who can see Leviathan for what he is have been placed outside him, like Jonah, and like Job in plate 15. After Job has attained this enlightenment, the prophecy of Jesus is fulfilled and Satan falls from heaven (pl. 16)."

Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Plate 17, (E 41)
"So I remaind with him sitting in the twisted [PL 18] root of
an oak. he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head
downward into the deep:
By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke
of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun,
black but shining[;] round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd
vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather
swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals
sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd
composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the
air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said,
between the black & white spiders
But now, from between the black & white spiders a cloud and
fire burst and rolled thro the deep blackning all beneath, so
that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible
noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest,
till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a
cataract of blood mixed with fire and not many stones throw from
us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent.
at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery
crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden
rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advancing toward [PL 19] us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind." 

Friday, July 25, 2025

PROVERBS OF HELL

Blake Archive 
Original in Fitzwilliam Museum
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
 Plate 10, Copy H

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was an early production of William Blake. It was begun in 1789, the year Songs of Innocence was completed. There are twelve known copies, all but one in museums or libraries. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is Blake's only satiric work among his Illuminated Books. 

Sir Geoffrey Keynes provided an Introduction and Commentary for a volume of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell produced by The Trianon Press, Paris. This useful book contains the text, images of all pages, and a respected scholar's insights into the text and illustrations 'keeping the meaning related as closely as possible to Blake's personal standpoint.'

Here are some of Keynes' comments on the image on Page 10, which is shone above:
"The scene shows three figures at the foaming edge of the Sea of Time and Space. In the center the Devil is kneeling with a scroll lying across his knees and presumably carrying the Proverbs. He is pointing impatiently to the first lines to instruct a slow-witted Angel industriously writing them down in a book, while probably misunderstanding them. Behind the Devil is a kind of throne or judgement seat from which he seems to have descended in his impatience. Sprouting from his back are spiky wings, their points directed respectively to the words 'Enough' and 'Too Much'. To his left and behind him is seated a contrasted figure, alert and interested, with his own script nearly finished across his knees while he looks to see how the stupid Angel is progressing. Erdman suggests that this is 'an apprentice Devil', perhaps Blake himself... The design seems to imply that the stupid Angel must receive and understand the evil Devil's Proverbs if he is to be saved."

Above the illustration are these nine proverbs:

"The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
     hands & feet Proportion.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
     contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing
     was white.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.       

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
     Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires 

Where man is not nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
     believ'd."
On pages 7-10 there are 70 Proverbs of Hell.


Monday, July 14, 2025

The Two Ways

 First Posted Match 2019 

Wikipedia Commons 
Illustration to the Book of Job 
Linnell Set
This is an extract from Chapter Four (FAITH) of Ram Horn'd With Gold by Larry Clayton.  

      In 'Milton' Blake speaks of two streams flowing from a fountain in a rock of crystal: one goes straight to Eden; the other is more torturous. They represent of course two possible journeys through life, and he could speak of both because he lived both. The first stream represents the child-like consciousness that enabled Blake (that enables anyone gifted with it) to live every moment in the light of Eternity. The other, more common path wanders all over this God-forsaken vale of tears, but it winds up at the same place.


      That's the most incredible good news for anybody who can hear it. The apostle Paul hinted at it a time or two; perhaps it was the truth that he was forbidden to tell. Origen believed it, no doubt one of the reasons the Church Fathers kicked him out. In the 19th Century an entire denomination arose whose primary emphasis was this particular good news--the Universalists. Actually this good news could not be pronounced with authority except by someone like Blake who had traveled both journeys; he knew whereof he spoke.

      If you believe that all came originally from the One and that in the fullness of time all things in Christ are gathered together in one, then as a consequence the two paths do meet at the end as Blake claimed. We can put this in a more properly theological context with Blake's expressed response to the Calvinistic doctrine of Double Predestination.

      Double Predestination contains as its lower half the grim old notion of Hell that has probably done as much as anything else in theology to discredit the Christian faith in the eyes of the modern world. Calvin taught the hoary old superstition that most of the world's population are destined to live without Christ and to die and move on to eternal torment; a lucky few have a happier destiny. The lucky few included Calvin of course and his friends, especially his obedient friends. In contrast Origen, perhaps Paul, and surely Blake believed in single predestination: the two streams converge at the end.

      Blake expended an enormous amount of his creative energy combating Double Predestination. He heaped scorn upon scorn on the Calvinistic God who curses his children. His break with Swedenborg followed his discovery that Swedenborg was a "Spiritual Predestinarian, more abominable than Calvin's". He later lamented over him and called him the "Samson, shorn by the Churches."
In Milton Blake ironically inverted the Calvinistic categories of 'elect' and 'reprobate'. With incredible elegance he used Jesus' words on Calvin like a two edged sword. He simply pronounced on behalf of Christ the obvious truth, as if to say, "Calvin, your doctrine is of the world, and your first shall be last in my kingdom."

      Double Predestination is a consequence of a more fundamental error of Rahab, the whore of Babylon, the organized Church, "Imputing sin and righteousness to individuals". Blake addressed that error with his doctrine of states, which we look at in a moment.

      In Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake examined most directly the conventional idea of Hell and pronounced it a delusion of a certain type of mind. In Visions of the Last Judgment he gave his straightforward views about the meaning of the biblical Hell. Again in 'Jerusalem', "What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness & devastation of the things of the Spirit?"

      However the conventional Hell does seem to have some biblical basis: Isaiah 66:24, Mark 9:43ff, Matthew 25:41 provide examples. How do you deal with all those scriptures? In the first place Blake felt perfectly free to discount anything in the Bible that he found incongruent with his vision, at least to discount its conventional meaning. The immediate experience always exercised authority over anything second hand. The inerrancy of scripture, another of the Five Fundamentals, meant just about as much to him as Double Predestination.

      In the second place, although the doctrine of hell has most often been used as a means of anathematizing those with whom one disagrees, there are certainly more creative ways to deal with it. Blake chose one of these, what he called the doctrine of states. In a conversation with the "seven Angels of the Presence" Milton is told by Lucifer: "We are not individuals but states.../ Distinguish therefore states from individuals in those states."

      And at the end of the first chapter of Jerusalem the daughters of Beulah pray as follows:
"Descend O Lamb of God & take away the imputation of Sin
By the Creation of States & the deliverance of Individuals  Evermore Amen...
But many doubted & despaird & imputed Sin & Righteousness       
To Individuals & not to States, and these Slept in Ulro"
      (Jerusalem, 25.12 Erdman 170)

      To distinguish states from individuals is the only means of forgiveness of sins. In the centuries since Blake enlightened Christians have learned to condemn sin without condemning the sinner. The most enlightened condemn no one, realizing that they themselves are as sinful as anyone else. For such a consciousness the only authentic preaching becomes confessional preaching.

      The relationship between Blake's doctrine of states and the conventional doctrine of hell becomes clear in Plate 16 of the Job series where Job and his wife watch the 'old man' in themselves take the plunge with their master "into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels". This of course is a spiritual or psychic event. The crude and ludicrous superstition of the conventional doctrine of hell stems from a spiritual blindness that attempts to impose the material upon the Beyond--once again the Lockian fallacy, the assumption that 'material' is 'real'.

      The Last Judgment in Blake is the consummation devoutly to be hoped for when truth takes its rightful place in man's psyche. Error is "burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it". The person wedded to error finds this a fearsome prospect; the one who wants to be free finds it a glorious one. We're all headed for the last judgment--by the direct childlike route or the torturous worldly route. It's the fervent hope of the eternalist and the bane of the materialist. Blake as was said before, traveled both routes. His exquisite lyrics attest to the first; his (often tormented) prophetic declamation to the second. The childlike route is so crystal clear as to need little explanation; the second obviously needs a great deal. Looking closely at the first may be good preparation for the second.

      An incident from Blake's last years suggests something of the nature of the torturous route which was Blake's life. The old poet was telling the story of the Prodigal Son. He got to the moment when the wandering boy at last returns to the Father. At that point Blake broke down in tears; he couldn't go on. The story casts a revealing light on a primitive relationship that must have provided a lot of the dynamic for Blake's creativity.

      Psychologists tell us that a person's early relationship with his father has a great bearing on his image of God. Applying that idea to Blake's poetry one could infer that Blake as a child had a gruesome relationship with his father. However we find little suggestion of this in the biography. On the contrary the preponderance of the evidence suggests a permissive and understanding parent. (The only exception seems to be the threat to beat the eight year old for his 'lie' about the tree full of angels.) In any event 'father' has unpleasant associations in Blake's poetry, especially in the theological realm. He adored Jesus, but he obviously had trouble believing Jesus' word about the loving Father.
       
The Neo-platonic interpreters have theorized that Blake couldn't forgive the Creator for condemning us to this prison house of mortal life. I think a more universal explanation fits the facts. Everyone has difficulty forgiving his father and/or creator for the dimensions of horror in life which threaten in one way or another to overwhelm the psyche. Few or none of us have done a really adequate job of this. Most often we've repressed the sensitive idealist; we've closed off from consciousness those unpleasant ultimate realities which seem to have no answer.

      "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Has anyone really asked that question since 1794? Nietzsche asked it and went crazy. In our generation Jung has come closest, and that's what makes him great. Most of us, even the best of Christians, have partitioned off and closed out that ultimate question, the ultimate doubt expressed by the dying Saviour on the cross. This William Blake could not do; like Jesus he was condemned to face consciously the penalty of our finitude.

Songs of Innocence and Experience, Song 42, Erdman 24 
"The Tyger.                           

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.      
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?          
On what wings dare he aspire?     
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
 
What the hammer? what the chain, 
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,       
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!              

When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?                
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:           
What immortal hand or eye,         
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

      Frye has spoken of the 'abyss of consciousness'. Enion, the primeval mother in 4Z is condemned to it by her love of her children. At the end of Night ii she calls our attention to this blindness which we have chosen and its opposite, the abyss of consciousness which she (and Blake in her) is condemned to face; here is her complaint.

      Something is terribly wrong in this created universe, and in the face of this underlying wrongness the idea of a loving Father as Creator simply doesn't fit all the facts. This consciousness, which Blake shared with Dostoevsky in the person of Ivan Karamazov, interrupted Blake's childlike innocence and precipitated the torturous journey "through the Aerial Void and all the Churches".

      Probably a majority of people will always refuse such an invitation; they will cling to the refuge of their Church, or Bible, or President, or fraternity, or whatever form of authority they have made their obeisance to, whatever they have found to block out the abyss of consciousness. A few will have at least a sympathetic or vicarious interest in the problem posed by Blake and Dostoevsky. A handful will perceive that to realize their full humanity and the God Within they must proceed beyond innocence. They, too, must take that long journey and plumb life to its wholeness. The art of Blake offers a good map for the trip.


Monday, June 30, 2025

DEFENCE OF POETRY

Gutenberg Press, A Defence of Poetry, and Other Essays

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote his essay A Defence of Poetry in 1821 although his widow did not have it published until 1840. Blake, who died in 1827, would have agreed with much of what Shelley wrote if he had had opportunity to read it.

Shelley wrote:

"Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions; We have his own authority also for the muse having 'dictated' to him the 'unpremeditated song'. And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty, is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process."

Summary of Shelley's essay.

ON HOMERS POETRY, (E 269)

"Every Poem must necessarily be a perfect Unity, but why Homers is
peculiarly so, I cannot tell: he has told the story of
Bellerophon & omitted the judgment of Paris which is not only a
part, but a principal part of Homers subject
  But when a Work has Unity it is as much in a Part as in the
Whole. the Torso is as much a Unity as the Laocoon ...
It is the same with the Moral of a whole Poem as with the Moral
Goodness
of its parts Unity & Morality, are secondary considerations &
belong to Philosophy & not to Poetry, to Exception & not to Rule,
to Accident & not to Substance. the Ancients calld it eating of
the tree of good & evil."
Jerusalem, Plate 3, (E 145)

  "When this Verse was first dictated to me I consider'd a 
Monotonous Cadence like that used by Milton & Shakspeare & all
writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage
of Rhyming; to be a necessary and indispensible part of Verse. 
But I soon found that
in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward,
but as much a bondage as rhyme itself.  I therefore have produced
a variety in every line, both of cadences & number of syllables. 
Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit
place: the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific
parts--the mild & gentle, for the mild & gentle parts, and the
prosaic, for inferior parts: all are necessary to each other. 
Poetry Fetter'd, Fetters the Human Race! Nations are Destroy'd,
or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry Painting and Music,
are Destroy'd or Flourish! The Primeval State of Man, was Wisdom,
Art, and Science."
Letters, To Hayley, (E 705)
"Thirteen years ago.  I lost a
brother & with his spirit I  converse daily & hourly in the
Spirit.  & See him in my remembrance in the  regions of my
Imagination.  I hear his advice & even now write from his
Dictate"
Visions of Daughters of Albion, Plate 27 [29], (E 125)
"But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music,          
And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man.
Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only
Science remains thro Mercy: & by means of Science, the Three
Become apparent in time & space, in the Three Professions
Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery:" 
Milton, Plate 41 [48], (E 142)
"To bathe in the Waters of Life; to wash off the Not Human
I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration
To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour
To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration
To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering          
To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with Imagination
To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration"
Milton, Plate 41 [48], (E 142)
"These are the destroyers of Jerusalem, these are the murderers
Of Jesus, who deny the Faith & mock at Eternal Life:
Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination;
By imitation of Natures Images drawn from Remembrance
These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation
Hiding the Human lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains
Which Jesus rent:"
Jerusalem, Plate 62, (E 213)
"Shall Albion arise? I know he shall arise at the Last Day!
I know that in my flesh I shall see God: but Emanations
Are weak. they know not whence they are, nor whither tend.

Jesus replied. I am the Resurrection & the Life.
I Die & pass the limits of possibility, as it appears
To individual perception. Luvah must be Created                  
And Vala; for I cannot leave them in the gnawing Grave.
But will prepare a way for my banished-ones to return
Come now with me into the villages. walk thro all the cities.
Tho thou art taken to prison & judgment, starved in the streets
I will command the cloud to give thee food & the hard rock       
To flow with milk & wine, tho thou seest me not a season
Even a long season & a hard journey & a howling wilderness!
Tho Valas cloud hide thee & Luvahs fires follow thee!
Only believe & trust in me, Lo. I am always with thee!

So spoke the Lamb of God while Luvahs Cloud reddening above      
Burst forth in streams of blood upon the heavens & dark night
Involvd Jerusalem. & the Wheels of Albions Sons turnd hoarse
Over the Mountains & the fires blaz'd on Druid Altars
And the Sun set in Tyburns Brook where Victims howl & cry.

But Los beheld the Divine Vision among the flames of the Furnaces
Therefore he lived & breathed in hope. but his tears fell incessant
Because his Children were closd from him apart: & Enitharmon
Dividing in fierce pain: also the Vision of God was closd in clouds
Of Albions Spectres, that Los in despair oft sat, & often ponderd
On Death Eternal in fierce shudders upon the mountains of Albion 
Walking: & in the vales in howlings fierce, then to his Anvils
Turning, anew began his labours, tho in terrible pains!"
British Museum
Judgment of Paris

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

LOGOS & MYTHOS

 First posted May 2012

British Museum
Young's Night Thoughts
'I stand at the Door'




In the prologue to the Gospel of John the author uses the word 'logos' to speak of truth which is eternal but inaccessible. The logos which became manifest was embodied in the flesh. By becoming expressed in human form the logos became mythos, and was able to speak to men through images, allegory, and anology. In a sense the Old Testament is logos because the eternal truth came to be expressed in the abstraction of the law. In the New Testament the truth became incarnate in Jesus which opened the way for man to experience God as internal: an ever present reality being forever born in his psyche.


John1
[1In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
[2] The same was in the beginning with God.
[3] All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
[4] In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
[5] And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
[6] There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
[7] The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
[8] He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
[9] That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
[10] He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
[11] He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
[12] But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
[13] Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
[14] And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Blake wrote not for the rational mind (associated with the logos), but for the intuitive mind. Dependence on reason, he felt, had led man away from his ability to understand his true nature and construct a reliable paradigm for viewing the world. Raine saw the same division between the rational and intuitive in Plato who addressed some his work to each type of mental processing. Blake applied himself to developing a means of awakening in men the ability to bypass rational or corporeal understanding and speak directly to the intuitive or spiritual sense.

Explaining the inconsistent attitude Blake had toward Plato and Greek culture, Kathleen Raine remarks in Blake and Tradition

"...Blake read the Neoplatonists before he read Plato, and the Phaperus, Cratylus, Phaedo, Parmenides, and Timaeus before he read the purely discursive works. Neoplatonism stems from one side of Plato - all that he inherited, through Pythagoras and the Orphic tradition, from the 'revealed' wisdom of antiquity. Blake was neither the first nor the last reader of Plato's works to have been bewildered by the presence of two, in many respects contradictory, aspects of his thought - logos and mythos; and he rejected the former with no less vigor than he continued to embrace the latter." (Page 73)

Blake was constantly in the process of refining his ability to restore the lost faculty of man to understand the infinite, eternal reality expressed in mythos.  

Letters , 27, (E 730)
[To Thomas Butts] Felpham July 6. 1803
"Thus I hope that all our three years trouble Ends in
Good Luck at last & shall be forgot by my affections & only
rememberd by my Understanding to be a Memento in time to come &
to speak to future generations by a Sublime Allegory which is now
perfectly completed into a Grand Poem[.] I may praise it since I
dare not pretend to be any other than the Secretary the Authors
are in Eternity I consider it as the Grandest Poem that This
World Contains.  Allegory addressd to the Intellectual powers
while it is altogether hidden from the Corporeal Understanding is
My Definition of the Most Sublime Poetry. it is also somewhat in
the same manner defind by Plato."
Northrop Frye, in Fearful Symmetry, tells us:
"A visionary creates, or dwells in, a higher spiritual world in which the objects of perception in this one have become transfigured and charged with a new intensity of symbolism." (Page 8)

Auguries of Innocence , (E 493)
"God Appears and God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day."

Annotations to Lavater (E 599)
"God is in the lowest effects as well as in the highest
causes for he is become a worm that he may nourish the weak
For let it be rememberd that creation is. God descending
according to the weakness of man for our Lord is the word of God
& every thing on earth is the word of God & in its essence is God"