Mortal and Eternal

Published Feb 2015

Blake read British poetry widely and found the same "kernel of meaning" in every kind of literature. He knew and loved Spenser, Queen Elizabeth's poet laureate who wrote The Faerie Queen. Kathleen Raine provided  two examples from Spenser of the oldest myth central to Blake's poetry, namely the descent of the soul and eventual return. 

 

These are the passages taken from 'THE THIRD BOOKE OF THE FAERIE QUEENE CANTO VI.....

"It sited was in fruitfull soyle of old,

And girt in with two walles on either side;

The one of yron, the other of bright gold,

That none might thorough breake, nor over-stride:

And double gates it had, which opened wide,

By which both in and out men moten pas;

Th'one faire and fresh, the other old and dride:

Old Genius the porter of them was,

Old Genius, the which a double nature has.

xxxii

He letteth in, he letteth out to wend,

All that to come into the world desire;

A thousand thousand naked babes attend

About him day and night, which doe require,

That he with fleshly weedes would them attire:

Such as him list, such as eternall fate

Ordained hath, he clothes with sinfull mire,

And sendeth forth to live in mortall state,

Till they againe returne backe by the hinder gate."

Blake used this (timeless idea) in one of his earliest works, Book of Thel, Plate 6:

"The eternal gates terrific porter lifted up the northern bar".

 

British Museum

Book of Thel

Plate 6

Blake used the Northern (down to earth) and Southern Gates more pointedly in The Arlington Tempera. Look closely and you may see Thel at the bottom of the northern stairs with her pail still full; she has seen more than she wants to see and she is purposefully going back against the stream of the nymphs which is heading for mortality.

The Angel is pointing the traveler back up the Southern Gate; he has tasted mortality fully and is ready to go home.

Nevertheless with the Enlightenment this sort of idea had fallen into obscurity in most of the materialistic and rational minds of England. Bacon, Newton, and Locke were the primary exponents of rationalism in Blake's day. This meant in reality that no one was interested in the kind of poetry and philosophy that interested Blake.

 

---

 

From the Beyond (Eternity) the world was created; man was created; time and space were created; birth and death were created; good and evil are creatures, figments of a frail and created mind.. In the world - in time and space - we perceive duality, or a multiplicity. In Eternity we imagine Unity.

 

The ultimate duality is between Eternity and the World, between God and man, but this is a sometime thing - until the end of time. As a creature the world will end; you, too, will end, as a creature.

 

But the vision of the mystic suggests that you are more than a creature. The writer of Genesis had such an inkling when he described man as made of the dust of the earth, but in the image of God. The Quakers believe there is 'that of God' in everyone.

 

Eternal Death in Blake's language refers to the soul's descent from Eden (and Beulah) to the nether regions (Ulro) where Eternity is lost and only the created remains. Lost! but not forever; Eternal Death dies, too; Eternity waits for the soul's Awakening, which may be at the moment of mortal death or whenever he casts off error and embraces truth.

 

Book of Thel, Plate 6, (E 6)

"The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning
Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down.
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit.     

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits & coined gold!  
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright.
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?          

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har
                                    
                  The End" 

Building a System

Wikipedia Commons

Book of Thel

Plate 1 

       Early in his life Blake and his wife joined a new church of Swedenborgians, but he soon outgrew that 'system'. He had a contemptuous opinion of organized religion in England from early days and throughout his life.        

He read omnivorously and seemed to retain (and use) everything that came into his mind. Some of his most influential reading was the Bible, Plato, the Egyptians, the Neoplatonists, Paracelsus and Boehme. He assembled all this ancient and medieval wisdom (discarded by Western culture with the Enlightenment) into his system, what we call his myth.      

Most of the literature and art of special interest to Blake expressed the almost universal concept of metaphysical reality from the days of the earliest Mesopotamians and Egyptians to the present.  Blake drew on these symbols everywhere along the spectrum of time. 

Blake's friend Thomas Taylor had translated Sallust's On the Gods and the World giving Blake access to Sallust's ideas on the types of myths or fables current in the ancient world. 

In On the Gods and the World, Section IV Sallust taught that the Species of Myth are Five: Myths are natural (physical), metaphysical (theological), psychic (psychological), and material (literal); some are a combination. To these we might add the moral or ethical. Blake's myth is definitely a combination of all of them.

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All of these various elements add up to a reality that exists in two spheres: upper and lower, above and below, Eternity and Time, spiritual and material, Heavenly and Worldly, dry and moist souls, good and evil. But at the deepest level these pairs belong to one another and God is in all ("as above so below"). These are all ways of looking at the fundamental metaphysical reality of life.        

The kernel of meaning in all this wisdom and in all of Blake's system was the myth of the descent of the soul into generation (this fallen world), her extensive travail here and eventual return to the fount of life from which she came.        

Blake drew on the earliest and latest examples of poetry and philosophy to elaborate his myth. Kathleen Raine in her little book, Blake and Antiquity, provides a very good means of elucidating the meanings that Blake intended in all his works. Perhaps the most common trap to avoid is assuming that his symbols connote literal or physical matters rather than psychological or metaphysical one.      

Blake had thorough familiarity with British poetry, where he found the same "kernel of meaning" as in every kind of literature.  For example Blake knew and loved Spenser (Queen Elizabeth's poet laureate who wrote The Faerie Queen).  Raine on page 18 provided examples from Spenser of the oldest myth central to Blake's poetry, namely the descent of the soul and eventual return:

"THE THIRD BOOKE OF THE FAERIE QUEENE

   CANTO VI.....
xxx
262 In that same Gardin all the goodly flowres,
263 Wherewith dame Nature doth her beautifie,
264 And decks the girlonds of her paramoures,
265 Are fetcht: there is the first seminarie
266 Of all things, that are borne to live and die,
267 According to their kindes. Long worke it were,
268 Here to account the endlesse progenie
269 Of all the weedes, that bud and blossome there;
270 But so much as doth need, must needs be counted here.
xxxi
271 It sited was in fruitfull soyle of old,
272 And girt in with two walles on either side;
273 The one of yron, the other of bright gold,
274 That none might thorough breake, nor over-stride:
275 And double gates it had, which opened wide,
276 By which both in and out men moten pas;
277 Th'one faire and fresh, the other old and dride:
278 Old Genius the porter of them was,
279 Old Genius, the which a double nature has.
xxxii
280 He letteth in, he letteth out to wend,
281 All that to come into the world desire;
282 A thousand thousand naked babes attend
283 About him day and night, which doe require,
284 That he with fleshly weedes would them attire:
285 Such as him list, such as eternall fate
286 Ordained hath, he clothes with sinfull mire,
287 And sendeth forth to live in mortall state,
288 Till they againe returne backe by the hinder gate."

Nevertheless with the Enlightenment this sort of idea had fallen into disrepute in most of the materialistic and rational minds of England. Bacon, Newton, and Locke were the primary exponents of rationalism in Blake's day. This meant in reality that no one was interested in the kind of poetry and philosophy that interested Blake.  

Jerusalem, Plate 10, (E 153)

"Therefore Los stands in London building Golgonooza
Compelling his Spectre to labours mighty; trembling in fear
The Spectre weeps, but Los unmovd by tears or threats remains

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

Heaven's Gate

First posted Nov 2009

Wikimedia Commons

Book of Thel

Plate 1

Among other things this abiding image provides a

link between Blake and Dylan 's Knocking on Heaven's Door.

Once again:
"I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall."
Jeusalem (E 231)

What about the gate? Can you go in? go out?
The Arlington Tempera offers visual instruction
in the matter. From the beginning of time
there have been two passages: to and from
Heaven. The northern passage leads down into
the Sea of Time and Space; the southern passage
leads back up to Eternity. This is the crux of
Blake's myth, and of the Judeo-Chistian one as
well.

If you apply 'gate' to the concordance, you
will find 262 of them. Quite a few gates of
Hell! Two noteworthy gates are (1) at the little
poem, To Morning (E410):

"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,
Unlock heav's' golden gates, and issue forth;
Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light..."

And then Thel notably traversed the gate in
both directions. From the Vales of Thar (a
region in Heaven) Thel considered the subject
of mortal life, and decided to give it a whirl:
" The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the
northern bar. Thel enter'd in & saw the
secrets of the land unknown."

But seeing the horrors of 'this vale of tears'
Thel screamed and "Fled back unhinder'd till
she came into the vales of Har."

From the Arlington Tempera you may notice a
maiden holding her bucket and making her way
upward against the stream. Like Thel she had
seen enough and refused mortality.

-----------------------------

"O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, 0 Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessed feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ." 

Hymn by John Masefield. How Blakean can you get!

 

BIOGRAPHY 2

Wikipedia Commons

Illustrations to Blair's The Grave

Object 19

From Chapter 1 of Larry's book Ram Horn'd With Gold.   

For the next five years Blake spent his days in this and other religious monuments communing with the images of legend and history. His imagination was nurtured and strengthened by the spiritual treasures of his country. One day he saw Jesus walking with the Twelve--and painted them. On another occasion he was present, the sole artist as it happened, when the embalmed body of a King Edward of the 15th Century was exhumed for inspection by the Antiquary Society.

       Some of Blake's formative experiences he shared with his contemporaries but not with us. For example 18th Century measures against crime were rather repressive by modern standards; petty crimes such as picking pockets were punished by hanging. A few blocks from Blake's home was Tyburn, the public gallows. In all likelihood on at least one occasion the impressionable lad witnessed a ten year old child being hung for his crimes. Tyburn became one of the mature poet's continually recurring symbols; he often equated it with Calvary, and he conceived of Satan as Accuser and Avenger.

       When Blake was nineteen, the American colonies declared their independence. His feelings, like those of many other Londoners, resembled the feelings of American liberals 190 years later about another war. At 23 he was swept along with a crowd that stormed Newgate Prison and set the prisoners free, eleven years before Bastille Day. Many in London devoutly hoped that the American revolution might spread to England. Blake saw this in his mind's eye because thirteen years later in his poem, America, he imaginatively described it.

       Blake's religious world was dominated by the State Church. Bishops were civil servants, appointed by the Crown; the religious establishment existed to all intents and purposes as part of the oppressive bureaucracy. This yoke had been thrown off briefly in the Puritan Revolution of the 17th Century, but the Restoration once again fastened it upon the people. Many of the established religious leaders of the age were corrupt and venal. Blake knew this from childhood and set his pen and artist's vision against religious hypocrisy.

       In Blake's day a strong sense of religious expectancy filled the air, especially within the dissenting community to which he belonged. He and many of his contemporaries hoped that an oppressive tyranny would shortly be replaced by the New Age of freedom and creativity. Today that hope has dimmed, but perhaps even in this dark age a few might get from Blake's poetry a glimpse of radiant possibilities.

       In 1782 the twenty-five year old poet married Catherine Boucher, the illiterate but beautiful daughter of a gardener. Blake taught her to read, draw, and assist him in many of his artistic endeavours, and she provided a full measure of faithful emotional support to him over a long and often trying creative career.

      In his younger days Blake often voiced the prevailing counter culture opinions about what was called free love. However all the evidence suggests that he was a devoted and faithful husband throughout the forty five years of their life together. Her only complaint was that he spent so much time in heaven. She made every effort to accompany him on those journeys. She frequently sat patiently with him through the long hours of the night while he pursued his rapturous visions. In a notebook poem, which he wrote after twenty five years of marriage he said, "I've a Wife I love and that loves me;/I've all but Riches Bodily." (Erdman, 481)

       Fortunate in parents, employer and wife Blake embarked in his twenties upon perilous paths and times. He suffered a fate common to many artists: economic necessities loomed as a dark shadow over the creative impulse. Like most young idealists he still had hopes of making his way in the world, and he began to confront the painful tension between creative work as an artist and a comfortable income.

       Some of Blake's students believe that a grim, traumatic event of some sort led to his disillusionment. If there was any one thing, we have lost sight of it. We do know that by 1784 his mind and thought had broadened beyond the pellucid innocence of his Poetical Sketches  to include the satirical stories of 'An Island in the Moon'. In these he lampooned the polite society in which he moved. The work probably served a healthy outlet for the frustration of conventional conformities.

       Interpreters most often use the 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience' to demonstrate the contrast between Blake's poetry before and after disillusionment. But the poem called 'Thel', written in 1789, illustrates that contrast in itself with startling abruptness. The first five plates of 'Thel' express the transparent radiance of child like faith as vividly as has been done in English. In 'Thel' the Lilly, the Cloud and finally the Clod of Clay all witness with ethereal beauty and clarity the reality of a warm and loving universe and their transparent destiny to move into yet greater glory. Hear the Clod of Clay as she speaks to the maiden, Thel:

'O beauty of the vales of Har, we live not for ourselves.
Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed:
My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark,
But he that loves the lowly pours his oil upon my head,
And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast,
And says: "Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away."
But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know;
I ponder, and I cannot ponder, yet I live and love.'

       But Plate Six is a shrieking, although its symbolism is too complex to deal with here. It does appear that Blake wants us in 'Thel' to experience the full shock of the contrast between the Garden and the Fall. And we must conclude that he himself experienced it in personal trauma, although we can't pinpoint it. Henceforth for the next twenty years fallenness was to be his major theme.       

A good case can be made for the idea that Blake's personal fall came after a conscious decision for the world; it led to two decades of trouble-economic and spiritual. Luckily for us it was the one decision he couldn't make stick. With his very best efforts he could never quite become a worldling; there were too many angels knocking on his door. But for twenty years he proceeded to "kick against the pricks" (Acts 9.5).

       As a responsible husband Blake made a valiant effort to conform to the social exigencies and to make his way in the world. He won some success as an artist and was even ashamed of his versifying because he knew that it was against what he called the "main chance" . He tried to be worldly and sophisticated, but he was always coming up against compromises which he simply couldn't make.

       For a while he and Catherine frequented the salon of a Rev. Mathews, an intellectual and artistic dilettante. This good man even brought out Blake's 'Poetical Sketches' in a small private printing. But Blake's ideas about organized religion were much too inflammatory to afford him the freedom of any parsonage for long. Soon he and Catherine drifted away.

       Blake found a more congenial group gathering for weekly dinners with the publisher, Joseph Johnson, his employer. Here Blake met some of the most prominent radicals of the day, among them Tom Paine. Blake deeply admired the republican activism of Paine, and he liked Paine's general iconoclasm, although he and Paine disagreed about spirit and matter. In this piquant relationship Blake might have learned how to open infinity to the deist mind. Unfortunately before it could develop, Paine was hounded out of the country.

       Blake enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art during the hegemony of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He even had several exhibits there, but he couldn't quite conform his aesthetic values to the prevailing taste as represented by Sir Joshua. As a consequence he found himself shut out of the lucrative popular market. In simplest terms the popular market was fallen, then as now; Blake refused to stoop to it, and he paid the price of poverty.

       Blake's gifts were well recognized, and he developed quite a reputation as a teacher of drawing. One day an invitation came to teach the children of the royal family. That assignment would have established him in the world of fashion. But at that awesome crossroad he chose the lower path; he declined. He knew too well how he felt about royalty, and he also knew that he could never enjoy the royal bounty. At that critical point he was true to himself, and he definitively unmade the decision which had begun his troubles; he chose spiritual values and rejected the world. Afterward things got better spiritually, although for the moment they worsened financially.

ENVISIONING THEL

First posted in 2016.

Among the things that Blake was doing in 1789 and 1790 was engraving plates for Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden, producing Songs of Innocence, creating the Book of Thel and studying Neoplatonism with Thomas Taylor. Each of these projects, from its own perspective, focused his attention on man's journey through the world of mortality.
 
Darwin, like Blake, was a multi-talented individual. He was a physician, a philosopher, a scientist and a poet. His Botanic Garden is a compendium of scientific thinking of his day, descriptions of plant life in sexual terms, and imaginative poems about flowering plants. His book sold well in the late eighteenth century.
 
Blake gained from Darwin exposure to the symbolic use of members of the plant kingdom, the opportunity to work closely with the mythology portrayed on the Portland Vase, and information from a wide range of the science being developed by the enlightenment.
 
The first fruit of Blake's work with Darwin's book and with his studies with Thomas Taylor, who began publishing translation of Greek literature in 1787, was his writing his illuminated Book of Thel.
 
Songs of Innocence posited a world unblemished by considerations of mortality, a world incompatible with our world of time, space and materiality. But innocence was a starting point, not a conclusion. In Thel there is commentary on Innocence. Thel contemplates the innocent Lily, Clod and Cloud in a visual world of flowers symbolizing sexual interactions. She draws back from descending into the sexual world where death is the corollary of life.
 
Like the central woman on the first compartment of the Portland Vase, Thel sits beside a crack which is opening up in the bedrock which supports her level of existence. She has been invited to explore the Mystery of mortality but has declined. Blake himself would not hold back but plunged in. He was also exploring the Swedenborgian Society at this time. Wherever he looked he found ideas which evoked images, some of which live on in the organic body of his work which grew more like a verdant landscape than an enclosed garden.

British Museum    Small Book of Designs
from Book of Thel, Page 6

Book of Thel, Plate 6, (E 6)
"The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning
Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down.
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit.     

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits & coined gold!  
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright.
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?          

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har
                                    
                  The End" 

THEL'S DECISION

British Museum
The Book of Thel
Plate 8

Blake wrote small books but the ideas contained in them are invariably large. The Book of Thel was one of the earliest illuminated books. It contained only 8 pages including Thel's Motto. The illuminations occupied almost as much space as the poetry and displayed pleasant scenes in a gentle world.

There are striking differences in what is said in the poetry and what is shown in the pictures. The paradoxical nature of human experience is one of the messages Blake conveys in this supposedly simple production. The pictures show Thel's world to be a lovely place but the questions she asks point to difficult issues to be solved.

It is possible to be accepting of whatever status befalls one. It is also possible to observe the options which are presented by alternate modes of existence. One may attempt to adopt the choices which seem to work for others. However if one choose to follow one's own path, she must strike out into the unknown seeking one's own destiny.

Thel found herself in a state of limbo: she was not in Eternity nor in the material world of time and space. She wanted to develop past the innocent world of her companions: the Clod of Clay, the Lilly, the Cloud and the Worm. She fearfully stepped into the world of generation but drew back when she gazed into her own grave which spoke to her of the vicissitudes of living in a mortal body with access through the five senses. She was faint of heart; she lacked the desire which would have induced her to accept life as a human, uniting body and soul, the mortal with the immortal.

The final illustration shows the ups and downs of mortal life as three children playfully enjoy riding a serpent which is no threat to them.

Book of Thel, Plate 6, (E 6)
"The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning
Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down.
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit.    

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits & coined gold! 
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright.
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?         

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har
                                   
                  The End"

Psalms 27
[11] Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.
[12] Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.
[13] I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

[14] Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.

BLAKE'S COMUS 13

 Under the guidance of the attendant Spirit, the Brothers sought the assistance of the Nymph, Sabrina, in disenchanting the Lady. Milton suggested the importance of Sabrina by providing her biography. Sabrina was given refuge in her flight from her father Brutus by Nymphs of the Severn. She became the Goddess of the river and a protector of the needy with a soft place in her heart for virgins like herself.

Wikimedia
Original in Huntington Gallery
Milton's Comus
Illustration 7, Thomas Set

A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634
John Milton

Line 910
"Brightest Lady look on me.
Thus I sprinkle on thy brest
Drops that from my fountain pure,
I have kept of pretious cure,
Thrice upon thy fingers tip,
Thrice upon thy rubied lip, [ 915 ]
Next this marble venom'd seat Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold,
Now the spell hath lost his hold"

The cure for the Lady was provided by the agency of water. Everything in Milton's poetry about Sabrina alluded to water: she was saved in water by the Gods of water; all the Gods and Goddesses of water were invoked to secure her assistance for the Lady. Milton like Blake was aware that in Platonic philosophy the symbolic meaning of water is the material world. Blake saw that the introduction of the nymph Sabrina to perform the healing of the Lady indicated that her journey would take her through the world of matter. 
 
In his poetry Blake developed several symbols to represent man's journey through the material world. Moving through Innocence to Experience and beyond was an image of our journey through life on Earth. The process of creating bodies by Los and Enitharmon was preparation for the travels through generation which man undertakes. The descent from Eden through Beulah into Generation initiated the undertaking of the journey. In Comus, Sabrina's role was to propel the Lady along her journey. The Lady, like Thel, hesitated to take the risk of engaging with the uncertainties of a fully human existence. Sabrina anointed the Lady with the water of baptism initiating her journey through generation or the material world.

Thel, Plate 5. (E 6)
"Wilt thou O Queen enter my house. 'tis given thee to enter,
And to return; fear nothing. enter with thy virgin feet.
Plate 6
IV.
The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning
Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,"

.

LOWLY WORM

In Blake's worm we find an image of the lowest and weakest form of life. The worm lives in the earth or inhabits the grave.

British Museum
A Small Book of Designs
Copy A, 1789
Image from Plate 4 of Thel

In Thel we learn that the worm appears in another form: that of the infant. But this is not the child of Innocence who is cared for, guided and protected; but a child who is alone, crying for help, unattended and unloved. Because the worm and the infant are vulnerable they appropriately represent man at his nadir; when he is most in need of, and most receptive to help. Thel herself is such a child, on the verge of making a beginning: of experiencing a birth to an evolving consciousness. Thel turns back when she looks into the grave and sees not what we call death but what we call life.

The worm or babe, however, enters the world of 'joy and woe' which Thel refuses and begins the transforming journey.

Thel, Plate 4, (E 4) 
"Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
Art thou a Worm? image of weakness. art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lillys leaf:
Ah weep not little voice, thou can'st not speak. but thou can'st weep;
Is this a Worm? I see thee lay helpless & naked: weeping,      
And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mothers smiles.
...
Plate 5
Queen of the vales, the matron Clay answerd; I heard thy sighs.
And all thy moans flew o'er my roof. but I have call'd them down:
Wilt thou O Queen enter my house. 'tis given thee to enter,
And to return; fear nothing. enter with thy virgin feet.
...
Plate 6 
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down.
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit.     

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits & coined gold!  
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright.
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?          

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har                                  
                  The End"

Visions of Daughters of Albion, Plate 5, (E 49)
"Does not the eagle scorn the earth & despise the treasures beneath?
But the mole knoweth what is there, & the worm shall tell it thee.       
Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard?
PLATE 6
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave
Over his porch these words are written. Take thy bliss O Man!
And sweet shall be thy taste & sweet thy infant joys renew!"

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 136, (E 403) 
"O terrible wine presses of Luvah O caverns of the Grave
How lovely the delights of those risen again from death
O trembling joy excess of joy is like Excess of grief

So sang the Human Odors round the wine presses of Luvah

But in the Wine presses is wailing terror & despair              
Forsaken of their Elements they vanish & are no more
No more but a desire of Being a distracted ravening desire
Desiring like the hungry worm & like the gaping grave 
They plunge into the Elements the Elements cast them forth
Or else consume their shadowy semblance Yet they obstinate       
Tho pained to distraction Cry O let us Exist for
This dreadful Non Existence is worse than pains of Eternal Birth
Eternal Death who can Endure. let us consume in fires
In waters stifling or in air corroding or in earth shut up
The Pangs of Eternal birth are better than the Pangs of Eternal Death"      

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"

Jerusalem, Plate 55, (E 205)
"Let the Human Organs be kept in their perfect Integrity
At will Contracting into Worms, or Expanding into Gods" 

For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, (E 267) 
"16 I have said to the Worm: Thou art my mother & my sister
 ... 
16 Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb 
 Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb 
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife 
And weeping over the Web of Life"

First Corinthians 1
[25] For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
[26] For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth;
[27] but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,
[28] God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are
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INNOCENCE & EXPERIENCE 3

The title pages for the individual books of Songs Innocence & of Experience introduce pictorially the contrast between the two states of the soul. Innocence will portray a relaxed state where there is no threat to the world of mothers and children, trees, birds and fruit. Experience will involve death, grief, sexual division. The bereaved pair of Experience may be the same two who enjoyed the attentive care of the mother on the title page of Innocence. The profile of the deceased woman on the title page of Experience resembles that of the mother on the earlier plate.
Blake uses a more graceful, less rigid font for the lettering of Innocence. His setting is in the open for Innocence; within a formal interior for Experience. The gentle protected world of Innocence has been exchanged for an acquaintance with harsh circumstances in Experience. 

British Museum Songs of Innocence
Title Page
Copy A 

British Museum Songs of Experience
Title Page
Copy A

Northrop Frye in Fearful Symmetry points us in the direction of beginning to understand the relationship between innocence and experience when on page 238 he states:
"The irony suggested by the contrast of the two states of innocence and experience is deepened in the tragedy of Thel, the failure to overcome that contrast which is symbolized by all unborn forces of life, all sterile seeds, all the virginity that results from fear. The Book of Thel thus represents the failure to take the state of innocence into the state of experience."

Book of Thel, Plates 5 & 6, (E 6)
"Wilt thou O Queen enter my house. 'tis given thee to enter,
And to return; fear nothing. enter with thy virgin feet.

The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen."

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VALA AS PSYCHE

Katherine Raine's Blake and Antiquity points out numerous ways in which the account of Vala and Luvah as they are sent into the 'vegetable' world follow the pattern of Cupid and Psyche in the myth of Apuleius. The house that Luvah provides for Vala is the 'body into which the soul enters when in "sleep she descends from Eternity."'

Four Zoas, Page 128, (E 397)

"My Luvah here hath placd me in a Sweet & pleasant Land
And given me fruits & pleasant waters & warm hills & cool valleys
Here will I build myself a house & here Ill call on his name
Here Ill return when I am weary & take my pleasant rest

So spoke the Sinless Soul & laid her head on the downy fleece 
Of a curld Ram who stretchd himself in sleep beside his mistress
And soft sleep fell upon her eyelids in the silent noon of day

Then Luvah passed by & saw the sinless Soul
And said   Let a pleasant house arise to be the dwelling place
Of this immortal Spirit growing in lower Paradise

He spoke & pillars were builded & walls as white as ivory
The grass she slept upon was pavd with pavement as of pearl
Beneath her rose a downy bed & a cieling coverd all

Vala awoke. When in the pleasant gates of sleep I enterd
I saw my Luvah like a spirit stand in the bright air
Round him stood spirits like me who reard me a bright house
And here I see thee house remain in my most pleasant world

PAGE 129
My Luvah smild I kneeled down he laid his hand on my head
And when he laid his hand upon me from the gates of sleep I came
Into this bodily house to tend my flocks in my pleasant garden

So saying she arose & walked round her beautiful house
And then from her white door she lookd to see her bleating lambs
But her flocks were gone up from beneath the trees into the hills

I see the hand that leadeth me doth also lead my flocks
She went up to her flocks & turned oft to see her shining house
She stopd to drink of the clear spring & eat the grapes & apples
She bore the fruits in her lap she gatherd flowers for her bosom
She called to her flocks saying follow me O my flocks

They followd her to the silent vall[e]y beneath the spreading
trees
And on the rivers margin she ungirded her golden girdle
She stood in the river & viewd herself within the watry glass
And her bright hair was wet with the waters She rose up from the
river
And as she rose her Eyes were opend to the world of waters
She saw Tharmas sitting upon the rocks beside the wavy sea
He strokd the water from his beard & mournd faint thro the summer
vales

And Vala stood on the rocks of Tharmas & heard his mournful voice"

From the Small Book of Designs
Thel Observing Lovers

From Raine, Page 23:
"We recognize the familiar theme of descent and return; Psyche's marriage, like the descent of soul in Porpyhry's myth, is described as a kind of death; ... Vala in the poem that bears her name makes the descent Thel refused; and her figure is enriched by attributes of Psyche."

In the introduction to Blake and Antiquity, Raine comments: "These lectures contain the essential theme of the larger book [Blake and Tradition] - a thesis more acceptable in 1977 than fifteen years ago, when I sought to establish, in detail which may now seem over-elaborate, Blake's indebtedness to Neo-Platonic and other sources within what may be called the canon of the Western esoteric tradition."
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