ANCIENT BRITONS

Wikimedia Commons

Jerusalem 

Plate 70

Blake wrote his Descriptive Catalogue in conjunction with his exhibition of paintings in 1809. His major painting of The Ancient Britons has been lost as has his History of England which is noted in the Descriptive Catalogue. However Blake left a detailed description of what he intended to represent in his large fresco.

Advertisement of the Exhibition, (E 526)
                     "Exhibition of Paintings in Fresco,
                  Poetical and Historical Inventions,
                             BY. Wm.  Blake.
PAGE 1
  THE ANCIENT BRITONS--Three Ancient Britons overthrowing the
Army of armed Romans; the Figures full as large as Life--From the 
Welch Triades.

In the last Battle that Arthur fought, the most Beautiful was one
That return'd, and the most Strong another: with them also return'd 
The most Ugly, and no other beside return'd from the bloody Field.

The most Beautiful, the Roman Warriors trembled before and worshipped: 
The most Strong, they melted before him and dissolved in his presence: 
The most Ugly they fled with outcries and contortion of their Limbs."

The symbolic nature of the figures in The Ancient Britons is explained by Northrop Frye in Some British Romantics: A Collection of Essays. He relates the figures which Blake described to the arch of three stones which typify Druid architecture, and he points out the parallel with Blake's Three Classes of Men. 

"The central form of druid architecture is the trilithic cromlech or dolmen, the arch of three stones. According to Blake, the two uprights of this arch symbolize  the two aspects of creative power, strength and beauty, or sublimity and pathos, as he called them in the Descriptive Catalogue, the horizontal stone being the dominant Urizenic reason. Human society presents this arch in the form of an 'Elect' class tyrannizing over the 'Reprobate,' the unfashionable artists and prophets who embody human sublimity, and the 'Redeemed,' the gentler souls who are in the company of the beautiful and pathetic. This trilithic structure reappears in such later militaristic monuments as the Arch of Titus: in the 'Druid' form, it is illustrated with great power in Milton, Plate 6, and in Jerusalem, Plate 70...To pass under this arch is to be subjugated, in a fairly literal sense, to what is, according to the Descriptive Catalogue, both the human reason and the 'incapability of intellect,' as intellect in Blake is always associated with the creative and imaginative. Another form of tyrannical architecture characteristic of a degenerate civilization is the pyramid, representing the volcano or imprisoning mountain under which Orc lies. Blake connects the pyramids with the servitude of the Israelites among the brickkilns and the 'furanaces of iron' (1 Kings 8:51) applied to Egypt in the Bible. The association of the pyramids with fire is as old a Plato..." (Page 20)

---

Jerusalem, Plate 27, (E 171)
" Albion was the Parent of the Druids; & in his Chaotic State of
Sleep   Satan & Adam & the whole World was Created by the Elohim."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 542)
" NUMBER V. 
          The Ancient Britons
In the last Battle of King Arthur only Three Britons escaped,
these were the Strongest Man, the Beautifullest Man, and the
Ugliest Man; these three marched through the field unsubdued, as
Gods,
...
 The three general classes of men who are represented by the
most Beautiful, the most Strong, and the most Ugly, could not be
represented by any historical facts but those of our own country,
the Ancient Britons; without violating costume.  The Britons (say
historians) were naked civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse
in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain, in their acts
and manners; wiser than after-ages."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 543)
"The Strong man represents the human sublime.  The Beautiful 
man represents the human pathetic, which was in the wars of Eden 
divided into male and female.  The Ugly  man represents the human 
reason.  They were originally one man, who was fourfold; he was 
self-divided, and his real humanity slain on the
stems of generation, and the form of the fourth was like the Son 
of God.  How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity 
and pathos.  The Artist has written it under inspiration, and 
will, if God please, publish it; it is voluminous, and contains 
the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of 
Adam.
  In the mean time he has painted this Picture, which supposes
that in the reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth
century, there were remains of those naked Heroes, in the Welch
Mountains; they are there now, Gray saw them in the person of his
bard on Snowdon; there they dwell in naked simplicity; happy is
he who can see and converse with them above the shadows of
generation and death.  The giant Albion, was Patriarch of the
Atlantic, he is the Atlas of the Greeks, one of those the Greeks
called Titans.  The stories of Arthur are the acts of Albion,
applied to a Prince of the fifth century, who conquered
Europe, and held the Empire of the world in the dark age, which
the Romans never again recovered."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 544)
"The Beauty proper for sublime art, is lineaments, or
forms and features that are capable of being the receptacles of
intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful
man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty.  The face and limbs
that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old age, is the
face and limbs of greatest Beauty and perfection.
  The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed to
imbecility and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for
historical grandeur; the Artist has imagined his Ugly man; one 
approaching to the 
beast in features and form, his forehead small, without frontals; 
his jaws large; his nose high on the ridge, and narrow; his chest 
and the stamina of his make, comparatively little, and his joints 
and his extremities large; his eyes with scarce any whites, 
narrow and cunning, and every thing tending toward what is truly 
Ugly; the incapability of intellect.
  The Artist has considered his strong Man as a receptacle of
Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not
spindle out into length, without strength, nor are they too large
and unwieldy for his brain and bosom.  Strength consists in
accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from thence a
regular gradation and subordination; strength is compactness, not
extent nor bulk.
  The strong Man acts from conscious superiority, and marches
on in fearless dependance on the divine decrees, raging with the
inspirations of a prophetic mind.  The Beautiful Man acts
from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of those for whom
he combats.  The Ugly Man acts from love of carnage, and delight
in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive 
precipitation into the very teeth of the affrighted enemy."
  
Descriptive Catalogue, (E 545)
  "The Roman Soldiers rolled together in a heap before them:
'Like the rolling thing before the whirlwind;' each shew a
different character, and a different expression of fear, or
revenge, or envy, or blank horror, or amazement, or devout wonder
and unresisting awe.
  The dead and the dying, Britons naked, mingled with armed
Romans, strew the field beneath.  Among these, the last of the
Bards who were capable of attending warlike deeds, is seen
falling, outstretched among the dead and the dying; singing to
his harp in the pains of death.
  Distant among the mountains, are Druid Temples,
similar to Stone Hedge.  The Sun sets behind the mountains,
bloody with the day of battle."


Milton, Plate 5, (E 100)
"Thus they sing Creating the Three Classes among Druid Rocks    
Charles calls on Milton for Atonement. Cromwell is ready
James calls for fires in Golgonooza. for heaps of smoking ruins  
In the night of prosperity and wantonness which he himself Created
Among the Daughters of Albion among the Rocks of the Druids
When Satan fainted beneath the arrows of Elynittria
And Mathematic Proportion was subdued by Living Proportion"

Milton, Plate 6, (E 100)
"The Web of Life is woven: & the tender sinews of life created
And the Three Classes of Men regulated by Los's hammer.   
Plate 7
The first, The Elect from before the foundation of the World:  
The second, The Redeem'd. The Third, The Reprobate & form'd
To destruction from the mothers womb: follow with me my plow!  

Of the first class was Satan: with incomparable mildness;
His primitive tyrannical attempts on Los: with most endearing love" 

Milton, Plate 25 [27], (E 222)
"The Ancient Man upon the Rock of Albion Awakes,
He listens to the sounds of War astonishd & ashamed;
He sees his Children mock at Faith and deny Providence          
Therefore you must bind the Sheaves not by Nations or Families
You shall bind them in Three Classes; according to their Classes
So shall you bind them. Separating What has been Mixed
Since Men began to be Wove into Nations by Rahab & Tirzah
Since Albions Death & Satans Cutting-off from our awful Fields;  
When under pretence to benevolence the Elect Subdud All
From the Foundation of the World. The Elect is one Class: You
Shall bind them separate: they cannot Believe in Eternal Life
Except by Miracle & a New Birth. The other two Classes;
The Reprobate who never cease to Believe, and the Redeemd,       
Who live in doubts & fears perpetually tormented by the Elect
These you shall bind in a twin-bundle for the Consummation--
But the Elect must be saved [from] fires of Eternal Death,
To be formed into the Churches of Beulah that they destroy not the Earth
For in every Nation & every Family the Three Classes are born
And in every Species of Earth, Metal, Tree, Fish, Bird & Beast"

 

VIDEOS

               Wikipedia Commons

Illustrations to Poems of Thomas Gray

Jerusalem, Plate 34 [38], (E 179)
"but mild the Saviour follow'd him,    
Displaying the Eternal Vision! the Divine Similitude!
In loves and tears of brothers, sisters, sons, fathers, and friends
Which if Man ceases to behold, he ceases to exist:

Saying. Albion! Our wars are wars of life, & wounds of love,
With intellectual spears, & long winged arrows of thought:       
Mutual in one anothers love and wrath all renewing
We live as One Man; for contracting our infinite senses
We behold multitude; or expanding: we behold as one,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man
We call Jesus the Christ: and he in us, and we in him,        
Live in perfect harmony in Eden the land of life,
Giving, recieving, and forgiving each others trespasses."

Letters, To Thomas Butts, (E 722)
     "Los flamd in my path & the Sun was hot
     With the bows of my Mind & the Arrows of Thought
     My bowstring fierce with Ardour breathes
     My arrows glow in their golden sheaves"

Blake was an innovator, an inventor. It is satisfying to see that in our age innovators and inventors have turned to the tools that are now available in order to present Blake in ways which were unavailable in his contemporary world. In order to give a flavor of ways Blake's life and work is being reinvented, I have selected four videos from the many which are available on YouTube. For more information about the subject of the video, click on the link to a post which treats similar ideas.

---

POST 

Inner Reality

VIDEO

William Blake South Bank Show

________________

POST

Imaginative Art

VIDEO

Spiritual Visions

______________

POST

Palmer

VIDEO

Ancients

__________

POST
 

William Blake & Thomas Paine

This review is to prepare you for the nudity which is present in the film.

Review of In Lambeth

VIDEO

In Lambeth

OPEN THE DOOR

Wikipedia Commons
Book of Urizen
Copy G, Plate 26

When I asked Larry which of Blake's pictures he liked best he selected this one without an explanation. His response to the picture was not rational but emotional and intuitive. I can now give a rational explanation to his reaction to the image.

Larry saw through the image to those who stand outside of the closed door. The pleading child and the howling dog are on the outside without a way to get in. To Larry and to Blake this was the plight of humanity; the door is not closed because we are locked out of Eden but because we fail to open it. Built into the mind of man is his Divine Humanity but it is up to the conscious man to open the door or gate and invite the expression of his spirit into his expanded mind.

The poignancy of this image to me is that in adolescence when individuals are re-accessing the assumptions of their childhood, they may close the door to a perception of the internal vision of the Divine. Once the door is closed there has to be a decisive action to reopen it. If the mind of the individual has been turned over to the reasoning faculty exclusively, and the intuition and imagination have been stifled, there is little probability that the door to spiritual experience will be reopened. 

But all is not lost. Some become disillusioned with a one-sided dependence on reason through seeing its failure to provide a balanced way of living. Some are given an opening into a fuller life through a spontaneous awakening of the spirit. Some quietly find the lost piece from their childhood by continuing to seek for it in beauty, truth and love. As Pilgrim learned in Pilgrim's Progress we already possess the key, we needn't wait for someone to give it to us.

Milton Plate 2, (E 96)
"Come into my hand
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry

The Eternal Great Humanity Divine. planted his Paradise,
And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet forms
In likeness of himself. Tell also of the False Tongue! vegetated
Beneath your land of shadows: of its sacrifices. and
Its offerings; even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God
Became its prey; a curec, an offering, and an atonement,
For Death Eternal in the heavens of Albion, & before the Gates
Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the heavens beneath Beulah" 

Milton, Plate 10 [11], (E 104)
"The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs
Of Life till they become Finite & Itself seems Infinite.   

And Satan vibrated in the immensity of the Space! Limited
To those without but Infinite to those within: it fell down and
Became Canaan: closing Los from Eternity in Albions Cliffs     
A mighty Fiend against the Divine Humanity mustring to War"

Milton, Plate 13 [14], (E 107)
"The Bard replied. I am Inspired! I know it is Truth! for I Sing
Plate 14 [15]
According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius
Who is the eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity
To whom be Glory & Power & Dominion Evermore Amen"

Milton 30 [33], (E 129)
"But to
The Sons of Eden the moony habitations of Beulah,
Are from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant Rest.

And it is thus Created. Lo the Eternal Great Humanity            
To whom be Glory & Dominion Evermore Amen
Walks among all his awful Family seen in every face
As the breath of the Almighty. such are the words of man to man
In the great Wars of Eternity, in fury of Poetic Inspiration,
To build the Universe stupendous: Mental forms Creating"         

Jerusalem, Plate 19, (E 164)
"And Los was roofd in from Eternity in Albions Cliffs
Which stand upon the ends of Beulah, and withoutside, all
Appear'd a rocky form against the Divine Humanity.               

Albions Circumference was clos'd: his Center began darkning
Into the Night of Beulah, and the Moon of Beulah rose
Clouded with storms: Los his strong Guard walkd round beneath the Moon
And Albion fled inward among the currents of his rivers."  

Four Zoas, Night II, PAGE 36, (E 325) 
"To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filld with wine & with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter
     house moan
To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast           
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, & the sickness 
     that cuts off his children
While our olive & vine sing & laugh round our door & our children bring fruits & flowers

Then the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten & the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison, & the soldier in the field
When the shatterd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity
Thus could I sing & thus rejoice, but it is not so with me!"

Urizen, Plate 24, (E 81)
"4. He in darkness clos'd, view'd all his race,
And his soul sicken'd! he curs'd
Both sons & daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep                        
His iron laws one moment.

5. For he saw that life liv'd upon death
Plate 25
The Ox in the slaughter house moans
The Dog at the wintry door
And he wept, & he called it Pity
And his tears flowed down on the winds"

RECREATION OF THE WORD

Wikipedia Commons
Jerusalem
Plate 76

Hebrews 11
[1] Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[2] For by it the elders obtained a good report.
[3] Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

From Larry Clayton's Ram Horn'd with Gold, Chapter 6 - Bible  

The Recreation of the Word

       Having said all this how can we summarize Blake's relationship to the Bible? First we recall that he didn't read it literally but symbolically, not historically, but poetically. Then we remember that he read it often enough and intensively enough to see it as a whole. That's a rare view nowadays. The Book has been almost universally blackened by simple ignorance (the failure to read it) and by preconceived theological notions that color and predetermine all of its meanings.

      

Few people have the happy faculty of looking at what's there without preconceptions of one kind or another. Blake's freedom from the conditioning of formal education gave him a most singular ability to do this. His powerful and energetic reading of the Bible therefore offers us the priceless gift of a new beginning, of getting behind our preconceptions and seeing the bedrock of western life in a new way.

      

This new way is not really a new way, but a very old way; it's a way that was lost when two things happened inaugurating the modern age. First, Bacon, Newton and Locke convinced the intellectual world that spirit doesn't really matter; all that matters is matter. Second, knowledge exploded in such an expansion that it became inconceivable to encompass it.

      

Blake's new way is a medieval way, but it's a lost way that we desperately need today, for failing an organized unity of spiritual direction, we all sink together into the abyss. The Bible according to Blake provides that direction. If you can make a commitment to the Bible like his, intensive enough to read it thoroughly, if you can put away the black book, if you can learn to read it imaginatively instead of binding it down to literal-historical categories of time and space (which Blake called "single vision"), if you can do all of these things, what emerges is a myth of meaning, a way of understanding life-- the Hebrews' life and your life.

      

You find this myth of meaning most explicitly stated in the earliest adventures of the children of Israel: they fall into Egypt, at the Exodus are delivered, wander in the wilderness and eventually occupy the Promised Land--but faithlessly. You see this story recreated by every writer of the Bible and applied one by one to a series of local scenes occurring over a period of about a thousand years. You see a man named Jesus who deliberately sets out to live this myth, and to live it in full, to do completely what the successive preceding generations had always failed to do. You see his death and resurrection and promise to come again to achieve for us all what he had achieved as an individual (he in us and we in him).

      

Finally you see John on Patmos still waiting for the Return and recreating the whole thing one more time in terms of the struggle between the Beast of Rome and the New Jerusalem. But is that the end of the story? For Blake it went on. In the City of God Augustine recreated it for the fourth century. There was Dante's recreation in the 13th, Milton's in the 17th, Blake's in the 18th--and yours and mine today! It's our myth of meaning; it's the way we get from time to eternity. Otherwise we stick with Locke, we decide there is no eternity, and we rot!

 

---

Milton, Plate 25 [27], (E 122)

"The Awakener is come. outstretchd over Europe! the Vision of God is fulfilled
The Ancient Man upon the Rock of Albion Awakes,
He listens to the sounds of War astonishd & ashamed;
He sees his Children mock at Faith and deny Providence          
Therefore you must bind the Sheaves not by Nations or Families
You shall bind them in Three Classes; according to their Classes
So shall you bind them. Separating What has been Mixed
Since Men began to be Wove into Nations by Rahab & Tirzah
Since Albions Death & Satans Cutting-off from our awful Fields;  
When under pretence to benevolence the Elect Subdud All
From the Foundation of the World. The Elect is one Class: You
Shall bind them separate: they cannot Believe in Eternal Life
Except by Miracle & a New Birth. The other two Classes;
The Reprobate who never cease to Believe, and the Redeemd,       
Who live in doubts & fears perpetually tormented by the Elect
These you shall bind in a twin-bundle for the Consummation--
But the Elect must be saved [from] fires of Eternal Death,
To be formed into the Churches of Beulah that they destroy not the Earth
For in every Nation & every Family the Three Classes are born"    

Milton, Plate 22 [24], (E 118)
"But then I rais'd up Whitefield, Palamabron raisd up Westley,    
And these are the cries of the Churches before the two Witnesses
Faith in God the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:
Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross
The Witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City
No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden under Foot:       
He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Westley; were they Prophets
Or were they Idiots or Madmen? shew us Miracles!
PLATE 23 [25]
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their lifes whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death
Awake thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity Albion awake"

Milton, Plate 41 [48], (E 142)
"He smiles with condescension; he talks of Benevolence & Virtue
And those who act with Benevolence & Virtue, they murder time on time
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: & now shall wholly purge away with Fire
Till Generation is swallowd up in Regeneration."

---

From The Double Vision, by Northrop Frye,

 "What 'the' truth is, is not available to human beings in spiritual matters: the goal of our spiritual life is God, who is spiritual Other, not a spiritual object, much less a conceptual object. That is why the Gospels keep reminding us how many listen and how few hear: the truth of the gospel kind cannot be demonstrated except through personal example. As the seventeenth-century Quaker Isaac Penington said every truth is substantial in its own place, but all truths are shadows except the last. The language which lifts us clear of the merely plausible and the merely credible is the language of the spirit; the language of the spirit is, Paul tells us, the language of love, and the language of love is the only language that we can be sure is spoken and understood by God." (Page 20)

 

 

JOB & JERUSALEM

Illustrations to the Book of Job

Linnell Set
Image 17

Now my Eye seeth thee

Job 42
[1] Then Job answered the LORD, and said,
[2] I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.
[3] Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
[4] Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
[5] I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
[6] Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. 

 

From Larry Clayton's Ram Horn'd with Gold, Chapter 6 - Bible 

Job and Jerusalem

       If Ezekiel and Revelation are the most symbolic books of the Bible, Job is the most poetic and indirect. It's significance lies not in its theological statements, but in the questions it raises. The primary question is how or why does a good and all powerful God permit untold suffering to his most faithful servant. The gospel of course provides the definitive answer, but an answer grasped and accepted only by those committed to it as final truth.

      

The modern prophet, C.G.Jung, in his Answer to Job, made some comments about God (the Hebrew God consciousness) very reminiscent of those which fill Blake's earlier prophecies. By the time Blake got around to his recreation of Job he had less interest in commenting on God than in retelling the old, old story. Job, the most indirect book of the Bible, proved an ideal vehicle for this, Blake's last and plainest statement of the truth of his life.

      

The biblical Job is presented as a good man whom God allows the devil to torment. Blake presents him as a moral but self-centered and self-righteous man. He prays for his children, but what about other people's children? Is he praying for God to favor his children over others? In no uncertain terms, writing in another work, Blake let us know what he thought of that kind of goodness:

"It this thy soft Family-Love, Thy cruel Patriarchal pride, Planting thy Family alone, Destroying all the World beside?"       (Jerusalem, 27.79; Erdman 173)

      

The point is that it's okay to pray for your children, but be careful how you pray for them. If your prayer for them to be first amounts to a curse on their fellows--to be second or last--that curse will fall upon your children's heads, just as it did upon Job's. Job's self-centered prayers and his left handed charity (See Plate 5 of the Job series) won him no reward but in fact delivered him into the hands of his Selfhood (Satan).

    

Good Christians take warning: Blake's Job is the same rich man Jesus spoke about, and he fills the pews (and too often the pulpit) of our churches. Here once again, in the twilight of his life, we find Blake dissenting from conventional religion, but now, unlike some of his youthful protests, his dissent completely agrees with the earlier dissent of the Prophet of Galilee: "Many that are first shall be last."

So much of our goodness is rotten; let's face it. The image of the boil ridden man haunted Blake and appears frequently in his prophecies. In his hands it became a vivid symbol of the general fallenness of man. Job's boils represent the physical misery of the fallen state of nature. Blake's Job, like the O.T. Job, represents Man. His adventures are a paradigm of the destiny of Man: he falls, but he is redeemed.

      

The importance of Job for the biblical writer as well as for our poet is to make us poignantly aware once again that we're not okay until we have experienced grace. Job's goodness got him nowhere, but his faith opened him to redemption.

     

Now look at Job's God; he resembles Job. Once again Blake reminds us that man's God is an image, a construct of his mind. In the beginning Job saw God as a solid moralist like himself. In the dark night his God turned bad, but in the end gave way to a new and better image. The whole thing foreshadows Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.

      

If we could learn that our experience of God comes only through our image of him, then we would be less prone to attempt (wickedly) to impose our God on others. Then we might experience a loving rather than a coercive God, and the others, not feeling compelled, might be attracted, like Job's friends are in the end. Blake's Job is a beautiful series of pictures, a perfect wedding of exquisite art and lofty faith, Blake at his plainest and best.

  In 'Jerusalem', his most mature poem, Blake's basic technique is to superimpose bodily the biblical scene, the biblical story, the biblical truth upon the history and geography of England, and of the rest of the world as well. Understood in its literal sense 'Jerusalem', like the book of Revelation, is grotesque in the extreme. The reader will turn away in despair or derision unless he succeeds in going beyond the literal meaning and learns to see through rather than with the eye.

      

In reality the biblical truth is just as relevant to 18th Century England as it is to first century (or any century) Palestine. The same spiritual events continue to unfold today that Ezekiel, John and the others saw and described in their day. The same choices are to be made by 18th Century Britons (or 20th Century Americans!) as were made by first (or any) century Palestinians, and these choices have the same consequences. Truth is spiritual and timeless; the passing scene is only a shadow of the eternal reality.

Blake's grotesque juxtaposition of Canaan with England may conceivably shock the reader into an understanding of these profound truths. When this happens, the Bible suddenly takes on new and gripping significance. It's no longer about all those events way back in the past; it's about the stories unfolded in this morning's newspaper. Blake's ability to live in the eternal, his visionary capability enabled him to see with vivid clarity the immediate relevance of scripture--personally, socially, and politically.

      

His young friends called him Interpreter because he taught them to see it also. If we read his work with aroused and concentrated attention, we, too, may see how scripture relates to us--with immeasurable enrichment to our spirits.

Jerusalem, Plate 70, (E 224) 
"The Starry Heavens all were fled from the mighty limbs of Albion
PLATE 71
And above Albions Land was seen the Heavenly Canaan
As the Substance is to the Shadow: and above Albions Twelve Sons
Were seen Jerusalems Sons: and all the Twelve Tribes spreading
Over Albion. As the Soul is to the Body, so Jerusalems Sons,
Are to the Sons of Albion: and Jerusalem is Albions Emanation"    

Jerusalem, Plate 84, (E 343)
"Thus sang the Daughters in lamentation, uniting into One
With Rahab as she turnd the iron Spindle of destruction.    
Terrified at the Sons of Albion they took the Falshood which
Gwendolen hid in her left hand. it grew &, grew till it
PLATE 85
Became a Space & an Allegory around the Winding Worm
They namd it Canaan & built for it a tender Moon
Los smild with joy thinking on Enitharmon & he brought
Reuben from his twelvefold wandrings & led him into it
Planting the Seeds of the Twelve Tribes & Moses & David
And gave a Time & Revolution to the Space Six Thousand Years
He calld it Divine Analogy, for in Beulah the Feminine
Emanations Create Space. the Masculine Create Time, & plant
The Seeds of beauty in the Space: listning to their lamentation"

Jerusalem, Plate 91, (E 252)
"So Los terrified cries: trembling & weeping & howling! Beholding 
PLATE 92           
What do I see? The Briton Saxon Roman Norman amalgamating
In my Furnaces into One Nation the English: & taking refuge
In the Loins of Albion. The Canaanite united with the fugitive
Hebrew, whom she divided into Twelve, & sold into Egypt
Then scatterd the Egyptian & Hebrew to the four Winds!       
This sinful Nation Created in our Furnaces & Looms is Albion

So Los spoke."

Annotations to Watson, (E 614)
"There is a vast difference between an accident brought
on by a mans own carelessness & a destruction from the designs of
another.  The Earthquakes
at Lisbon &c were the Natural result of Sin.  but the destruction
of the Canaanites by Joshua was the Unnatural design of wicked
men   To Extirpate a nation by means of another nation is as
wicked as to destroy an individual by means of another individual
which God considers (in the Bible) as Murder & commands that it
shall not be done" 

BOOK OF REVELATION

Wikipedia Commons
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun

Revelation 12 

[1] And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

[2] And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
[3] And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
[4] And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
[5] And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
[6] And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
[7] And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
[8] And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
[9] And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

From Larry Clayton's Ram Horn'd with Gold, Chapter 6 - Bible - Revelation.

       To understand the last book of the Bible the reader must have achieved a certain level of consciousness. He must have at least a rudimentary grasp of the eternal and a certain feel for symbols, especially those metaphors of time and space that point to eternal truth. Without this equipment the Apocalypse is commonly read either as a grotesque phantasmagoria or as a convenient coat-rack upon which to hang a fabric of theological inanity.

       John of Patmos, the writer of the Apocalypse, had been a bishop of the Church, a man of authority, a man of action, a man who had committed himself with a whole heart to actualizing the ideals of Jesus of Nazareth. John had seen his religious program overwhelmed by a heartless political structure, his congregation scattered, and himself exiled to a small island where he had little to do but reflect upon the past and gaze into the future.

       In his reflections John was informed by an intimate knowledge of scripture. The vivid images of the Hebrew writers ignited his imagination. They took the place of the people and events which had formerly filled his mind. The seven eyes of God, the plagues, the beasts from the sea and from the land, the harlot, the Lamb, the bride, the new heaven and the new earth-- all these and many more of John's images originate in various books of the Old Testament.

       Northrup Frye referred to Revelation as "a dense mosaic of allusions and quotations" from the Bible. The Apocalypse is an imaginative recreation of the entire Hebrew religious consciousness in an epic that carries us to the end of time and the return of man to the golden age.

       Blake attempted to do the same thing with the English religious consciousness, which explains why Revelation meant so much to him. His epic can just as rightly be called a "dense mosaic of allusions and quotations" from the Bible. In particular he seized upon John's images and combined them into the stuff of his prophetic poems.

       When Christ ascended into Heaven, he left his disciples with the expectation that he would soon return (See John 21:22). The writer of Revelation had lived through the years when this hope was increasingly deferred. It became more and more apparent that the return of Jesus was not within the time frame of their original expectations. John outlived his associates, and he differed from the other New Testament writers in that he was forced to look beyond the immediate events and their immediately expected outcome.

       He was forced to look into a more complex future. The rigor of this necessity freed him from the limited time frame that characterizes most of the New Testament. He knew the Old Testament truth that "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday". He of all the writers of the New Testament had been most significantly disappointed in his temporal hopes and forced to lift his mind from time to the eternal. That's why his is the most symbolic book, and that's why it most appealed to Blake.

       Blake used all of the symbols we have just noted and many others as well. He had brooded over these images for a life time, and they were fraught with meaning to him. They conveyed to him not only John's meanings but the original meanings of the O.T. writers from whom John had borrowed them, plus untold accretions of additional meanings acquired in the two millennia since.

       It's doubtful that John's images mean to anyone today exactly what they meant to him. That's the nature of the symbols of eternity: their temporal meanings change with the times. Our religious consciousness changes with the times; even our images of God change with the times--not just in the historical frame but in the personal frame of a man's lifetime.

       Blake took the images of Revelation--and of the rest of the Bible as well--and recreated them so as to express the evolving spiritual consciousness of his day, and ours. The images link us to our heritage, the consciousness evolves, the Spirit is timeless.

       Two of the primary images of Revelation are the "the Woman Clothed with the Sun" and the "great whore that sitteth upon many waters".  Much of the interest of John's epic lies in the conflict between these two women; they respectively represent spiritual Jerusalem and spiritual Rome. The first woman is driven into the wilderness by the Great Red Dragon; the Whore sits upon his back. But in due time the Whore is burned (much to the satisfaction of the faithful) while the other woman becomes the Bride of the Lamb.

       A minimal knowledge of this symbolism prepares one to appreciate Blake's use of the same images to tell the same story. 'The Four Zoas' was first called 'Vala': she is the woman with whom Blake began, and she originally included both of John's women. But the Moment of Grace released in Blake the vision of Jerusalem, and the long poem bearing her name recounts her suffering at the hands of the other, who gradually evolves into the Whore.

       Like John's woman clothed with the sun Jerusalem is driven into the wilderness and continually oppressed and afflicted by the forces of the Beast and the Whore. Vala, eventually manifested as Rahab, is finally burned; the scene in The Four Zoas at the end of Night viii, contains one of Blake's most explicit and extended quotations from Revelation.

   Here as in all of Blake's work he takes the biblical material, and while remaining largely faithful to its accidents, shows us new essence. Part of the final essence of Jerusalem is that her name is Liberty (Jerusalem plate 26), another manifestation of Blake's most vital lesson for us.

Four Zoas, Night VIII, PAGE 115 [111], (E 386)
"Rahab triumphs over all she took Jerusalem
Captive A Willing Captive by delusive arts impelld

To worship Urizens Dragon form to offer her own Children
Upon the bloody Altar. John Saw these things Reveald in Heaven
On Patmos Isle & heard the Souls cry out to be deliverd 
He saw the Harlot of the Kings of Earth & saw her Cup
Of fornication food of Orc & Satan pressd from the fruit of Mystery
But when she saw the form of Ahania weeping on the Void
And heard Enions voice sound from the caverns of the Grave
No more spirit remained in her She secretly left the Synagogue of Satan
She commund with Orc in secret She hid him with the flax
That Enitharmon had numberd away from the Heavens  
She gatherd it together to consume her Harlot Robes    
In bitterest Contrition sometimes Self condemning repentant
And Sometimes kissing her Robes & jewels & weeping over them 
Sometimes returning to the Synagogue of Satan in Pride
And Sometimes weeping before Orc in humility & trembling
The Synagogue of Satan therefore uniting against Mystery
Satan divided against Satan resolvd in open Sanhedrim
To burn Mystery with fire & form another from her ashes 
For God put it into their heart to fulfill all his will

The Ashes of Mystery began to animate they calld it Deism
And Natural Religion as of old so now anew began
Babylon again in Infancy Calld Natural Religion"

Milton, Plate 37[41], (E 138)
"Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine
Luther, these seven are the Male-Females, the Dragon Forms
Religion hid in War, a Dragon red & hidden Harlot

All these are seen in Miltons Shadow who is the Covering Cherub
The Spectre of Albion in which the Spectre of Luvah inhabits     
In the Newtonian Voids between the Substances of Creation"
Jerusalem, Plate 53, (E 203)
"But the Spectre like a hoar frost & a Mildew rose over Albion    
Saying, I am God O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!
Am I not Bacon & Newton & Locke who teach Humility to Man!
Who teach Doubt & Experiment & my two Wings Voltaire: Rousseau.
Where is that Friend of Sinners! that Rebel against my Laws!
Who teaches Belief to the Nations, & an unknown Eternal Life     
Come hither into the Desart & turn these stones to bread.
Vain foolish Man! wilt thou believe without Experiment?
And build a World of Phantasy upon my Great Abyss!
A World of Shapes in craving Lust & devouring appetite

So spoke the hard cold constrictive Spectre he is named Arthur   
Constricting into Druid Rocks round Canaan Agag & Aram & Pharoh

Then Albion drew England into his bosom in groans & tears
But she stretchd out her starry Night in Spaces against him. like
A long Serpent, in the Abyss of the Spectre which augmented
The Night with Dragon wings coverd with stars & in the Wings     
Jerusalem & Vala appeard: & above between the Wings magnificent
The Divine Vision dimly appeard in clouds of blood weeping."

Jerusalem, Plate 93. (E 253)
 "Then Los again took up his speech as Enitharmon ceast

Fear not my Sons this Waking Death. he is become One with me
Behold him here! We shall not Die! we shall be united in Jesus.
Will you suffer this Satan this Body of Doubt that Seems but Is Not 
To occupy the very threshold of Eternal Life. if Bacon, Newton, Locke,
Deny a Conscience in Man & the Communion of Saints & Angels
Contemning the Divine Vision & Fruition, Worshiping the Deus
Of the Heathen, The God of This World, & the Goddess Nature
Mystery Babylon the Great, The Druid Dragon & hidden Harlot    
Is it not that Signal of the Morning which was told us in the Beginning

Thus they converse upon Mam-Tor. the Graves thunder under their feet"

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE LAST JUDGMENT, To Ozias Humphry, (E 552)
 "Beneath Earth is convulsed with the labours
of the Resurrection--in the Caverns of the Earth is the Dragon
with Seven heads & ten Horns chained by two Angels & above his
Cavern on the Earths Surface is the Harlot siezed & bound by
two Angels with chains while her Palaces are falling
into ruins & her councellors & warriors are
descending into the Abyss in wailing & despair
     Hell opens beneath the Harlots seat on the left hand into
which the Wicked are descending [while others rise from their
Craves on the brink of the Pit]
     The right hand of the Design is appropriated to the
Resurrection of the Just the left hand of the Design is
appropriated to the Resurrection & Fall of the Wicked"

 

FROM BEYOND

British Museum

Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

From Larry Clayton's Ram Horn'd with Gold, Chapter 5 - God. Here is a description of Jesus as the mature Blake envisioned him.

But the fourth feature of Jesus came into Blake's consciousness as a new experience. It came from Beyond. That is to say it was not an inward expression of Blake's psyche; it came like the Son of God who had joined the three friends in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. It wasn't something he thought of; it was something that happened to him.

Daniel 3
[19] Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego: therefore he spake, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was wont to be heated.
[20] And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
[21] Then these men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.
[22] Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.
[23] And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.
[24] Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellers, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.
[25] He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.
[26] Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, came forth of the midst of the fire.
[27] And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellers, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.
[28] Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.

It was the experience of forgiveness and self-annihilation, which are two sides of the same coin. No one forgives until he has found the grace to annihilate at least momentarily the law bound accusing Spectre which is his Selfhood. And this is only possible as an act of the Imagination, which is Eternal, which is Christ. Whenever you successfully annihilate your old self to the point of truly forgiving another, the eternal Christ is alive and at work in your soul. In fact it is he who does it. He is in you, and you are in him; that's Eternal life.

Reduced to its barest essential that's what Jesus finally came to mean for Blake. The only unique thing about the man of Nazareth was that he taught forgiveness of one's enemies. In this sense he incarnated God. God is love, is forgiveness. "If Morality was Christianity, Socrates was the Saviour." Unlike Socrates Jesus was a man in whom God dwelt through his vision and his acts of forgiveness.

The significance of the resurrection lies in the coming to life of Forgiveness, Jesus, in you and me. In this way we defeat death.

Everlasting Gospel, from Notebook, (E 875)

"There is not one Moral Virtue that Jesus Inculcated but Plato
  and Cicero did Inculcate before him; what then did Christ
  Inculcate?  Forgiveness of Sins.  This alone is the Gospel,
  and this is the Life and Immortality brought to light by Jesus,
  Even the Covenant of Jehovah, which is This:  If you forgive
  one another your Trespasses, so shall Jehovah forgive you,
  That he himself may dwell among you; but if you Avenge, you
  Murder the Divine Image, and he cannot dwell among you; because
  you Murder him he arises again, and you deny that he is Arisen,
  and are blind to Spirit."
 

       It's quite a trick (or gift) to go from time to eternity.

---

Colossians 1

[25] Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God;
[26] Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints:
[27] To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

John 14

[26] But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

John 17
[1] These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:
[2] As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
[3] And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

---

Letters, To Butts, 1804, (E 757)
"I speak with
perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which has passed
upon me.  Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him; I have
had twenty; thank God I was not altogether a beast as he was; but
I was a slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils; these
beasts and these devils are now, together with myself, become
children of light and liberty, and my feet and my wife's feet are
free from fetters."

Jerusalem, Plate 27, (E 173)
 "He witherd up the Human Form,
By laws of sacrifice for sin:
  Till it became a Mortal Worm:    
But O! translucent all within.

  The Divine Vision still was seen
Still was the Human Form, Divine
  Weeping in weak & mortal clay
O Jesus still the Form was thine.      

  And thine the Human Face & thine
The Human Hands & Feet & Breath
  Entering thro' the Gates of Birth
And passing thro' the Gates of Death

  And O thou Lamb of God, whom I    
Slew in my dark self-righteous pride:
  Art thou return'd to Albions Land!
And is Jerusalem thy Bride?

  Come to my arms & never more
Depart; but dwell for ever here:         
  Create my Spirit to thy Love:
Subdue my Spectre to thy Fear,

  Spectre of Albion! warlike Fiend!
In clouds of blood & ruin roll'd:
  I here reclaim thee as my own         
My Selfhood! Satan! armd in gold."

LAW & GRACE

                  British Museum          Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

2nd Corinthians 3
[15] But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
[16] Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
[17] Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
[18] But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

From Larry Clayton's Ram Horn'd with Gold, Chapter 5 - God.

iiia

As soon as people attempt to frame Christianity within rules and fit it into a prescribed law and order, it stops being Christianity. There is a general failure to understand that Christians are handed over to the Holy Ghost.... Where God's Spirit is, there freedom must be; there Moses must keep silent, all laws withdraw, and let no one be so bold as to prescribe law, rules, order, goals, and measures to the Holy Ghost, nor attempt to reach, govern, and lead those who belong to him.

       All his life Blake had an implacable hatred of law, which he equated with coercion or hindering of others; to him that was the only sin. Consequently Blake's Jesus was a thorough going antinomian. Perhaps his most extreme expression of this occurs in MHH, written before his conversion:

"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."
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 23, (E 43)

That's the proud, tongue in cheek, announcement of a young man not yet marked by the suffering of life. As he matured, his language became more moderate, but his attitude remained substantially the same. Blake hates the law, and his Jesus forgives the lawbreaker. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

       Law is an expression of authority. Life presents to us two kinds of authority: spiritual authority or God and political authority, his worldly shadow. Blake consumed his early years in rebellion against the shadow. Then at age 43 he met God and was able to submit to and affirm the true authority.

       Some means of coercion characterizes all forms of political authority; ecclesiastical authority is no exception. Blake temperamentally renounced all forms of political authority; he felt that they were satanic, based on coercion and fear and earthly power. Political authority is the authority of this world, and he had no use for it.

       In contrast spiritual authority as Blake experienced it is the exercise of the purest form of love with an absence of any sort of constraint. The release from constraint by the active good will calls forth the Divine Image from the dark sepulcher or cave of corporeal life. Blake had uniquely experienced this spiritual authority as a child; he rediscovered it in the experience which he understood as Self-annihilation or Forgiveness.

       Henceforth for him this was the basic and intimate character and quality of Jesus. This was the good news. In 'Milton' the old antinomian made his commitment to the law of self giving love, referring to it as the "Universal Dictate". A free Blakean translation of John 3.16 with a touch of Philippians 2 added might read: God so forgave the world that he annihilated his transcendent Deity and united himself through a corporeal sepulcher with sinful, materialistic man to lift us up to Eternity. Here is the ultimate of spiritual authority, and those who meet Jesus begin to exercise it in the way that he did.

       Although Blake did not often use the conventional Christian symbolism of the cross, after his conversion he did believe from the depths that by dying for one another we live eternally:

Jerusalem, Plate 96, E 256)

"Jesus said. Wouldest thou love one who never died 

For thee or ever die for one who had not died for thee 

And if God dieth not for Man & giveth not himself 

Eternally for Man Man could not exist. for Man is Love: 

As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death 

In the Divine Image nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood"

Freedom from materialism and from the law are the philosophic and moral coloring which Blake gave to his portrait of Jesus the One. In this way he accommodated his new vision of God to his existing value structure.

Four Zoas, Night VIII, PAGE 104, (E 377)
"We now behold the Ends of Beulah & we now behold
Where Death Eternal is put off Eternally
Assume the dark Satanic body in the Virgins womb
O Lamb divine it cannot thee annoy O pitying one
Thy pity is from the foundation of the World & thy Redemption
Begun Already in Eternity   Come then O Lamb of God   
Come Lord Jesus come quickly

So sang they in Eternity looking down into Beulah."