Genesis 2
[21] So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the
man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place
with flesh;
[22] and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he
made into a woman and brought her to the man.
[23] Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones ad
flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken
out of Man."
Genesis 3
[2] And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the
fruit of the trees of the garden;
[3] but God said, `You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree
which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it,
lest you die.'"
[4] But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die.
[5] For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be
opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
[6] So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she
also gave some to her husband, and he ate.
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| Wikipedia Commons Large Color Printed Paintings Satan Exaulting Over Eve |
The name Satan does not appear in the book of Genesis. Eve's tempter
is the serpent. We owe to Milton's Paradise Lost much of the
imagery involving Satan in the Fall. Satan is rarely mentioned in
the Old Testament outside of the book of Job where he is assigned by
God the role of testing Job.
In Blake's picture Satan Exaulting Over Eve we see Eve lying
prone with Satan in the air above her. Satan is the active figure,
armed with spear and shield, held aloft by powerful wings,
surrounded by energetic flames. Eve lies sleeping with the fruit in
her hand and the serpent twining her body.
To Blake the two phases of man's consciousness, the active and
passive, are balanced in the unified man. When man, through
Creation, is divided from the unifying principle which is God, he
undergoes a further division which can be expressed as various
contraries, one of which is active and passive. The passive becomes
the female or emanation or outer expression. The creation of Eve
implies that the Fall has already been initiated because man has
been divided from his emanation.
Although we may have been taught that the Fall was an event in which
Eve ate the forbidden fruit, Blake sees the Fall as the accumulation
of actions which draw man farther from the unity which he experienced
in Eternity.
Damon states in A Blake Dictionary that: "the division of
the Emanation from the Individual is a split in the personality, a
stage in the Fall of Man, symbolized in Genesis by the extraction of
Eve from the side of sleeping Adam...
The separated Emanation takes the female form, an event which
horrifies the Eternals. Man is left 'a dark Spectre', of perhaps
only in his Spectre's power. Worse yet, the Emanation acquires a
will of her own, which by definition is turned against her consort."
(Page 121)
Spectre of Urthona
speaks to Shade of Enitharmon:
Four Zoas, Night VII, Page
84, (E 359)
"This thou well rememberest listen
I will tell
What thou forgettest. They in us
& we in them alternate Livd
Drinking the joys of Universal
Manhood. One dread morn
Listen O vision of Delight One
dread morn of goary blood
The manhood was divided for the
gentle passions making way
Thro the infinite labyrinths of
the heart & thro the nostrils issuing
In odorous stupefaction stood
before the Eyes of Man
A female bright. I stood beside my
anvil dark a mass
Of iron glowd bright prepard for
spades & plowshares. sudden down
I sunk with cries of blood issuing
downward in the veins
Which now my rivers were become
rolling in tubelike forms
Shut up within themselves
descending down I sunk along,
The goary tide even to the place
of seed & there dividing
I was divided in darkness &
oblivion thou an infant woe
And I an infant terror in the womb
of Enion
My masculine spirit scorning the
frail body issud forth
From Enions brain In this deformed
form leaving thee there
Till times passd over thee but
still my spirit returning hoverd
And formd a Male to be a
counterpart to thee O Love
Darkend & Lost In due time
issuing forth from Enions womb
Thou & that demon Los wert
born Ah jealousy & woe
Ah poor divided dark Urthona now a
Spectre wandering
The deeps of Los the Slave of that
Creation I created
I labour night & day for Los
but listen thou my vision
I view futurity in thee I will
bring down soft Vala
To the embraces of this terror
& I will destroy
That body I created then shall we
unite again in bliss"
.
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