Sex as Symbol 2

  The Two Women

       When Blake began to work on his epic myth, he intended to focus upon the wicked career of Vala, but as time went by, he became more interested in the Zoas, which no doubt helped to relieve the anti-feminine bent of his metaphysics. Vala temporarily sank to the level of a minor character, and Blake laid most of the guilt for man's sorry state upon Urizen. The Moment of Grace brought another significant change: Vala fumed into two females, Rahab and Jerusalem, both of whom issue from Enitharmon.

       When Blake gave Rahab the alternate name of Babylon, he came into conformance with the basic symbology of the Bible. Throughout the scripture we read about these two women/cities. Jerusalem is at least potentially the city of God, while Babylon always represents the seat of the God of this World. In his last epic Blake's Vala has become virtually interchangeable with Babylon.

       We have already noted the biblical sources of Blake's two symbolic women in the 12th and 17th chapters of Revelation. In the first of these John sees a woman "clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet". In the second he described "the great whore that sitteth upon many waters". These two women in the Bible aptly prefigure Blake's Jerusalem and Vala, and a careful study of the two chapters will help the reader to shape in his own mind the identity of Blake's two characters.

       John and Blake both drew their paired women from earlier sources. Frye calls them "royal metaphors" for the twin totalities of good and evil, of redemption and damnation that fill the pages of the Bible. The Tower of Babel, the first city of sin, led to the confusion of tongues. Following God's command Abraham, the father of the Hebrews, left Ur, a few miles from Babylon and eventually settled in the Promised Land. The first Captivity occurred in Egypt, which later biblical literature often treats as synonymous with Babylon. The second Captivity took place at Babylon. A later captivity was to Rome, which John the Apocalyptist called Babylon: in Revelation he celebrated the burning of the Whore of Babylon.

       Meanwhile Melchizidek, King of Salem and priest of the Most High God, had blessed Abraham. Some centuries later David established Jerusalem as his capital. The Song of Solomon is a poem and love song about a king and his bride. This theme became a primary symbol of the relation between Jerusalem, representing the Chosen People, and God. The prophets constantly referred to Jerusalem as a woman, married to God, but too often faithless, whoring after other gods. Hosea's stories about the love of the betrayed husband for his faithless wife, Gomer, poetically express the highest level of the Hebrew consciousness of God. On occasion the prophets became so enraged that they identified Jerusalem with Babylon. For example John spoke of "the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified".

       This biblical background prepares us to cope with the woman found in Blake's poem, Jerusalem . As we have seen, in the poetry of the first half of Blake's life the woman is sinister. She represents the material; the material is unworthy, reprehensible, satanic. This is the typical Gnostic position and to a lesser extent the Neo-platonic position. Blake stated it very explicitly and with his usual hyperbole in 'Visions of the Last Judgment' (E 565) (See also the image): "I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance and not Action; it is as the Dirt upon my feet. No part of Me."

       He wrote that as late as 1810. Nevertheless after the Moment of Grace Blake's perspective on matter (and Woman!) softened. At first there had been only the sinister woman, but now the Woman of Grace appeared as well.

       In the poem, Jerusalem, we find a discourse and a conflict between these two women. Vala speaks for the kingdom of Satan, and Jerusalem speaks for the kingdom of Heaven. Their interaction dominates the poem and must fascinate anyone interested in those two subjects. The epic is a straightforward conflict between light and darkness as Blake understood those two realities. Vala wins most of the battles, but we always know who must win the war.

       Blake describes reality imaginatively and dramatically in terms of ultimate value; this is basically an expression of faith. If one believes in the higher values: in spirit, in truth, in justice and love, then one imagines these things ultimately victorious. Blake did, and he concluded the passage from VLJ quoted above: "What, it will be Question'd, 'When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?' 0 no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying 'Holy, holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.'" In Blake's final epic Vala represents the guinea sun and Jerusalem the "innumerable company of the Heavenly host". Needless to say those who see only the guinea sun will not be attracted to the poem.

vi

'Jerusalem'

       At the very beginning of Blake's poem, Jerusalem, he makes us fully aware that the new woman represents something entirely other than the disreputable matter of earlier writing. She is just the opposite; she is Spirit or rather the manifestation of Spirit in this world. The Saviour confronts the sleeping Albion and identifies his disease, "where hast thou hidden thy Emanation, lovely Jerusalem". But the "perturbed Man" denies Christ and denies Jerusalem: "Jerusalem is not! her daughters are indefinite: By demonstration man alone can live, and not by faith." A few lines further the poet announces that

Jerusalem is scatter'd abroad like a cloud of smoke thro' nonentity.
Moab & Ammon & Amalek & Canaan & Egypt & Aram
Receive her little ones for sacrifices and the delights of cruelty.

       The place names represent the six heathen nations or the powers of evil that surround the Chosen People. The import of all this in another biblical phrase is that "He who departs from evil makes himself a prey".

       Very shortly we meet the Daughters of Albion; they represent the feminine dimension of the materialistic impulses of Man: "Names anciently remember'd, but now contemn'd as fictions. Although in every bosom they controll our Vegetative powers". Eventually a redemptive moment occurs when, Los having subdued and integrated his Spectre, his Sons and Daughters "come forth from the Furnaces". Erin, like America a symbol of redemption, addresses Jerusalem:

Vala is but thy Shadow, 0 thou loveliest among women!
A shadow animated by thy tears, 0 mournful Jerusalem!
Why wilt thou give to her a Body whose life is but a Shade?
Her joy and love, a shade, a shade of sweet repose:
But animated and vegetated she is a devouring Worm.
What shall we do for thee, 0 lovely mild Jerusalem?

       The fallen Sons of Albion express the opposite viewpoint. In Plate 18, in a prophetic statement worthy of Isaiah in its irony, the twelve Sons of Albion describe explicitly and in detail their relationship to Jerusalem and to Vala:

Cast, Cast ye Jerusalem forth! The Shadow of delusions!
The Harlot daughter! Mother of pity and dishonourable forgiveness!
Our Father Albion's sin and shame! But father now no more,
Nor sons, nor hateful peace & love, nor soft complacencies,
With transgressors meeting in brotherhood around the table
Or in the porch or garden. No more the sinful delights
Of age and youth, and boy and girl, and animal and herb,
And river and mountain, and city & village, and house and family,
Beneath the Oak and Palm, beneath the Vine and fig tree,
In Self-denial!--But War and deadly contention Between
Father and Son, and light and love! All bold asperities
Of Haters met in deadly strife, rending the house & garden
The unforgiving porches, the tables of enmity, and beds
And chambers of trembling & suspicion, hatreds of age & youth,
And boy & girl, & animal & herb, & river & mountain,
And city & village, and house & family, That the Perfect
May live in glory, redeem'd by Sacrifice of the Lamb
And of his children before sinful Jerusalem. To build
Babylon the City of Vala, the Goddess Virgin-Mother.
She is our Mother! Nature! Jerusalem is our Harlot-Sister
Return'd with Children of pollution to defile our House
With Sin and Shame. Cast, Cast her into the Potter's field!
Her little ones She must slay upon our Altars, and her aged
Parents must be carried into captivity: to redeem her Soul,
To be for a Shame & a Curse, and to be our Slaves for ever.

       In an extended passage too long to quote here Blake gives a colloquy with the fainting, confused Albion and the two females competing for his heart. It's actually a recreation of the earlier colloquy in VDA, and infinitely richer and fuller. Albion wavers exactly like Theotormon; Vala, like Bromion, is implacably blind, and Jerusalem has the eloquence of the earlier heroine. In this scene, like the earlier one, Blake describes the eternal battle between faith and worldliness.

       Look also at the passage on Plates 32-34 and remember that Albion, Vala and Los each speaks from his own viewpoint. To understand Blake's vision the reader must imaginatively enter the psychic state of each of the three characters. Los most often speaks from the poet's true standpoint, and the following lines put his position about as plainly as it can be put:

What may Man be? who can tell! but what may Woman be
To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave?
There is a Throne in every Man, it is the Throne of God:
This, Woman has claim'd as her own, and Man is no more!
Albion is the Tabernacle of Vala and her Temple,
And not the Tabernacle and Temple of the Most High.
0 Albion, why wilt thou Create a Female Will?

[A few lines along he adds further meaning to his term:]
Is this the Female Will, 0 ye lovely Daughters of Albion, To
Converse concerning Weight & Distance in the Wilds of Newton & Locke?

[As the epic progresses, Blake continues to define the two women:]
Man is adjoin'd to Man by his Emanative portion
Who is Jerusalem in every individual Man, and her
Shadow is Vala, builded by the Reasoning power in Man.

       The idea of building Jerusalem gains prominence in Blake's poetry after the Moment of Grace. Jerusalem, "a city, yet a woman", is builded in the heart of every man by acts of love and kindness, and this is the work of the imagination.

       As the third chapter of Jerusalem begins, Blake describes Jerusalem for us once more:

In Great Eternity every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, and the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment. This is Jerusalem in every Man,
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness, Male and Female Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion.

       Blake's ethics of sexual love, his symbolism, and his Christian faith all fit together and reach a climax in a sketch virtually guaranteed to astound and provoke the reader (and no doubt dismay and disgust some). This passage, Plates 61 and 62, is called "Visions of Elohim Jehovah". Here once again forgiveness is the key, and to Blake forgiveness was everything. Vala, the soul of materialism, knows nothing of forgiveness. Jerusalem's liberty is expressed most fully in forgiveness. In this passage Mary, the mother of Jesus, merges with the other Mary, who was forgiven because "she loved much".

       "Visions of Elohim Jehovah" could only have been written by a poet who despised the social value placed upon virginity. In an earlier work he had called it "pale religious letchery that wishes but acts not". Blake hated the ideal of chastity, which meant to him a virtuous withholding of woman's body as an exercise of power over the deprived male, and he struck directly at the archetype of the chaste woman. "Visions of Elohim Jehovah" is not a theological statement, but an imaginative vision about meaning and value. The love of Blake will always be confined to people who discriminate between those two things and whose theological perspective is neither glassy eyed nor otherwise rigid.

       Blake's Mary has perfect trust in the forgiveness of sin, and her relationship with Joseph becomes a type for the relationship of Jerusalem with Jesus:

Jerusalem fainted over the Cross and Sepulcher. She heard the voice:
"Wilt thou make Rome thy Patriarch Druid & the Kings of Europe his
"horsemen? Man in the Resurrection changes his Sexual Garments at will.
"Every harlot was once a Virgin: every Criminal an Infant Love.
"Repose on me till the Morning of the Grave. I am thy Life."
Jerusalem replied: "I am an outcast: Albion is dead:
"I am left to the trampling foot is. the spurning heel:
"A Harlot I am call'd: I am sold from street to street:
"I am defaced with blows in with the dirt of the Prison,
"And wilt thou become my Husband, 0 my Lord & Saviour?"

[As Jerusalem progressively gains our sympathy, Vala moves farther and farther in the opposite direction:]
Then All the Daughters of Albion became One before Los, even Vala
And she put forth her hand upon the Looms in dreadful howlings
Till she vegetated into a hungry Stomach in a devouring Tongue.
Her Hand is a Court of Justice: her Feet two Armies in Battle:
Storms & Pestilence in her Locks, and in her Loins Earthquake
And Fire & the Ruin of Cities & Nations and Families and Tongues.

       The allegoric drama of good and evil in terms of the two females continues and intensifies throughout the epic poem until the final awakening of Albion, when sexes disappear. The first indication of this is in the dialogue of Los and Enitharmon:

Enitharmon answer'd in great terror in Lambeth's Vale:
"The Poet's Song draws to its period, and Enitharmon is no more;
For if he be that Albion, I can never weave him in my Looms,
But when he touches the first fibrous thread, like filmy dew
My Looms will be no more and I annihilate vanish for ever.
Then thou wilt Create another Female according to thy Will."
Los answer"d swift as the shuttle of gold: "Sexes must vanish & cease
To be when Albion arises from his dread repose, 0 lovely Enitharmon:
When all their Crimes, their Punishments, their Accusations of Sin, brAll their Jealousies, Revenges, Murders, hidings of Cruelty in Deceit
Appear only in the Outward Spheres of Visionary Space and Time,
In the shadows of Possibility, by Mutual Forgiveness for evermore,
And in the Vision and in the Prophecy, that we may Foresee & Avoid
The terrors of Creation & Redemption & Judgment....

       Soon comes the last mention of the woman of the world. She is connected with her sexual counterpart and described in the very specific terms which John used in Revelation 17:

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?

[Now Blake attempts to visualize the true place of sex in Eternity:]
Awake, Awake, Jerusalem! 0 lovely Emanation of Albion,
Awake and overspread all Nations as in Ancient Time;
For lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day
Appears upon our Hills. Awake, Jerusalem and come away!
...Then Albion stretch'd his hand into Infinitude
And took his Bow....
And the bow is a Male and Female, and the Quiver of the Arrows of Love
And the Children of this Bow, a bow of Mercy & Loving-kindness laying
Open the hidden Heart in Wars of mutual Benevolence, Wars of Love;
And the Hand of Man grasps firm between the Male and Female Loves.
And he Clothed himself in Bow and Arrows, in awful state, Fourfold

       And after the final chorus of the multiple aspects of Man, Blake tells us that he "heard the Name of their Emanation: they are named Jerusalem." And so ends Jerusalem.

Yale Center for British ArtJerusalemPlate 92

 

 

BLAKE INDEX

If you would like easy access to an index and to the contents of Erdman's The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake copy and bookmark this link:

https://blake.lib.asu.edu/html/home.html

You may find this a convenient resource for locating and reading specific works of Blake in an accessible format.

    Jerusalem Plate 3, (E 145)

   "Reader! lover of books! lover of heaven,
    And of that God from whom all books are given,
    Who in mysterious Sinais awful cave
    To Man the wond'rous art of writing gave,
    Again he speaks in thunder and in fire!                
    Thunder of Thought, & flames of fierce desire:
    Even from the depths of Hell his voice I hear,
    Within the unfathomd caverns of my Ear.
    Therefore I print; nor vain my types shall be:
    Heaven, Earth & Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony" 

Yale Center for British Art
Jerusalem 
Plate 64, Detail

EGO & ARCHETYPE

Edward F Edinger in Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Soul wrote of the development of the psyche as the individual travels through the process of individuation.

In Chapter 2 with subtitles The Alienated Ego, and Encounter with the Self, Edinger provides five images from Blake's Illustration of the Book of Job to supplement his text on the encounter between ego and Self.

"The Self is the ordering and unifying center of the total psyche (conscious and unconscious) just as the ego is the center of the conscious personality." (Page 3)

"It is generally accepted among analytic psychologists that the task of the first half of life involves ego development with progressive separation between ego and self; whereas the second half of life requires a surrender or at least a relativization of the ego as it experiences and relates to the self... [However] The process of alternation between ego-Self union and ego-Self separation seems to occur repeatedly in the life of the individual both in childhood and in maturity." (Page 5)

Picture 3 - The Fire of God Has Fallen from Heaven

Page 80

"Apparently the Self needs conscious recognition and is obliged by the individuation process to tempt and test the ego in order to bring about full ego-awareness of the Self existence."

---

Picture 11 - Yahweh Frightens Job with a Glimpse of Hell

Page 87

 "The process of individuation requires that he accept and assimilate the dark inferior side."

---

Picture 13 - Yahweh Answers Job out of the Whirlwind

Page 89

"The part cannot encompass the whole...The ego is being contrasted here with the size and power of the archetypes which determine psychic existence."

---

Picture 15 - Yahweh Shows Job the Depths 

Page 91

"God reveals his own shadow side and since man participates in God as the ground of his being, he must likewise share his darkness."  

---

Picture 18 - Job Sacrifices to Yahweh

Page 96

"Having experienced the transpersonal center of the psyche, the ego recognizes its subordinate position and is prepared to serve the totality and its ends rather than make personal demands." 

---

Describing a stage in psychic development Edinger writes of the means through which the ego and the Self establish a proper relationship. The ego which resembles Blake's Urizen becomes reconciled to the Self which resembles Blake's Urthona. The ego which dominates the relationship of the psyche to the external, physical world, undergoes a process through which it recognizes the role of the Self as the manifestation of the internal, spiritual nature of mankind.    

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 79, (E 355)

"Urizen answerd Read my books explore my Constellations 
Enquire of my Sons & they shall teach thee how to War
Enquire of my Daughters who accursd in the dark depths
Knead bread of Sorrow by my stern command for I am God
Of all this dreadful ruin   Rise O daughters at my Stern command"

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 98 [90],(E 371)

"First his immortal spirit drew Urizen[s] Shadow away        
From out the ranks of war separating him in sunder
Leaving his Spectrous form which could not be drawn away     
Then he divided Thiriel the Eldest of Urizens sons
Urizen became Rintrah Thiriel became Palamabron
Thus dividing the powers of Every Warrior
Startled was Los he found his Enemy Urizen now
In his hands. he wonderd that he felt love & not hate     
His whole soul loved him he beheld him an infant
Lovely breathd from Enitharmon he trembled within himself"

New York Public Library
Milton
Plate 41

Milton, Plate 40 [46], (E 141) 

"Before Ololon Milton stood & percievd the Eternal Form
Of that mild Vision; wondrous were their acts by me unknown
Except remotely; and I heard Ololon say to Milton

I see thee strive upon the Brooks of Arnon. there a dread
And awful Man I see, oercoverd with the mantle of years.   
I behold Los & Urizen. I behold Orc & Tharmas;
The Four Zoa's of Albion & thy Spirit with them striving
In Self annihilation giving thy life to thy enemies"

THE NATIVITY

First posted December 2011

Matthew 1
[18] Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
[19] Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
[20] But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
[21] And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Luke 2
[3] And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
[4] And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
[5] To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
[6] And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
[7] And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Wikipedia Commons
The Nativity

Blake's tempera image of the Nativity was painted on copper in 1799 for Thomas Butts and belongs to the Philadelphia Museum. An enlargement of the image can be viewed in the Blake Archive.

Most striking in this image is the portrayal of the infant Jesus. The child is seen as a spiritual rather than a physical being. He is not subject to the force of gravity for he is suspended in the air. There is no need for additional light in the stable for he is the source of light which radiates to his surroundings. He has left his father and mother and is moving toward Elizabeth who holds her promised son, the infant John, on he lap. Blake's first illustration to Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity is an expansion of this picture but the all important soaring Christ Child appears in both. In another post he is identified with the weeping babe. 

 

SIN & FORGIVENESS

First posted April 2011

Yale Center for British Art

Young's Night Thoughts

Page 73

 

Listen to Blake and the Bible commenting on Jesus, Sin, Error, Forgiveness, Satan and Judgment. These quotes from the two sources allow us to compare New Testament concepts and how similar ideas appear in Blake:

1)Jesus not the accuser (Satan) is our judge.

1John.2
[1] My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:

Vision of the Last Judgment, (E 565)
"Forgiveness of Sin is only at the Judgment Seat of Jesus the
Saviour where the Accuser is cast out. not because he Sins but
because he torments the Just & makes them do what he condemns as
Sin & what he knows is opposite to their own Identity"

2) The accuser has no power over us.

Rev.12
[10] And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

Vision of the Last Judgment,(E 564)
"Christ comes
as he came at first to deliver those who were bound under the
Knave not to deliver the Knave He Comes to Deliver Man the
[Forgiven] not Satan the Accuser we do not
find any where that Satan is Accused of Sin he is only accused of
Unbelief & thereby drawing Man into Sin that he may accuse him.
Such is the Last Judgment a Deliverance from Satans Accusation
Satan thinks that Sin is displeasing to God he ought to know that
Nothing is displeasing to God but Unbelief & Eating of the Tree
of Knowledge of Good & Evil"

3) The light of Truth leads us to the new creation.

Acts.26
[18] To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. [PAUL]

Vision of the Last Judgment, (E 565)
"I will not Flatter them Error is
Created Truth is Eternal [,] Error or Creation will be Burned Up &
then & not till then Truth or Eternity will appear It is Burnt up
the Moment Men cease to behold it I assert for My self that I do
not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance &
not Action it is as the Dirt upon my feet No part of Me."

4) Forgiveness of sins is God's will.

Matt.9
[2] And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
[5] For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
[6] But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

Jerusalem, Plate 20, (E 165)
"Jerusalem answer'd with soft tears over the valleys.

O Vala what is Sin? that thou shudderest and weepest
At sight of thy once lov'd Jerusalem! What is Sin but a little
Error & fault that is soon forgiven; but mercy is not a Sin
Nor pity nor love nor kind forgiveness! O! if I have Sinned
Forgive & pity me! O! unfold thy Veil in mercy & love!
Slay not my little ones, beloved Virgin daughter of Babylon
Slay not my infant loves & graces, beautiful daughter of Moab"

5) The religion of Jesus practices mercy not vengeance.

Matt.23
[23] Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Jerusalem, Plate 52, (E 201)
"Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion
of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, & will erect the
Synagogue of Satan. calling the Prince of this World, God; and
destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God.
Will any one say: Where are those who worship Satan under the
Name of God! Where are they? Listen! Every Religion that Preaches
Vengeance for Sins the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger; and not
the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, Named by the Divine
Name Your Religion O Deists: Deism, is the Worship of the God
of this World by the means of what you call Natural Religion and
Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or
Self-Righteousness, the Selfish Virtues of the Natural Heart.
This was the Religion of the Pharisees who murderd Jesus. Deism
is the same & ends in the same."

6) Practicing Forgiveness builds the Kingdom of God

Matthew 18
[21] Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
[22] Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

Jerusalem, Plate 77, (E 232)
"And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another;
calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of
every Mental Gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving
Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel
Man, is not so in the sight of our kind God.
Let every Christian as much as in him lies engage himself
openly & publicly before all the World in some Mental pursuit for
the Building up of Jerusalem "

The influence that the Bible had on shaping the mind of Blake led him to become a religious poet. He used the Christian metaphors in unique ways but always with the goal of opening the minds of men to the 'perception of the Infinite'.

FORGIVENESS OF SINS

William's book Forgiveness of Sins can be download along with He Came Down from Heaven from the site Faded Page. 

Charles Williams, a friend of C.S.Lewis, wrote a short book named The Forgiveness of Sins. In his chapter Forgiveness and Reconciliation he quoted passages from Blake to demonstrate the distinction between "the state of union to which forgiveness is a means and the opposite state." Although Williams agreed with Blake on many points, he seemed to disagree where Blake deviated from some orthodox church teachings, particularly in regard to complete absolution for the sinner.

I have added the locations where Blake's statements can be found in Erdman's The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake.

Charles Williams Wrote:

Jerusalem, Plate 34 [38], (E 179)

"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.
. . . Our wars are wars of life and wounds of love,
With intellectual spears and long winged arrows of thought."

We may or may not suffer from exterior things; from this
interior thing we must all suffer—or almost all. It is certainly
possible that a few holy souls may have been born already so
disposed to sanctity that their effort is natural and their growth
instinctive; they move happily into goodness, and their
regeneration seems to have been one with their generation;
but even they may have suffered more than they chose
or indeed were able to communicate. Their wounds were
hidden; their sensitiveness bled privately; they appeased
the rage of their companions in their own quietude, and no one
has done more than envy a celsitude more painful than anyone
knew. But for the rest of us, the ‘wounds of love’ mean a
sudden or a lingering death. The second death itself is indeed
but a choice in time; if we prefer it before our natural death, we
are taught that it may be salvation; if after, that it may be
eternal loss. The death of our Lord introduced that choice. He
who died in his natural life brought into our natural life the
possibility of the choice of a supernatural death and therefore
of a supernatural life; this is the life of faith.

Jerusalem, Plate 96, (E 256)

"Wouldst 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, and 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."

‘Man is Love.’ I do not remember the divine epigram
elsewhere. It is this which is the original part of all our life; to
divide it into natural and supernatural is a schism inevitable to
us, but an inevitability only as a means to unite or disunite the
common, the public thing. It is in our most private hearts that
the Republic is established, but our private hearts can force
themselves out of the Republic. We can refuse the maternity of
Love, the protectorate of Grace: intolerable and too certain
concession! and then? 

Jerusalem, Plate 47, (E 196)

"Hark! and Record the terrible wonder, that the Punisher
Mingles with his Victim’s Spectre, enslaved and tormented
To him whom he has murder’d, bound in vengeance and enmity.
Shudder not, but Write, and the hand of God will assist you."

The Sinner is for ever justified? no; perhaps Blake was indeed
heretical. Certainly the Republic is ambiguous, but the
humanitarian terror of punishment will not be more than a
Precursor, a Saint John Baptist there. It is the fashion
nowadays among many Christians to sneer at
humanitarianism and liberalism (in the political sense),
and this is natural because of the undue trust that has been
reposed in them. But ‘the lights of nature and faith’, wrote
John Donne, ‘are subordinate John Baptists to Christ’;
humanitarianism is a formula of prophecy. Pity is still half a
pagan virtue; compassion a Christian. To forgive is indeed
compassion, the suffering with another. To refuse to forgive is
to refuse that other as himself or herself; it is to prefer the
spectre of him, and to prefer a spectre is to be for ever lost. 

Jerusalem, Plate 45 [31], ( E 194)

"All things are so constructed
And builded by the Divine hand that the sinner shall always escape;
And he who takes vengeance alone is the criminal of Providence.
O Albion! If thou takest vengeance, if thou revengest thy wrongs,
Thou art for ever lost! What can I do to hinder the Sons
Of Albion from taking vengeance or how shall I them
persuade?"

To say that the sinner shall always escape is a rash definition.
Our Lord did not say so. But he did say that even the collection
of our just human debts was a very dangerous business; he did
say that we were to pray to be forgiven as—precisely as—we
forgive; he did say that the debts forgiven us reduced to
nonsense the debts owed to us. It is not therefore to read the
New Testament too rashly to see in it rather more than a
suggestion that, as far as we humanly are concerned, the sinner
will always escape. The Church may blame; it does not
condemn—at most it does but relegate the sinner to the Mercy
of God. The Republic may condemn; it must not blame
—the judge has no business to do more than pronounce
a sentence. We are not yet—perhaps in this world we shall
never be—in that ‘state’ when the judges themselves may
descend to be substitutes for the condemned and to endure in
their own persons the sentences they impose. But something
like this is already the habit of the Church, for the Church
mystically shares the vicarious sufferings of Christ. ‘The state
of the punisher is eternal death.’ In the Church this is so, for in
the Church he who takes vengeance is indeed already lost; he
is outside the Church, ‘outside which is no salvation’; he is
outside the City, where as Saint John saw, are dogs and
sorcerers and whoremongers, ‘and whoever loveth and maketh
a lie’. In the Church there is no punishment except when it is
invoked and as long as it is invoked; there is no punishment
except through and because of pardon. There indeed the holy
soul, aware at once of pardon and celestial vengeance, may
sigh: ‘Both! both!’—too far beyond our vision to be more than
momently comprehensible, and only at moments desirable. But
it has been declared that the scars of Christ, the wounds of
Love, are glorious in heaven; and the justice of God glorifies
the scars of Man who is also Love. The alternative?

Jerusalem, Plate 38 [43], (E 185)

"Instead of the Mutual Forgiveness, the Minute Particulars, I see
Pits of bitumen ever burning, artificial riches of the Canaanite
Like Lakes of liquid lead; instead of heavenly Chapels, built
By our dear Lord, I see Worlds crusted with snows and ice.
I see a Wicker Idol woven round Jerusalem’s children. I see
The Canaanite, the Amalekite, the Moabite, the Egyptian . . .
Driven on the Void in incoherent despair into Non Entity."

Blake put the same vision more positively and more simply in
one of the shorter poems:

Songs and Ballads, My Spectre, (E 476)

"Thus through all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me:
As our dear Redeemer said:
This the Wine and this the Bread."

The orthodox Christian need not reject that quatrain. If our
Lord was indeed the very Person of forgiveness, then
certainly it is the very passion of forgiveness which is
communicated in the Eucharist; it is a mutuality between God
and man which is also expressed between man and man. To
feed on that with a grudge or a resentment present in the brain,
or still lingering in the blood below the brain, is to reject the
divine Food that is swallowed; it is not only to set schism
between the body and the soul but literally in the body itself.
All things are finally worked out in the body; all mysteries are
there manifested, even if still as mysteries. It is the only
crucible of the great experiment; its innocent, even if debased,
purity endures the most difficult transmutations of the soul. 
...
The whole state of forgiveness must be whole; it is a state of
being into which we grow and not a series of acts which we
exercise, though (to repeat) we must exercise those acts in
faith. Say, 'Do not do;' and add, 'And then do.' The
supernatural is the birth of action in the death of action.

"O point of mutual forgiveness between enemies,
Birthplace of the Lamb of God incomprehensible!" 

End for passages from Charles Williams. 

_____________________

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 87

Jerusalem, Plate 7, (E 150)

"O that I could abstain from wrath! O that the Lamb
Of God would look upon me and pity me in my fury.                
In anguish of regeneration! in terrors of self annihilation:
Pity must join together those whom wrath has torn in sunder,
And the Religion of Generation which was meant for the destruction
Of Jerusalem, become her covering, till the time of the End.
O holy Generation! [Image] of regeneration!  
O point of mutual forgiveness between Enemies!
Birthplace of the Lamb of God incomprehensible!
The Dead despise & scorn thee, & cast thee out as accursed:
Seeing the Lamb of God in thy gardens & thy palaces:
Where they desire to place the Abomination of Desolation." 

JOB, BLAKE & JUNG

First posted Sept 2009.

William Blake, Carl Jung and the author of the Book of Job, seem to agree that the experience of Job represented a change in the relationship of man and God. Job struggles against the perceived injustice of God and the suffering it brings upon him. Job receives a direct intervention from God in the shape of God speaking to him from the whirlwind. Because Job was truthful with God and confronted God with the human point of view, he received an answer demonstrating God's power, wisdom and mystery. 

After his trials Job's fortunes are restored and he receives God's favor. The role that Satan (the personification of evil) plays in the story is pivotal. Satan is allowed by God to test Job because of Job's reputation for righteousness. This perhaps is the hinge of the story because Satan, not God is in charge of testing Job. In the end Job's demands convince God to relate to him directly.  

Wikipedia Commons

Satan before the Throne of God 

Illustrations to the Book of Job (Linnell Set)

Here is a quote from Jung in a letter to Morton Kelsey (from Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul by Claire Dunne): 

 "This is what happens in Job: The creator sees himself through the eyes of man's consciousness and this is the reason why God has to become man, and why man is progressively gifted with the dangerous prerogative of the divine 'mind.' You have it in Christ's saying: 'Ye are gods' and man has not even begun to know himself." 

Edward Edinger, in Encounter with the Self: A Jungian Commentary on William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job describes the encounter of Job with God as "a divine encounter by which the ego is rewarded with some insight into the transpersonal psyche." And he further says "The ego, by holding fast to its integrity, is granted a realization of the Self." 

Blake's book, Illustrations of the Book of Job, consists of 21 plates which tell Job's story in a few words and in highly symbolic pictures. Plate 13 represents the encounter of Job with God in the whirlwind which is the intimate experience of a man directly with the numinous. The next plate, number 14, depicts a rebirth of consciousness. The central picture is surrounded with images and words from the creation story in Genesis. The text includes "When the morning Stars sang together & all the sons of God shouted for joy." (Job 38:7) The central image depicts at the top four angels among the stars rejoicing. In the center is kneeling God with outstretched arms and a bright sun-like halo. Beside him are Apollo with the sun, and Artemis with the moon. At the lowest level are Job his wife and the three comforters, who are allowed to witness the celebration of the this new stage of creation. The next seven plates illustrate the changed relationship between Job and God. 

Damon in A Blake Dictionary explains the process Job underwent in terms to going through stages represented by the Seven Eyes of God. In the end "His manhood purged of all error, is now complete." Each one of us is searching for images to represent indescribable experience. 

For links to Blake's illustrations consult the post: Blake's Pictures for Job.

Sex as Symbol

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 85

Chapter 8, Blake Primer 

 Sex as Symbol

       Blake used the female as the basic symbol for the material and for the materialistic viewpoint. The history of this concept goes as far back as the beginning of time. The Sun represents a masculine God, the Moon, a Goddess, such as Diana, the great goddess of Ephesus, whose priests raised a riot against the apostle Paul, reported at Acts 19.

       Long after MHH he wrote Jerusalem where the "female will" approaches identity with Satan. Both terms connote a preoccupation with the material, putting it first and only. Thus when we read a passage like:

The Human is but a Worm, and thou, 0 Male! Thou art
Thyself Female, a Male, a breeder of Seed, a Son & Husband; & Lo
The Human Divine is Woman's Shadow, a Vapor in the summer's heat.
Go assume Papal dignity, thou Spectre, thou Male Harlot! Arthur,
Divide into the Kings of Europe in times remote, 0 Woman-born
and Woman-nourish'd and Woman-educated & Woman-scorned!
      (Jerusalem, 64.12; Erdman 215)

spoken by Vala, the personification of the "female will", we understand that Blake is not talking about what we know as the sex economy, but rather making a hard nosed statement of the nature of fallenness: the dominance of the material over the spiritual, a dominance all too evident in his age as in ours. This sad situation was always Blake's major concern, and the basic symbol with which he expressed it was that of sex. When we remember to translate male/female into spiritual/material or eternal/temporal, we make a great gain in our understanding of Blake.

       Milton's theory of sex influenced Blake as much as any other literary source. Paradise Lost provides a definitive model for much of the sexual imagery that Blake used. Professor Frye calls our attention to a line in Book iv of P . L. describing Adam and Eve: "Hee for God only, shee for God in him" Frye reminds us that this applies only to the unfallen pair; it assigns to Adam a purely spiritual authority. The male dominance of material history Frye calls a "fallen analogy" of that spiritual relationship.

       All this enriches our understanding of the meaning of Astarte in her many forms and of the priests' reactions to her which color virtually every word of the Old Testament and its literary descendants: God is male, the Creator; Nature is female, the Creation. The soul (of man and woman) is female in relation to her Creator. Christ is the bridegroom; in union with him we all (of both sexes) become part of the bride. The modern man can accept this only as an imperfect metaphor for spiritual reality.

iii

Generation

 According to Blake's myth sexes begin in the moony night of Beulah where the Eternals came to rest from the arduous wars of intellect that have filled their sunny days in Eden:

There is from Great Eternity a mild and pleasant rest Named Beulah, a Soft Moony Universe, feminine, lovely, Pure, mild and Gentle, given in Mercy to those who sleep.. (Four Zoas [Night 1], 5.29; E303)

       Beulah, one of Blake's most ambiguous images, is a way station between Eden and Ulro. The Eternal, sleeping in Beulah, may rise from his sexual dreams and return to the activity of Eden, or he may fall further into Death Eternal, which is exactly what happened to Albion. Unable to find his way back to Heaven he lapsed into a deeper form of sleep where the female develops a will of her own and lures the male into the "torments of love and Jealousy". Late in Jerusalem the warrior, speaking for Albion, gives a glimpse of his true (fallen) situation and laments"

Once Man was occupied in intellectual pleasures and Energies,
But now my Soul is harrow'd with grief and fear & love & desire,
And now I hate, & now I love, and Intellect is no more.
There is no time for any thing but the torments of love and desire.
      (Jerusalem, 68:65; Erdman 222)

______________________________________________________________
       ( There are four worlds in Blake's psychic universe:
       Eternity
       Beulah
       Ulro
       Generation)

       Man in Eternity is androgynous. In Beulah, which means Married, the sexes are divided into loving and restful contraries. With the Fall the Female Will becomes dominant; the Human Form deteriorates to the sexual in which male and female, spirit and matter, exist in a state of constant warfare. Man has fallen into the fourth world of Ulro. But whatever falls may rise again.

       The third world, Generation, is the world of Los, fallen man's imaginative faculty. Los generates or brings forth artistic creations, structures of thought, myths of meaning, much as a woman brings forth children. These creations always turn bad (or perhaps just moldy) and are broken up and cast into Los's furnace for renewal. The process of generation and destruction would go on indefinitely, like the cycle of Nature, but the Moment of Grace breaks in upon it. Los learns to forgive. His emanation, Enitharmon, now joins him as an instrument of a regeneration offering redemptive promise. Blake proclaims, "0 holy generation, image of regeneration".

       The change in Los and Enitharmon, who together make up fallen man's imaginative faculty, prepares the ground for the generation of Jesus. The Sons of Eden announce this event in Night viii of Four Zoas with a paean of praise. Careful study of the entire song will cast more light on the meaning of Blake's symbolism of sex and generation; here are the final seven lines:

we now behold the Ends of Beulah, and we now behold
Where death Eternal is put off Eternally.
Assume the dark Satanic body in the Virgin's womb,
0 Lamb Divine! it cannot thee annoy. 0 pitying one,
Thy pity is from the foundation of the world, & thy Redemption
Begun already in Eternity. Come then, 0 Lamb of God,
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

       What Blake reports next should be a welcome change for the by now outraged feminist. With his usual consistency he follows the divine annunciation with the appearance of Satan, and the worst thing he can say about Satan is to call him a "male without a female":

The War roar'd round Jerusalem's Gates; it took a hideous form
Seen in the aggregate, a Vast Hermaphroditic form
Heav'd like an Earthquake lab'ring with convulsive groans
Intolerable; at length an awful wonder burst
From the Hermaphroditic bosom. Satan he was nam'd,
Son of Perdition, terrible his form, dishumaniz'd, monstrous,
A male without a female counterpart, a howling fiend
Forlorn of Eden, repugnant to the forms of life,
Yet hiding the shadowy female Vala as in an ark & Curtains,
Abhorr'd, accursed, ever dying an Eternal death,
Being multitudes of tyrant Men in union blasphemous
Against the Divine Image, Congregated assemblies of wicked men.
      (Four Zoas [Night 8], 104[2nd].30; E378)