ETERNITY EXISTS

Wikipedia Commons

Visions of the Daughters of Albion

Plate 3

Oothoon kissing the winged joy as it flies.

Songs and Ballads, (E 470) 

 "Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies 
Lives in eternity's sun rise"  

According to Blake we give too much credence to the idea that the created world came into existence out of nothingness or chaos. Blake's belief is that Eternity is the matrix from which the created world of time and space originated. Eternity continues when the material world ends. Since we creatures of the material world of time and space cannot imagine Eternity which has no beginning or end, we model Eternity as endless time and Infinity as endless space.

 

In our world, the World of Generation, Urthona - Imagination or Intuition - is represented by Los, the Prophet of Eternity. Los functions as Time and his Emanation, Enitharmon, functions as Space. Thus Blake continued the Platonic idea that time and space supply the matrix through which we have an inkling of Eternity.

---

Quote from THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME by Michael Bradie and Comer Duncan,  Plato's Universe :

 

"The closest approximation to the unchanging Form of Eternity Plato takes to be the change associated with the uniform flow of time, the measure of the uniform motion of the Sphere. 'Time is the moving likeness of Eternity', the closest we can get to Eternity in this world. The metaphor is both brilliant and provocative."  .

---

As the real world to Plato was the world of Forms, to Blake it was the world of Spirit. He conceives of Eternity as the dwelling place of Spirit which exercises its influence in the natural world. Blake went so far as to say "every Natural Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not A Natural." He was convinced that the Eternal world penetrates the world of time and space and is known to those who have developed the ability to perceive its presence. 

 

How different experience in this life would appear to us if we looked for the Spiritual Cause in all that we encounter in our "bright pilgrimage of sixty years."

Milton, Plate 26 [28], (E 123)

"as the Spectres choose their affinities
So they are born on Earth, & every Class is determinate
But not by Natural but by Spiritual power alone, Because         
The Natural power continually seeks & tends to Destruction
Ending in Death: which would of itself be Eternal Death
And all are Class'd by Spiritual, & not by Natural power.

And every Natural Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not
A Natural: for a Natural Cause only seems, it is a Delusion      
Of Ulro: & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory."

A Vision of The Last Judgment, [Page 91], (E 563)

"Many suppose that before the Creation All was Solitude and Chaos. This is the most pernicious Idea that can enter the Mind as it takes away all sublimity from the Bible and Limits All Existence to Creation and to Chaos-- to the Time and Space fixed by the Corporeal Vegetative Eye, and leaves the Man who entertains such an Idea the habitation of Unbelieving Demons. Eternity Exists and All things in Eternity Independent of Creation which was an act of Mercy. I have represented those who are in Eternity by some in a Cloud within the Rainbow that Surrounds the Throne. They merely appear as in a Cloud when any thing of Creation, Redemption, or Judgment are the Subjects of Contemplation tho their Whole Contemplation is Concerning these things. The Reason they so appear is The Humiliation of the Reasoning and Doubting Selfhood and the Giving all up to Inspiration. By this it will be seen that I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State but to be every one of them States of the Sleep which the Soul may fall into in its Deadly Dreams of Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent."

Marriage of Heaven And Hell, Plate 5, (E 36)

"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

Marriage of Heaven And Hell, Plate 8, (E 36)

"The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the
    stormy sea,    and the destructive sword. are portions of
    eternity too great for the eye of man."

Visions of daughters of Albion, Plate 5, (E 49)

"Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard?
Plate 6
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave
Over his porch these words are written. Take thy bliss O Man!
And sweet shall be thy taste & sweet thy infant joys renew!" 

Song of Los, Plate 3, (E 67)

The human race began to wither, for the healthy built            
Secluded places, fearing the joys of Love
And the disease'd only propagated:
So Antamon call'd up Leutha from her valleys of delight:
And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave.
But in the North, to Odin, Sotha gave a Code of War,             
Because of Diralada thinking to reclaim his joy.
Plate 4
These were the Churches: Hospitals: Castles: Palaces:
Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity
     And all the rest a desart;
Till like a dream Eternity was obliterated & erased."

Milton, Plate 10[11], (E 104) 

"Every thing in Eternity shines by its own Internal light: but thou
Darkenest every Internal light with the arrows of thy quiver
Bound up in the borns of jealousy to a deadly fading Moon" 

Milton, Plate 17 [19], (E 111)

"For travellers from Eternity. pass outward to Satans seat,
But travellers to Eternity. pass inward to Golgonooza." 

Milton, Plate 24 [26], (E 121)

"Los is by mortals nam'd Time Enitharmon is nam'd Space
But they depict him bald & aged who is in eternal youth
All powerful and his locks flourish like the brows of morning    
He is the Spirit of Prophecy the ever apparent Elias
Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Times swiftness
Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment:"   

Milton, Plate 30 [33], (E 129)

"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"

Milton, Plate 31[34] 

"These are the Gods of the Kingdoms of the Earth: in contrarious
And cruel opposition: Element against Element, opposed in War
Not Mental, as the Wars of Eternity, but a Corporeal Strife"  

Annotations to Watson, (E 611)

 "But to him who sees this mortal pilgrimage in the light that
I see it.  Duty to country is the first
consideration & safety the last
     Read patiently take not up this Book in all idle hour the
consideration of these things is the whole
duty of man & the affairs of life & death trifles sports of time
<But> these considerations business of Eternity"  

 

Shadow & Substance

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 32

 

First posted in December 2014

 

Ram Horn'd with Gold - Chapter 2 -Style  

Poetry by its nature yields meaning at more than one level. Most of Blake's poetry has significance at three primary levels: (1) political or historical, (2) personal or psychological, and (3) religious or metaphysical. Blake would have denied these distinctions because life to him was all one.

He saw the political spiritually, the historical metaphysically. This means that the reader may encounter an initial confusion, but if he perseveres in the face of the complexities of symbols and thought forms, he eventually discovers a wealth of meaning. Once again the guiding principle is that everything points to and converges upon the eternal reality underlying what Blake called the shadows of life.

The words of Los in The Four Zoas record the moment when Blake got a firm grip on what he sought for himself and for us: "I already feel a World within Opening its gates, & in it all the real substances Of which these in the outward World are shadows which pass away. |FZ7a-86.7; E368| After twenty years in the visionary wilderness that "World within" opened its gates into the mind of the mature artist and poet.

 

Then he began to exercise the greatest freedom in his artistic use of the shadows. They served him in every conceivable way to elucidate the real world within. All the shadows, all natural phenomena, all historical events, all works of art, his own included, he treated as fluctuating insubstantials which illustrate or point to the eternal reality.

As we have seen, Blake like the biblical writers expressed
the eternal by means of metaphors or symbols drawn from
sense experience. Logical positivists deny meaning either to
the eternal per se or to value of any sort (other than
quantitative); Blake of course stood at the opposite pole.
He despised the mental world of the positivists whom he
knew best: Bacon, Newton,and Locke. They had directed
men's thoughts away from the spiritual and toward the
natural world. In violent reaction Blake refused any
significance to natural events aside from their eternal value.

Jonathan Swift, with his Lilliputians and his talking
horses, had developed irony into a fine art and a
popular form of English writing. Irony among other things
requires the use of the intellect. When Blake makes a
statement like, "As I was walking among the fires of
Hell, delighted....", whoever attempts to read this
literally thereby excludes himself from understanding.
But ask the question--what does Blake mean by the fires
of Hell? A few lines before he had said that hell or
evil is "the active springing from Energy". In this way
he responds to the viewpoint of the pious. The knowledge
of irony makes us aware that he disagrees with their
value structure. Blake suggests that the "religious"
most likely would perceive his ideas as evil, so he
ironically accepts their judgment as if to say, "Okay,
I'm evil; if delighting in energy is evil, then I'm evil."
He must have been in contact with some soul deadening
religionists when he wrote this.

A real tail-twister, Marriage of Heaven and Hell has thrilled
thousands of sophomores and helped them to endure
frustrating experiences with "good people". Writing shortly
before Hegel, Blake with his doctrine of contraries
(reason and energy, innocence and experience, love
and jealousy, heaven and hell) vividly displayed
the obverse of every truth which he considered.
He often simply assumed the obvious or conventional
wisdom as a starting point, not bothering to state it
explicitly. Instead he went directly to its opposite,
calling our attention to the dimension of truth buried
on the other side of the conventional. From this dialectic
he finally arrived at a synthesis.

He had a habit of inverting the meaning of the most
sacred words, for example "holiness". For Blake, as for many
others since his day, the holy most often seemed holier than
thou. Sometimes he used the word with an alliterative
adjective such as "hypocritic holiness":

"For then the Body of Death was perfected in hypocritic holiness,"
Milton, Plate 13,(E 107)

Holiness characterizes the self righteous pharisee, who is
most insidious because he judges as non-holy all those who
don't measure up to his standard: "God, I thank thee that
I am not as other men." Holiness of course relates to the
law, which Blake despised for its life denying power.
Furthermore he thought holiness often rather stupid. In
a climactic speech near the end of Jerusalem Los cries: 

"I care not whether a Man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool. Go, put off Holiness
And put on Intellect...." Jerusalem, Plate 92, (E 252)

Having excoriated (false) holiness Blake also tells us
that the word really means with his sacred line, found at the
end of Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "Everything that lives is holy". 

Since he wrote it, only a few great souls in the west, like
Albert Schweitzer with his "reverence for life", have risen
to that level of vision.

"Religion", like holiness, Blake almost always used as
a pejorative. A deeply religious man, (though he might have
denied it at times) Blake keenly focused on the seedy side
of religion: the greedy priest, the life denying marriage law,
the blasphemous alliance between an established church and
the military, lust of an oppressive crown. "Religion" for Blake
most often conveyed these dire meanings, the sort of thing
that "good people" feel should be slurred over or ignored.

"Elect" and "reprobate" are two words known today primarily by theologians. In Blake's day they were more common. They came into prominence with Calvin's Institutes. The two words basically differentiate the "good people", bound for heaven, from the others. The doctrine of election represented the core or key of Calvinism. Blake adopted the conventional meanings, but he related them, not to the conventional God, but to the God of this World. His elect are those fully conformed to the God of this World. His reprobate is Jesus and others like him who are despised and persecuted by the elect. The "Bard's Song" (Milton, Plate 2, line 22), the first third of Blake's major poem, Milton, concerns the creation of the three classes of men: the Elect, the Redeemed and the Reprobate:
"Of the first class was Satan...."

With such inversions Blake provokes his reader to think more deeply about these terms of value. As you go through the hundreds of pages of Blake's poetry, these and similar terms recur at frequent intervals. The reader who keeps in mind the ironic dimension has a good chance to get the full and vivid impact of Blake's meaning.

 

Blake made words into jewels, and with the utmost freedom he displayed their multiple facets.

 

God & Nature

New York Public Library

Milton

Plate 26

Larry's Notes in Google Docs

Blake's God

Some understanding of Berkeley's thought is a good preliminary to understanding the shape of Blake's mature vision of God, which came to him definitively about 1800.

You can say nothing other than the products of your mind, which means that an objective God is a complete unknown; Blake would say there's no such thing:

"Mental Things are alone Real what is Calld Corporeal Nobody Knows of its Dwelling Place it is in Fallacy & its Existence an Imposture Where is the Existence Out of Mind or Thought Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool."
(From, A Vision of The Last Judgment)

In Blakean theology Jesus is the only God; not the man named Jesus: he's only a man. No! Blake's Jesus is the indwelling spirit within the psyche - the fount of imagination and forgiveness. Jesus is one.

Thus, when the two Great Commandments meld together, the neighbor we're exhorted to love is the God within the other. So to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength involves loving God in all the particulars-- not just your neighbor, but his animals, insects, sticks and stones. Nature thus becomes what is groaning in travail; to love and care for it is to love God. "God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men" (MHH Plate 16).

---

Romans 8

[19] For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God;
[20] for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope;
[21] because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.
[22] We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now;
[23] and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 

Milton, Plate 26, (E 124)

"This Wine-press is call'd War on Earth, it is the Printing-Press
Of Los; and here he lays his words in order above the mortal brain
As cogs are formd in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel.
Timbrels & violins sport round the Wine-presses; the little Seed;
The sportive Root, the Earth-worm, the gold Beetle; the wise Emmet;
Dance round the Wine-presses of Luvah: the Centipede is there:
The ground Spider with many eyes: the Mole clothed in velvet
The ambitious Spider in his sullen web; the lucky golden Spinner;
The Earwig armd: the tender Maggot emblem of immortality:
The Flea: Louse: Bug: the Tape-Worm: all the Armies of Discase:
Visible or invisible to the slothful vegetating Man.
The slow Slug: the Grasshopper that sings & laughs & drinks:
Winter comes, he folds his slender bones without a murmur. 
The cruel Scorpion is there: the Gnat: Wasp: Hornet & the Honey Bee:
The Toad & venomous Newt; the Serpent clothd in gems & gold:
They throw off their gorgeous raiment: they rejoice with loud jubilee
Around the Wine-presses of Luvah, naked & drunk with wine.

There is the Nettle that stings with soft down; and there        
The indignant Thistle: whose bitterness is bred in his milk:
Who feeds on contempt of his neighbour: there all the idle Weeds
That creep around the obscure places, shew their various limbs.
Naked in all their beauty dancing round the Wine-presses."

Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris',(E 663)

Berkeley: "Plato and Aristotle considered God as abstracted or
distinct from the natural  world.  But the Aegyptians considered
God and nature as making one whole, or all things together as
making one universe.

Blake: "They also considerd God as abstracted or distinct from the
Imaginative World but Jesus as also Abraham & David considerd God
as a Man in the Spiritual or Imaginative Vision
     Jesus considerd Imagination to be the Real Man & says I will
not leave you Orphanned and I will manifest myself to you   he
says also the Spiritual Body or Angel as little Children always
behold the Face of the Heavenly Father   

 Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris', (E 664) 

Berkeley: "By experiments of sense we become acquainted with
the lower faculties of the soul; and from them, whether by a
gradual evolution or ascent, we arrive at the highest.  These
become subjects for fancy to work upon.  Reason considers and
judges of the imaginations.  And these acts of reason become new
objects to the understanding." 

Blake: "Knowledge is not by deduction but Immediate by Perception or
Sense at once Christ addresses himself to the Man not to his
Reason   Plato did not bring Life & Immortality to Light Jesus
only did this" 

Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris' (E 664) 

Berkeley: "It is a maxim of the Platonic philosophy, that the
soul of man was originally furnished with native inbred notions,
and stands in need of sensible occasions, not absolutely for
producing them, but only for awakening, rousing or exciting, into
act what was already preexistent, dormant, and latent in the
soul."
Blake: "The Natural Body is an Obstruction to the Soul or Spiritual
Body" 

 Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris', (E 664) 

 Berkeley: ". . . Whence, according to Themistius, . . . it may
be inferred that all beings are in the soul.  For, saith he, the
forms are the beings.  By the form every thing is what it is. 
And, he adds, it is the soul that imparteth forms to matter, . ." 

 Blake: "This is my Opinion but Forms must be apprehended by Sense or
the Eye of Imagination 
     Man is All Imagination God is Man & exists in us & we in him"  

Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris', (E 664)  

Blake: "What Jesus came to Remove was the Heathen or Platonic
Philosophy which blinds the Eye of Imagination The Real Man"   

As Damon states in his section on Nature, "But When Man fell, his senses turned outward: 'they behold what is within now seen without' (Four Zoas, E 314); and Nature appeared to be separate from Man. That is delusion: "In your bosom you bear your Heaven and Earth & all you behold; tho' it appears Without, it is Within' (Jerusalem, (E 225.)    

Jerusalem, Plate 71, (E 225) 

"For all are Men in Eternity. Rivers Mountains Cities Villages,
All are Human & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk
In Heaven & Earths; as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven
And Earth, & all you behold, tho it appears Without it is Within
In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow."

God, Man and Nature are One. They are all aspects of the complex unity of whatever is.

 

Law

National Galleries Scotland

God Writing upon the Tables of the Covenant

From Larry's Blake Primer Chap 5:

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 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 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 the ten
commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so
mock the sabbath's God? murder those who were
murder'd 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."

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:

"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 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."
(Jerusalem, Page 96, E 256) 

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.

 

Love

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Songs of Innocence and of Experience 

Plate 32

This section is from Larry Clayton's unpublished book which he wrote in the 1980's and titled Ram Horn'd With Gold.

       The devout have put the word "love" very close to the acme of the language. In John's first epistle marvelous use of it is made to show the relationship between God and man. We see the same thing in Paul. Look at some of the jewels of the English language:

"God is love."

"God so loved the world..."

"[Love] beareth all things..."

"And now abideth faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

       

From that sacred backdrop it's easy to be offended at the use our poet makes of the word. Worse than the seaman, he turns everything upside down and comes up with the Bible of Hell (MHH: end of Plate 24). In his poems love most often connotes the worst forms of human behavior. How gross! But Blake knows that 'love' is not God; quoting Bob Dylan, it's a four letter word. It means many things to many people, and even to the same person in a variety of states. Like the grain of sand Blake wants to show infinity in the word, in this case the infinite variety of meanings that it carries, all the minute particulars. He wants to marry Heaven and Hell.

 

Of course like every other word love conveys basically two meanings. We all have some experience of God's love and the Devil's love. And Blake sets out to show us both very clearly. He aims for us to learn to distinguish the two and to make a wise choice between them. The enchanting poem, Thel, lives and breathes the exquisite fragrance of divine love. In it the humblest creatures of nature--the lily, the cloud, and the clod of clay--know themselves as favored by God; in response their love goes out to all. Their perfect love casts out fear; death means only tenfold life.ere we meet innocent love at its best.

But after the first five plates of Thel we come to sterner stuff. We don't meet divine love again in Blake's poetry until the appearance of the Saviour (FZ8-100[1st].10;E 372) in the later additions to The Four Zoas. In Songs of Experience the clod of clay returns, this time as one of the contraries. A very elementary lesson about love confronts the reader of The Clod and the Pebble. It shows with stark simplicity the two kinds of love, divine and demonic.

 

Two kinds of love! Blake will explore the pebble's love with its infinite variety of forms before he allows us to rest again in the love of God. Blake's poem, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, begins with the words, "I loved Theotormon."

 

The heroine, Oothoon, thus describes the first significant act in a life of horror. Before the consummation of her love for Theotormon she is raped by Bromion. Then Theotormon won't have her; well named, he's tormented by God. Woman as a possession makes life hell for everyone. Here we find Blake's first full manifestation of the "torments of love and jealousy".

 

At the climax of this strange love song, with the irony all spent, Oothoon properly assesses conventional love and brands it:

"self-love that envies all, a creeping skeleton 

With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed."

Those are hot, passionate words of righteous indignation at what fallen men have made of love. Oothoon then proceeds to offer a happier form of married love:

"But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread, 

And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold. 

I'll lie beside thee on a bank & view their wanton play 

In lovely copulation, bliss on bliss, with Theotormon"

  

With these extravagant images the young poet shocks his reader into an awareness of love's spectrum of value. In the ironic language of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell the first, jealous love, is the love of Heaven or Restraint, and the second, the selfless love, is that of Hell or Eternal Delight. This version of values set the style for Blake's use of the word. It became in his hands a sharp sword penetrating to the core of society's ills.

 

The subtitle of The Four Zoas begins, "The Torments of Love & Jealousy". Violent and passionate feelings characterize the entire epic. As soon as the reader can envision 4Z as a whole, he will perceive that all these passionate feelings in all of these characters have a common destructiveness and alienating effect, until the Moment of Grace recorded in Night vii. Love, hate, fear, pride, humiliation, all are united in this common fallenness.

 

In Night i the primeval pair, Los and Enitharmon, set the tone for the meaning of love in this fallen world. (They all too aptly portray the emotional universe of many married couples): "Alternate Love & Hate [filled] his breast: hers Scorn & Jealousy". Enitharmon believes love to be a one way street. Speaking to Los of their parents:

"...if we grateful prove
They will withhold sweet love,
whose food is thorns & bitter roots."

And in Night ii she announces her philosophy of the relations between man and woman:

"The joy of woman is the death of her most best beloved
Who dies for Love of her
In torments of fierce jealousy & pangs of adoration."

       There you have love at its worst! This fairly represents Blake's ironic use of the word in his major work. In Blake's symbolic structure of thought love is most often a function of woman, who is a symbol of fallenness. Not until his character Jerusalem do we meet the feminine embodiment of the Christian graces, among them love divine.

 

       The notebook poem which begins, "My Spectre around me night and day" merits study as an approach to understanding the use of Blake's symbolism to express his deepest feelings about life. I quote the climax of it. In the first verse Blake means by 'love' very much what Paul in Romans 8 meant by 'flesh'. In the second, without using the word, he expresses in the fullest possible way what divine love meant to him: 

"Let us agree to give up Love,
And root up the infernal grove;
Then shall we return & see
The worlds of happy Eternity.

& Throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
As our dear Redeemer said:
This the Wine & this the Bread."

As these lines suggest, Blake had a strong sense of reticence about using the sacred words in the sacred sense, perhaps because he had so exhaustively explored their profane senses. Nevertheless in the poem William Bond from the Pickering Manuscript he gave an exquisite portrait of romantic love, purified of fallenness and filled with the divine. Read the last two verses:

      " I thought Love liv'd in the hot sun shine,

But O, he lives in the Moony light!

I thought to find Love in the heat of day,

But sweet Love is the Comforter of Night.

 

       Seek Love in the Pity of others' Woe,

In the gentle relief of another's care,

In the darkness of night & the winter's snow,

In the naked & outcast, Seek Love there!"

 

SATAN

Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations of the Book of Job

Satan Before the Throne of God

The work that is done in the psyche is not all easy and pleasant. It involves tearing down as well as building up. It includes dividing as well as uniting. In the Book of Job, Satan was given the task of testing God's servant Job who was though to be perfect. It turned out that there was a lot of internal work that he needed to do before he knew his own defects and failing. Satan was the instrument through which Job was able to evolve into self-knowledge and a right relationship with God.

Blake describes Satan as having a unique place in the scheme of things. He has no permanent existence as either body or spirit. He exists only as a function and is created when his function needs to be performed. Satan is a state which man passes through along his journey through Eternal Death or life as it is known in this world. He is called the Miller of Eternity because he breaks down the hardened routines we accept as our personalities or who we are. If one's psyche is under the control of a mistaken but pervasive behavior, Satan may intervene to reveal the destructiveness of that arrangement. 

Something has to play the role of showing us what changes will make it possible for an individual to be freed from the chains that bind him to the status quo. Psychological development is a process which is never complete. Satan is a miller; he grinds the hard grains until the are fit to make bread to feed the soul of man. Along with Rintrah, the plowman, he breaks hardened surfaces so that the work of Palamabron, Los and Blake may be accomplished. 

Perhaps we encounter Satan in our dreams when we enter a dark place where we see chaos and destruction. The unconscious mind is signaling us that change is imminent. We have the option of making the necessary changes of becoming their victim. Albion resisted change and suffered the consequences.  

Milton, Plate 3, (E 97)

"At last Enitharmon brought forth Satan Refusing Form, in vain
The Miller of Eternity made subservient to the Great Harvest
That he may go to his own Place Prince of the Starry Wheels

Plate 4 
Beneath the Plow of Rintrah & the harrow of the Almighty
In the hands of Palamabron. Where the Starry Mills of Satan
Are built beneath the Earth & Waters of the Mundane Shell
Here the Three Classes of Men take their Sexual texture Woven
The Sexual is Threefold: the Human is Fourfold              
If you account it Wisdom when you are angry to be silent, and
Not to shew it: I do not account that Wisdom but Folly.
Every Mans Wisdom is peculiar to his own Individ[u]ality
O Satan my youngest born, art thou not Prince of the Starry Hosts
And of the Wheels of Heaven, to turn the Mills day & night?  
Art thou not Newtons Pantocrator weaving the Woof of Locke
To Mortals thy Mills seem every thing & the Harrow of Shaddai
A scheme of Human conduct invisible & incomprehensible
Get to thy Labours at the Mills & leave me to my wrath,

Satan was going to reply, but Los roll'd his loud thunders.   

Anger me not! thou canst not drive the Harrow in pitys paths.
Thy Work is Eternal Death, with Mills & Ovens & Cauldrons.
Trouble me no more. thou canst not have Eternal Life

So Los spoke! Satan trembling obeyd weeping along the way.
Mark well my words, they are of your eternal Salvation"        

Jerusalem, Plate 35  [39], (E 181)
"By Satans Watch-fiends tho' they search numbering every grain
Of sand on Earth every night, they never find this Gate.
It is the Gate of Los. Withoutside is the Mill, intricate, dreadful
And fill'd with cruel tortures; but no mortal man can find the Mill
Of Satan, in his mortal pilgrimage of seventy years              

For Human beauty knows it not: nor can Mercy find it! But 
In the Fourth region of Humanity, Urthona namd[,]
Mortality begins to roll the billows of Eternal Death
Before the Gate of Los. Urthona here is named Los." 

Descriptive Catalogue, Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, (E 535)

"Thus the reader will observe, that
Chaucer makes every one of his characters perfect in his kind,
every one is an Antique Statue; the image of a class, and not of
an imperfect individual.
  This groupe also would furnish substantial matter, on which
volumes might be written.  The Franklin is one who keeps open
table, who is the genius of eating and drinking, the Bacchus; as
the Doctor of Physic is the Esculapius, the Host is the Silenus,
the Squire is the Apollo, the Miller is the Hercules, &c.
Chaucer's characters are a description of the eternal Principles
that exist in all ages.  The Franklin is voluptuousness itself
most nobly pourtrayed:
Page 21
              "It snewed in his house of meat and drink."
  The Plowman is simplicity itself, with wisdom and strength
for its stamina.  Chaucer has divided the ancient character of
Hercules between his Miller and his Plowman.  Benevolence is the
plowman's great characteristic, he is thin with excessive labour,
and not with old age, as some have supposed.
               "He would thresh and thereto dike and delve
               For Christe's sake, for every poore wight,
               Withouten hire, if it lay in his might."
Visions of these eternal principles or characters of human
life appear to poets, in all ages; the Grecian gods were the
ancient Cherubim of Phoenicia; but the Greeks, and since them the
Moderns, have neglected to subdue the gods of Priam.  These Gods
are visions of the eternal attributes, or divine names, which,
when [P 22] erected into gods, become destructive to humanity.
They ought to be the servants, and not the masters of man, or of
society.  They ought to be made to sacrifice to Man, and not man
compelled to sacrifice to them; for when separated from man or
humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the vine of eternity, they
are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers.
  The Plowman of Chaucer is Hercules in his supreme eternal
state, divested of his spectrous shadow; which is the Miller, a
terrible fellow, such as exists in all times and places, for the
trial of men, to astonish every neighbourhood, with brutal
strength and courage, to get rich and powerful to curb the pride
of Man.

Jerusalem, Plate 31 [35], (E 177)

"Then the Divine hand found the Two Limits, Satan and Adam,

... 

"Albion goes to Eternal Death: In Me all Eternity.
Must pass thro' condemnation, and awake beyond the Grave!
No individual can keep these Laws, for they are death
To every energy of man, and forbid the springs of life;
Albion hath enterd the State Satan! Be permanent O State!
And be thou for ever accursed! that Albion may arise again:
And be thou created into a State! I go forth to Create           
States: to deliver Individuals evermore! Amen.

So spoke the voice from the Furnaces, descending into Non-Entity

 [To Govern the Evil by Good: and States abolish Systems.]" 

Romans 8 - Phillips Translation 

Verses 38-39 

        I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor
        life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth,
        neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow,
        neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor
        anything else in God's whole world has any power to
        separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our
        Lord! 

OPPOSER OF CHANGE

Blake Archive
Book of Urizen
Plate 5

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the idea that
the only constant in life is change. Of the few fragments of his writings 
remain, there is one in which he says:

"Everything changes and nothing remains still; and you cannot step twice into the same stream."

From wikipedia we learn more:  

"Heraclitus’ quote is perhaps best known through its interpretation in the dialogue “Cratylus” by Plato.

Socrates: "Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river." (Plato Cratylus 402)

In popular parlance Heraiclitus' insight is often restated as "Change is the only constant."

Blake's Zoa Urizen was opposed to change. The portrait Blake gives us of Urizen shows an individual whose effort was directed toward controlling the future, limiting the actions of others, and producing rules which would prevent change from happening. We are told that Urizen was fond of writing books to supervise the behavior of others in various spheres.

Apparently Urizen devoted significant time to producing his Book of Brass which (as Damon tells us) contains laws for establishing an ideal society.

Book of Urizen, Plate 4, (E 71)

4: From the depths of dark solitude. From
The eternal abode in my holiness,
Hidden set apart in my stern counsels
Reserv'd for the days of futurity,
I have sought for a joy without pain,                            

For a solid without fluctuation"

The perfect society for Urizen would be static. It would not allow for any change because that would obviate the control of the future which Urizen required.

Four Zoas, Night VII,  Page 80, (E 355)
"And Urizen Read in his book of brass in sounding tones    

Listen O Daughters to my voice Listen to the Words of Wisdom
So shall [ye] govern over all let Moral Duty tune your tongue 
But be your hearts harder than the nether millstone
To bring the shadow of Enitharmon beneath our wondrous tree   
That Los may Evaporate like smoke & be no more
Draw down Enitharmon to the Spectre of Urthona
And let him have dominion over Los the terrible shade

Compell the poor to live upon a Crust of bread by soft mild arts
Smile when they frown frown when they smile & when a man looks pale
With labour & abstinence say he looks healthy & happy
And when his children Sicken let them die there are enough
Born even too many & our Earth will be overrun
Without these arts If you would make the poor live with temper
With pomp give every crust of bread you give with gracious cunning 
Magnify small gifts reduce the man to want a gift & then give with pomp 
Say he smiles if you hear him sigh If pale say he is ruddy
Preach temperance   say he is overgorgd & drowns his wit
In strong drink tho you know that bread & water are all
He can afford   Flatter his wife pity his children till we can   

Reduce all to our will as spaniels are taught with art"

Four Zoas, Night VI, Page 73, (E 350) 

"Here will I fix my foot & here rebuild
Her Mountains of Brass promise much riches in their dreadful bosoms

So he began to dig form[ing] of gold silver & iron   
And brass vast instruments to measure out the immense & fix
The whole into another world better suited to obey
His will where none should dare oppose his will himself being King
Of All & all futurity be bound in his vast chain" 

In implementing the perfect autocratic society under his own dominance Urizen found himself opposed by Orc the embodiment of revolution. Urizen  wrote the Book of Iron describing the ruin and sorrow which results from the conflict between established systems and the impetus of change.

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

Rending the Rocks Eleth & Uveth rose & Ona rose       
Terrific with their iron vessels driving them across
In the dim air they took the book of iron & placd above
On clouds of death & sang their songs Kneading the bread of Orc
Orc listend to the song compelld hungring on the cold wind
That swaggd heavy with the accursed dough. the hoar frost ragd   
Thro Onas sieve   the torrent rain pourd from the iron pail
Of Eleth & the icy hands of Uveth kneaded the bread
The heavens bow with terror underneath their iron hands
Singing at their dire work the words of Urizens book of iron
While the enormous scrolls rolld dreadful in the heavens above   
And still the burden of their song in tears was poured forth
The bread is Kneaded let us rest O cruel father of children
But Urizen remitted not their labours upon his rock" 

Urizen's books are not to be taken lightly. What he writes has a life of its own. Even if it is discarded or replaced it continues to exert its influence. Man, through his inner Urizen, repeatedly writes of the conflicts resulting from the need to preserve the past and the need to enter the future.

Four Zoas, Night  VI, Page 71, (E 348) 

"But still his books he bore in his strong hands & his iron pen   
For when he died they lay beside his grave & when he rose   
He siezd them with a gloomy smile for wrapd in his death clothes  
He hid them when he slept in death when he revivd the clothes
Were rotted by the winds the books remaind still unconsumd

Still to be written & interleavd with brass & iron & gold 
Time after time for such a journey none but iron pens           
Can write And adamantine leaves recieve nor can the man who goes

Page 72 
The journey obstinate refuse to write time after time"  

Albion appealed to Urizen to put aside his anger but he clung to his books until he was trapped in a labyrinth of unsolvable Mystery. Although Urizen escaped, his book of Iron remained behind. Nothing could abide the wrath of Orc or the resolve of Urizen.

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 78, (E 353) 
"For Urizen fixd in Envy sat brooding & coverd with snow
His book of iron on his knees he tracd the dreadful letters
While his snows fell & his storms beat to cool the flames of Orc
Age after Age till underneath his heel a deadly root
Struck thro the rock the root of Mystery accursed shooting up   
Branches into the heaven of Los they pipe formd bending down
Take root again whereever they touch again branching forth
In intricate labyrinths oerspreading many a grizly deep

 Amazd started Urizen when he found himself compassd round
And high roofed over with trees. he arose but the stems          
Stood so thick he with difficulty & great pain brought
His books out of the dismal shade. all but the book of iron
Again he took his seat & rangd his Books around
On a rock of iron frowning over the foaming fires of Orc

And Urizen hung over Orc & viewd his terrible wrath              
Sitting upon an iron Crag at length his words broke forth 

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 120, (E 389) 

 "The Eternal Man sat on the Rocks & cried with awful voice

O Prince of Light where art thou   I behold thee not as once
In those Eternal fields in clouds of morning stepping forth 
With harps & songs where bright Ahania sang before thy face
And all thy sons & daughters gatherd round my ample table
See you not all this wracking furious confusion
Come forth from slumbers of thy cold abstraction come forth
Arise to Eternal births shake off thy cold repose 
Schoolmaster of souls great opposer of change arise
That the Eternal worlds may see thy face in peace & joy
That thou dread form of Certainty maist sit in town & village
While little children play around thy feet in gentle awe
Fearing thy frown loving thy smile O Urizen Prince of light

Image of dread whence art thou whence is this most woful place
Whence these fierce fires but from thyself No other living thing
In all this Chasm I behold. No other living thing
Dare thy most terrible wrath abide   Bound here to waste in pain" 

Blake resolved his conundrum in the final pages of The four Zoas. The various aspects of the Eternal Man were restored to their original positions and functions. Urizen was reunited with his emanation. Damon states that "Orc burns himself out, especially when Urizen stops trying to control him; and he becomes Luvah again." 

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 125, (E  394)

"The seed is harrowd in while flames heat the black mould & cause
The human harvest to begin Towards the south first sprang 
The myriads & in silent fear they look out from their graves

Then Urizen sits down to rest & all his wearied Sons
Take their repose on beds they drink they sing they view the flames
Of Orc in joy they view the human harvest springing up
A time they give to sweet repose till all the harvest is ripe    

And Lo like the harvest Moon Ahania cast off her death clothes
She folded them up in care in silence & her brightning limbs
Bathd in the clear spring of the rock then from her darksom cave
Issud in majesty divine   Urizen rose up from his couch
On wings of tenfold joy clapping his hands his feet his radiant wings
In the immense as when the Sun dances upon the mountains
A shout of jubilee in lovely notes responding from daughter to daughter
From son to Son as if the Stars beaming innumerable
Thro night should sing soft warbling filling Earth & heaven
And bright Ahania took her seat by Urizen in songs & joy         

The Eternal Man also sat down upon the Couches of Beulah
Sorrowful that he could not put off his new risen body
In mental flames the flames refusd they drove him back to Beulah
His body was redeemd to be permanent thro Mercy Divine

Page 126 
And now fierce Orc had quite consumd himself in Mental flames
Expending all his energy against the fuel of fire
The Regenerate Man stoopd his head over the Universe & in   
His holy hands recievd the flaming Demon & Demoness of Smoke
And gave them to Urizens hands the Immortal frownd Saying        

Luvah & Vala henceforth you are Servants obey & live
You shall forget your former state return O Love in peace
Into your place the place of seed not in the brain or heart"

While writing Jerusalem later in his career Blake returned to the theme of conflict between Urizen's desire to preserve the status quo and Orc's inclination to foster change. While Golgonooza was being built contentions between Los and the Spectre continued. However the Spectre had been forced to see the consequences of his own actions.

Jerusalem, Plate 10, (E 154)
"So spoke the Spectre shuddring, & dark tears ran down his shadowy face
Which Los wiped off, but comfort none could give! or beam of hope
Yet ceasd he not from labouring at the roarings of his Forge
With iron & brass Building Golgonooza in great contendings
Till his Sons & Daughters came forth from the Furnaces
At the sublime Labours for Los. compelld the invisible Spectre   
Plate 11
To labours mighty, with vast strength, with his mighty chains,
In pulsations of time, & extensions of space, like Urns of Beulah
With great labour upon his anvils, & in his ladles the Ore
He lifted, pouring it into the clay ground prepar'd with art;
Striving with Systems to deliver Individuals from those Systems; 
That whenever any Spectre began to devour the Dead,
He might feel the pain as if a man gnawd his own tender nerves."