A Clod of Clay

First posted March 2010.

Blake's myth posits our pre-existence, like Thel in the pastoral Vale of Har; we all choose material, temporal life. That's why we're here-- for a time! Eventually we will return--whether we will or not.

But like Thel the choice was ours; we chose life; she declined.

Why do those in the 'above' choose mortal life? Who can say? Some do; some don't.

Thel explored the option. She found the end of mortal life fearsome. With a screech she forsook the world and presumably returned to Har.

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For Blake everything is a man: rocks, clouds, all creatures, the whole Creation"
"Cities are Men....and Rivers & Mountains are also Men; everything is Human, mighty! sublime!" (Jerusalem, Plate 34 [38], E 180)

Also lilies, clouds, worms, a Clod of Clay.

Wikimedia Commons
Book of Thel
Plate 6

In Thel we meet the Lilly, the Cloud, the Worm, the Clod of Clay. The last one had this to say:
Book of Thel, Plate 4, (E 5)
"...on Thel she fix'd her humble eyes;
'O beauty of the vales of Har, we live not for ourselves.
Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed:
My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark,
But he that loves the lowly pours his oil upon my head,
And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast,
And says: "Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away."
But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know;
I ponder, and I cannot ponder, yet I live and love.'

Such a beautiful passage! the 'Clod of Clay' is the mother of God's children, 'he that loves the lowly'. God promises to redeem the entire Creation. ("the whole Creation groans in travail ......waiting for the Redemption" (Romans 22).
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"Cities are Men, fathers of multitudes, and Rivers & Mount[a]ins Are also Men; every thing is Human, mighty! sublime! (Jerusalem, Plate 34, E 180)

And from Milton, Plate 22, (E 117):

"Six Thousand Years
Are finishd. I return! both Time & Space obey my will.
I in Six Thousand Years walk up and down: for not one
Moment Of Time is lost, nor one Event of Space unpermanent.
But all remain: every fabric of Six Thousand Years
Remains permanent: tho' on the Earth where Satan
Fell, and was cut off all things vanish & are seen no more
They vanish not from me & mine, we guard them first & last.
The generations of men run on in the tide of Time
But leave their destind lineaments permanent for ever & ever."

You could construct an elaborate and beautiful cosmology out of that idea:

Jerusalem Plate 99, (E 258):

"All Human Forms identified even Tree Metal Earth & Stone. all
Human Forms identified, living going forth & returning wearied
Into the Planetary lives of Years Months Days & Hours reposing And then Awaking into his Bosom in the Life of Immortality."

When we've completely annihilated our Selfhood, our journey is complete:
"When once I did descry the immortal man who cannot die Through evening shades I haste away to close the labors of my day." Gates of Paradise, (E 269)
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System of Blake and the Bible

First posted 2010.

"I must Create a System or be enslavd by another Mans"

Jerusalem, Plate 10, (E 153)

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

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

So Los, in fury & strength: in indignation & burning wrath
Shuddring the Spectre howls. his howlings terrify the night
He stamps around the Anvil, beating blows of stern despair
He curses Heaven & Earth, Day & Night & Sun & Moon               
He curses Forest Spring & River, Desart & sandy Waste
Cities & Nations, Families & Peoples, Tongues & Laws
Driven to desperation by Los's terrors & threatning fears
Los cries, Obey my voice & never deviate from my will
And I will be merciful to thee: be thou invisible to all         
To whom I make thee invisible, but chief to my own Children" 

It's very nice when you begin to grasp the system that Blake created instead of choosing a conventional life. But the most fascinating thing is to reach some understanding of how it relates to the 'system' of the Bible.

In Joachim of Flora's Everlasting Gospel there are three stages: O.T. (the Father, who ruled by the law), N.T. (the Son where Love becomes dominant), and post-Resurrection (the Holy Spirit). Jesus told us he was leaving mortal form so that we might be led by the Holy Spirit (John 14:25-29).
Blake expressed this theory of Religion with three of his Zoas: Urizen with the Father, Luvah with the Son, and Los with the Holy Spirit. In his mind (at least part of the time) Urizen with the Fall became arrogant and thirsty for Power and chose to run the World; he always had his book before him, and he ruled by the book; he claimed to be God.

As The Four Zoas begins (with the Fall), Luvah is said to have stolen Urizen's horses of light and thereby exerted his dominance.

Four Zoas, Night I, Page 9, (E 305)

"Urizen sleeps in the porch 
Luvah and Vala woke & flew up from the Human Heart    
Into the Brain; from thence upon the pillow Vala slumber'd.
And Luvah siez'd the Horses of Light, & rose into the Chariot of Day" 

In Blake's poetry there's much conflict between the two Zoas (psychologically - thought and feeling, or reason and impulse). This conflict occurred in Blake's psyche. In the early years freedom (free love, etc.) was dominant; in the course of his life the two functions came into (or rose to) the pre-Fall balance. (You can approximately relate this to the conflict between biblical priests and prophets; it goes on throughout the Bible. Blake definitely chose prophecy, as did Jesus - love rather than law. This accounts for the high valuation he placed on forgiveness, making it virtually synonymous with the love of God and neighbor.)

Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations to Paradise Lost
Page 3

Blake identified creative imagination with Los; Los was a blacksmith with a furnace. The Bible is full of references to a furnace: Isaiah 48:10 for example. It found expression in the hymn How Firm a Foundation.

In the Bible and in Blake there is an underlying fourfold structure. Running through it is a myth of four phases: Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Apocalypse. This is the sequence of events in Blake's system as well as in the Bible's.

ACCUSERS

First posted Aug 2010 on Religion & Psychology.

Wikipedia Commons     Large Book of Designs
The Accusers

Link to image from British Museum
Link to image from National Gallery


Blake created a print in 1793 which he was to reuse several times because it expressed so well his political, spiritual and psychological views. He first called the image 'Our End is Come.' Erdman, in Prophet Against Empire (Page 206), describes it as 'the hysterical king, flanked by two chief warriors who grip sword and spear, [who] stands inside a threshold enveloped in flames.' The second issue was captioned, 'When the senses are shaken, And the Soul is driven to madness', to suggest the madness of the king. In the third version the caption below the picture reads: 'A Scene in the Last Judgment / Satans' holy Trinity The Accuser The Judge & The Executioner'. Above the Picture we see: 'The Accusers of Theft Adultery Murder'; with the words 'Theft', 'Adultery' and 'Murder' labeling the three men.

The madness of the king refers to the episodes of madness that King George III experienced in 1788-9 and later in his reign. King George's militarism is represented by the warrior on his right, his political tyranny by the counselor on his left. There was much in the British government of which Blake disapproved, and he suggested it in the picture. But the consequences to those who committed destructive acts is most evident in the faces of the men portrayed. They exhibit the sorrow, terror, despair and fear which they had caused others to experience through war, impoverishment, imprisonment and oppression.

Erdman suggests that in labeling the picture 'The Accusers of Theft Adultery Murder', Blake had made a bitter jest: 'those who accuse are guilty and those who judge will be judged by the flaming sword; and the executioner shall be consumed in the conflagration of his own igniting.' (Page 207)

Erdman continues on Page 208: "The king in his expression of amazement bears kinship to the kings as accusers of adultery in Queen Emma and Jane Shore... Burke in speeches and pamphlets in which he raised the property question accused both France and English radicals of intending theft ('levelling'). Pitt was an accuser of Murder when he urged Parliament to arm against France because of the murder of the King of France..."

Blake describes Satan as the accuser. In the inscription Blake names the accusers as Satan's Holy Trinity. The state of error which Satan represents, is to be annihilated at the Last Judgment. The accusers are aspects of Satan, the selfhood. They become what they see (or they see what they have become). As error they have no permanent existence and may well say "Our End Is Come."

Four Zoas, Page 107 [115], (E 380)
"There is a State namd Satan learn distinct to know O Rahab
The Difference between States & Individuals of those States
The State namd Satan never can be redeemd in all Eternity"

Milton, Plate 23 [25], (E 119)
"lest they write them in their Books, & in the Scroll
Of mortal life, to condemn the accused: who at Satans Bar
Tremble in Spectrous Bodies continually day and night
While on the Earth they live in sorrowful Vegetations
O when shall we tread our Wine-presses in heaven; and Reap
Our wheat with shoutings of joy, and leave the Earth in peace"

Descriptive Catalogue, Page 86 ,(E 564)
"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"

Descriptive Catalogue, Page 92, (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"
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Satanic Mills

First posted Oct 2009.

The famous hymn called 'Jerusalem' is found in the Preface of Blake's poem Milton:

"And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets.
(Numbers ch 11, verse 29)"


From Little Black Boy in Songs of Innocence we read "To learn in joy upon our fathers knee."


Like most of what Blake wrote 'Satanic Mills' has more
than one meaning. The most obvious one might be the
monuments to the Industrial Revolution that took
thousands of landless, homeless peasants and paid them
a pittance to work 16 hours a day at a deadening,
repetitive task.

That happened not just to adults but to very young
children. Charles Dickens novels gives a taste of that
outrage, and it was echoed as late as the mid 20th
century in furniture and garment factories in this
country.

British Museum
Illustration's to Young's Night Thoughts

More basic to Blake's spiritual and psychological orientation was the sense in which it was applied in an earlier post: "the same dull round", applicable to the essentially meaningless lives that millions of people live.

They may or may not go to essentially meaningless churches (or taverns) in search of something made inaccessible to them by the deadening atmosphere of the schools they attended.

At the end of Chapter Three of Jerusalem (Plate 76; E230-31) Blake imagined the horrible reality of a return to the beginning of history at its end:

"For Los in Six Thousand Years walks up & down continually
That not one Moment of Time be lost & every revolution
Of Space he makes permanent in Bowlahoola & Cathedron.

And these the names of the Twenty-seven Heavens & their
Churches Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared,
Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech; these are the Giants mighty,
Hermaphroditic Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Cainan the Second,
Salah, Heber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah: these
are the Female Males: A Male within a Female hid as in
an Ark & Curtains. Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Paul,
Constantine, Charlemaine, Luther. these Seven are the
Male Females: the Dragon Forms The Female hid within a
Male: thus Rahab is reveald Mystery Babylon the Great:
the Abomination of Desolation
Religion hid in War: a Dragon red, & hidden Harlot

But Jesus breaking thro' the Central Zones of Death &
Hell Opens Eternity in Time & Space; triumphant in
Mercy

Thus are the Heavens formd by Los within the Mundane
Shell And where Luther ends Adam begins again in
Eternal Circle...."

"where Luther ends Adam begins" expresses the
fear that there will be only 'another dull round' of
history..

But Blake saw a happier outcome as you find portrayed at
the ends of The Four Zoas and Jerusalem.
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MORAVIAN CONNECTION

First posted June 2010.

In recent years it has been learned that William Blake's mother had been a Moravian during her first marriage and was said to have been from a Moravian family. After her husband's death she left the Moravians and married James Blake in 1752.

The Moravians originated in central Europe and moved about as they were persecuted for their non-orthodox beliefs and practices. They emphasized a religion of the heart, expressed in a life of religious disciplines and freedom for emotional and aesthetic activities.

They had a missionary zeal to spread the Gospel and sent members to far flung sites. Peter Bohler was sent to England to establish contact with Christians at Oxford. He became associated with a young John Wesley and they both traveled to the new colony in Georgia which had been established to provide opportunity for the British underclass such as those in the debtor's prison - the Marshalsea.

Victoria and Albert Museum
The Transfiguration

When Wesley and Bohler returned to London they were among those who established the Fetter Lane Society in 1738. As were many religious societies in that day, Fetter Lane was non-denominational. Later Wesley left Fetter Lane and established Foundry and other societies which became the foundation of the Methodist Church. Fetter Lane became the Moravian Church to which Catherine Armitage applied for membership in 1750. During the period when Blake was a young man, Wesley was active in his ministry throughout England: preaching salvation from sin, organizing societies for the converted to grow in the faith, encouraging a deep personal religious experience among believers.

Wesley, the Oxford educated son of a Church of England minister preached in the fields to the outcasts, the poor and the oppressed, and he converted them to lives of sobriety and frugality. Blake, the son of a hosier, without formal education created sublime poetry and artwork to speak to the intellect and imagination about the possibility of living in Eternity. Both men were unaccepted by the establishment. Both men carved out distinctive lifestyles to carry out their religious vision. Both were significantly influenced by the Moravian movement which found form in a little meeting called the Fetter Lane Society.

Wesley had nothing to say about Blake, but Blake made mention of Wesley with admiration.

Milton, Plate 22, (E 118) 

Rintrah speaking:

 "O Swedenborg! strongest of men, the Samson shorn by the Churches!
Shewing the Transgresors in Hell, the proud Warriors in Heaven:
Heaven as a Punisher & Hell as One under Punishment:
With Laws from Plato & his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods,
In Albion; & to deny the value of the Saviours blood.
But then I rais'd up Whitefield, Palamabron raisd up Westley,    

And these are the cries of the Churches before the two Witnesses[']
Faith in God the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:
Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross
The Witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City
No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden under Foot:       
He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Westley; were they Prophets
Or were they Idiots or Madmen? shew us Miracles!
Plate 23 [25]
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their lifes whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death" 

Wesley's explanatory note on the Two Witnesses of Revelation:

1:3

"And I - Christ. Will give to my two witnesses - These seem to be two prophets; two select, eminent instruments. Some have supposed (though without foundation) that they are Moses and Elijah, whom they resemble in several respects. To prophesy twelve hundred and sixty days - Common days, that is, an hundred and eighty weeks. So long will they prophesy, (even while that last and sharp treading of the holy city continues,) both by word and deed, witnessing that Jesus is the Son of God, the heir of all things, and exhorting all men to repent, and fear, and glorify God. Clothed in sackcloth - The habit of the deepest mourners, out of sorrow and concern for the people." .

Influences on Blake

First posted Nov 2009.

There's an uncanny similarity between the culture Blake
was born into and the present: The majority culture was
radically materialistic, while an alternative (New Age) one
thrived, especially in religious circles.

Blake's parents may have been Swedenborgians; his mother had been a
Moravian during her first marriage; these two radically dissenting sects
had their due influence on the young Blake's religious outlook.

Wikimedia Commons
Songs of Innocence
Plate 40

Blake enjoyed a happy childhood, with remarkably liberal and permissive parents; he started school at the appropriate age, but his academic career was a short one: when the schoolmaster birched a fellow pupil, little William made a quick exit and never returned.

Like many such 'dropouts' Blake became an autodidact; he probably knew more than any person alive of the "perennial philosophy", the wisdom of the ages. It was a wisdom that
the materialistic culture had turned its back on with the excessive secularism of the Enlightenment.

In late 18th century England School was for the middle class, a station to which Blake always aspired. But outside the middle class boys were generally apprenticed; Blake became an apprentice to a well regarded engraver. Thereafter he made his primary income as an engraver; a great many of his poems were engraved as illuminated poetry, which Blake practically invented.

Husbands in general tend to be deeply influenced by
their wives, and Blake was no exception. He married an
illiterate woman, but she soon became literate; for 40
years Catherine Blake helped William with his creations and
gave him unlimited encouragement and emotional support.

Re intellectual influences the Bible was first and foremost;
it's hard to find a page of Blake's poetry without a
quotation or at least allusion to some biblical idea.

Second to the Bible is what I called above the 'perennial
philosophy', what Kathleen Raine called the 'canon of the
western esoteric tradition.' It includes an enormous variety
of written material. In a letter he wrote to John Flaxman
when he was 33 Blake only touched the surface:

"Now my lot in the Heavens is this; Milton lovd me in
childhood & shewd me his face Ezra came with Isaiah the
Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave me his hand
Paracelsus & Behmen [Boehme] appeard to me. terrors
appeard in the Heavens above."

One might add Spencer, Dante, and a host of others. Blake
was an inveterate and omnivorous reader; you have to
wonder how he could have accessed all the stuff to which
he had obviously been exposed.

We all encounter influences, both positive and negative. The
primary negative influence Blake felt was the prevailing
materialism; he referred to it as Bacon, Newton and Locke.
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Sons of Los

First posted Oct 21, 2009.

Urizen is given credit for creation of the world; but at least part of it should actually go to Los.

Look at Chapter IV of the Book of Urizen where in seven ages 'in a state of dismal woe,' Los proceeded to endow Urizen with the five senses.

Book of Urizen, Plate 10, (E 75)
"5. Restless turnd the immortal inchain'd
Heaving dolorous! anguish'd! unbearable
Till a roof shaggy wild inclos'd
In an orb, his fountain of thought.

6. In a horrible dreamful slumber;                              
Like the linked infernal chain;
A vast Spine writh'd in torment
Upon the winds; shooting pain'd
Ribs, like a bending cavern
And bones of solidness, froze                 
Over all his nerves of joy.      
And a first Age passed over,                     
And a state of dismal woe.           
Plate 11

7. From the caverns of his jointed Spine,
Down sunk with fright a red
Round globe hot burning deep
Deep down into the Abyss:
Panting: Conglobing, Trembling                     
Shooting out ten thousand branches
Around his solid bones.
And a second Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

8. In harrowing fear rolling round;                   
His nervous brain shot branches
Round the branches of his heart.
On high into two little orbs
And fixed in two little eaves
Hiding carefully from the wind,                        
His Eyes beheld the deep,
And a third Age passed over:
And a state of dismal woe.

9. The pangs of hope began,
In heavy pain striving, struggling.     
Two Ears in close volutions.
From beneath his orbs of vision
Shot spiring out and petrified
As they grew. And a fourth Age passed
And a state of dismal woe.         

10. In ghastly torment sick;
Hanging upon the wind;
Plate 13
Two Nostrils bent down to the deep.
And a fifth Age passed over;
And a state of dismal woe.

11. In ghastly torment sick;
Within his ribs bloated round,        
A craving Hungry Cavern;
Thence arose his channeld Throat,
And like a red flame a Tongue
Of thirst & of hunger appeard.
And a sixth Age passed over:         
And a state of dismal woe.

12. Enraged & stifled with torment
He threw his right Arm to the north
His left Arm to the south
Shooting out in anguish deep,          
And his Feet stampd the nether Abyss
In trembling & howling & dismay.
And a seventh Age passed over:
And a state of dismal woe."

Properly speaking Blake meant by Sons of Los just about everyone and everything:

Milton, Plate 26 [28], (E 123)
"These are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the Vintage
Thou seest the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summer
Upon the sunny brooks & meadows: every one the dance
Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave:
Each one to sound his instruments of music in the dance,     
To touch each other & recede; to cross & change & return
These are the Children of Los; thou seest the Trees on mountains
The wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro' the darksom sky
Uttering prophecies & speaking instructive words to the sons
Of men: These are the Sons of Los! These the Visions of Eternity

But we see only as it were the hem of their garments
When with our vegetable eyes we view these wond'rous Visions"

Wikipedia Commons
Europe a Prophecy
Plate 17

Some of Sons of Los


James Rieger even claims the Holy Word is a garment which may be called a Son of Los:
"The idiom of the Bard's Song is to the Holy Word as nature is to eternity. Both are garments, and both may be called Sons of Los." (Page 297)