Reconciliation With Jesus

British Museum
Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

Previously posted  April 2019

This is an extract from Chapter Five (GOD) of Ram Horn'd With Gold by Larry Clayton.

 i

Perhaps the most basic feature of Blake's Jesus is the Oneness that he embodied. It's also the most orthodox. Blake was in many ways an unorthodox thinker and theologian, as the preceding pages have shown, but the Oneness of Jesus comes straight out of the New Testament. A wealth of texts demonstrate this; those of the Bible and those of Blake show a profound simultaneity of intention:

The Evangelist John quotes Jesus in his starkest statement of his identity: "I and my Father are One" John 10:30. And later he recorded Jesus' great prayer of intercession for us,

"That they all may be one, as thou Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one is us."

If any one verse in the Bible most clearly expresses Blake's fundamental faith, that's it. Look at Blake's first mention of Jesus in 4Z:

"Then those in Great Eternity met in the Council of God
...
As One Man all the Universal family; and that One Man
They call Jesus the Christ, and they in him and he in them
Live in Perfect harmony, in Eden the land of life."
(The Four Zoas [Nt 1], 21.1-6; E310)

In the total structure of his theological vision Blake has imaginatively answered thoroughly and completely the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to his vision Jesus, the One, comprises the true nature of you and me when we are healed and whole. Once again nothing could be more biblical.

Long before his encounter with Jesus Blake's myth was thoroughly grounded in the Oneness of Man. Albion was One, the Universe. His division was the Fall, and his return to unity the ultimate good. Thus Blake describes Albion, the Universal Man at the very beginning of 4Z:

Four Zoas, Night I, Page 4, (E 310)
"Daughter of Beulah, Sing,
His fall into Division and his Resurrection to Unity:
His fall into the Generation of decay and death, and his
Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead."

That was the shape of the original myth. After Felpham Jesus became the One and Albion became one of his members--and so did Blake. 'Jerusalem' begins with a plate headed by the stark phrase in Greek, "Jesus only", and Blake reports hearing these words from the Savior:

Jerusalem, Plate 4, (E 146)
"I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;
Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:
Lo! we are One, forgiving all Evil, Not seeking recompense.
Ye are my members...."

And near the end of 'Jerusalem':

Jerusalem, Plate 91, (E 251)
"He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children,
One first, in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in midst
Jesus will appear....
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars, and every
Particular is a Man, a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus."

Jesus claimed to be one with God and prayed that we might join him in the oneness. Blake's pilgrimage, with his successive visions of God, those he hated as well as those he loved, provides a fascinating example of how a man becomes one with God. To love the true God is to hate all false Gods.

ii

The philosophic garment with which Blake clothed Jesus was his Neo-platonic idealism. The Eternal Jesus whom Blake envisioned and worshiped is radically separated from the Hebrew peasant who lived in the first century. Blake understood that the worship of the historical Jesus had become an insidious form of idolatry, an advanced form of Satanism.

The priest claims the historical Jesus as his exclusive possession and as the ultimate sanction of his particular form of religious tyranny. He uses the figure first to cow and then to exploit his credulous followers. In this way he denies the indwelling Spirit in himself as well as in his flock. Blake's Jesus, in contrast to the priests', exists not in history but in heaven, which is not a far off never, never land, but a psychic reality.

The never, never land is a materialistic illusion. The reality of Jesus is eternal rather than material; preoccupation with the material Blake saw clearly as a rejection or refusal of the eternal. In 4Z Jerusalem, the embodiment of the church, responds materialistically to the death of Jesus: "let us build a Sepulcher and worship Death in fear while yet we live." What a powerful commentary on the response of the Church to the Christ event!

As long as our minds are centered in that particular century, Christ is dead for us. Preoccupied with the corporeal, we fail to discern the (spiritual) body. A few pages later we read that "Jerusalem wept over the Sepulcher two thousand years". Blake means that we Christians have done this under the influence of the established Church, dominated by the materialistic spirit of the age. While Jerusalem weeps over the corporeal body, like Mary Magdalen at the empty tomb, Jesus in his spiritual body stands beside her waiting to be recognized, but this won't happen until we (Jerusalem) awaken from our obsession with the material:

"And Los and Enitharmon builded Jerusalem, weeping
Over the Sepulcher and over the Crucified body
Which, to their Phantom Eyes, appear'd still in the Sepulcher;
But Jesus stood beside them in the spirit...."
(FZ9-117.1-4; E386)

The Eternal Man, both First and Second Adam, had God (Spirit) for father and Earth (Clay, Matter) for mother. Blake's profound allegiance to this traditional symbolism led to what many have perceived as a savage attack on Jesus' mother. The attack was savage, but the object of Blake's savagery was not Mary herself but the veneration of Mary, which he could only see as a reversion to Nature Worship and the fertility cults. He understood the veneration of Mary as an alternative to the Living Christ, a direct rival in fact of true Christianity.

This background helps one to understand the psychic meaning of the "Visions of Elohim Jehovah" concerning Joseph and Mary found on Plate 61 of 'Jerusalem'. Too lengthy to quote here, it gives the clearest picture of Blake's feelings about the corporeal ancestry of Christ. A brief but cogent statement of the same thing appears in 'The Everlasting Gospel':

iii

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

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

Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Plate 21, (E 43)
"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 goodwill 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, 96.23ff; E256)

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.

iv

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

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

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

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

Textual note for Everlasting Gospel, (E 875)
"There is not one Moral Virtue that Jesus Inculcated but Plato
and Cicero did Inculcate before him; what then did Christ
Inculcate? Forgiveness of Sins. This alone is the Gospel,
and this is the Life and Immortality brought to light by Jesus,
Even the Covenant of Jehovah, which is This: If you forgive
one another your Trespasses, so shall Jehovah forgive you,
That he himself may dwell among you; but if you Avenge, you
Murder the Divine Image, and he cannot dwell among you; because
you Murder him he arises again, and you deny that he is Arisen,
and are blind to Spirit."

Textual note for Everlasting Gospel, (E 875)

   "If Moral Virtue was Christianity
     Christs Pretensions were all Vanity
     And Caiphas & Pilate Men
     Praise Worthy & the Lions Den
     And not the Sheepfold Allegories
     Of God & Heaven & their Glories 
     The Moral Christian is the Cause 
     Of the Unbeliever & his Laws 
     Take Jesus & Jehovahs Name.
     For what is Antichrist but those
     Who against Sinners Heaven close
     With Iron bars in Virtuous State
     And Rhadamanthus at the Gate...

     It was when Jesus said to Me
     Thy Sins are all forgiven thee
     The Christian trumpets loud proclaim
     Thro all the World in Jesus name
     Mutual forgiveness of each Vice
     And oped the Gates of Paradise
     The Moral Virtues in Great fear
     Formed the Cross & Nails & Spear
     And the Accuser standing by
     Cried out Crucify Crucify
     Our Moral Virtues neer can be
     Nor Warlike pomp & Majesty
     For Moral Virtues all begin
     In the Accusations of Sin
     And all the Heroic Virtues End 
     In destroying the Sinners Friend" 

 End of Chapter Five of Ram Horn'd With Gold. 

FALLEN ANGELS

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum

Fallen Angels

The owners of this picture, the Harvard Art Museums, give it the date 1793 which is four years before the date on the title page of The Four Zoas. It is probable that Blake began composing The Four Zoas years before the date on the Title Page. Therefore, judging from this image, it seems that a conception of falling angels or zoas was in the mind of Blake long before he began to put words to paper. 

Four Zoas, Night V, Page 64, (E 344)

"O Fool could I forget the light that filled my bright spheres
Was a reflection of his face who calld me from the deep          

I well remember for I heard the mild & holy voice
Saying O light spring up & shine & I sprang up from the deep 
He gave to me a silver scepter & crownd me with a golden crown
& said Go forth & guide my Son who wanders on the ocean      

I went not forth. I hid myself in black clouds of my wrath       
I calld the stars around my feet in the night of councils dark
The stars threw down their spears & fled naked away
We fell. I siezd thee dark Urthona In my left hand falling

I siezd thee beauteous Luvah thou art faded like a flower
And like a lilly is thy wife Vala witherd by winds               
When thou didst bear the golden cup at the immortal tables
Thy children smote their fiery wings crownd with the gold of heaven
PAGE 65 
Thy pure feet stepd on the steps divine. too pure for other feet
And thy fair locks shadowd thine eyes from the divine effulgence
Then thou didst keep with Strong Urthona the living gates of heaven
But now thou art bound down with him even to the gates of hell"  

Milton's Paradise Lost was illustrated by Blake for Thomas Butts in 1808. Following Milton's narration, Blake pictured on his seventh illustration, rebel angels being expelled from heaven. Prominent in Milton's tale is the idea that the angels who refused obedience to the Almighty were forced from heaven. Later after God created Adam and Eve, Satan entered Eden and tempted 'the mother of mankind' to eat the forbidden fruit. The fall of Adam and Eve led to mankind living in a fallen world which Blake described in detail.

Wikipedia Commons

Illustrations to Paradise Lost

Rout of the Rebel Angels

Paradise Lost, Book I

"The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the most high,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms."

Book VI, 

853

1. Yet half his strength he put not forth, but checked
   His thunder in mid volley; for he meant
   Not to destroy, but root them out of Heaven:
   The overthrown he raised, and as a herd
   Of goats or timorous flock together thronged
   Drove them before him thunder-struck, pursued
   With terrors, and with furies, to the bounds
   And crystal wall of Heaven; which, opening wide,
   Rolled inward, and a spacious gap disclosed
   Into the wasteful deep: The monstrous sight
   Struck them with horror backward, but far worse
   Urged them behind: Headlong themselves they threw
   Down from the verge of Heaven; eternal wrath
   Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.
   866

   ---

      Paradise Regained, The Third Temptation

Fitzwilliam Museum

Paradise Regained

Christ Placed on the Pinnacle of the Temple

We see Blake's portrayal of the Fall of Satan in the Illustrations to Milton's Paradise Regained. This work is dated 1816-20. Milton described the passage which occurs  in Matthew 4:

[5] Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
[6] And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
[7] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

Paradise Regained, Book 4

"There stand, if thou wilt stand; to stand upright
Will ask thee skill; I to thy Fathers house
Have brought thee, and highest plac't, highest is best,
Now shew thy Progeny; if not to stand,
Cast thy self down; safely if Son of God: [ 555 ]
For it is written, He will give command
Concerning thee to his Angels, in thir hands
They shall up lift thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.

To whom thus Jesus: also it is written, [ 560 ]
Tempt not the Lord thy God; he said and stood.
But Satan smitten with amazement fell"

---

   Throughout his career Blake was interested in showing how there was a fall through which entities who had enjoyed the company of God in the divine milieu, lost their heavenly status. Blake felt compelled to make it clear to mankind that he lives in a fallen state. Without such a consciousness there is no possibility of reestablishing with God a spiritual connection which restores the oneness.

JERUSALEM MARATHORN

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 2

 

 Blake's epic poem Jerusalem delights the senses, stimulates the mind, and enriches the spirit. A group of scholars and students challenged themselves to read straight though the poem taking the parts of various characters. The reading was reported on by Suzanne Skyler in Blake/ An Illustrated Quaterly.

The event was not performed for an audience or recorded for posterity. However there have been recordings made of readings of Jerusalem which are available on youTube. This version is presented by LibriVox .

The Jerusalem Marathon
The Abbey at Sutton Courtenay, 6-7 November 2004

By Susanne Sklar
Queen's College, Oxford

WAR IN HEAVEN

National Gallery of Art

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, c. 1805

Revelation12

[1] And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
[2] And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
[3] And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
[4] And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
[5] And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
[6] And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
[7] And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
[8] And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
[9] And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
[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.
[11] And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
[12] Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
[13] And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.
[14] And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.

BODY & SOUL

Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations to Robert Blair's The Grave

Christ Descending into the Grave 

Genesis 2

[7] And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Given to man are two means or 'doors' of perception; his physical senses and his spiritual senses. The doors though which his body perceives are eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch. Through intuition, imagination, intimation, and revelation the spirit receives and disseminates spiritual truth. Since physical sensation is of the body it dies with bodily death. The spiritual senses, like the Soul, are eternal and continue to operate in the Eternal World. Blake, like the Apostle Paul, recognized the Spiritual Body.

Because we live in two worlds - the Eternal World and the physical world - we receive messages from both sources. However through our senses we have become more accustomed to the physical world of time and space. But our Spiritual Senses are accessible to our bodies as well as our Spirits. Blake could say that "notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged", because the body and soul are interconnected serving one another and being served by the other. The Apostle Paul and William Blake agree that at death, the Physical Body is left behind in the physical world and it is replaced by a spiritual body as the spirit leaves time for Eternity. 

First Corinthians 15

[41] There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
[42] So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
[43] It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
[44] It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

Philippians 18-21 [Phillips Translation]

For there are many, of whom I have told you before and tell you again now, even with tears, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. These men are heading for utter destruction - their god is their own appetite, their pride is in what they should be ashamed of, and this world is the limit of their horizon. But we are citizens of Heaven; our outlook goes beyond this world to the hopeful expectation of the saviour who will come from Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will re-make these wretched bodies of ours to resemble his own glorious body, by that power of his which makes him the master of everything that is.

---

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39)

 "For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to 
leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole 
creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas
it now  appears finite & corrupt.
   This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
   But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his
soul, is to  be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the
infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and
medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the
infinite which was hid.
   If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear  to man as it is: infinite.
   For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks of his cavern."

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Plate 52, (E 30)

"Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay
And me to Mortal Life betray:
The Death of Jesus set me free, 
Then what have I to do with thee?

[text on illustration: It is Raised a Spiritual Body]"

Four Zoas, Night viii, Page 104, (E 378)

"Los said to Enitbarmon Pitying I saw
Pitying the Lamb of God Descended thro Jerusalems gates
To put off Mystery time after time & as a Man
Is born on Earth so was he born of Fair Jerusalem
In mysterys woven mantle & in the Robes of Luvah 

He stood in fair Jerusalem to awake up into Eden
The fallen Man but first to Give his vegetated body  
To be cut off & separated that the Spiritual body may be Reveald"

Four Zoas, Night vii, PAGE 84,(E 359) 
"The Spectre said. Thou lovely Vision this delightful Tree
Is given us for a Shelter from the tempests of Void & Solid
Till once again the morn of ages shall renew upon us
To reunite in those mild fields of happy Eternity
Where thou & I in undivided Essence walkd about     
Imbodied. thou my garden of delight & I the spirit in the garden
Mutual there we dwelt in one anothers joy revolving
Days of Eternity with Tharmas mild & Luvah sweet melodious
Upon our waters. This thou well rememberest listen I will tell
What thou forgettest. They in us & we in them alternate Livd 
Drinking the joys of Universal Manhood."

Annotations to Berkeley, (E 663)

"They [Plato and Aristotle] so 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"

Tharmas & Urthona

British Library

Four Zoas Manuscript

End of the Dream

When William Blake developed the characters who peopled his myth he used  methods which had been passed down from ancient times. He looked within himself, found diverse ways in which his mind worked and gave form to ideas. Although the Zoas, Emanation, Spectres and others came from Blake's mind, they were not unique to Blake. Under different names they lived in other mythologies and belief systems. 

---

We have often pointed out the similarities between Blake's four Zoas and Jung's four functions. There is not evidence that Jung studied Blake and copied the system Blake developed. Four ways in which both viewed the structure of our thinking came from self reflection. But it is not just that each divided the mind into four parts which function in the same ways as those proposed by the other thinker. The two men recognized that the four formed two pairs which operated in the same ways.

Jung identified Sensation and Intuition as the two kinds of perception; Thinking and Feeling were the two kinds of judgment. Jung's pair of Thinking and Emotion matches Blake's pair of Urizen and Luvah. Jung's pair of Intuition and Sensation matches Urthona and Tharmas. 

The two Zoas who initiated the fall were Urizen and Luvah: reason and emotion, Jung's judging functions.

Four Zoas, Night V, Page 64, (E 343)

[Urizen speaks]

"I well remember for I heard the mild & holy voice
Saying O light spring up & shine & I sprang up from the deep
He gave to me a silver scepter & crownd me with a golden crown
& said Go forth & guide my Son who wanders on the ocean

I went not forth. I hid myself in black clouds of my wrath
I calld the stars around my feet in the night of councils dark
The stars threw down their spears & fled naked away
We fell. I siezd thee dark Urthona In my left hand falling

I siezd thee beauteous Luvah thou art faded like a flower
And like a lilly is thy wife Vala witherd by winds
When thou didst bear the golden cup at the immortal tables
Thy children smote their fiery wings crownd with the gold of heaven
Page 65
Thy pure feet stepd on the steps divine. too pure for other feet
And thy fair locks shadowd thine eyes from the divine effulgence
Then thou didst keep with Strong Urthona the living gates of heaven
But now thou art bound down with him even to the gates of hell

Because thou gavest Urizen the wine of the Almighty
For steeds of Light that they might run in thy golden chariot of pride
I gave to thee the Steeds I pourd the stolen wine
And drunken with the immortal draught fell from my throne sublime"

 After the fall Urizen attemped to establish his kingdom based on rigid principles of law and control. When Urizen was unsuccessful Tharmas declared himself God, Urthona he named his son, and Los he designated Urthona. 

Four Zoas, Night iv, Page 51, (E 334)

"Tharmas before Los stood & thus the Voice of Tharmas rolld

Now all comes into the power of Tharmas. Urizen is falln
And Luvah hidden in the Elemental forms of Life & Death
Urthona is My Son O Los thou art Urthona & Tharmas
Is God.
...
O why did foul ambition sieze thee Urizen Prince of Light  

And thee O Luvah prince of Love till Tharmas was divided         
And I what can I now behold but an Eternal Death
Before my Eyes & an Eternal weary work to strive
Against the monstrous forms that breed among my silent waves
Is this to be A God far rather would I be a Man
To know sweet Science & to do with simple companions             
Sitting beneath a tent & viewing sheepfolds & soft pastures"

Urizen's ploy to enlist Luvah in a takeover of as much of the territory of the brain as he could, had repercussions for Tharmas and Urthona as well.

Four Zoas, Night iv. Page 49, (E 332)

"O how Los howld at the rending asunder all the fibres rent
Where Enitharmon joind to his left side in griding pain 
He falling on the rocks bellowd his Dolor. till the blood
Stanch'd, then in ululation waild his woes upon the wind 
And Tharmas calld to the Dark Spectre who upon the Shores
With dislocated Limbs had falln. The Spectre rose in pain
A Shadow blue obscure & dismal. like a statue of lead
Bent by its fall from a high tower the dolorous shadow rose

Go forth said Tharmas works of joy are thine   obey & live
So shall the spungy marrow issuing from thy splinterd bones
Bonify. & thou shalt have rest when this thy labour is done
Go forth bear Enitharmon back to the Eternal Prophet
Build her a bower in the midst of all my dashing waves
Make first a resting place for Los & Enitharmon. then            
Thou shalt have rest. If thou refusest dashd abroad on all
My waves. thy limbs shall separate in stench & rotting & thou
Become a prey to all my demons of despair & hope

The Spectre of Urthona seeing Enitharmon writhd  
His cloudy form in jealous fear & muttering thunders hoarse      
And casting round thick glooms. thus utterd his fierce pangs of heart

Tharmas I know thee. how are we alterd our beauty decayd
But still I know thee tho in this horrible ruin whelmd
Thou once the mildest son of heaven art now become a Rage
A terror to all living things. think not that I am ignorant      
That thou art risen from the dead or that my power forgot
Page 50 
I slumber here in weak repose. I well remember the Day
The day of terror & abhorrence 
When fleeing from the battle thou fleeting like the raven
Of dawn outstretching an expanse where neer expanse had been
Drewst all the Sons of Beulah into thy dread vortex following 
Thy Eddying spirit down the hills of Beulah. All my sons
Stood round me at the anvil where new heated the wedge
Of iron glowd furious prepard for spades & mattocks
Hearing the symphonies of war loud sounding   All my sons
Fled from my side then pangs smote me unknown before. I saw      
My loins begin to break forth into veiny pipes & writhe   
Before me in the wind englobing trembling with strong vibrations
The bloody mass began to animate. I bending over
Wept bitter tears incessant. Still beholding how the piteous form
Dividing & dividing from my loins a weak & piteous               
Soft cloud of snow a female pale & weak I soft embracd
My counter part & calld it Love   I named her Enitharmon
But found myself & her together issuing down the tide
Which now our rivers were become delving thro caverns huge
Of goary blood strugg[l]ing to be deliverd from our bonds        
She strove in vain not so Urthona strove for breaking forth,
A shadow blue obscure & dismal from the breathing Nostrils

Of Enion I issued into the air divided from Enitharmon"

Four Zoas, Night vi, Page 68, (E345)
[Urizen spoke]
"I will give
Chains of dark ignorance & cords of twisted self conceit
That they may curse Tharmas their God & Los his adopted son
That they may curse & worship the obscure Demon of destruction
That they may worship terrors & obey the violent
Go forth sons of my curse Go forth daughters of my abhorrence
Tharmas heard the deadly scream across his watry world
And Urizens loud sounding voice lamenting on the wind"

The injuries to Tharmas (the body) healed but Urthona (the spirit) was left with a limp, an imperfection which connected him with the frailty of humanity in whom he dwelled.

At the ending of the Four Zoas Tharmas is the companion of Urthona. They join together at the Golden Feast in 'mirth and joy'. Urthona (no longer Los) is not deterred from his task of providing the bread and wine to feed the soul of man.  He retreats to the inner world within man's subconscious. 

 Four Zoas, Night ix, Page 137, (E 405)
"The Eternal Man darkend with Sorrow & a wintry mantle   
Coverd the Hills   He said O Tharmas rise & O Urthona

Then Tharmas & Urthona rose from the Golden feast satiated
With Mirth & joy Urthona limping from his fall on Tharmas leand
In his right hand his hammer Tharmas held his Shepherds crook
Beset with gold gold were the ornaments formed by the sons of Urizen 
Then Enion & Ahania & Vala & the wife of Dark Urthona
Rose from the feast in joy ascending to their Golden Looms"
Four Zoas, Night ix, Page 137, (E 405)
"Urthona calld his Sons around him Tharmas calld his sons
Numrous. they took the wine they separated the Lees
And Luvah was put for dung on the ground by the Sons of Tharmas & Urthona
They formed heavens of sweetest worlds of gold & silver & ivory 
Of glass & precious stones They loaded all the waggons of heaven
And took away the wine of ages with solemn songs & joy

Luvah & Vala woke & all the sons & daughters of Luvah
Awoke they wept to one another & they reascended
To the Eternal Man in woe he cast them wailing into              
The world of shadows thro the air till winter is over & gone

But the Human Wine stood wondering in all their delightful Expanses
The Elements subside the heavens rolld on with vocal harmony

Then Los who is Urthona rose in all his regenerate power"
Four Zoas, Night ix, Page 138, (E 406)
"Such are the works of Dark Urthona Tharmas sifted the corn
Urthona made the Bread of Ages & he placed it
In golden & in silver baskets in heavens of precious stone
And then took his repose in Winter in the night of Time
...
For Tharmas brought his flocks upon the hills & in the Vales
Around the Eternal Mans bright tent the little Children play
Among the wooly flocks The hammer of Urthona sounds              
In the deep caves beneath his limbs renewd his Lions roar
Around the Furnaces & in Evening sport upon the plains
They raise their faces from the Earth conversing with the Man
...
Urthona is arisen in his strength no longer now
Divided from Enitharmon no longer the Spectre Los                
Where is the Spectre of Prophecy where the delusive Phantom
Departed & Urthona rises from the ruinous walls
In all his ancient strength to form the golden armour of science
For intellectual War The war of swords departed now
The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns           

                  End of The Dream 

---

HOLY WEEK

John 12

[12] On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem,

[13] Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

[14] And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written,

[15] Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt.

Mark 14

[32] And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

[33] And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;

[34] And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.

[35] And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

Mark 22

[14] And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.

[15] And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:

[16] For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

[17] And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves:

[18] For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.

[19] And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.

[20] Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

Matthew 26

[30] And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

[31] Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.

[32] But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

Matthew 26

[47] And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.

[48] Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.

[49] And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.

[50] And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

Matthew 27

[21] The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.

[22] Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.

[23] And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

[24] When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

Luke 23

[39] And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

[40] But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

[41] And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

[42] And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

[43] And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

Luke 24

[1] Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

[2] And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.
[3] And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.
[4] And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:
[5] And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?
[6] He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
[7] Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.
[8] And they remembered his words,

Four Zoas Summary 4

Blake Archive

Four Zoas, Night ix, Page 128

Four Zoas, Night ix, Page 128, (E 397)
"Vala awoke. When in the pleasant gates of sleep I enterd
I saw my Luvah like a spirit stand in the bright air
Round him stood spirits like me who reard me a bright house
And here I see thee house remain in my most pleasant world"   

In the last Night Blake let all of his feelings out in a magnificent vision of apocalypse that bears comparison with the one John wrote: 

"Los his vegetable hands 
Outstretch'd; his right hand, branching out in fibrous strength, 
Siez'd the Sun; His left hand, like dark roots, cover'd the Moon, 
And tore them down, cracking the heavens across from immense to immense. 
Then fell the fires of Eternity with loud and shrill
Sound of Loud Trumpet thundering along from heaven to heaven 
A mighty sound articulate Awake ye dead & come To judgment from the four winds Awake & Come away"
(Four Zoas, Night ix, E 386)

     And on and on it goes, much too imposing to describe in this short review. But two things will be said:

     First, Blake draws on John's Apocalypse as he already has in Night viii. The strangest book in the Bible, utterly incomprehensible to the literal mind, has much to offer to the trained imagination. To read the end of 4Z with complete attention gives one a purchase on Blake's great source; Revelation begins to come alive in an exciting new way.

Second, as great as it is, Blake simply wasn't able to 'Christianize' his apocalypse as he had done the two previous Nights. Perhaps it was already too deeply stamped with his pre-Christian mind. Forgiveness is the soul, virtually the alpha and omega of Blake's Christ, but Night ix shows little or no evidence of this new spirit. Only in Jerusalem, in its last plates, do we find a thoroughly Christian apocalypse. Neither Revelation nor Night ix has much of forgiveness; what they do have is vengeance and retribution. Both writers had suffered much at the hands of the ungodly, and both looked with anticipation to the Day of Vengeance. So we must say that Night ix is a modern redoing of John's Apocalypse, while the end of Jerusalem is a Christian recreation of it.

     Blake's epic ends with the eternal man awake, his four Zoas back in union, each carrying out his appointed function in the harmonious consummation of the Age. In the last harvest Urizen reaps, Tharmas threshes, Luvah tramples out the vineyard and Urthona bakes the bread.

     Night ix contains much magnificent poetry. A few lines near the end will provide an appropriate end to this all too inadequate description of Blake's great poem:

"The Sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morning, 

And the mild moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night, 

And Man walks forth from the midst of the fires: the evil is all consum'd.
... He walks upon the Eternal Mountains, raising his heavenly voice, 

Conversing with the Animal forms of wisdom night and day, 

... They raise their faces from the Earth, conversing with the Man:

"How is it we have walk'd thro' fires and yet are not consum'd? 

"How is it that all things are chang'd, even as in ancient times?"
The Sun arises from his dewey bed, and the fresh airs 

Play in his smiling beams giving the seeds of life to grow, 

And the fresh Earth beams forth ten thousand thousand springs of life."

(Four Zoas, Night ix, E 406) 

---

    

Blake's myth is stated concisely in Blake's Four Zoas: The Design of a Dream by Brian Wilkie and Mary Lynn Johnson: 

"Albion is the whole person and mankind. His Emanation is Jerusalem, who represents the perfect freedom enjoyed by man in the unfallen state (called by Blake Eden or Eternity) where he is in harmony with himself and the world. The fallen state is a condition in which each of the four primal powers betrays what is best in himself and wars with the others." 

In The Four Zoas Blake follows the disintegration of Albion's original unity, his struggles as a divided self and the final resolution of Albion reborn as his constituent Zoas, each serving the whole. 

Four Zoas Summary 3

Four Zoas, Night v, Page 60, (E 340)
"But when fourteen summers & winters had revolved over
Their solemn habitation Los beheld the ruddy boy
Embracing his bright mother & beheld malignant fires
In his young eyes discerning plain that Orc plotted his death"

       As Night ii begins, the Fallen Man, on the point of falling asleep, commissions Urizen as his regent. Urizen soars with pride but immediately falls into the fearful fantasies of the future which dominate all of his attempts at creation. He casts Luvah into the furnaces of affliction and proceeds to build the Mundane Shell, giving Blake a chance to expatiate at great length on how wrongly the world is made.

       Tharmas and Luvah are now thoroughly fallen and estranged from their emanations, and Urizen's turn comes in Night iii. Ahania, Urizen's emanation, reacts to his fearful aggressions with  her own vision of the Fall, and the infuriated Urizen casts her out and promptly falls himself like Humpty Dumpty, an eloquent comment on the fate of all the 'strong' who in fear cast out the 'weak'. With the fall of Reason Tharmas rises to power from the depths of the sea, although he is mentally incompetent in the extreme. He commissions Los to create endlessly and futilly: "Renew these ruin'd souls of Men thro' Earth, Sea, Air & Fire,/To waste in endless corruption, renew thou, I will destroy."

       Los proceeds to bind Urizen with the chains of time and space in the parody of Creation which we have already studied from Book of Urizen, but "terrified at the shapes enslav'd humanity put on, he became what he beheld". ( The second extended Christian interpolation occurs in the midst of this story.)

      Los begins Night v with a sort of St. Vitus Dance to "put on the shape of enslaved humanity", a convulsion which Enitharmon shares, leading to the birth of Orc, a manifestation of Luvah, who at this point represents fallen human feeling. Immediately, "The Enormous Demons woke and howl'd around the new born King,/Crying 'Luvah, King of Love, thou art the King of rage & death'".

       As in Book of Urizen, Orc is bound in the Chain of Jealousy, but his tormented cries awaken Urizen, who concludes Night v with the "Woes of Urizen". His suffering has brought him to a point of self-recognition; he has come to himself in a way reminiscent of the Prodigal Son's moment of truth: "I will arise", which Blake took directly from the story in Luke. Urizen thus shows himself to be human. Unfortunately it's only a temporary lapse, for in Night vi he explores his dens, faces all the brokenness and horror of a ruined universe and as his solution comes up with the  "Net of Religion ". Since pure political tyranny won't work, he turns to a form of religious control.

       We come to the climax of this epic in Night vii when Urizen has approached Orc's prison and induced him to climb the  "Tree of Mystery ", turning into a serpent. This sets the stage for the Genesis account of the Fall, which Blake sees as the beginning of the Return. Enitharmon, attracted by the cries of her son, Orc, comes down to the "Tree of Mystery", where she meets the Spectre of Urthona (FZ, Night  vii, E 358). The Spectre closely corresponds to Jung's 'shadow', and like a skilled analyst Blake brings about the reconciliation of shadow and anima on the way to wholeness).

       From the union of Spectre and Enitharmon two things ensue. The good news is that Los begins to get himself together with his Spectre and his Emanation. From this integration comes forth Jerusalem and from Jerusalem will proceed the Lamb. The bad news is the immediate birth of Rahab, the most sinister female of Blake's pantheon. She personifies all the evils of deceit, treachery, and hateful female pride that most appalled Blake about life. Blake's Rahab is the same character whom John of Patmos called "Mystery, the Whore of Babylon"; Blake eventually gives her these names--and several others as well.

       The Spectre of Urthona, a new idea on Blake's imaginative horizon, foreshadowed the Moment of Grace which was to revolutionize his spiritual world.  Suffice it here to say that the appearance of the Spectre marks Man's (and Blake's) dawning awareness that the evils of the world, which he had so deplored, exist in his own psyche. It marks what Jung referred to as the withdrawal of the projections, which Jung considered vital to the survival of the world. Blake agreed about the seriousness of the process; he stated it with great poetic intensity in the reversed writing found in the illustration to Jerusalem, Plate 41 (E 183) :

"Each man is in his Spectre's power Until the arrival of that hour When his humanity awake And cast his Spectre into the Lake."

       But in Night vii Los doesn't cast his Spectre into the lake; he embraces it, which in a manner of speaking is the same thing. Los doesn't (yet) cast his Spectre into the lake because his humanity is not yet fully awake, but only beginning to awaken. As Blake aptly put, it complete redemption "was not to be effected without Cares & Sorrows & Troubles of six thousand years of self denial and of bitter Contrition". That beautiful line points to the redemptive dimension of all the fallenness and horror we have been reading about. It was Blake's way of saying what Paul said in Romans: "All things work together for good to them that love God...." Blake and Jung and probably Paul would agree that we begin to love God (and stop trying to be God!) when we recognize and accept our own involvement in the horror around us. That's the moment when the six thousand years of change begins.

       The birth of Rahab and the integration of Los lead to an intensification of a drama that has already stretched out for seven nights of excruciating intensity. In Night viii the drama has not only intensified, but it has clarified so that we can no longer fail to understand that the forces of life and of death are in bitter conflict. It has become the old, old story, and Blake leaves no doubt about who represents light and who darkness. Urizen resumes his war for control and out of his ranks of War comes Satan. Rahab conspires to put to death the Saviour who has come down from Heaven and emerged from Jerusalem. The Christian knows that this death is foreordained for final victory, but neither Rahab nor Jerusalem has that awareness, and near the end of Night viii we read these richly evocative words:

"Jerusalem wept over the Sepulcher two thousand years.
Rahab trimphs over all; she took Jerusalem
Captive, a Willing Captive, by delusive arts impell'd
To worship Urizen's Dragon form, to offer her own Children
Upon the bloody Altar. John saw these things Revealed...."(FZ, Night viii, E 385)

    Blake never forgot the involvement of the Christian Church in two thousand years of bloodshed, but here, under the influence of grace, he has a more understanding view of it than he has expressed elsewhere.

TO BE CONTINUED