Daniel M. Tarr: William Blake - The Book of Urizen This is the web version of my MA Thesis http://www.tarrdaniel.com/documents/Hermetika/BlakeUrizen/WebUrizen/williamblake.htm Chapter I.

- Introducing William Blake William Blake (1757-1827), who lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, was a profoundly stirring poet who was, in large part, responsible for bringing about the Romantic movement in poetry. He was able to achieve "remarkable results with the simplest means"; and was one of several poets of the time who restored "rich musicality to the language" (1). His research and introspection into the human mind and soul has resulted in his being called the "Columbus of the psyche," and because no language existed at the time to describe what he discovered on his voyages, he created his own mythology to describe what he found there (2). He was an accomplished poet, painter, and engraver. Despite the work of such 17th century baroque poets as Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), and Richard Crashaw (1612-1649), England had no visionary tradition in its literature before the brilliant English poet, painter, engraver and visionary mystic - William Blake. His hand-illustrated series of lyrical and epic poems, beginning with Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), form one of the most strikingly original and independent bodies of work in the Western cultural tradition. Blake is now regarded as one of the earliest and greatest figures of Romanticism. Yet he was ignored by the public of his day and was called mad because he was single-minded and unworldly; he lived on the edge of poverty and died in neglect. "I know I am inspired!" could be the foundation of his obscurity as well as of his dynamic enthusiasm. He was ambitious for fame; he longed for, even demanded, an audience as enthusiastic as himself, to build the Jerusalem he was looking for in England's green and pleasant land. He was after all writing at a time when the Age of reason was turning into an Age of Enthusiasm ( 3). But he had a naive, almost arrogant confidence in the power of his own inspiration. Burning with its fire, convinced that to hear him must be to applaud, he failed to realize that he must also address himself to the minds of his audience before they could hear him. He never made any concessions to them, and as a result they made none to him. He sought to project his inner enthusiasm on to the public, but chose one method after another that ensured that his audience would regard his enthusiasms, not as inspiration, but as mere eccentricity or worse. Blake scholars disagree on whether or not Blake was a mystic. In the Norton Anthology, he is described as "an acknowledged mystic, [who] saw visions from the age of four" ( 4). Frye, however, who seems to be one of the most influential Blake scholars, disagrees, saying that Blake was a visionary rather than a mystic. "'Mysticism' . . . means a certain kind of religious techniques difficult to reconcile with anyone's poetry," says Frye ( 5). He next says that "visionary" is "a word that Blake uses, and uses constantly" and cites the example of Plotinus, the mystic, who experienced a "direct apprehension of God" four times in his life, and then only with "great effort and relentless discipline." He finally cites Blake's poem "I rose up at the dawn of day," in which Blake states, "I am in God's presence night & day, And he never turns his face away." Besides all of these achievements, Blake was a social critic of his own time and considered himself a prophet of times to come. Frye says that "all his poetry was written as though it were about to have the immediate social impact of a new play" ( 6). His social criticism is not only representative of his own country and era, but strikes profound chords in our own time as well. As Appelbaum said in the introduction to his anthology English Romantic Poetry, "[Blake] was not fully rediscovered and rehabilitated until a full century after his death". For Blake was not truly appreciated during his life, except by small cliques of individuals, and was not well-known during the rest of the nineteenth century (7).

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Blake's life might seem uneventful, but his inner life was so exciting that it did not matter. His enthusiasm lifted him out of London into Jerusalem - or rather, brought Jerusalem into London and turned a rainbow over Hyde Park into a gateway to heaven. Blake's enthusiasm are not the toad-like crazes of a perpetually unsatisfied man, but the developing insights of someone with a wide-ranging mind responding to life's rejections of his hopes, not by losing hope, but by rebuilding it. And each stage has its own artistic correlative. Blake was born November 28, 1757, in London. His father was a hosier living in Broad Street in the Soho district of London, where Blake lived most of his life. He was the second son of a family of four boys and one girl. Only his younger brother Robert was of great significance in William's life, as he was the one to share his devotion to the arts ( 8). William grew up in London and later described the visionary experiences he had as a child in the surrounding countryside, when he saw angels in a tree at Peckham Rye and the prophet Ezekiel in a field. William very soon declared his intention of becoming an artist in 1767, and was allowed to leave ordinary school at the age of ten to join a drawing school and started to attend the drawing school of Henry Pars in the Strand. He educated himself by wide reading and the study of engravings from paintings by the great Renaissance masters. Here he worked for five years, but, when the time came for an apprenticeship, his father was unable to afford the expense of his entrance to a painter's studio. A premium of fifty guineas, however, enabled him, aged nearly fifteen, to enter on 4 August 1772 the workshop of a masterengraver, James Basire. There, in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, he worked faithfully for seven years, learning all the techniques of engraving, etching, stippling and copying. This thorough training equipped him as a man who could later claim with justice that he was one of the finest craftsmen of his time, one moreover able not only to develop and improve the conventional modes throughout his life, but also to invent methods of his own. Basire sent him to make drawings of the sculptures in Westminster Abbey, and thus awakened his interest in Gothic art ( 9). On completion of his apprenticeship in 1779 Blake entered the Royal Academy as an engraving student. His period of study there seems to have been stormy. He took a violent dislike to Sir Joshua Reynolds, then president of the Royal Academy, rebelling against his aesthetic doctrines, and felt that his talents were being wasted. He was initially influenced by the engravings he studied of the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. He made drawings from the antique in the conventional manner and some life studies, though he soon rejected this form of training, saying that 'copying nature' deadened the force of his imagination. For the rest of his life he exalted imaginative art above all other forms of artistic creation, scarcely any of his productions being strictly representational. While still at the Academy he was earning his living by engraving for publishers and was also producing independent watercolours. At this time his friends included the "roman group" of brilliant young artists, among them the sculptor John Flaxman and the painter Thomas Stothard ( 10). He also came into contact with the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli at this time, whose work may have influenced him. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to Henry Fuseli for a time. He then became deeply impressed with the work of his contemporary figurative painters like James Barry, John Mortimer, and Henry Fuseli, who, like Blake, depicted dramatically posed nude figures with strongly rhythmic, linear contours. Fuseli's extravagant pictorial fantasies in particular freed Blake to distort his figures to express his inner vision ( 11). In 1784 he set up a print shop; although it failed after a few years, for the rest of his life Blake eked out a living as an engraver and illustrator (12). In the late 1760s and '70s the "roman group" circle of British painters in Rome had already begun to find academic precepts inadequate. James Barry, the brothers John and Alexander Runciman, John Brown, George Romney, and the Swiss-born Henry Fuseli favoured themes whether literary, historical, or purely imaginary determined by a taste for the pathetic, bizarre, and extravagantly heroic. Mutually influential and highly eclectic, they combined, especially in their drawings, the linear tensions of Italian Mannerism with bold contrasts of light and shade. Though never in Rome, John Hamilton Mortimer had much in common with this group, for all were participants in a move to

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found a national school of narrative painting. Fuseli's affiliations with the German Romantic Sturm und Drang writers predisposed him, like Flaxman, toward the "primitive" heroic stories of Homer and Dante. Flaxman himself, in the two-dimensional linear abstraction of his drawings, a twodimensionality implying rejection of Renaissance perspective and seen for instance in the expressive purity of "Penelope's Dream" (1792-93), had important repercussions throughout Europe. Both Fuseli and Flaxman highly influenced both Blake's interest in mythology and the heroic and also his attitude towards art (13). William Blake absorbed and outstripped the Fuseli circle, evolving new images for a unique private cosmology, rejecting oils in favour of tempera and watercolour, and depicting, as in "Pity" (1795), a shadowless world of soaring, supernatural beings. His passionate rejection of rationalism and materialism, his scorn for both Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Dutch Naturalists, stemmed from a conviction that "poetic genius" could alone perceive the infinite, so essential to the artist since "painting, as well as poetry and music, exists and exults in immortal thoughts." (14) In his painting (as well as in his poetry), Blake seemed to most of his contemporaries to be completely out of the artistic mainstream of their time. His art was in fact far too adventurous and unconventional to be easily accepted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has been called a pre-romantic because it was not only in poetry that he rejected neoclassical literary style and modes of thought, his graphic art too defied 18th-century conventions. Always stressing imagination over reason, he felt that ideal forms should be constructed not from observations of nature but from inner visions. His rhythmically patterned linear style is also a repudiation of the painterly academic style. Blake's attenuated, fantastic figures go back, instead, to the medieval tomb statuary he copied as an apprentice and to Mannerist sources. The influence of Michelangelo is especially evident in the radical foreshortening and exaggerated muscular form in one of his bestknown illustrations, popularly known as The Ancient of Days, the frontispiece to his poem Europe, a Prophecy (1794). (15) For this reason Blake remained virtually unknown until Alexander Gilchrist's biography was published in 1863, and he was not fully accepted until his remarkable modernity and his imaginative force, both as poet and artist, were recognized in the twentieth century ( 16). In spite of this his paintings belong to a recognizable artistic tradition, that of English figurative painting of the later 18th century. Throughout his life Blake stressed the superiority of line, or drawing, over colour, commending the "hard wirey line of rectitude." He condemned everything that he felt made painting indefinite in contour, such as painterly brushwork and shadowing. Finally, Blake stressed the primacy of art created from the imagination over that drawn from the observation of nature. The figures in Blake's many prints and watercolour and tempera paintings are notable for the rhythmic vitality of their undulating contours, the monumental simplicity of their stylised forms, and the dramatic effectiveness and originality of their gestures. He also showed himself a daring and unusually subtle colourist in many of his works. Much of Blake's painting was on religious subjects: illustrations of the work of John Milton, his favourite poet (although he rejected Milton's Puritanism), for John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and for the Bible, including 21 illustrations to the 'Book of Job'. Blake's favourite subjects were episodes from the Bible, along with episodes found in the works of

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Milton and Dante. Among his secular illustrations were those for an edition of Thomas Gray's poems and the 537 watercolours for Edward Young's Night Thoughts - only 43 of which were published. His illustrations for the Book of Job were done late in life, and they mark the summit of his achievement in the visual arts (17). The spiritual, symbolical expression of Blake's complex sympathies, his ability to recognize God in a single blade of grass, inspired Samuel Palmer, who, with his friend Edward Calvert, extracted from nature a visionary world of exquisite, though short-lived, intensity ( 18). On August 18, 1782, Blake married a poor, illiterate girl, Catherine Boucher, who was to make a perfect companion for him. Having married, Blake left his father's home and rented a small house round the corner in Poland Street, being joined there by his brother Robert after their father's death in 1784. William then began to train Robert as an artist. Meanwhile he himself, self-educated, had already acquired a wide knowledge of poetry, philosophy and general literature, and was ready to take his place among people of intelligence. He attended social gatherings of intellectuals, to whom he even communicated his own poems, sometimes singing them to tunes of his own composition (19). Flaxman introduced him to the Rev. Anthony S. Mathew and his wife, and for a time Blake was one of the chief attractions at their literary parties. Flaxman and Mathew paid for the printing of a collection of verses by their young friend, Poetical Sketches (1783). A preface provides the information that the verses were written between Blake's 12th and 20th years. This is a remarkable first volume of poetry, and some of the poems contained in it have a freshness, a purity of vision, and a lyric intensity unequaled in English poetry since the 17th century ( 20). Blake's visits to the Mathews' eventually became less frequent and finally ceased. Nevertheless, in the 1780s he was one of a group of progressive-minded people that met at the house of Blake's employer, the Radical bookseller Joseph Johnson. His mind was developing an unconventional and rebellious quality, acutely conscious of any falsity and pomposity in others, so that about 1784 or 1787 he wrote a burlesque novel, known as An Island in the Moon, in which he ridiculed contemporary manners and conventions, and in which members of this group are satirized. In 1784, after his father's death, Blake started a print shop in London and took his younger brother Robert to live with him as assistant and pupil. Early in 1787 Robert fell ill and in February he died; and William, who had nursed him devotedly, later said that he had seen Robert's soul joyfully rising through the ceiling. At the moment of Robert's death his visionary faculty enable him to see "the released spirit ascend heavenwards, clapping its hands for joy" ( 21). For the rest of his life William claimed that he could communicate with this brother's spirit and gain strength from his advice. He also said that Robert had appeared to him in a vision and revealed a method of engraving the text and illustrations of his books without having recourse to a printer. This method was Blake's invention of what he called "illuminated printing," in which, by a special technique of relief etching, each page of the book was printed in monochrome from an engraved plate containing both text and illustration: an invention foreshadowed by his friend, George Cumberland. Although his method of illuminated printing is not completely understood, the most likely explanation is that he wrote the words not in reversed script, as an engraver must normally do and drew the pictures for each poem on a copper plate, using some liquid impervious to acid, which when applied left text and illustration in relief. After etching away the unwanted material, the plate became one large piece of type, to be inked and printed on his engraver's press. Ink or a colour wash was then applied, and the printed picture was finished by hand in watercolours. Thus each print is itself a unique work of art. As an artist Blake broke the ground that would later be cultivated by the Pre-Raphaelites. Most of Blake's works after the Poetical Sketches were engraved and "published" in this way, and so reached only a limited public during his lifetime. Today these "illuminated books," with their dynamic designs and glowing colours, are among the world's art treasures. Most of Blake's paintings

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(such as "The Ancient of Days" or the frontispiece to Europe: a Prophecy) are actually prints too made from copper plates, which he etched in his 'illuminated printing' method. The product of his first enthusiasm is the foundation of all the rest; it reveals him, not as the preacher of doctrines of free innocence, or as a mystical thinker, but as that typical eighteen-century figure, the inventor. In other hands his invention might well have succeeded: the re-creation in modern guise of the medieval illuminated book, text and design together as unity, but using new techniques to make reproduction feasible. Illustrated books were much in demand, but not easy to produce. Blake was writing poetry; how better to see it published than in the style of medieval illuminated book, a handmade, unique work of art? As a poet and artist, he could create the whole work, and the result would be as fine as an illustrated manuscript. But there was no need for the work to remain unique; as an engraver he had the skill and the means to make multiple copies. Many of the plates, especially in the Songs, America and Europe, fulfil his hopes and make one artistic unity, poem and design ( 22). In his readiness to invent new techniques, Blake was typical of his age. His "illuminated books" were usually coloured with watercolour or printed in colour by Blake and his wife, bound together in paper covers, and sold for prices ranging from a few shillings to 10 guineas. He must have thought his fortune was made. True, it was a clumsy process by our standards, and did not produce a very welldefined or legible text, but it satisfied Blake's needs, and he used it as long as he wrote poetry. It might well have made him a success, if he had produced works that the public wanted to see. But apart from Songs of Innocence, a children's poetry book which might well have found a market, he used it almost entirely for his own ideological campaign. Even this might have succeeded Shelley found an audience but Blake's books used an idiom that even his friends found hard to understand. William Blake created a unique form of illustrated verse; his poetry, inspired by mystical vision, belongs to the most original lyric and prophetic poetry in the language. His poetry and visual art are inextricably linked, therefore to fully appreciate one you must see it in context with the other. As was to be Blake's custom, he illustrated the Songs with designs that demand an imaginative reading of the complicated dialogue between word and picture ( 23). You could say, he was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been "beatniks", along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Czanne and Whitman. The first books in which Blake made use of his new printing method were two little tracts, There is No Natural Religion and All Religions are One , engraved about 1788. They contain the seeds of practically all the subsequent development of his thought. In them he boldly challenges accepted contemporary theories of the human mind derived from Locke and the prevailing rationalisticmaterialistic philosophy and proclaims the superiority of the imagination over other "organs of perception," since it is the means of perceiving "the Infinite," or God. Immediately following these tracts came Blake's first masterpieces, in an astonishing outburst of creative activity: Songs of Innocence and The Book of Thel (both engraved 1789), The French Revolution (1791), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Visions of the Daughters of Albion (both engraved 1793), and Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794). The production of these works coincided with the outbreak of the French Revolution, of which Blake, like the other members of the group that met at Johnson's shop, was at first an enthusiastic supporter. Blake significantly differed from other English revolutionaries, however, in his hatred of deism, atheism, and materialism, and his profound, though undogmatic, religious sense (24). Blake did, however, approve of some of the measures that individuals and societies took to gain and maintain individual freedom. As Appelbaum said, "He was liberal in politics, sensitive to the oppressive government measures of his day, [and] favorably inspired by the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution" ( 25). This is the time when Blake keeps an intensive communication with the revolutionary American political thinker Thomas Paine. According to Keynes, Blake wrote many positive and appreciative things about him, for instance, such as "The Bishop never saw the Everlasting Gospel any more than Tom Paine" ( 26). As "London" shows,

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however, Blake did not entirely approve of the measures taken to forward the causes he longed to advance: "London" refers to how the "hapless Soldier's sigh/ runs in blood down Palace walls" ["London" 791]. Among many other events which took place during the French Revolution, this could possibly refer to the storming of the Bastille or the executions of the French nobility. Blake began writing poetry at the age of 12, and his first printed work, Poetical Sketches (1783), is a collection of youthful verse. Amid its traditional, derivative elements are hints of his later innovative style and themes. As with all his poetry, this volume reached few contemporary readers. Blake's most popular poems have always been Songs of Innocence (1789). These lyrics are notable for their eloquence. In 1794, disillusioned with the possibility of human perfection, Blake issued Songs of Experience, employing the same lyric style and much of the same subject matter as in Songs of Innocence. Both series of poems take on deeper resonances when read in conjunction. Innocence and Experience, the two contrary states of the human soul, are contrasted in such companion pieces as "The Lamb" and "The Tyger". Blake's subsequent poetry develops the implication that true innocence is impossible without experience, transformed by the creative force of the human imagination. Songs of Innocence is Blake's first masterpiece of "illuminated printing." Blake made the twentyseven plates of Songs of Innocence, dating the title page 1789, and thus initiated the series of his now famous Illuminated Books. The impulse to produce his poems in this form was partly due to his cast of mind, whereby the life of the imagination was more real to him than the material world. This philosophy demanded the identification of ideas with symbols which could be translated into visual images word and symbol each reinforcing the other. His lyrical poems have content enough to make them acceptable without the visual addition, but he did not choose that they should be read in this plain shape, and consequently his output of books reckoned in numbers of copies was always very limited. Songs of Innocence differs radically from the rather derivative pastoral mode of the Poetical Sketches. In the Songs, Blake took as his models the popular street ballads and rhymes for children of his own time, transmuting these forms by his genius into some of the purest lyric poetry in the English language. There is no reason for thinking that when he composed the Songs of Innocence he had already envisaged a second set of antithetical poems embodying Experience. The Innocence poems were the products of a mind in a state of innocence and of an imagination unspoiled be stains of worldliness. Public events and private emotions soon converted Innocence into Experience, producing Blake's preoccupation with the problem of Good and Evil. This, with his feelings of indignation and pity for the sufferings of mankind as he saw them in the streets of London, resulted in his composing the second set. So in 1794 he finished a slightly rearranged version of Songs of Innocence with the addition of Songs of Experience; the double collection, in Blake's own words in the subtitle, "shewing the two contrary states of the human soul." The "two contrary states" are innocence, when the child's imagination has simply the function of completing its own growth; and experience, when it is faced with the world of law, morality, and repression. Songs of Experience provides a kind of ironic answer to Songs of Innocence. The earlier collection's celebration of a beneficent God is countered by the image of him in Experience, in which he becomes the tyrannous God of repression. The key symbol of Innocence is the Lamb, the corresponding image in Experience is the Tyger (27). The Tyger in this poem is the incarnation of energy, strength, lust, and cruelty, and the tragic dilemma of mankind is poignantly summarized in the final question, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Blake also viewed the larger society, in the form of contemporary London, with agonized doubt in Experience, in contrast to his happy visions of the city in Innocence. In the great poem "London", which has been described as summing up many implications of Songs of Experience, Blake describes the woes that the Industrial Revolution and the breaking of the common man's ties to the land have brought upon him. "London" is an especially powerful indictment of the

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new "acquisitive society" then coming into being, and the poem's naked simplicity of language is the perfect medium for conveying Blake's anguished vision of a society dominated by money ( 28). When Blake's first great enthusiasm gripped him, the world was in the ferment of revolution. But Blake was convinced that art, the works of the imagination, not political revolution, were the key to its renovation. In the first group of legends (1789-93), Blake presents his case: the indestructibility of innocence. The soul that freely follows its imaginative instincts will be innocent and virtuous; nature protects this innocence and the only sin is to allow one's nature to be prevented by law and custom. Free love is only true love; law destroys both love and freedom ( 29). Some see him as true nonconformist radical who numbered among his associates such English freethinkers as Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft ( 30). But for Blake freedom could not come about except through the imagination. The Bible presented a view, not of freedom, love, innocent happiness and above all, imagination, but law. The world's images were all wrong. Blake would put it right with a series of narrative poems in the new medium, to illustrate the nature of imaginative truth. Poems such as 'The French Revolution' (1791), 'America', a 'Prophecy' (1793), 'Visions of the Daughters of Albion' (1793), and 'Europe, a Prophecy' (1794) express his condemnation of 18thcentury political and social tyranny. Political revolution was not in itself the antidote to tyranny, but a symptom of mankind's awakening to the freedom of the spirit. In the exercise of the imagination, the purity and inviolability of innocence would reveal itself. The need for law, and tyranny itself, would not wither at the hand of war, but at the breath of the free imagination. Theological tyranny is one subject of The Book of Urizen (1794), and the dreadful cycle set up by the mutual exploitation of the sexes is vividly described in "The Mental Traveller" (circa 1803). (31) These books, including the Songs of Experience (1794), are devoted to discovering what had gone wrong. Typically Blake did not reject his beliefs, but went on to improve them. Now he understood that it was too simple to see the world's problems as the hostility of evil minds against good - the tyrant threatening the innocent imagination. His new visions emerged in his enthusiasm for the plan of a great epic, Vala, which he started writing on the black proofs of his Night Thoughts designs (32). Among the Prophetic Books is a prose work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93), which develops Blake's idea that without Contraries is no progression. It includes the "Proverbs of Hell", such as The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. Blake was experimenting in narrative as well as lyrical poetry at this time. 'Tiriel', a first attempt, was never engraved. The Book of Thel, with its lovely flowing designs, is an idyll akin to Songs of Innocence in its flowerlike delicacy and transparency. In Tiriel and The Book of Thel Blake uses for the first time the long unrhymed line of 14 syllables, which was to become the staple metre of his narrative poetry (33). The fragment called 'The French Revolution' is a heroic attempt to make epic poetry out of contemporary history. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell satire, prophecy, humour, poetry, and philosophy are mingled in a way that has few parallels. Written mainly in terse, sinewy prose, it may be described as a satire on institutional religion and conventional morality. In it Blake defines the ideal use of sensuality: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." Blake reverses the tenets of conventional Christianity, equating the good with reason and repression and regarding evil as the natural expression of a fundamental psychic energy ( 34). As Appelbaum said of Blake, "Blake replaced the arid atheism or tepid deism of the encyclopaedists and their disciples with a glowing new personal religion" ( 35). Besides rejecting "arid atheism" and "tepid deism," Blake also attacked conventional religion. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he wrote "Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion" and "As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys" ["Proverbs" 19; "Proverbs" 20]. Rather than accepting a traditional religion from an organized church, Blake designed his own mythology to accompany his personal,

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revealed religion. Blake's personal religion was an outgrowth of his search for the Everlasting Gospel, which he believed to be the original, pre-Jesus revelation which Jesus preached. As Blake said, "all had originally one language and one religion: this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus". Blake's religion was based upon the joy of man, which he believed glorified God. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell culminates in the 'Song of Liberty', a hymn of faith in revolution, ending with the affirmation that "everything that lives is Holy" (36). The book includes a famous criticism of Milton and the "Proverbs of Hell", 70 pithy aphorisms that are notable for their praise of heroic energy and their sense of creative vitality. In Visions of the Daughters of Albion Blake develops the theme of sexual freedom suggested in several of the Songs of Experience. The central figure in the poem, Oothoon, finds that she has attained to a new purity through sexual delight and regeneration. In this poem the repressive god of abstract morality is first called Urizen. About 1789 Blake and his wife had moved to a small house on the south side of the Thames in a terrace called Hercules Buildings, Lambeth. They lived there for seven years, and this, the period of Blake's greatest worldly prosperity, was also that of his deepest spiritual uncertainty. Here he set about making a number of books embodying his philosophical system, which he expressed in an increasingly obscure form. These have become known as his Prophetic Books, their production going on at the same time as he was painting numbers of pictures and making large colour prints, using a tempera medium instead of oil paints for the former. In the Prophetic Book America, A Prophecy (1793), Europe, A Prophecy (1794), The Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Ahania, The Book of Los, and The Song of Los (all 1795) Blake elaborates a series of cosmic myths and epics through which he sets forth a complex and intricate philosophical scheme. A principal symbolic figure in these books is Urizen, a spurned and outcast immortal who embodies both Jehovah and the forces of reason and law that Blake viewed as restricting and suppressing the natural energies of the human soul (37). The Prophetic Books describe a series of epic battles fought out in the cosmos, in history, and in the human soul, between entities symbolizing the conflicting forces of reason (Urizen), imagination (Los), and the spirit of rebellion (Orc). America, illustrated with brilliantly coloured designs, is a powerful short narrative poem giving a visionary interpretation of the American Revolution as the uprising of Orc, the spirit of rebellion. Europe shows the coming of Christ and the French Revolution of the late 18th century as part of the same manifestation of the spirit of rebellion. The Book of Urizen is Blake's version of the biblical Book of Genesis. Here the Creator is not a beneficent, righteous Jehovah, but Urizen, a "dark power" whose rebellion against the primeval unity leads to his entrapment in the material world. The poetry of The Book of Urizen, written in short unrhymed lines of three accents, has a gloomy power, but is inferior in effect to the magnificent accompanying designs, which have an energy and monumental grandeur anticipating the quality of those of

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Jerusalem, Blake's most splendid illuminated book. Blake's saga of myths is continued in The Book of Ahania, a kind of Exodus following the Genesis of Urizen, and in The Book of Los. In The Song of Los Blake returns to the cosmic theme and brings the story of humanity down to his own time. By this time Blake seems to have reached his spiritual nadir, and his poetry peters out in the last of the Prophetic books. He had lost faith in the French Revolution as an apocalyptic and regenerating force, and was finding his attempt at a synthesis based on the "contraries" of good and evil inadequate as an answer to the complexities of human existence ( 38). Blake was in many ways typical of his age and like William Morris seventy years later, he was just as typical in his fascination with the medieval. Gothic stories and melodramas of castles, knights and monks and fair ladies were already popular enough for Jane Austen to parody in Northanger Abbey. Matthew Lewis's notorious soft-porn The Monk sold very well indeed. Scott, not Wordsworth, became the favourite poet of the age (39). Blake, unfortunately for him, was captured, not by the clarity and humour of Chaucer, much as he admired him, but by the cloudy pseudo-medievalism of Chatterton and Ossian ( 40). This kind of writing is most suitable for escapist literature, but Blake used it for most of his work in 'illuminated printing', to convey his most urgent messages. Apart from the Songs (1789-94), virtually all his completed books are such gothic legends. Grandiose, superhuman figures gesticulate across his pages; and since they crowd past, not to entertain us but to evangelise, bearing names we have never heard of and associations we can slowly grasp, it is not surprising that Blake's major poetry, far from bringing him fame, brought only ridicule. When later he added to his myth the fumblings of antiquaries notably the theories of William Stukeley who identified Eastern religions with ancient Britain, linked the Syrian mother-goddess with Avebury and the Druids with the biblical patriarchs, even his best friends found it almost impossible to follow his imaginative fights; and so do we (41). In his so-called Prophetic Books, a series of longer poems written from 1789 on, Blake created a complex personal mythology and invented his own symbolic characters to reflect his social concerns. A true original in thought and expression, he declares in one of these poems, I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. With The Song of Los the experimental period of his poetic career ended: he engraved no more books for nearly 10 years. In 1795 he had been commissioned by a bookseller to make designs for an edition of Edward Young's Night Thoughts. He worked on this until 1797, producing 537 watercolour drawings. It seems to have been while he was working on these illustrations that a fresh creative impulse led to the beginning of his first full-scale epic poem. The first draft of the epic, called Vala, was begun in 1795. He worked on it for about nine years, during which period he rewrote it under the title of The Four Zoas, but never engraved it. It remains a magnificent torso, but the quality of this work's poetry and its thought are obscured by its overly complicated mythological scheme. In spite of the grandeur of individual passages and of the major conception, The Four Zoas remains fragmentary and lacking in coherence. It provided the materials out of which Blake constructed his later epics, Milton and Jerusalem (42). In 1800, at the invitation of William Hayley, a Sussex squire, Blake and his wife went to live in a cottage provided by Hayley at Felpham on the Sussex coast, where he lived and worked until 1803 under the patronage of Hayley. There he experienced profound spiritual insights that prepared him for his mature work, the great visionary epics written and etched between about 1804 and 1820. Milton (1804-08), Vala, or The Four Zoas (that is, aspects of the human soul, 1797; rewritten after 1800), and Jerusalem (1804-20) have neither traditional plot, characters, rhyme, nor meter; the rhetorical free-verse lines demand new modes of reading. They envision a new and higher kind of innocence, the human spirit triumphant over reason. In his new vision of the ideal world, all beings are united in one perfect Human Form. After the Fall which as always in Blake is a failure of the imagination - the Human is fragmented, and hostility arises between his now separated elements. None of these elements is perfectly good or evil; the

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creatures of the earlier myth, Orc, Urizen and Los, are now all damaged pieces of the Universal Human Form, and none will be complete without the rest. From this time on, Urizen, the great evil of America (1793), becomes less hated and more pitied. Even Vala, the female form who is at first blamed for the disintegration, is at last regenerated ( 43). William Hayley, a well-meaning, obtuse dilettante, who had employed Blake to make engravings, regarded his imaginative works with contempt and tried to turn him into a miniature painter and tame poet on his estate. At first Blake was delighted with life in Sussex, but he soon found the patronizing Hayley intolerable. The cottage was damp and Mrs. Blake's health suffered, and in 1803 the Blake returned to London. Toward the end of his stay at Felpham, Blake was accused by a soldier called Schofield of having uttered seditious words when he had ejected him from his cottage garden. He was tried at the quarter sessions at Chichester, denied the charges, and was acquitted. Hayley gave bail for Blake and employed counsel to defend him. This experience became part of the mythology underlying Jerusalem and Milton (44). It was also probably at Felpham that Blake wrote the most notable of his later lyrical poems, including "Auguries of Innocence", with its memorable opening stanza: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." It was at Felpham, too, that he wrote some of his finest letters, many of them addressed to Thomas Butts, a government clerk who was for years a generous and loyal supporter and patron of Blake and who commissioned almost his total output of paintings and watercolours at this period. In 1804-08 Blake engraved Milton. This poem is a comparatively brief epic, which deals with a contest between the hero (Milton) and Satan; it too is couched in the prophetic grandeur and obscurity of Blake's invented mythology. Milton's struggle with evil in the poem is a reflection of Blake's own conflicts with the domineering patronage of William Hayley. Jerusalem is Blake's third major epic and his longest poem. Begun about 1804, and written and engraved soon after the completion of Milton, it is also the most richly decorated of Blake's illuminated books, and only a few of its 100 plates are without illustration. Although the details are complex and present many difficulties, the poem's main outlines are simple. At the opening of the poem the giant Albion (who represents both England and humanity) is shown plunged into the "Sleep of Ulro," or the hell of abstract materialism. The core of the poem describes his awakening and regeneration through the agency of Los, the archetypal craftsman or creative man. The poem's consummation is the reunion of Albion with Jerusalem (his lost soul) and with God through his acceptance of Jesus' doctrine of universal brotherhood ( 45). During Blake's Felpham years another enthusiasm arrived, close on the heels of the Immortal Man. It is a time once more for the restatement of the vision and the third development of the myth, not this time through disillusionment but because his images had taken a new colouring. Markedly Christian language begins to creep into Vala, which eventually collapses under the strain. Even before Felpham, Blake has used the phrase, "We who call ourselves Christians". Now the belief grows into its own images which must be incorporated into the myth. It is a complex development. The Druids of Ancient Britain are identified with the patriarchs of the Bible, and the Giant Albion - the Spirit of Britain - is identified with the Israel of the Bible. Thus Albion is the Holy Land, London is Jerusalem, and Jesus did indeed walk (in the truth of the imagination) across these hills. The solution to the disintegration of man is reconciliation through forgiveness, and the reconciliation of Christ and Albion brings about the reunion of the disintegrated Eternal Human, who appears then as Christ himself. It is not enough now, as in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, to find one's own imaginative life. The Human Form Divine will not be re-created until the whole nation, the whole of mankind, the whole universe, is drawn together; but this can

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begin in the smallest of single actions. Blake has returned to the idealistic hope of America, but now his thought is less simple and more mystical; yet as the pages of Jerusalem show, no less radical (46). Blake's life during the period from 1803 to about 1820 was one of worldly failure. He found it difficult to get work, and the engravings that can be identified as his from this period are often hack jobs. In 1809 he made a last effort to put his work before the public and held an exhibition of 16 paintings and watercolour drawings. He wrote a thoughtful Descriptive Catalogue for the exhibition, but only a few people attended. But after this long period of obscurity, Blake found in 1819 a new and generous patron in the painter John Linnell, who introduced him to a group of young artists among whom was Samuel Palmer. In his last years Blake became the centre of this group, whose members shared Blake's religious seriousness and revered him as their master. The most notable poetry Blake wrote after Jerusalem is to be found in The Everlasting Gospel (1818?), a fragmentary and unfinished work containing a challenging reinterpretation of the character and teaching of Christ. Blake's writings also include An Island in the Moon (1784), a rollicking satire on events in his early life; a collection of letters; and a notebook containing sketches and some shorter poems dating between 1793 and 1818. It was called the Rossetti Manuscript, because it was acquired in 1847 by the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the first to recognize Blake's genius. But Blake's last years were devoted mainly to pictorial art. In 1821 Linnell commissioned him to make a series of 22 watercolours inspired by the Book of Job; these include some of his best known pictures. Linnell also commissioned Blake's designs for Dante's Divine Comedy, begun in 1825 and left unfinished at his death. These consist of 102 watercolours notable for their brilliant colour. Blake thus found in his 60s a following and support for the imaginative work he had longed to do all his life. As a result, it was in his last years that he produced his most technically assured and beautiful designs. Toward the end of his life Blake still coloured copies of his books while resting in bed, and that is how he died in a room off the Strand, in London, on the 12th August 1827, in his 70th year leaving uncompleted a cycle of drawings inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Bunhill Fields. Blake is frequently referred to as a mystic, but this is not really accurate. He deliberately wrote in the style of the Hebrew prophets and apocalyptic writers. He envisioned his works as expressions of prophecy, following in the footsteps (or, more precisely strapping on the sandals) of Elijah and Milton. In his filthy London studio he succumbed to constant visions of angels and prophets who instructed him in his work. He once painted while receiving a vision of Voltaire, and when asked later whether Voltaire spoke English, replied: "To my sensations it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key. He touched it probably French, but to my ear it became English." ( 47) It is the difficulty of Blake's visionary poetry, rather than the vividness that has captured the commentators. They have sought high and low in the mystical philosophies, or in the politics, of East and West for the "key" to his work. It is true that he has a habit of allusiveness that is certainly obscure. In the famous song, for example, England is 'clouded' by spiritual blindness more than by cumuli, and the 'Satanic mills' are the shackles of the mind, of which the Industrial Revolution is only one manifestation. The difficulty is not to be solved by finding a missing key. It is something less systematic; the problem of Blake himself. Each of Blake's new enthusiasm reshapes the legend of his poems. As Blake refines his beliefs, he refines his myth too. The function of Orc and Urizen in America (1793) is quite plain; one fights for freedom, the other for law. In The Book of Urizen (1794) it is much more complex, and by Vala (1803) and Milton (1810) they have had to be altered almost out of recognition, but they are never quite abandoned. Blake was not by instinct a narrative poet. He tended to 'improve' his longer poems by a process of accumulation rather than by following the demands of the narrative. His mind was like an untidy desk. He threw nothing away, and often used old material for new tasks. One never

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knows what one will find. The reader ploughing through pages full of 'dismal howling woe' comes across an unexpected line of startling beauty which only Blake could have written ( 48). It is therefore no use trying to understand Blake by means of a key. No one scheme fits all his works; each stage grows out of the one preceding it. Each enthusiasm gives a striking new turn to his legend and its imagery, but the new is always superimposed on the old. If we can understand the series of enthusiasms, we can begin to find our way through the difficulties of his work. It is easy to dismiss Blake as 'primitive', an artist whose attraction resides in his naivety, which is lost when the work becomes heavy and charmless. This is also too simple. There is an odd contradiction at the heart of Blake's writing. He repeatedly called for art to concern itself with the 'minute particulars' of life: "To generalise is to be an idiot!" he scribbled in the margin of Reynold's Discourses (49). On the other hand he criticized Wordsworth for paying too much attention to the details of nature at the expense of inner realities ( 50). More important, much of his poetry disregards his own rule. Words like 'howling' and 'dismal' appear far too often. His lyrics are usually marvels of conciseness, but he chose to express his dearest beliefs, not as 'minute particulars', but as cloudy, generalized figures representing eternal states of humanity. Milton ceases to be a seventeenth-century poet and becomes a state of Los, the eternal spirit of the imagination. From first to last, Blake champions the imagination, but too much misplaced convention. At his greatest, minutiae become eternal; at his worst, the eternal becomes a scheme ( 51). Here if anywhere else, lies the "key" to Blake. He was not a "Romantic" writer, whatever that is; he was neo-classic by training and inclination. He had no time for classical myth, but that is irrelevant. His instinct was to create inspired by his own visions not symbols out of mystical tradition, nor vivid observations of human life, but representative figures to embody both the inner nature of the subject and his own response to it. His long epic poems are made up of a mixture of inspiration, pigheadedness, evangelic fervour and profound imagery. When he failed, he became obscure or tedious often both. When he succeeded, he created a kind of magic of which no other poet has been capable. He blundered into greatness, just as he often blundered away from it. Yet there are many occasions, as his mystical figures move across the abyss, when all the elements come together, and then he produces poetry of a unique kind of genius, which leave the reader in something more than admiration in wonderment.

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Footnotes: (1) Appelbaum, Stanley - Introduction to English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. [Mineola, Dover, 1996.] (Chpt. V.) (2) Damon, S. Foster - A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. [New York, Dutton, 1971.] (Chpt. IX.) (3) Murry, John Middleton - William Blake. [London, Jonathan Cape, 1933.] (p.12.) (4) Mack, Maynard (ed.) - "William Blake" in The Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Expanded Edition, Volume 2. [New York: Norton, 1995.] (p. 783.) (5) Frye, Northrop - Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. [Boston, Beacon Press, 1967.] (Chpt. 8.) (6) c.a. (Chpt. 4.) (7) Appelbaum, Stanley - Introduction to English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. [Mineola, Dover, 1996.] (Chpt. V.) (8) Keynes, Geoffrey - William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.] ("An Introduction to William Blake") (9) Wilson, Mona - The Life of William Blake. [(ed.) Geoffrey Keynes. London, Oxford University Press, 1971.] (10) Wilson, Mona - The Life of William Blake. [(ed.) Geoffrey Keynes. London, Oxford University Press, 1971.] (11) Bindman, David - Blake as an Artist. [Oxford, Phaidon, 1977.] (p. 53-56.) (12) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (13) Bindman, David - William Blake, His Art and Times. [Thames and Hudson, 1982.] (p. 15-23.) (14) c.a. (p. 45.) (15) Blunt, Anthony - The Art of William Blake. [Columbia University Press, New York, 1963.] (p. 78.) (16) Keynes, Geoffrey - William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.] ("An Introduction to William Blake") (17) Blunt, Anthony - The Art of William Blake. [Columbia University Press, New York, 1963.] (p. 12.) c.a. (p. 34.) (18) Keynes, Geoffrey - William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.] ("An Introduction to William Blake") (19) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (20) Keynes, Geoffrey - William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.] ("An Introduction to William Blake") (21) Bindman, David - Blake as an Artist. [Oxford, Phaidon, 1977.] (p.58.) (22) Mitchell, W.J.T. - Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.] (p. 13.) (23) Bindman, David - William Blake, His Art and Times. [Thames and Hudson, 1982.] (p. 45-50.) (24) Appelbaum, Stanley - Introduction to English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. [Mineola, Dover, 1996.] (Chpt. V.) (25) Damon, S. Foster - A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. [New York, Dutton, 1971.] (p. 318.) (26) Mack, Maynard (ed.) - "William Blake" in The Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Expanded Edition, Volume 2. [New York: Norton, 1995.] (p.784.) (27) Mack, Maynard (ed.) - "William Blake" in The Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces, Expanded Edition, Volume 2. [New York: Norton, 1995.] (p.785.) (28) Varanyi Szilvia - Sin and Error in William Blake. [Budapest, ELTE-BTK DELL, Szakdolgozat 19xx.]

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(29) Erdman, David V. Blake: Prophet against Empire. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.] (p. 45.) (30) Nurmi, Martin K. - William Blake. [London, Hutchinson, 1975.] (p. 54.) (31) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (p. 79.) (32) c.a. (p. 124.) (33) Damon, S. Foster - A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. [New York, Dutton, 1971.] (Chpt. XI.) (34) Appelbaum, Stanley - Introduction to English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. [Mineola, Dover, 1996.] (Chpt. III.) (35) Damon, S. Foster - A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. [New York, Dutton, 1971.] (p. 344.) (36) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (37) Damon, S. Foster - A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. [New York, Dutton, 1971.] (38) Appelbaum, Stanley - Introduction to English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. [Mineola, Dover, 1996.] (Chpt. I.) (39) Phillips, Michael (ed.) - Interpreting Blake. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.] (p. 193.) (40) Fisher, F. Peter - Blake and the Druids. [in Frye (ed.): Blake . Prentice-Hall, New Jersey 1966.] (41) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (42) Damon, S. Foster - William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols. [Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958.] (43) Wilson, Mona - The Life of William Blake. [(ed.) Geoffrey Keynes. London, Oxford University Press, 1971.] (44) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (45) Nathan, Norman - Prince William B. - The Philosophical Conceptions of William Blake. [Paris, Mouton, 1975.] (46) Levi Asher - Literary Kicks on William Blake. (47) Phillips, Michael (ed.) - Interpreting Blake. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.] (p. 114-116.) (49) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (p. 106.) (50) c.a. (p.112.) (51) Behrendt, Stephen C. - Reading William Blake. [London, Macmillan Press, 1992.] (p. 87.) Chapter II. - Major Influences The Romantic period As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, "Romantic" is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled "Romantic movement" at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics. Blake lived during a time of intense social change. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution all happened during his lifetime. These changes gave Blake a chance to see one of the most dramatic stages in the transformation of the Western world from a somewhat feudal, agricultural society to an industrial society where philosophers and political thinkers such as John Locke (1632-1704) and Thomas Paine (1737-1809) championed the rights of the individual. Some of these changes had Blake's approval; others did not. Many of the age's foremost writers thought that something new was happening in the world's affairs, nevertheless. Blake's affirmation in 1793 that "A new Heaven is begun..." was matched a generation later

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by Shelley's "The world's great age begins anew." "These, these shall give the world/Another heart, and other pulses" wrote Keats, referring to Haydon Leigh Hunt and Wordsworth. Fresh ideals came to the fore: in particular the ideal of freedom, long cherished in England, was being extended to every range of human endeavour. As that ideal swept through Europe, it became natural to believe that the age of tyrants might soon end. The feature most likely to strike a reader turning to the poets of the time after reading their immediate predecessors is the new role of individual feeling and thought. Where the main trend of 18th-century poetics had been to praise the general, to see the poet as a spokesman of society, addressing a cultivated and homogeneous audience and having as his end the conveyance of "truth," the Romantics found the source of poetry in the particular, unique experience. Blake's marginal comment on Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses expresses the position with characteristic vehemence: "to generalise is to be an idiot; to particularise is the alone distinction of merit." The poet was seen as an individual distinguished from his fellows by the intensity of his perceptions, taking as his basic subject matter the workings of his own mind. The implied attitude to an audience varied accordingly: although Wordsworth maintained that a poet did not write "for Poets alone, but for Men," for Shelley the poet was "a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds," and Keats declared "I never wrote one single line of Poetry with the least Shadow of public thought." (1) Poetry was regarded as conveying its own truth; sincerity was the criterion by which it was to be judged. Provided the feeling behind it was genuine, the resulting creation must be valuable. The emphasis on feeling - seen perhaps at its finest in the poems of Burns - was in some ways a continuation of the earlier "cult of sensibility"; and it is worth remembering that Pope praised his father as having known no language but the language of the heart. But feeling had begun to receive particular emphasis and is found in most of the Romantic definitions of poetry. Wordsworth called it "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling," and in 1833 John Stuart Mill defined "natural poetry" as "Feeling itself, employing Thought only as the medium of its utterance." (2) It followed that the best poetry was that in which the greatest intensity of feeling was expressed, and hence a new importance was attached to the lyric. The degree of intensity was affected by the extent to which the poet's imagination had been at work; as Coleridge saw it, the imagination was the supreme poetic quality, a quasi-divine creative force that made the poet a godlike being. Romantic theory thus differed from the neoclassic in the relative importance it allotted to the imagination: Samuel Johnson had seen the components of poetry as "invention, imagination and judgement" but William Blake wrote: "One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision." (3) The judgment, or conscious control, was felt to be secondary; the poets of this period accordingly placed great emphasis on the workings of the unconscious mind, on dreams and reveries, on the supernatural, and on the childlike or primitive view of the world, this last being regarded as valuable because its clarity and intensity had not been overlaid by the restrictions of civilized "reason." Rousseau's sentimental conception of the "noble savage" was often invoked, and often by those who were ignorant that the phrase is Dryden's or that the type was adumbrated in the "poor Indian" of Pope's Essay on Man (4). A further sign of the diminished stress placed on judgment is the Romantic attitude to form: if poetry must be spontaneous, sincere, intense, it should be fashioned primarily according to the dictates of the creative imagination. Wordsworth advised a young poet, "You feel strongly; trust to those feelings, and your poem will take its shape and proportions as a tree does from the vital principle that actuates it." This organic view of poetry is opposed to the classical theory of "genres," each with its own linguistic decorum; and it led to the feeling that poetic sublimity was unattainable except in short passages ( 5). Hand in hand with the new conception of poetry and the insistence on a new subject matter went a demand for new ways of writing. Wordsworth and his followers, particularly Keats, found the prevailing poetic diction of the later 18th century stale and stilted, or "gaudy and inane," and totally unsuited to the expression of their perceptions. It could not be, for them, the language of feeling, and Wordsworth accordingly sought to bring the language of poetry back to that of common speech. His theories of diction have been allowed to loom too large in critical discussion: his own best practice very often differs from

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his theory. Nevertheless, when Wordsworth published his preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800, the time was ripe for a change: the flexible diction of earlier 18th-century poetry had hardened into a merely conventional language and, with the notable exceptions of Blake and Burns, little first-rate poetry had been produced (as distinct from published) in Britain since the 1740s ( 6). Top The Poets of Early-Romanticism Useful as it is to trace the common elements in Romantic poetry, there was little conformity among the poets themselves. It is misleading to read the poetry of the first Romantics William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, for example as if it had been written primarily to express their feelings. Their concern was rather to change the intellectual climate of the age. Blake had been dissatisfied since boyhood with the current state of poetry and the drabness of contemporary thought. His early development of a protective shield of mocking humour with which to face a world in which science had become trifling and art inconsequential is visible in the satirical An Island in the Moon (c. 1784-85); he then took the bolder step of setting aside sophistication in the visionary Songs of Innocence (1789). His desire for renewal encouraged him to view the outbreak of the French Revolution as a momentous event. Tradition has it that he openly wore the revolutionary red cockade in the streets of London. In his powerful works, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93) and Songs of Experience (1794), he attacked the hypocrisies of the age and the impersonal cruelties resulting from the dominance of analytic reason in contemporary thought. As it became clear that the ideals of the Revolution were not likely to be realized in his time, he renewed his efforts to revise his contemporaries' view of the universe and to construct a new mythology centred not in the God of the Bible but in Urizen, a figure of reason and law who he believed to be the true deity worshiped by his contemporaries. The story of Urizen's rise to provide a fortification against the chaos created by loss of a true human spirit was set out first in "Prophetic Books" such as The First Book of Urizen (1794) and then, more ambitiously, in the unfinished manuscript Vala, or The Four Zoas, written from about 1796 to about 1807 (7). Later Blake shifted his poetic aim once more. Instead of attempting a narrative epic on the model of Paradise Lost he produced the more loosely organized visionary narratives of Milton (1804-08) and Jerusalem (1804-20) where, still using mythological characters, he portrayed the imaginative artist as the hero of society and forgiveness as the greatest human virtue. Blake's later poetry was most probably influenced by the graveyard school. Among Blake's secular illustrations were those for an edition of Thomas Gray's poems and the 537 watercolours for Edward Young's 'Night Thoughts'. The "graveyard" is a genre of 18th-century British poetry that focused on death and bereavement. The graveyard school consisted largely of imitations of Robert Blair's popular long poem of morbid appeal, The Grave (1743), and of Edward Young's celebrated blank-verse dramatic rhapsody Night Thoughts (1742-45). These poems express the sorrow and pain of bereavement, evoke the horror of death's physical manifestations, and suggest the transitory nature of human life. The meditative, philosophical tendencies of graveyard poetry found their fullest expression in Thomas Gray's "An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard" (1751). The poem is a dignified, gently melancholy elegy celebrating the graves of humble and unknown villagers and suggesting that the lives of rich and poor alike "lead but to the grave." The works of the graveyard school were significant as early precursors of the Romantic Movement. Top Mysticism and Romanticism The 18th century and especially the second half is a very important age from an esoteric point of view. The new scientific view of the world demolished the theory of macrocosm and microcosm, and the whole edifice of magic which had been built on it. The universe was no longer constructed on the model of a man, alive and all trough, pulsing with currents of divine energy, responsive to human will and desire. Man could not now climb the ladder of his own nature to scale the heights of power. He did not contain the heavens himself, so that he was influenced by the stars and could dominate them in turn. The links of sympathy and correspondence, which the magician sought to employ, were consigned to the

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rubbish heap of discarded theories. The spirits of things which made them worth mastering, and indeed it became questionable whether they existed at all. Predicting the future changed into a scientific instead of a religious, magical or psychic exercise. The universe was now a dead piece of machinery, it cogs and wheels turning in accordance with immutable laws which left no scope for magical and mystical manipulation and little for effective religion. People began to look instead to improved technology for control of the environment. A certain respect remained for religion, though it proved hollow, magic ceased to command respect or cause much alarm in intellectual circles. It was dismissed with contempt as irrational and ridiculous. At popular levels, improved agricultural and medical techniques weakened without entirely destroying the hold of magic, witchcraft, herb-lore and astrology on the most important areas of most people's lives. The rationalism of the Enlightenment cut the arteries of folk customs and William Blake Newton ceremonies, which began to die (Newton designing the new universe) out. These trends were far more pronounced in Protestant quarters than in Roman Catholic ones, where the old religion and the old traditions fared better. The reaction, when it came, was correspondingly stronger in Protestant than in Catholic spheres of influence. As a counter-reaction of the new scientific dogmas there is a growing interest in the esoteric teachings everywhere in Europe from the late 1700s. There's a kind of renaissance of the esoteric and many works of former esoteric and classical hermetic writers are widely published. These include the thoughts of the neoplatonist Marsiglio Ficino (1433-1499), Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Gemistos Plethon, Raimondus Lullus, Cusanus and cardinal Bessarion, the writings of the alchemists Paracelsus (14931541) and Bombast von Hohenheim (1493-1541), the occultists Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), Agrippa Von Nettesheim (Heinrich Cornelius 1486-1535) and Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), and the works of Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame 1503-1566). The famous English magicians John Dee (-1608) and Edward Kelly (-1595) are published again as well as the astrologers Regiomontanus (Johann Mller 1436-76), Jerome Cardan (1501-76), and Copernicus (-1543). But the thoughts of the theosophical

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Sebastian Franck (1499-1553), Valentin Weigel (1533-1588), or Jacob Bhme (1575-1624) are even more influential, as well as the ideas of the great Renaissance natural philosophers like Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Galileo Galilei (1564-1641) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Protestant mystical circles, neoplatonist groupings, freemason lodges and magical societies pop up like mushrooms after a heavy rain and good sunshine. There's no end to the number of mystic groups and selfmade magicians proclaiming some kind of superior mystic knowledge. England is especially intricate. Top

Protestant mysticism The chief representatives of Protestant mysticism are the continental "Spirituals," among whom Sebastian Franck (c.1499-c.1542), Valentin Weigel (1533-88), and Jakob Bhme (1575-1624) are especially noteworthy. Among traditional Lutherans Johann Arndt (1555-1621) in his Four Books on True Christianity took up many of the themes of medieval mysticism in the context of Reformation theology and prepared the way for the spiritual revival known as Pietism, within which such mystics as Count von Zinzendorf flourished. In England the Anglican divines known as the "Cambridge Platonists", the "Quakers" headed by George Fox (1624-91) and William Law (1686-1761) were important. In Holland a mystical group known as "Collegiants", similar to the Quakers, broke away from the Remonstrant (Calvinist) Church. Other mystical bodies were the "Schwenckfeldians", founded by Kaspar Schwenckfeld, and the "Family of Love", founded in Holland by Hendrik Niclaes early in the 16th century before moving to England about 1550. The religion of the "Ranters" and other radical Puritans in 17th-century England had mystical aspects (8). The cardinal feature of Protestant mysticism is the emphasis laid on the divine element in humanity variously known as the "spark" or "ground" of the soul, the "divine image" or "holy self," the "Inner Light," or the "Christ within." This was one of the essential elements of 'Rhineland mysticism' and shows the connection between medieval and Reformation mysticism. For Bhme and the Spirituals, essential reality lies in the ideal world, which Bhme described as "the uncreated Heaven." Bhme took over the Gnostic belief that the physical world arose from a primeval fall, renewed with the Fall of Adam. His teaching was the main formative influence on the developed outlook of William Law and William Blake. For Protestant as well as for Roman Catholic mystics, sin is essentially the assertion of the self in its separation from God. The divine life is embodied in "the true holy self that lies within the other" [Bhme, First Epistle]. When that self is manifested, there is a birth of God (or of Christ) in the soul. Protestant mystics rejected the Lutheran and Calvinist doctrine of the total corruption of human nature. William Law remarked: "the eternal Word of God lies hid in thee, as a spark of the divine nature" [The Spirit of Prayer, I.2.]. "The eternal Word of God" is the inner Christ, incarnate whenever people rise into union with God. By the Spirituals Christ was viewed as the ideal humanity born in God from all eternity. This conception received its greatest emphasis with Kaspar Schwenckfeld, who, unlike Protestant mystics generally, taught that humans as created beings are totally corrupt; salvation means deliverance from the creaturely nature and union with the heavenly Christ (9). Protestant mystics explicitly recognize that the divine Light or Spark is a universal principle. Hans Denck in the early 16th century spoke of the witness of the Spirit in "heathens and Jews." Sebastian Franck, like the Cambridge Platonists, found divine revelation in the work of the sages of Greece and Rome. George Fox appealed to the conscience of the American Indians as a proof of the universality of the Inner Light. William Law described non-Christian saints as "apostles of a Christ within." Protestant mystics stated plainly that, for the mystic, supreme authority lies of necessity not in the written word of Scripture but in the Word of God in the self. Fox said: "I saw, in that Light and Spirit that was before the Scriptures were given forth" [Journal, chapter 2]. It was especially on this ground that the mystics came into conflict with the established church, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant ( 10).

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The "Ranters" provide a good example of the conflict between mysticism and established religion. They held, with Fox and Hendrik Niclaes, that perfection is possible in this life. Puritan leaders under the Commonwealth denounced them for their "blasphemous and execrable opinions," and there was, no doubt, an antinomian tendency among them that rejected the principle of moral law. Some rejected the very notion of sin and believed in the universal restoration of all things in God. Top Political radicalism The degree to which Blake was personally acquainted with the leading radicals of his days, such as Godwin, Holcroft, and Thomas Paine, has been exaggerated ( 11), but there is no question that he sympathised with their ideas, since these are clearly reflected in the two works which follow the Songs of Innocence and Thel: The French revolution and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The former Blake planned to print and publish in the ordinary way, through the well-known radical bookseller Joseph Johnson, and not by his method of illuminated painting. Although, it never appeared and is known only from a proof copy, it is of importance in setting forth the story of the first years of the French Revolution in a manner which shows clearly that Blake was at this date a convinced Jacobin ( 12). Throughout his works William Blake makes such claims as "There is no natural religion." and "He never can be a Friend to the Human Race who is the Preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion. He is a flatterer who means to betray, to perpetuate Tyrant Pride" ["Jerusalem" Pl. 52]. Presumably he saw deism as a very dangerous tyrannical movement. Yet, when Bishop Watson wrote a refutation of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, Blake angrily annotated the refutation, proclaiming Watson's motives to be tyrannical and Paine to be a "worker of miracles". Most studies on the subject tend to locate the reason for Blake's extravagant praise of Paine in his sympathies with revolutionary politics. It does not matter that Blake and Paine apparently cannot reconcile their religious differences, because Blake recognized that Paine and he were attacking the same tyrannous regimes. However, Blake had much better reason involving his very particular use of the terms "natural religion" and "prophecy" for praising Paine as a miracle-worker. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-American writer and political pamphleteer whose "Common Sense" and "Crisis" papers were important influences on the American Revolution. Other works that contributed to his reputation as one of the greatest political propagandists in history were Rights of Man, a defence of the French Revolution and of republican principles; and The Age of Reason, an exposition of the place of religion in society. The millenialist rhetoric of the Protestant dissenting faiths and Great Awakening promotion of "inner light" theology helped to fuel political resistance to bring about a new way of life for those who were not benefiting from the current system. Moreover, millenialism provided an explanation for the tumultuous revolutionary uprisings going on in the world in the 1790s, uprisings which threatened the status quo. A positive explanation of revolutionary movements would have been welcome to members of working classes, who were drawn to evangelical religious groups, simply for economic reasons. Evangelical egalitarian rhetoric offered these struggling people a voice in a social system that was unresponsive to their needs. It was only a short step from religious conversion to radical political activism, and many millenarians joined the radical secular groups which commonly attracted a motley group of "the insecure and declining, the casualised, pauperised and criminalised" artisans and laborers of middle and low classes whose troubles Paine would well have known. Indeed, as J. F.C. Harrison has observed, Paine's writings, including The Age of Reason attracted these politically concerned, millenarian Christians, who saw Paine as instrumental in ushering in a new age. These evangelical millenialists were actually drawn to such deist expressions in Paine's work as "My own mind is my own church," as apt articulations of their own dissenting faiths, which emphasized individual spiritual guidance [Paine I: 464]. Harrison suggests that at the popular level, at least, Paine's deism was incorporated into religious beliefs. It would be just as easy to call Paine a millenialist, simply based on his popular reception as such, as it has been for us classify him as a deist ( 13).

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Paine's attack on Christianity in The Age of Reason claims that the Bible is inapplicable to the eighteenth century. Really, according to Paine, it was written by poets and prophets who "were in parties, and they prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with, as the poetical and political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the other." [Paine I:562]. From what we know of the importance Blake places on revelation, we can expect that this passage would have angered Blake, who was so concerned with his role as both poet and prophet. However, what may be less clear is that Paine advocates a particular kind of deism that shares the tenets of the popular "inner light" philosophy in a way that very likely interested Blake. Paine, whose father was a Quaker, shared with other deists like Voltaire a respect for Quakerism as "the religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the moral and benign part thereof" [Paine, Age of Reason I: 498]. However, Paine goes further than his fellow deists when he calls for the Quakers to promote their religious beliefs in support of the colonial cause in 1776. Paine's "Epistle to Quakers", which Blake might have read as part of the Appendix to the third edition of Common Sense , was written in response to a Tory movement among colonial Quakers. Paine accuses this movement of hypocrisy. These writings reveal that, more than simply respecting this branch of inner light theology, Paine saw the Quaker cause as allied closely with his own. In instructing those who shared the faith of his father on how to best apply their religious beliefs as a force for good, Paine gives them a non-military mode of opposition similar to his own: the Quakers must publish to spread their ideals and convince those who are tyrannically acting in the name of God that they must change their ways. Paine thus calls for mental warfare for inner light principles of human equality which are closer to popular millenialist ideals than to a deism that supports the status quo by proclaiming a God afar off whose machine is set to run perfectly in his absence. This, in short, is a call to do the work of God to bring about a better world. Top Neoplatonism The "Cambridge Platonists" hoped to reconcile Christian ethics with Renaissance humanism, religion with the new science, and faith with rationality. Their leader was Benjamin Whichcote, who expounded in his sermons the Christian humanism that united the group. His principal disciples at the University of Cambridge were Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and John Smith; Joseph Glanvill was a University of Oxford convert. Nathanael Culverwel, Richard Cumberland, and the mystic Peter Sterry at Cambridge and John Norris at Oxford were influenced by Cambridge Platonism without wholly accepting its moral and religious ideals. Educated as Puritans, the Cambridge Platonists reacted against the Calvinist emphasis on the arbitrariness of divine sovereignty. In their eyes, Thomas Hobbes, the political philosopher, and the Calvinists both erred in supposing that morality consists in obedience to a will. Morality, the Platonists said, is essentially rational; and the good man's love of goodness is at the same time an understanding of its nature, which not even God can alter through sovereign power. Against both William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, and the Calvinists, they denied that ritual, church government, or detailed dogmas are essentials of Christianity. To be a Christian is to participate in divine wisdom and to be free to choose whatever forms of religious organization prove helpful. The width of their tolerance won them the nickname "latitude men"; and they were often condemned as Unitarians or atheists because they stressed morality so far above dogma. Their metaphysics derives from Renaissance Platonism, which interpreted Plato in a Neoplatonic light. They learned much from Descartes's critique of Empiricism; but, fearing that the new "mechanical" theories might undermine the religious world view, they supported (against Descartes) a teleological interpretation of natural processes (14).

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The influence of "Christian Platonism" on English literature, and especially on English poetry, has been wide and deep. But there has also been a strongly anti-Christian Neoplatonic influence, that of Thomas Taylor "the Platonist" (1758-1835), who published translations of Plato, Aristotle, and a large number of Neoplatonic works in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Taylor was as militant in his pagan Platonism as was Gemistus Plethon. His ideas had a strong influence on the English Romantics. In the poetry of William Blake who eventually succeeded in reconciling Taylor's paganism with his own very original version of Christianity much of the symbolism is Neoplatonic. The Platonism of the English Romantic poets Coleridge and Shelley also derives from Taylor, although both were able to read the original texts. Taylor also deeply influenced Emerson and his circle in America. Later, in the early 20th century, the influence of Taylor's writings was again apparent in the Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats, who in his later poems made use of Stephen MacKenna's then new translation of Plotinus ( 15). Top Freemasonry and Secret Societies Freemasonry also becomes a major organizing factor of the modern age, due to the activity of the legendary Cagliostro (1743-95) and Saint Germain (-1784). The first freemason lodge is founded in London in 1717, but then it quickly spreads to the continent and America. Important freemasons - from a philosophical point of view - of the time are Sincerus Renatus (Sigmund Richter 1710), and Jacobite Scots (1750). This is the time when William Stukeley (1687-1765) lays the foundations of the modern "Druid Society". Stukeley became a Mason because he hoped that the Craft's secret concealed 'the remains of the mysteries of the ancients'. Stukeley was a clergyman, physician and archaeologist, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the founder of the "Royal Society of Antiquaries". He was also a member of the "Egyptian Society", founded in 1741 to promote the antique wisdom of the Nile. He investigated Stonehenge and Avenbury, and published books on the two sites as 'temples of the British Druids' in the 1740s. He laid out a Druid shrine round an old apple tree in his garden in Linconshire and his friends, with affectionate amusement, called him "the Arch-Druid of his Age" ( 16). Stukeley was dismayed by the atheism of his time and, in the Renaissance spirit, hoped to re-establish the authority of Christianity by tracing its essence back to the earliest times. In a book published in 1736 he carried his efforts to the remarkable length of identifying the Roman Bacchus with God the Father. In Druidism he found 'the aboriginal patriarchal religion', the pure and ancient knowledge of God which the Druids, he thought, had brought with them from among the Hebrews when they left Palestine for Britain about the time of Abraham. Stukeley's ideas seem to have had a great impact on Blake's own mythology (17). This is the age when "The Golden Rosy Cross Brotherhood" is formed, which has amongst its members for example William II., the Prussian king (1786-97), but this is the revival of the "Order of the Templarian Knights" too, which can be traced back to the German freemason lodge called Strict Observance, and was founded by Baron von Hund (1755). This is when the French magician, Martinez de Pasqually (1727-79) founds the "Ordere des Chevalier-Macons, Elus Cohens de lUniverse", with students like Louis Claude de St-Martin (1743-1803). Other important figures of the age are Jean Baptiste Willermoz (1767), who founded "The Order of Black Eagle Rosy Cross", Giacomo Casanova (1725-98), and Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who founded mesmerism. The most important esoteric thinker of the time is Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), whose writings had greatly influenced Blake, especially with his work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. William Blake (1757-1827), with his unique form of illuminated poetry inspired by mystical vision, also greatly constitutes to the mystical philosophy and tradition of the age. [See below: The New Church] Alchemy was conducted in hidden societies. There was a sensation in England in 1782, when a Fellow of the Royal Society, James Price, turned mercury into gold in the presence of distinguished observers. But the feat turned out to have been fraudulent and the unfortunate Price committed suicide. Astrology though less popular is kept alive in a rudimentary form in the almanacs. The most poular of them was Vox

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Stellarum, which was put out under the name of the Astrologer Francis Moore long after his death in 1715. It sold over 100.000 copies in 1768 and subsequently became the well-known Old Moore's Almanac, which is still published. But less than a half a dozen new astrological textbooks were published between 1700 and 1780. (18) Another ingredient in the magical, mystical melting-pot was the perennial glamour of Egyptian wisdom. The hieroglyphs had not yet been deciphered, and would not be till the 1820s. They were still believed to be charged with esoteric and compelling wisdom. Mozart was a mason and The Magic Flute (1791) is set in ancient Egypt and identifies the mysteries of Masonry with those of Isis and Osiris as the pathway to salvation. By this time the Sicilian adventurer Giuseppe Balsamo (1743-95), who called himself Count Cagliostro, had founded his "Egyptian Rite of Masonry", with himself at its head as Grand Copht and his beautiful wife presiding over the women's lodges as the Queen of Sheba. Egyptology and Orientalism directed the general interest towards ancient wisdom and the mystical teachings. Some more important figures of this age were the English magician, Francis Barrett (1801), the astrologer Robert Cross Smith (1795-1832) and Richard James Morrison (1795-1874), who laid the foundations of todays modern lower astrology. But perhaps the most important figure was to be Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant 1810-?), who made the biggest influence on his age ( 19). Top The New Church Probably the most important 'movement' to have influence on William Blake's philosophy and work was "The New Church". Also called Swedenborgians, it refers to the churches founded by the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the 18th-century Swedish scientist, philosopher, and theologian: the General Conference of the New Church, the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the U.S.A., and the General Church of the New Jerusalem. Its members are followers of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg. Soon after his death, devoted followers created Swedenborgian societies dedicated to the study of his thought. These societies formed the nucleus of the Church of the New Jerusalem, or New Church, also referred to as the Swedenborgians. Swedenborg did not himself found a church, but he believed that his writings would be the basis of a "New Church," which he related to the New Jerusalem mentioned in the biblical Book of Revelation. Shortly after Swedenborg's death, a group of his followers in England decided to establish a separate church. In 1788 the first building for New Church worship was opened in Great East Cheap, London, and was rapidly followed by others. In 1789 a conference met in the London church, and, except for 17941806 and 1809-14, the General Conference of the New Church has met annually. According to a number of researchers William Blake was in very close contact with the Church of the New Jerusalem (20), and some suggest, that he even tried to establish his own Swedenborgian society ( 21). On April 7, 1744, Swedenborg had his first vision of Christ, which gave him a temporary rest from the temptations of his own pride and the evil spirits he believed to be around him. A definite call to abandon worldly learning occurred in April 1745, Swedenborg told his friends in his later years. The call apparently came in the form of a waking vision of the Lord. Swedenborg thereafter left his remaining works in the natural sciences unfinished. For the remainder of his long career, Swedenborg devoted his enormous energy to interpreting the Bible and to relating what he had seen and heard in the world of spirits and angels. From 1749 to 1771 he wrote some 30 volumes, all of them in Latin and the major part anonymously. Among these were Arcana Coelestia, 8 vol. (1749-56; Heavenly Arcana) and Apocalypsis Explicata, 4 vol. (1785-89; Apocalypse Explained), which contain his commentaries on the internal spiritual meaning of Genesis and Exodus and on the Book of Revelation, respectively. De Coelo et ejus Mirabilibus et de Inferno (1758; On Heaven and Its Wonders and on Hell) is perhaps his best-known theological work. He gave an admirably clear summary of his theological thinking in his last work, the Vera Christiana Religio

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(1771;

True

Christian

Religion),

which

was

written

when

he

was

83.

( 22)

Swedenborg asserted that his entry into the field of theological study was in response to a divine vision and call; that his spiritual senses were opened so that he might be in the spiritual world as consciously as in the material world; and that the long series of exegetical and theological works that he wrote constituted a revelation from God for a new age of truth and reason in religion. Furthermore, he held that this new revelation of God was what was meant by the Second Coming. Because of his otherworldly experiences, Swedenborg has often been regarded either as a spiritualist "medium" or as a mystic, but in his dry, matter-of-fact accounts of the spiritual world and in his acutely reasoned theology he actually retains his lifelong attitude of the scientific and philosophic investigator. Swedenborg consistently maintained that the infinite, indivisible power and life within all creation is God. In his theology he asserts the absolute unity of God in both essence (essentia) and being (esse). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit represent a trinity of essential qualities in God; love, wisdom, and activity. This divine trinity is reproduced in human beings in the form of the trinity of soul, body, and mind. Swedenborg accepted that all creation has its origin in the divine love and wisdom and asserted that all created things are forms and effects of specific aspects of that love and wisdom and thus "correspond," on the material plane, to spiritual realities. This true order of creation, however, has been disturbed by man's misuse of his free will. He has diverted his love from God to his own ego, and thus evil has come into the world. In order to redeem and save mankind, the divine being of God had to come into the world in the material, tangible form of a human being--i.e., Jesus Christ. Christ's soul partook of the divine being itself, but in order that there might be an intimate contact of God with fallen mankind, Jesus assumed from Mary a body and a human nature comprising all the planes of human life. During the course of his life on earth, Jesus resisted every possible temptation and lived to their divine fullness the truths of the Word of God; in so doing he laid aside all the human qualities he had received from Mary, and his nature was revealed as the divine embodiment of the divine soul. Redemption, for Swedenborg, consisted in mankind being re-created in God's image through the vehicle of Christ's glorification. It was through the example of Christ's victory over all temptation and all evil that men could achieve a similar harmonious unification between their spiritual and their material aspects. Swedenborg rejected the tripersonalism of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (i.e., the one God revealed in the Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). To him the Trinity was in one Person, the Father being the originating divine being itself, the Son the human embodiment of that divine soul, and the Holy Spirit the outflowing activity of Jesus, or the "Divine Human." Swedenborg also rejected the orthodox conceptions of redemption. To him the redemption of mankind represented a deliverance from the domination of evil. The hells, which are the communities of the spirits of evil men in the spiritual world, were aspiring to force themselves upon men's minds, destroying their freedom to discern between truth and falsity and therefore between good and evil. By admitting into himself the evil spirits' temptations and by his complete resistance to them, Jesus broke their power; and the inflowing of the divine being into the human plane thus perfected interposed an eternal and infinitely powerful barrier between the hells and mankind. Human beings are thus saved from the forcible imposition of the hells upon themselves and are thus free to know and obey the truth. Man's salvation depends on his acceptance of and response to divine truth (23). In his massive exegetical and theological volumes, Swedenborg attempted to interpret the Scriptures in the light of the "correspondence" between the spiritual and the material planes. He viewed references in the Bible to mundane historical matters as symbolically communicated spiritual truths, the key to which he tried to find through detailed and voluminous commentaries and interpretations. Swedenborg died in

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London in 1772, where he was buried in the Swedish Church. At the request of the Swedish government, his body was removed to Uppsala cathedral in 1908. Swedenborg never acted as a preacher but rather relied totally on the effect of his huge Latin volumes. His influence was by no means restricted to his immediate disciples, to the extent that the first Swedenborgian societies appeared in the 1780s, and the first independent congregation, the origin of the various Church of the New Jerusalem organizations, was founded in London in 1788 only sixteen years after his death. His visions and religious ideas have not only been a source of inspiration for William Blake, but for a number of prominent writers, including Honor de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Butler Yeats, and August Strindberg ( 24). Top

Footnotes (1) Quotations from Cantor, Paul A. - Creature and Creator: Myth-Making and English Romanticism. [Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984.] (p. 22-28.) (2) Bloom, Harold - The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. [Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1971.] (p. 24.) (3) Cantor, Paul A. - Creature and Creator: Myth-Making and English Romanticism. [Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984.] (p.45.) (4) c.a. p.56. (5) Bloom, Harold - The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. [Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1971.] (6) Encyclopaedia Britannica [1994-1998] - see: Romanticism (7) Lindsay, Jack - William Blake: His Life and Work. [London, Constable, 1978.] (p. 62.) (8) Encyclopaedia Britannica [1994-1998] See: Protestant Christianity (9) Erdman, David V. (ed.) - Blake and His Bibles. [West Cornwall, Locust Hill Press, 1990.] (10) Erdman, David V. (ed.) - Blake and His Bibles. [West Cornwall: Locust Hill Press, 1990.] (p. 113.) (11) Erdman, David V. - Blake: Prophet against Empire. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.] (p. 139-47.) (12) Blunt, Anthony - The Art of William Blake. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.] (Chpt. IV.) (13) Elisa E. Beshero - "For every thing that lives is Holy": The Millenialist Revolutionary Visions of William Blake and Thomas Paine [Penn State University] (14) Encyclopaedia Britannica [1994-1998] See: Cambridge Neoplatonists (15) Harper, George Mills - The Neoplatonism of William Blake. [Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1961.] (16) Cavendish, Richard - A History of Magic. [Arkana, 1990.] (p. 125.) (17) Fisher, F. Peter - Blake and the Druids. [in Frye (ed.): Blake . Prentice-Hall, New Jersey 1966.] (18) Cavendish, Richard - A History of Magic. [Arkana, 1990.] (p. 123.) (19) Cavendish, Richard - A History of Magic. [Arkana, 1990.] (p. 122-132.) (20) Paley, Morton D. - "A New Heaven Is Begun: Blake and Swedenborgianism.". [in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 13 (1979): 64-90.] (21) Schuchard, Marsha Keith - "The Secret Masonic History of Blake's Swedenborg Society". [in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 26 (1992): 40-51.] (22) J. Hyde - A Bibliography of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg. [1906.] (23) "Swedenborg's Theology" in Encyclopaedia Britannica [1994-1998] See: Emanuel Swedenborg (24) I. Jonsson - Emanuel Swedenborg. [Eng. trans. 1971.] (Introduction)

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Chapter III. - The Book of Urizen The years 1793 and 1794 mark a crisis for William Blake and the group of radicals with whom he was associated. The September Massacres in 1792, and the execution of the King and Queen in 1793, followed by the Terror, made those whose support for the Revolution was combined with humanitarianism gradually change their views. Further, the reaction of Pitt's government to the new development in France led to a violent repression of all radicalism in England. Some, like Thomas Paine, fled to France; others were brought to trial, and though Holcroft escaped conviction, many of his friends were less fortunate and were condemned to deportation. The intellectual members of the group found various solutions to the disillusionment which they felt at the failure of the hopes they had placed in the Revolution and the breaking up of their movement. Mary Wollstonecraft devoted herself to propaganda against social evils and the battle for the rights of women, and Godwin spent the rest of his life in pure speculation and the creation of anarchist Utopias (1). Blake's solution was in many ways similar to Godwin's. He foreswore political activity and turned inward toward "mental strife", seeking a philosophical and religious solution to the problems of the universe rather than aiming at the immediate improvement of man's state on earth. He gave his most moving expression to this reincarnation of his belief in revolutionary activity in "The Grey Monk", written some years later: But vain the Sword & vain the Bow They never can work War's overthrow. The Hermit's Prayer & the Widow's tear Alone can free the world from fear. For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing. An a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King, And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe Is an Arrow from the Almighty's Bow. But this solution was not to be found all in a moment, and for the next five years Blake was to plunge into a despair from which he only slowly emerged after 1800, as he gradually discovered a final, mystical solution to his problem. The poems, which he produced during these years, called the Lambeth Books from his new place of residence, are the darkest and gloomiest in the whole range of his work, both in their text and their illustration. Blake's bitter awareness of the evil of the world led him to a dualist belief which insisted on the existence of an original force of evil, which he called URIZEN (2). The name "Urizen" comes from the Greek oriezein, "to fix a limit" and is identified with the Jehovah (IHVH) of the Old Testament by Blake in opposition to Jesus of the New Testament, whom he identified with the force of good. This basic opposition he extended by adding to Urizen-Jehovah the attributes of reason, restraint, and law, as opposed to imagination, freedom, and love for one's neighbour, which he associated with Christ. The [First] Book of Urizen is known in seven copies, containing from 24 to 28 plates plus some scattered plates including the title page and ten full-page designs. The first copy was published in 1794. As in the Bible, the text is divided into two columns and set out in chapters and verses. Designs are chiefly restricted to blocks at top or bottom of the page, often however filling more than half the page and dominating it. The figures are often gruesome: a crouching skeleton, for example, or the blind Urizen opening his book of corruption. Earth, air, fire, and water become elements of oppression and death. Only

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a few of the designs are lighter and more hopeful. Blake's theme now is not the overthrow of tyranny, but a horrified fascination with its origin. The Book of Urizen written in a rough anapaestic trimeter ( 3) is Blake's Genesis, and the core of his Bible of Hell, re-shaping the Fall and the Creation of the physical universe. It is also the locus for his mythology in 'A Song of Liberty', America, Europe, The Song of Los, The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los, all of which rest on the ideas presented in this poem. Urizen, like Milton's Satan, was an angel enjoying the immoral life, though among democracy of immortals. He is not cast out for rebellion against law, but separates himself by demanding that Law be established. Los, the immortal artist, emerges to define, clarify and make sense of the disaster, by the power of imagination. Blake works in many more allusions. Los becomes Adam, and Enitharmon his Eve. Orc is born to her, like Cain, but also the Serpent. The storyline of the poem is as follows: Urizen a god of Reason who separates himself from other Eternals, demands obedience to his self-proclaimed principles, and falls into Chaos is an abstract, vain and punitive deity. A body is created for him by Los, 'the eternal prophet' or Divine Imagination. But Los, exhausted, divides into male (Los) and female (Enitharmon). Their child Orc who represents Rebellious Energy is born but immediately chained to a rock. Urizen then explores his deadly world, and mankind shrinks up from Eternity. Finally, some of Urizen's children begin an exodus. It is important to note that for Blake the Creation and the Fall are one event. This event occurs in stages, each of which shows unity lapsing into duality and spiritual energy lapsing into material passivity. Humanity as we know appears only at the very end of a long cataclysmic process, and is from the point of view of Eternity almost wholly pathetic. In Urizen, Apocalypse is genesis; creation is fall conflations that obviously clash with the logical flow of the biblical (and Miltonic) hexameral paradigm. Urizen, at the centre of both binaries, additionally confounds the reader who expects a Manichean division of good and evil in the characters. ( 4) Understanding the text thus must necessarily be a recursive act. Urizen cannot be read it can only be re-read. Yet, a distinct temporal progression does characterize the events of Urizen. The narrator's response to the muse-like Eternals "I hear your call gladly,/ Dictate swift winged words" [Prel:5-6] (5) suggests that the process of composition proceeds in a continuous (hence linear) manner. Structurally the book also evinces a recognizable architecture: the title page submits to the preludium, which precedes sequential chapters, each subdivided and numbered. Fibres and chains, webs and nets: Blake's illuminated poetry is replete with objects that snag and bind. Nearly every character in The Book of Urizen is caught up in something; Los nets and binds Urizen [8:6], Enitharmon and Urizen chain Orc [20:20]; the Web of Religion enmeshes all [25:20]. The reader, too, finds navigation difficult; the collapsed temporal framework of Blake's cosmogony thwarts the linear, easy read. This dialectic between bookish linearity and conceptual chaos is not, of course, abnormal in Blake, a writer who fuels his works with the friction of opposition. But the tension between linearity and non-sequentiality (or multi-sequentiality) in the text of Urizen is exacerbated by the illustrations, all of which deny interpretation as mere portrayals of the textual narration. Not all the plates, for example, depict scenes mentioned in (or even suggested by) the text itself. (The title page is a good example of this. Urizen as writer of course is a major theme in The Four Zoas, though it is only alluded to in Urizen.) The most obvious subversion of order is the fact as W.J.T. Mitchell has noted that ten of the plates are full-page illustrations and that their order is different in each of the seven extant copies of Urizen. Mitchell sees this "atemporal, antisequential quality" as a "deliberate formal device, a way of augmenting the anti-narrative elements disclosed by the text." ( 6) And yet, again, the book maintains a certain fixity: the title page, preludium, and (most of) the textual plates follow in the same basic sequential order in all copies of the poem. So, it seems that linearity in Blake's Urizen inheres neither in the text nor in the

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images but rather in the format of the book itself. This tension is a function of a narrative constrained by its own materiality. No one knows for sure how to proceed through The Book of Urizen. That is, none of the seven extant copies of the illuminated books is composed of plates arranged in the same order. At this most basic level there is a sense that Blake toyed around with the meaning of linear progression through his textual picture book. It inheres in multiplicity, for the various and tangled narrative lines in Urizen can bewilder the reader and stymie the sense of a logical flow. Commenting on the motif of the "Fibrous form" (one of many kinds of organic filaments in Blake's poem), Mitchell notes that the "temporal manifestation of this form is the structure of intricate, labyrinthine interplay between various narrative lines, and the feeling that our movement through the poem is like watching the uncontrolled growth of a cancer, an explosive series of mitoses, divisions, and subdivisions, or the proliferation of genealogical branches' from a single root." (7) The narrative lines in Urizen of the Eternals, of Urizen, of Los, and of Enitharmon do not merge into a singularly definable narrative "trunk"; they are rather separate and discrete (though they do intersect). In a word, Urizen is multi-linear. One "storyline" constructs Urizen as the God of creation whose "Words articulate" "rolled on the tops of his mountains"[4:4-5]; another fashions a demonic, fallen Urizen, "Unseen in tormenting passions;/ An activity unknown and horrible;/ A self-contemplating shadow" ; another depicts Urizen as the Adamic first human "rent from Eternity," a "clod of clay" [6:8-10]. Navigating these lines requires surrendering the very notion of line, for to follow a particular line to its end is to be led astray, or not to be led anywhere. Only by moving associatively through the forest of signification can sense be constructed. The figure of Urizen (and the other polymorphous characters) literally is the intersection of these storylines, a kind of node moving among the bifurcating elements of the narrative. Nelson Hilton believes that Blake was aware of textual accordioning to the extent that his word "fold" is a self-conscious referent. Hilton describes the spatializing feat that the reader must execute in trying to manoeuvre the narrative lines of Urizen: "To stave off the madness of proliferating extensions and regression, we "chunk," or shrink, together the levels not directly before us... As words have no direct relation to things, so the "chunks" of image, belief, perception, and so on have no direct relation to reality; perception becomes a localized function of past and present environment." ( 8) Reality here corresponds to the material artefact that is the book of Urizen. Perceptually we distort the neat physical lines of the book; we crumple them together in order to perform the most basic readerly task of understanding the poem. We must effect a stasis like Urizen in plate six, one that cuts across the lines of signification, rather than hanging ourselves in them like the figures in the next plate. As the agents of the perception, we readers stand at the centre of a tangle of lines, echoing Urizen caught in the Web of Religion. Top

Footnotes:

(1) Blunt, Anthony - The Art of William Blake. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.] (Chpt. IV.: The First Illuminated Books). (p. 59.) (2) The name "Urizen" was pronounced by Blake with primary stress on the first syllable (not on the second). For the clear metrical evidence see: Metcalf, Francis Wood "The Pronunciation of Blakean Names" in Blake Newsletter 21. [1972.] (pp. 17-18.)

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(3) Keynes, Geoffrey (ed.) - The Complete Writings of William Blake. [Oxford: Oxford Universitiy Press, 1996.] (p. 913.) (4) The "bounding line": Verbal and Visual Linearity in Blake's "Laocon" and Book of Urizen. [http://www. mindspring.com/~jntolva/blake/#5] (5) All Blake quotations are from Erdman, David V. - The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. [New York: Doubleday, 1988]. In-text references to poems cite first the plate then the line number. (6) Mitchell, W.J.T. - Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978] (p.137.) (7) Mitchell, W.J.T. - Blake's Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry. [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978] (p.130.) (8) Hilton, Nelson - Blakean Zen. [in Studies in Romanticism 24. (Summer 1985.)] (p.184) The Chapters

At this point I have to indicate that Blake's mythology should be considered as a complex whole, built round several main "ideas" of which perhaps the most consistent summary is the Four Zoas. The Book of Urizen is therefore not a separate piece of writing, but fits in with the spiritual progress of Blake's own ideas. All the later pieces of his work tend to express the various aspects of this myth. The First Book of Urizen is perhaps more shapeless and chaotic at a first glimpse than any other of these prose poems of the Prophetic Books. Clouds of blood, shadows of horror, worlds without form and void, rise and mingle and wane in indefinite ways, with no special purpose or appreciable result. The myth here is of an active but unprolific God, warring with shapes of the wilderness, and at variance with the eternals: beaten upon by Time. But what lies beneath the surface of this myth? Before we can investigate into that question, there are some general points we have to consider in order to save ourselves from making far-reaching statements. To fully understand Blake's importance without overestimating his personal potential, we have to accept the "expressive theory" as a general point of view. I wish to point out by this, the possibility of gaining unconscious knowledge of universal truths. Blake with his prophetic abilities could have been precisely the kind of man to gain such 'transcendental' knowledge. For what we find in his work is one of the most superior literary expression of a certain "psychological idea", which we could call "The Urizen Myth". So now we can put the question forward again: What is Urizen? "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survival in terms which would freeze blood if not masked by a bland optimism. /.../ Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come..." [H.P. Lovecraft "The Call of Cthulhu".]

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Preludium Blake in the early 1790s was writing about the nature of prophecy in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell . Almost as if he were replying to Paine's discrediting of biblical prophecy, Blake makes the fantastic claim that "The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition. Isaiah answered. I saw no God nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded & remain confirmed; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote." [The Marriage of Heaven and Hell pl.12.] Blake thus explains the nature of prophecy paradoxically: Prophets neither see nor hear God, yet through their senses they discover God. Moreover, one needs only to be honestly indignant, it seems, to be a prophet. This is exactly what Blake's referring to in the Preludium to The Book of Urizen, where he pays homage to his great masters 'the primeval Priests' Isaiah and Ezekiel, and calls for their power [2:1]. ( 1) As a self-proclaimed seer he takes his place among the prophets setting forth his ability to record his visions of the infinite. He takes part of their 'assumed power' to communicate with the Eternals and blindly record the dictated words of eternity.This idea of being a non-conscious communicator is well represented in the figure on the title page often described as the blind Urizen. In my opinion it also refers to the prophets of illumination, who took on themselves the tormenting task of revealing heavenly secrets. Thus Urizen himself is a prophet unfolding the mysteries of his own creation. The allusion to Moses writing 'The Ten Commandments' [Exodus 19-20.] is quite clear the canonical representation of the two stone plates of the Commandments in the background can be easily recognised. "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite. 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." [The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]

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This is the reason for the development of the Illuminated Book as means of fusing the visual and the literary into a form which according to Blake would cleanse the "doors of perception," that is the senses and their relationship to the imagination, and awaken Man from the "sleep of reason." ( 2) Chapter I. Urizen Chapters I. and II. describe the state of the Universe before Creation unfolds. Since this 'state of being' precedes every kind of singularity and rational identification, it is described as Chaos identified with the emerging Urizen thereof. The name "Urizen" comes from the Greek orizein, "to fix a limit" and is identified with the Jehovah (IHVH) of the Old Testament by Blake. According to hermetic ideas we can identify Blake's Urizen with the well-known character of the system called Hermes or Pan. In order to get a full grip of the question matter we have to investigate into the system of Hermetics (3) the religio-philosophical system, which deals with the mystical-magical tradition of mankind. Given, that this is a literary paper focusing on Blake's Urizen, I will not to go into all of the philosophical and psychological aspects, but rather identify a number of historicalcultural images of the same idea only. Hermes-Urizen is a primordial figure; the progenitor-existent of Chaos in the aspect of Pan. We might understand this better by looking at what Pan means. The word pan (Greek: ran), means "everything". Therefore he represents the all-aspect of the universe; the physical world, the psychic world, the idea world and the one above all, the divine sphere of One. In this respect he is called Gnosis by the Gnostic, which is rather a state of "existence" than a defined existent. This all-aspect is anthropomorphised in the figure of Pan-Hermes. Hermes is everything. In hermetics, as in any other tradition, he is the omnipotent, divine, one-god aspect of everything. There is nothing else, but Hermes every movement is happening within himself. He changes face, appearing in countless figures: In alchemy he is Alchemy. Not only is he the planet Mercurius, but also the Venus, the Sun and the Saturn. In alchemy Saturn is called "Sol Niger", therefore he is also the black sun. (The planetary aspects of Hermes should of course not be understood by physical terms, but as an allegory of different phases of the mind and of the world.) He is the one appearing in different 'disguises' changing from one to the other he was Hermes Trismegistos of Egypt, he was Asklepios, was Imhotep, was himself Toth, and the deciple of Toth, but also father and sometimes the son of Toth. At places he was Agathodaimon or the master of Agathodaimon. There are versions where he appears as Asklepios Imhotes deriving from Imhotep who was a real character, the high-priest and architecture of Heliopoli, uniting with Asklepios, similarly to Hermes who became son of Agathodaimon. It is not the importance of the exact figure, but the interaction and the undividable complexity of these symbols. Therefore Hermes is also Pan, who according to the Greek cosmology and works trying to describe the origin of the cosmos and mind like Hesiod's , belongs to the very first generation of Gods, who precede the existence of the cosmos. Hermes-Urizen is the progenitor-existent of the micro-cosmos just the same as of the macro-cosmos. He is the creator of both Heaven and Earth. Sometimes he is vulgarised, appearing as a triarchic system of micro-, macro-, and mezzo-cosmos, but really there is a hiding fourth; the uniting-all divine aspect. The aspect above existence and non-existence. The character of Urizen is also defined by abstractions and negations unknown, unprolific, repelling, void, vacuum, unseen, secret, etc. [3:1-20] for two reasons: From the point of view of Eternity, Urizen is unreal; and only an isolated 'Reason' can invent abstract and negative terms. In a full reality, such terms would have no meaning. By comparison Milton's God is praised by the angels for being 'invisible' and 'thorned inaccessible' [ Paradise Lost III.375-7]. Blake condemns such qualities in a deity, and mocks them by exaggeration. As the primarily, divine, ancient and creative idea, Pan-Urizen is called Pan pangenitor, "the creator of all", but is also called Pan panfager, "the destroyer of all". In Latin tradition the dark aspect of Pan will be called Dispater, the Father of the Underworld, the ruler of the Underworld, Dys. So we see that Pan is an ambivalent figure like Mercurius-Hermes-Toth; he has a satanic face, the Saturnic, the

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Sol Niger face, the face of the chaos of the under-waters, the face of the underworld, the nearlynothing-aspect, and he has the face of the spiritual sun, the universality of above existence. Just like Blake's Urizen who first appears embodied in the dark horrors of the "petrific abominable chaos" [3:26], but later becomes the creator of the Worl "Dark revolting in silent activity: Unseen in tormenting passion; An activity unknown and horrible; A self-contemplating shadow, In enormous labours occupied" [The Book of Urizen I.4.] Pan-Urizen's dark aspect can be traced through the centuries, and was always placed in absolute central position like the city of the underworld, Dys in Dante's Divina Comedia. (In the Book of Enoch, the same layers of the underworld are given centuries before.) Pan is the Master of the Universe, the primal Dispater; the lord of the chaotic under-waters and the equivalent of all dark aspects of things. This "underworldness" was called khthonicity by the Greeks the absolute darkness and abyss of all evil. In this chthonic under-water realm is where Dispater rules. "In his cold horrors silent, dark Urizen prepared" [3:27-28]. Blake also sees Urizen as a dark, winter god, anticipated in the imagery of "Winter" of Poetical Sketches (4). We could go on and on showing the immense variety of ideas trying to formulate the meaning of Pan-Urizen through the various traditions, but it is more profitable to narrow our subject down to the actual representation of Blake. Of course we will have to reach out to the latest times of Hermetics; the 20th century, where the hermetic tradition seems rather chaotic, and therefore presents us with a very rich variety of ontology. Chapter II. Prior to Existence According to every spiritual tradition, the creation of the universe consists of several phases, and the first stage always refers to the realm before the creation. It is always described as the disordered entire beyond the sphere of the universe the Kabbalah calls it zimzum meo which is characterized by absolute nothing (ayin) and absolute everything (ayin sof). The Gnostic describe it as complete emptiness (keroma) and complete inclusiveness (pleroma): this is the infinite orb of divinity before the emanation. Blake describes it beautifully: "Earth was not, nor globes of attraction; the will of the Immortal expanded or contracted at will his all-flexible senses. Death was not; but eternal life sprang" [3:36]. Eternity is undivided and has nothing to separate the oneness of immanent power. Geoffrey Keynes understands this as in Eternity there are no spheres (such as planets, moons, stars, etc.) subject to the law of gravity [3:36]. Eternity is non-Newtonian. Expansion and contraction are by will, not by the law of gravity [3:37-38] (5).

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Creation begins with the unfolding of the unspeakable creative forces, awakening the sleeping God of Formation. He is aroused by the sound of a heavenly trumpet. The trumpet [3:40] does not refer to the trumpet of the Last Judgement, but the trumpet that sounded over Sinai when God gave the Law to Moses [Exodus 19:16]. Similarly to Moses, Urizen is seated on a mountain writing secret words of wisdom that are uttered from the bursting thunders [4:34]. He just like Moses is seeking to learn the secret laws of the Eternals, but the Almighty God stays hidden in darkness. Jehovah too, hid himself in darkness, in the cloud in Sinai, and then in the windowless Holy of Holies. Urizen [pl.4b.] Details could have been taken from the mustering of armies in Milton's Paradise Lost [VI.55-60]. This is when Urizen is first named the solitary one in Immensity [3:43]. Urizen and Moses are identified, not just in their common act of recording the secrets of Heaven, but also in their task to create order. On plate no. 4 Urizen is depicted just like Michelangelo's Moses; with long white hair and beard. Urizens motivation is clearly explained [4:6-13]. It is intended to sound reasonable, as Urizen is Reason he has to justify his task of recording the true secrets of Creation. His reason echoes the reason of Neoplatonic creation myths: to fulfil the void. He describes his solitude fighting the fire of passion within himself [4:14] that has pushed him in a state which Alchemy calls albedo. Albedo is "whiteness" or the 'emptiness', when the creative powers are locked in passivity generating an empty space. Blake describes this with an alchemical allusion too, describing Nature's wide womb. In Alchemy the philosophers vase is often portrayed as the womb (of Nature). "Consumed inwards, into the world within: A void immense, wild dark and deep, Where nothing was; Natures wide womb And self balanced stretched over the void I alone, even I!" [The Book of Urizen II.5] In stanza no.5 I alone, I even! [4:19] shows the lonesomeness of Urizen which echoes at once the biblical Jehovah ("I am the Lord thy God" [Exodus 20:2]) and Milton's Satan. It isnt egotism like Stevenson would suggest (6), but the clear expression of the horrors of standing out against emptiness. Urizen is the only progenitor-existent capable of withstanding the excruciating transformation of Creation. Similarly to Ezekiel witnessing the change of times, or Satan fallen from Heaven, Urizen is left alone to manifest the creative powers of Eternity. Compare "Why will you die O Eternals?" [4:12] to "Why will ye die, O house of Israel?" [Ezekiel 18:31, 33:11]. Many more biblical parallels can be found. Compare Self balanced stretched over the void [4:18] with "And the Earth was without form and void" [Genesis I:2] and "And Earth self-balanced on her Centre hung" [Paradise Lost VII.242]. Urizen partakes in the first stage of Creation by becoming the God of restraint, the creator of prohibition, whose laws are forbearance and abstinence, and therefore is for ages divided from Eternity and at war with Time. But he does not see that joy and pain are necessary contraries for a living existence, that 'a solid without fluctuation' is dead, and that the burning fires of 'the enjoyments of Genius' only appear like 'torment and insanity' to those who do not understand them. [For comparison see: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (pl.17-20)].

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He creates the dividing laws and lays down the fundamentals of Creation. Similarly to the Bible he writes all the laws in the Book of eternal brass [4:32-40], setting the foundations of a created Universe he becomes the Ordering Power of God. Compare: "Thou shall have no other gods before me" [Exodus 20:3]. Milton's God promises, after 'long obedienceOne Kingdom' [Paradise Lost VII.159-61.]. This is what the hermetic tradition identifies with IHVH or Jehovah. So this is where we meet up with the hermetic tradition once more, which also presents us with the expression of the same idea, which is closely similar to the Sumerian pan-aspect, which they called Sub Isniggarab. We also have to introduce a new line: the dark mythology of H.P. Lovecraft (7) called the "Great Old Ones" a group of gods from the times of chaos, who dwell in the inter dimensional spheres or the deep oceans, representing the chaotic under-waters. He calls his main god Yog-Sothoth, as well as Sub Niggurath, the " black goat of the woods with a thousand progeny", the principle which Blake calls Urizen and the Greeks called panfager. This god lies deep below the realms of time and space ready to emerge from the chaotic abyss. Chaos appears when it is believed to have emerged; then it is the time of Chaos, the Lead Age, the age of Saturn, the time of 'chaos-magic', when the disintegrated chaotic powers appear in the world, for everything is allowed. It is interesting to draw a parallel to Aleister Crowley (8), who chooses Pan as the main principle of his magical system. It is not by coincidence that he does that; the sabbatical goat is the strongest satanic aspect, for Sabbath is the resting sun, the last sphere, and the time where one falls or transcends. We can identify Lovecrafts beast as the most central figure of chaos magic, where Cthulhu is the most clear manifestation of Chaos. This is what Crowley although had no kind of relationship with Lovecraft calls CTHLH666. This is the Sumerian Kaprunuja, known in the Islam too as the satanic principle, the vitiating, the disrupting force, as well as known by the Indian tradition as a sea-monster called Khatala. The Chinese are also familiar with it as Hui Tai Lao "the monster in the sea". The important is that they are all the same representatives of the same idea, the same principle. I could go on showing the parallels in Blake's Urizen and the way it appears in certain mytho-magical systems or the way his intuitive descriptions influence and interact with other mystic circles, but at this point I wish to summarize. All mythological representations are symbolic expressions of this chaotic condition preceding the emergence of the human psyche; consciousness. This certain psychological condition is still there in every human, far beyond the deepest domain of the mind: The fear of the unrecognisable, inconceivable, inexplicable non-consciousness. Therefore Urizen is not a horror character like Frankenstein or Dracula; he is not an outer force, but the symbolical representation of the 'Pan principle', more ancient than anything else in the world, for it is the progenitor-existent preceding consciousness. Blake's importance lies in the perfect representation of this inner force. He is the first, who by means of unparalleled talent of literary capabilities, goes beyond fantasy and horror as a genre, and is able to express this pre-conscious principle. All those who see Blake as a simple writer

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of dark horror and fantasy, not only underestimate his work, but fall short of understanding their own inner depths. Chapter III. Grasping Subsistence The Fall (of God or Man) is always understood by all hermetic traditions as a division. Creation also starts with a division for Blake [5:3-4]. The division of Urizen from the hosts of Eternity has ironically resulted from his attempts to enforce a fixed static unity. According to the neoplatonic views Creation is no other than the emanation of the light of God arranging chaos around its emanative route generating different spheres. In the Kabbalah the emanation creates four "universes": the world of Emanation ( Aziluth), the world of Creation (Beriah), the world of Formation (Yetzirah) and the world of Action (Assiyah). (9) Aziluth separates Heaven and Earth from Nothingness it is the world that was summoned from the non-existent by the Ten Voices of God. Urizen also summons the first sphere of existence by opening the Book of Brass unleashing the creative powers of nature enormous forms of energy; all the seven deadly sins of the soul [4:48-49]. Compare the creation of the world by the power of the Word in the Bible, separating the Heaven and the Earth [Genesis I.1-10.]. The bounding forces of the productive energies of nature unleashed by Urizen establish the boundaries of the created universe Blake compares it to a bloody womb [4:29] and a black globe [4:33] standing on the shore of the infinite ocean. Emanating from the dark void Urizen becomes the focal point of existence gathering the creative powers around his own existence, like an immense gravitational field that draws light towards itself. This state is understood in the hermetic tradition as the state of "Hell". Blake is also aware of it and takes a detail No light from the fires [5:17] from Milton's Hell [Paradise Lost I.61-63.]. This is the state the Greeks called kthonicity the absolute darkness of the abyss. At this emanative state creation is still unconscious and automatically ordains existence around the centre of creation. The creative processes are mechanical and even Urizen cannot resist becoming the nucleus of life [4:21]. Compare He dug mountains [5:22] with Milton's war in Heaven [Paradise Lost VI. 639-69]. In this condition of existence Urizen can be identified with Pan as the Master of the Universe, the primal Dispater; the lord of the chaotic under-waters and the equivalent of all dark aspects of things. In this chthonic under-water realm is where the Dispater rules without reason or rational construction the laws of generating are ruled by chaotic conditions: fear, fury and fierce madness [4:24]. The created universe in this state is 'unorganised' [6:8] and 'formless' [7:9], so the images are confusing [5:28-37]. The hermetic tradition reveals to us a very interesting 'aspect' of this chaotic state of existence: this is where the female aspect of Nature ( Physis), the Sophia, the daughter of the world is cast. By Hermetics she is called Khor Kosmu and by the Sumerian tradition Erestigal. She becomes the

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mistress of the underworld, in her 'sacred whore' aspect, in contradiction to Innana, the virgin aspect. We find such examples in Orpheus and Erudite or the hymns of the Gnostic. Accordingly Pan is this aspect of Nature too, the sabbatical goat, known as Sub Isniggarad for the 'goat-aspect' by the Sumerians, and Kernumos for the 'deer-aspect' by the Celts. This pan-face of Hermes can be found in the proto-Indian early states like the proto-Siva of Mohenjodaro. The same idea is there: the highaspect of Siva sitting on the top of the mountain of life, as the representative of the mind, as Sakta the Lord of the World, as mayavin world magician, with his female aspect ( Sakti) there in the beginning too, later descending to the bottom of the world and kept prisoner by the snake or becoming a snake-goddess. (This tradition reflects nicely in the Kundalini-yoga praxis.) She is there in many other traditions as well; what is prajna in the East is Khor Kosmu in the Kabbalah and Hermetics, Shekinah in the Jewish tradition, Shakina in the Sufi, and so on. Blake calls this wisdom principle of Nature the Sophia Los. As with Orpheus and Erudite in the Ileuses mysteries, or Pan-Hermes and Khor Kosmu in the hermetic tradition, Urizen and Los are inseparable they are the diabolic aspect of the same unity. "Los wept howling around the dark Demon And cursing his lot; for in anguish, Urizen was rent from his side"[The Book of Urizen III.9] Los is the power of poetic imagination. If Imagination is separated from Reason, both are drastically wounded. Los is in anguish because he has lost his Mind. The biblical allusion of Adam and Eve is quite clear Urizen was created from the side of Los [6:4] like Eve of Adams rib [Genesis II.21-23.]. Urizen lost in the chaotic state of his own emptiness is locked in unconscious sleep. Separated from his power of imagination, he is dead until Los creates a vault for him to be reborn [7:8]. It is only the physical sphere (Physis) that is able to frame and orient the creative powers lost in chaos.

Chapter IV. Taking Form Urizen is asleep or dead from the point of view of Eternity. Hurtling bonessurgingraging [8:2-4] means he has become a chaos of disorganised motion. His elements (sulphur, pitch, nitre) suggest that he has become a hell [8:3-5]. In order to change his condition he needs to be bounded by Los he has to go through an "alchemical transmutation". As with every transmutation he is first hemmed in the alchemical stove, upheld by the nets and rivets of Los [8:8-11]. His mind is still characterized by perturbed immortal mad raging but it is also "sulphureous" [8:3, 10:14, 10:21] referring to the alchemical theory of metamorphosis, because sulphur is a primal formative element in alchemical theory. Urizen is locked in the state that Alchemy calls nigredo. Nigredo is "blackness" or the philosophical death, when because of oblivion the creative powers are unrealised, resulting in a

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death like stupor (10). Plate no.10 & 11 (chapter IV [a]) is like a prologue to the detailed description of the transmutation of Urizen that follow. These transformations of Urizen make up some of Blake's grandest and strangest prophetic studies. The transformation is full of horror and pain. First the spinal skeleton, with branchwork of rib and savage nudity of joint and clavicle, shaped mammoth-wise, in grovelling involution of limb. Next a huge fettered figure with blind shut eyes overflowing into tears, with convulsed mouth and sodden stream of beard: then bones painfully gathering flesh, twisted forms round which flames break out fourfold, tortured elemental shapes that plunge and writhe and moan. Blake describes this change with a number of alchemical allusions. To begin with Urizen is described as a dark waste [10:3] what alchemists called prima materia ("first matter") and often identified with soil. For the transmutation to go into operation a new order has to be adopted the measurement of time since changes can only take effect in time. Los is now for the first time called 'the Eternal Prophet' [10:15]. In Eternity there is no need for Prophecy because there is no Time. Time belongs to the fallen world, and is a necessity for it. Hence Los divides the night into 'watches' and creates 'hours, days and years' by the repeated beat of his blacksmith's hammer which is a metaphor for the metre of poetry. In time the formless God takes from, creating and assuming feature by feature; bones heart, eyes, nostrils, throat with tongue, hands with feet; on age of agony being allotted to each of the seven created features; still toiling in fire and beset by snares. This stage of Creation belongs to the World of Formation, which the Cabbala calls Yetzirah. The visionary cabbalistic writing, the Sr Qom as well as the Zohar give detailed descriptions of the creation of the First Man (Adam Kadmon) as an allegory to the creative processes of heavenly emanation. The head, the beard and every part of the first divine body refer to metaphysical symbols of creation. Without these symbols one would not be able to gain knowledge of the higher stages of existence. It is interesting that Blake also describes the unfold of creative powers with the formation of Urizens body by Los. The emanation of the hidden creative powers of Urizen is a re-verbalization of the biblical Genesis the seven "Ages" [10:42] refer to the days of creation in Genesis. Also there is a more ancient tradition of septinity immediately reflected in the occult concept of "the seven spheres", each reflecting a stage of emanation. Without going into specific details of the system; every sphere is connected to one universal principle symbolised by one of the seven planets. Each sphere is a faculty of awareness and construction, possessing the potential to organise reality accordingly. With the birth of every ability, reality takes a new form. The first stage of emanation from is the framework of the mind. The eternal mind White as the snow [10:19-23] is an allusion to the tabula rasa of John Locks psychology; a 'blank slate' empty of intrinsic ideas, capable only of receiving and combining external impressions. This is Fire, the Sun the Light of God ; the clear emanating creative force imprisoned by the human skull A roof shaggy wild inclosed in an orb [10:33]. It is the highest of heavenly principle in the human body seated at the highest point of the body. The Hindu mystics call it sahasrara, "the lotus with a thousand leaves", referring to the infinite nature of this power.

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From this centre all other forces descend and become more embodied in matter. Attached to the skull the spine brings forth the whole body structure, creating the solid framework of the spinal skeleton [10:35-41]. In one copy at least these bones are touched with dim green and gold colour; such a faint fierce tint as one might look for on the cast scales or flakes of dragons left a strand in the ebb of a deluge (11). The second stage starts with the painful descent of the life force, which the Gnostic called logoi spermatikoi, "the seed of life". Blake describes it as a round globe hot burning deep [11:3]. When it reaches the central point of the physical framework it creates the heart and blood vessels; A red / round globeten thousand branches [11:2-6]. This is Air the Human Soul. This is what the Sephirot Kabbalah calls Tiferet ("beauty"); the central seat of power residing in the heart of the Tree of Life. It is the dividing line between the higher- and lower- stages of existence linking the superior and inferior sephiras. It is the ignition point harmonising the creative and destructive forces. The Hindu mystics call it anahata-cakra, "the centre of the Heart", while the Jewish mystics refer to it as the 'Throne of Solomon', since it connects to the powers of Wisdom (Hokmah) and Understanding (Binah) as well as the powers of Forgiveness (Hesed) and Judgement (Gevurah). They also refer to it as You or May He be Holy, since it is the manifestation of divine presence in the 'Heart of Being'. (12) The third stage of emanation creates the nervous system Brain shot branches [11:11] and the primal perceptive sense; the eyes. Stages four to seven generate the other four senses of perception; the ears [11:21], the nose [13:1] and A craving Hungry Cavern [13:6] the digestive system and tongue. Finally, in the Seventh Age the limbs appear; arms and legs. The five sensual organs in every hermetic tradition represent the five principle elements: limbs and thus touch relate to Earth; tongue and thus taste relate to Water; nose and thus smell relate Fire; ears and thus hearing relate Air; and finally eyes and thus seeing relate to the fifth element: space. The development of the five sensual organs does not only mean the birth of Urizen, but also the birth of the physical universe. There is an endless line of analogies where every existent constituent in the physical world relates to one of the senses. This is the final world: the World of Action ( Assiyah), the Earth-sphere and the body of Men. It is interesting to note that Blake also describes Urizens body as big as the created physical universe his right Arm [reaching] to the north, his left Arm to the south and his Feet stamped the nether Abyss [13:13-16]. It fits in perfectly with the hermetic tradition: the creation of Men is also the creation of the World the micro- and macro-cosmos is the same. Verum est, certum et verissimum, quod est, superius, naturam habet inferioram et ascendens naturam descendentis. It is without doubt, certain and true, that what is above corresponds to what is below, and what is below corresponds to what is above.

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[Hermes Trismegistos Tabula Smaragdina (1-3.)] Chapter V. Foundations of Life Urizen has become the created universe well bounded in a deadly sleep [14:27]. The divine powers of Urizen have manifested in the body of the World conjured up by Los' enormous errand, obliterating his eternal condition. The Chinese mystics know this stage of Creation very well; they call it Pan Ku, "The Cosmic Man". The Jewish mystics call the same condition of the form taken universe Adam Kadmon "The World Man". Having created this stable dimension of existence, Los the wisdom principle of Nature (Sophia) returns to the inactive condition of his primordial passivity. A nerveless silence, his prophetic voice seized [14:38] Examining his own creation Los falls into exhaustion and attachment with Urizen [13:40] he is infatuated with what he has created. Thus he unites with his complementary primordial power now regulated and ordered. His imaginative powers merge with Urizens creative, rational powers: "The Eternal Prophet & Urizen closed" [13:40]. I will elucidate this condition for the sake of simplicity with the help of Chinese mysticism. This state is understood by Chinese mystics as "doubleness" ( t'ai-chi), represented by the black and white flames rotating in the Wheel of Life ( ). As Urizen divided himself from the other Eternals, so now Los will divide into male (strong, active) and female (weak, passive). This division does not exist in Eternity. Here it indicates passive helplessness in the face of disaster. Although Blake and his interpreters see this as a negative process, Chinese mysticism sees this progression natural and identifies the two forces of division as yin (black, female) and yang (white, male). Los sees Urizen "deadly black" too [13:50]. See plate 11. where Urizen (black) and Los (white) are locked in the flames of Creation. Los, the imaginative force of Creation, now has space the potential universe (the body of Urizen) and creative "mental" power to fill in the void. It is the creation of the first "living" organism; the active formation of the unified potential creative powers into something definite. This process for Blake is triggered by pity. In stanza no.7 pity is a patronizing emotion, as against love, which unifies [13:51-2].

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The separation starts with the birth of "the globe of life" [15:13], which all hermetic traditions describe as the "cosmic egg". The Chinese call it Hun Tun, "the cosmic egg", the Hindus Mula Trikona, "Great Womb", the Sufi kashkul, "vessel", the Cabbalists Kelipot, "bubble", the Gnostic Zo, "life orb", and so on. The primal difference of this existent is that it is material and definite. The formative creative forces Los and Urizen can thus be identified as 'parents': "the universal father and mother of all living things".The birth of the 'globe of life' is naturally identified with the birth of the first female, since it is the origin of all material life. For Blake the first female Nature is created from a fluid, rather than a solid rib [18:1], since she emanates from the supple state of Los. Time, divided against himself, brings forth Space, the universal eternal female element. From the point of view of the Eternals, the new-born material world is deceptive and was generated by pity, therefore the first female form is called Pity [19:1]. This topic is highly important for Blake, well reflected in his separate piece of painting called 'Pity', where the first female is represented lying on the ground in a position of the dead with an angelic figure handing down a baby the symbol of life to her thus giving her life. Los's pity is a false love [19:10], which produces a whole range of false reactions in the responsive material universe (Enitharmon). The gods recoil in fear from the dawn of human creation and division and therefore the material universe is shielded by the Eternals, in order that it would not disturb the 'real' world [19:2-8]. This is what every hermetic tradition calls "the veil", which blinds us from seeing the eternal reality. The Gnostic call it "Curtain", the Kabbalah Ruah ha Kodesh, "the shroud of the soul", the Hindus maya, "the veil of illusion", and so on. Blake calls it "Science" [19:9] reflecting his views on the Newtonian universe, according to which the world is a dead piece of machinery, operating in accordance with immutable laws leaving no space for divine organization. Chapter VI. - Generation With the birth of the first female Nature the World of Generation begins. Since the materialised world reflects divine nature and as a result resembles true reality Los is succumbed and blinded by his "own divided image" [19:16]. This process is described in occult philosophy as "the mirroring". The essence of this teaching is that during the emanative processes of Creation the creator is blinded by his own reflection and becomes enslaved by it. He surrenders to false identification and gradually comes to believe that he is identical with his false (physical) image: the material body or Nature. As a consequence he loses his touch with his own true nature and loses the connection with ultimate reality. This is exactly what happens to Los [20:2].

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Los does not realise that the manifested world is a mere projection of his own imaginative powers ordained by the 'satanic' rationalizing powers of Urizen. As a result Los becomes a separated character appearing in the anthropomorphic form of the first man. Accordingly the first feminine power becomes embodied in the human form of Enitharmon. They are identified with the first humans of the biblical paradise [Genesis II.], so Enitharmon is associated with Eve, while Los is related with Adam. Of these two divinities is born the first man-child Orc. The imaginative creating force (Los) unites with the power of Nature (Enitharmon) creating life (Orc). According to Platonic philosophy the division of the One (hen) into male and female active and passive powers results in constant movement or 'energy flow' and the eternal desire for steadiness and oneness. The separation of active and passive energies result in the unceasing world of motion; in nature active powers flow towards the passive. Only in unity do they come to a rest. This is what the Greeks called the "Wheel of Ixion", the Gnostic "the circle of genesis" (cyclostes genestos), the Hindus "the wheel of life" (samsara) and so on. We can identify Enitharmon's attempt to flee from Los [19:13] just like Eve fleeing Adam at first in Paradise Lost [IV. 477-82.] as the expression of this idea. Sensing the separated nature of the Female Los feels pity as in contrast to the platonic love ( agap) and unites with Enitharmon only to be separated again. Similarly to the biblical story Los' intercourse with Enitharmon has fundamental consequences: he commits the original sin and sets forth the generation of living creatures. Enitharmon conceives an embryo, which is described as a worm [19:20]. The worm is to become Orc, who is again identified with the Serpent of Paradise, but the Bible legend is altered. For Blake, the Serpent is not the tempter to vice, but repressed energy, chained by mankind's false perceptions. Here Orc also recalls Cain, the cursed child of Adam and Eve [Genesis IV.]. There is also a hermetic secret of the Serpent concealed in this symbolism. The snake is not altogether a negative image, but the symbolic representation of generative powers and all secret knowledge. The coiled snake is in itself symbolizes the womb and the embryo, as the productive force of life, as well as it's spiral motion connecting to the ascent and descent of divine powers. Due to its constant change of skin it is the symbol of eternal life and rejuvenation. In Christian mysticism for example the snake is identified with the force of Immaculate Conception, while in Greek mythology it appears as the Goddess of Earth with a snake tail, Erikhthonios. The serpent is seen as a protector-god in Hindu mythology and is represented in the form of Mucilinda, coiled around the neck of God Siva, and in other forms it is recognized as the keeper of all secret knowledge; the king of the snakes (naga). It is the power of fertility appearing in the form of the phallus the linga of Siva. There are endless representations of this principium, but perhaps one more important aspect in connection to Blake is that the Serpent is the symbol of Time locked in motion the creative forces bolted in the endless cycle of death and rebirth, of constant revitalization. In this respect the Serpent is called Uroboros (= Phoenician Lotan, Hebrew Leviatan, Greek Ladon, Scandinavian Midgardrom, etc.) and is related to the powers of Time ( Kronos-Saturnus).

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Los act of seduction sets forth the spinning wheels of Life with the creative powers now transferred into matter the world becomes a self-generating existent, without having to rely on the continuous participation and control of divine intervention. The unleashed powers of creation begin their unfold to generate a whole new race of extant beings: the Human race. Orc is the progenitor existent of all material beings [19:43] and is clearly the ultimate life force stimulating dead matter. "Delving earth in his resistless way" [19:44] of course means "irresistibly digging through the mother's body" (13), but on a higher level of interpretation it also means plunging into the material world. The material world now powered by its own generating force becomes a separate unit in Eternity the Eternals close it in a fixed place, and hide it from the rest of Reality [19:51-52]. Chapter VII. Chains of Being The birth of Orc the life force sets off an avalanche of changes in the materialized world. Orc developing on the milk of Enitharmon gives rise to what every hermetic tradition calls "the great chain of being". In Blake's description Orc suckling the power of Nature creates in Los "a tightening girdle" a heart-constricting jealousy [20:9]. Orc represents unrestricted life power, of which Los has no possession, therefore his aroused by longing and envy. Their struggle the struggle between the progenitor creative force and materialized life is described similarly to the Oedipus legend. Like the infant Oedipus was abandoned on a mountainside because of an oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother, so is Orc abandoned. Blake's version of the Oedipus myth combines the theme of incest-threat with the idea of adult authority restricting youthful energy. [20:23] "The dead heard the voice of the child and began to awake from sleep all things heard the voice of the child and began to awake to life." [The Book of Urizen VII.5.] The energy of life cannot be restricted by the power of imagination and so it flows into the material world. The dead refers to matter coming to life, but instead of finding a universe of freedom and imagination materialized life faces a universe of limitation and dependence. Los emanated girdles form an inseparable chain "in each other link by link locked" [20:20]. Life is chained to the material world with 'the Chain of Jealousy' [20:23-24]. In renaissance symbolism the chained man is the allegory of the human bound by his own desires, who is unable to break free from the world of yearning. This is what Buddhist philosophy calls "dependent origination" which means the interwoven connections between all things in existence: nothing is without cause and causation. This is the earth-bound nature of physical existence, locked in the everlasting cycle of life and death. This idea is also reflected in Swedenborg's philosophy of nature, especially in the Principia Rerum Naturalium ("Principles of Natural Things"), where he posited that matter consists of interdependent particles that are indefinitely divisible, and that these particles are in constant vortical (swirling) motion. Furthermore, these particles are themselves composed of smaller particles in motion related to each other ( 14). In neoplatonic philosophy the chain is an invisible cord by which the Eternals govern the actions of mortals. Thus, the chain not only means a bonding to the world of craving and dependence, but it is also a symbol of punishment. We cannot help recall the figure of Prometheus also the representation of the life force (heavenly fire) chained to the rocks of the Caucasus by Zeus. It is interesting that like many hermetic traditions, Blake is also aware of the secrets of the hidden aspect of Nature: "Los encircled Enitharmon with fires of Prophecy from the sight of Urizen & Orc" [20:42-44]. From the corporeal reality of our existence, true nature always stays hidden. Material beings are locked away from the true gnosis the secret wisdom of Nature.

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The arising of life in matter awakens the sleeping forces of generation: Urizen. Urizen is awakened by "hunger and the odours of Nature" [20:30]. As the objective, creative aspect of the Father his powers manifest in the organization and stabilization of the material world. He seeks to control by reason and natural law, instead of enjoying by imagination. His main aspect is forming dividing rules to distinguish all material manifestations. This activity is seen by Blake as creating the natural laws of modern science scales to weigh, equipments for measurement and in the aspect of the Father creating the biblical Garden of Eden [20:41], which is also seen in every hermetic tradition as the symbol of the fixed boundary of the existing universe.Urizen is represented as a figure pushing the orb of the physical world in its set place; setting the World as we know it. His figure clearly resembles the figure of Sisyphus pushing the boulder of human sin and trying to reach the summit of relief (15). Urizen's labour is like Sisyphus': hopeless and without end. Chapter VIII. The Material World The divine creative powers manifesting in existence can take the form of many structures, but manifestation in the form of the material world or Nature ( pistis sophia or physis) can only take one definite structure the configuration of the 'garden' governed by the forces of a quaternity. The idea of Paradise, something that is surrounded (Avestan pairi+dz), is therefore the idea of the world, the universe that God created. This is the den of Urizen signifying the world of Materialism [20:46]. This structure is called Gan Eden "world garden" or simply pardes "garden" in the Hebrew tradition revealing PRDS (16), the universal tetrasomy: P stands for Pesat, R for Remez, D for Drus and S for Sod. The dens of Urizen, like Paradise, are the symbolic representation of the material universe; an allegory of the embodied secrets of the world. It is built up of four organizing powers represented by the four sons of Urtizen: And the children of Urizen were Thiriel, born from cloud; Utha, from water; Grodna, from earth; Fuzon "first-begotten, last-born, from fire-" and his daughters from green herbs and cattle, from monsters and worms of the pit [23:11-17]. Urizen's four sons are the four principle elements of air, water, earth and fire. This tetrasomy is the manifesting quaternity of materialised life energy, represented by the great quarters in every tradition: the four basic principles of Air, Fire, Water and Earth in all traditions. In Egyptian tradition, the four guardians of the quarters of Heaven: Hapi (the Monkey north), Thamutet (the Jackal - east), Quebsenut (the Falcon west), and Amset (the Man - south), or the four main gods Re, Su, Geb and Apis. In Christian tradition, the four animate beasts: the Bull, the Eagle, the Lion, and the Cherub or Man. In Hebrew tradition, the Shem ha Meforash, the most special name of god, with the four attributes, represented by the four letters of YHVH. In the Kabbalist tradition along with the former, Hayot ha Kodesh, the 'angels' with four faces around the Keter Sefirah. The tetrakthus in the Pythagorean tradition; monas, dias, trias, and tetrad, or 1, 2, 3, 4. The four dimensions in Latin tradition: cosmos, spiritus, anima and solum. In the Kbalion tradition: spiritual, mental, astral, and physical nature. In Gnostic tradition the emanated

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arkhons: gnosis, pneuma, psych, and sarks, which create the prison of the material body. Urizen's exploration of the physical world is a highly elaborated topic, greatly expanded in the Four Zoas Night the Sixth. The episode also parallels the journey of Satan through Chaos in Milton's Paradise Lost. In the fallen world, everything lives on something else (the Ox is food) and what one appropriates, another lacks (the Dog goes hungry). Laws of unity are impossible in this world; the central governing law of this condition of existence is suffering; "life lived upon death" [23:27]. It is interesting how Blake's description of the world of suffering and the 'web of religion' parallel the Buddhist teachings of the 'wheel of life' ( samsara) according to which the interdependent origination and existence of all beings in the material world leads to suffering ( dhukha). In Hindu philosophy this is referred to as all living things caught in the "Web of Brahman". The "Web of Religion" Urizen leaves trailing behind him parallels the highway built by Sin and Death in Satan's track [ Paradise Lost II:1024-9]. The sons and daughters of Urizen are cursed because they are lost in the world of matter: "no flesh nor spirit could keep his iron laws one moment" [23:25-26]. Then from his sorrows for these his children begotten on the material body of nature, the web of religion begins to unwind and expand, "throwing out from his sorrowing soul, the dungeon-like heaven dividing" [25:11-12] and the knotted meshes of the web to involve all races and cities. Blake again touches on the root of the matter: "the Web is a Female in embrio" [25:18] that is a growing conviction in the reality of the material world. Blake consistently makes Churches female a generating force since the church signifies a belief in the predetermined actuality of the physical universe. Material beings bound by the chains of being automatically create the general conviction that their physical state of existence is real and singular. Thus "The Net of Religion" [25:22] is a second enclosure for mankind, like the "Tent of Science" [25:19]. This idea is clearly expressed in the yogacara philosophy of Buddhism, according to which reality is what we believe it to be; the material world is a mere projection of the mind. Correspondingly Blake compares the web to the meshes of the human brain [25:21]. This is what Hindu philosophy calls the 'illusion of reality' (maya) and the Gnostic the 'force of corruption' or 'faith' (pistis). Chapter IX. The Human Race "The Senses inward rushed shrinking beneath the dark net of infection: till the shrunken eyes, clouded over, discerned not the woven hypocrisy; but the streaky slime in their heavens, brought together by narrowing perceptions, appeared transparent air; for their eyes grew small like the eyes of a man. Six days they shrank up from existence, and the seventh day rested, and they blessed the seventh day, in sick hope; and forgot their eternal life." [The Book of Urizen IX.1-3.] The degeneration of the children of Urizen is a consequence of their belief in the fixed and limited nature of the natural world. They take on definite material forms; their soft, flexible powers hardening in shapes of matter [25:25]. Nerves create a marrow around which a limited structure of senses evolve, but of limited perception. The birth of the Human race is paralleled to the creation of the universe [Genesis I.] and the birth of Urizen [Chapter IV.], but in a degraded state and power. The materialisation of life in the form of human beings also takes seven stages, but the seven ages of Urizen's creation become seven days for the creation of humans: "For six days they shrunk up from existence and on the seventh day they rested" [25:39-40.] "And in reptile forms shrinking together of seven feet stature they remained" [25:37-38]. The loss of height refers to "There were giants in the earth in those days" [Genesis 6:4]. Primitive mankind recapitulates the constriction and shrinking of Urizen's divine senses. The limitation of the senses is crucial, since sensual perception blinded by the Net of Religion ("woven hypocrisy streaky slime" [25:32-3]) is the major cause of the loss of Eternity and

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freedom. The narrowing perceptions are responsible for the bound-to-earth nature of humanity [25:47-48]. Hence grows the animal tyranny of gravitation, and hence also the spiritual tyranny of the laws of prudence [28:6-7]. Laws of limitation replace the true laws of God, which allow absolute freedom in every aspect. Law is the root of every human organization: "thirty cities divided in from of a human heart" [25:43-4] could relate to heart-formed Africa, [Song of Los 3:3] which is the cradle of civilization (17). The thirty cities also refer to the thirty organs of the human body bounding the spirit of man to earth. Blake ends his vision in a very gloomy way. Seeing these his brethren degraded into life and debased into flesh, the son of the Fire, Fuzon, calls together the remaining children of Urizen and they leave the pendulous earth [28:19-22]. (Fuzon parallels Moses leading the Exodus from Egypt, a topic highly elaborated in The Book of Ahania.) The freer and stronger spirits leave the world of men to the dominion of earth and water; air and fire are withdrawn from them, and they are left only with the heaviness of imprisoning clay and the bitterness of violent sea. Accordingly humanity is left without the divine elements of Fire, the creative power of the mind and Air, the imaginative power of the soul. Humanity can no longer discern the divine element in the universe [28:17-18].
If the doors of perception were cleansed Every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. Footnotes: (1) All Blake quotations are from Erdman, David V. - The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. [New York: Doubleday, 1988]. In-text references to poems cite first the plate then the line number. (2) Keep, Christopher & McLaughlin, Tim - William Blake and the Illuminated Book. [robin.escalation@ACM .org, 1995] (3) Hermetics: In a narrow sense from historical and philological point of view the Hermetic tradition refers to a well distinguishable cultural phenomenon, starting from Egypt around the 2nd century BC. In general terms it is a philosophical system organizing all religious, mystical, magical, philosophical traditions and mythological ideas ever known to mankind. Of course it is a tradition itself, more ancient than any other systems known... (4) Keynes, Geoffrey (ed.) - The Complete Writings of William Blake. [Oxford: Oxford Universitiy Press, 1996.] (p.914.) (5) Keynes, Geoffrey (ed.) - The Complete Writings of William Blake. [Oxford: Oxford Universitiy Press, 1996.] (p.914.) (6) Stevenson, W.H. (ed.) William Blake : Selected Poetry. [Penguin, 1988.] (p. 282.) (7) H.P. Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness. (The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1-3.) [Harper Collins, 1985.] (8) Aleister Crowley MAGICK in theory and practice. [Castle Books, 1991.] (9) MacGregor Mathers The Kabbalah Unveiled. [Arkana, reprint of 1926.] (10) Compare with Chapter II. : the alchemical state of albedo (page 54.) (11) Swinburne, Ch. Algernon - William Blake. - Chpt. III.: The Prophetic Books . [William Heinemann, London 1925.] (p. 249.) (12) Papus (Encausse, Gerard) Kabbala. [Hermit: Miskolc, 1999.] (13) Keynes, Geoffrey (ed.) - The Complete Writings of William Blake. [Oxford: Oxford Universitiy Press, 1996.] (p.917.) (14) Swedenborg's Philosophy of Nautre in Encyclopaedia Britannica [1994-1998] See: Emanuel Swedendorg (15) There is a possible influence of Tiziano's or Giordano's Sisyphus on the representation (author's comment). (16) Since the body of the word in Hebrew comes from the consonants, only the consonants of pardes are written. (17) Keynes, Geoffrey (ed.) - The Complete Writings of William Blake. [Oxford: Oxford Universitiy Press, 1996.] (p.918.)

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