Blake's Church II

 First posted June 2011

British Museum

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Copy A, Plate 39

While the Church Fathers congregated in Rome, Gnosticism had its center in Alexandria, a marketplace of competing religious and philosophical ideas. There in the third century a man named Plotinus gave birth to Neo-platonism, an amalgam of the best of Greek thought with the ethical teachings of Christ. Extremely eclectic, drawing on currents of thought from Rome to India, Plotinus's teachings became the religion of some of the later Roman Emperors. Blake read widely and drew on Gnosticism and Neo-platonism.

During the fourth century the religion of Neo-platonism disappeared as a rival of the Church. However it deeply influenced the shape of Christian theology, most notably through the mind of St. Augustine. Augustine in his spiritual journey passed through a Neo-platonic stage, which left its mark upon his Christian life and writing. Augustine occupies an anomalous position in the history of the Church: he is both a Church Father of impeccable reputation and the spiritual forebear of many theologians whose Neo-platonic bent put them on the fringe of orthodoxy:

Erigena, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Meister Eckhart are a few of these Neo-platonic Christians. Some of these thinkers succeeded in remaining within the umbrella of the authorized tradition; some were partially or totally cast out. Among them they preserved to theology a breadth and a poetic dimension that burst open the priestly cocoon with the 15th Century Renaissance and the 16th Century Reformation.

Blake had definite gnostic leanings:

"To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. He believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they might exhibit outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake."

Blake expressed many times that the church was a spiritual obstacle.

His "The Little Vagabond" portrays the "loveless morality of the churches" (Raine 148). The church, the clerics of the church and the church ceremony altogether is cold and distant. "Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold" ("The Little Vagabond ln i) is the opening line of the poem. It is obvious that the young child is distraught with his church because it is not quenching his spiritual thirst. However, he offers a remedy:

"But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,

And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,

We'd sing and we'd pray all the live-long day,

Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray."

"These lines plainly, but clearly, express Blake's religious stance. The church is a cold place that has kept a distance between its members and itself. Therefore, the meanings of the gospels have been delivered in a way that has no meaning or effectiveness. The word of God has been marginalized when it should in fact be communicated in a kind loving manner. The preacher is God and the members of the church are God as well. Instead, the preacher is a merciless intruder that is penetrating the word into the congregation's heads not alloying thought, but perpetuating cold disciplined faith. This poem is used by Blake as a way to communicate his belief that the church was suffering from cold militant preaching rather than warm intoxicating love."

(This from Analyzing William Blake's Poetry.)

Blake's Christianity

First posted  April  2014

A Blakean View of Christianity

The immediate followers of Jesus were accused of turning the world upside down. They followed him in challenging all forms of worldly power including death. One can make a good case for the idea that the Christian by definition challenges the powers of the world; that's certainly the meaning of 'radical Christian'.

Blake perceived the legacy that Jesus left behind in two ways. On one hand the church as the mystical body of Christ consists of those who continually challenge the authority or powers of the world. On the other hand the Church as an institution becomes one of the powers of the world. The tension between these two principles probably exists within the breast of anyone seriously interested in Christ.

       

In the second century Ignatius of Antioch eloquently embodied that tension with his life. Ignatius died a martyr to the secular power of the Roman Empire. Before that happened, he had spent much of his time as an eccleiastical authority rooting out dissenters, whom he called heretics; he did this in the course of establishing the institutional authority of what became the Roman Church.

       

With Constantine these two streams of authority came together. In 312 A.D. the new emperor declared himself a Christian and assumed control of the Church. He exercised that control through the simple device of naming his most trusted servant as bishop. The Church became an arm of the political power of the empire.

From that day to this the Church has been primarily one of the powers of the world. The power of the Church has been expressed through ecclesiastical hierarchies and creeds, both imposed upon the rank and file by various coercive techniques essentially identical with those of other worldly powers. This means that the spiritual reality of Christ vis-a-vis the Church is only actualized through the same sort of dissent that Jesus made in the beginning.

These conclusions of course may be debated, but they represent the basic and lifelong viewpoint underlying the radical protest which was Blake's art.

The Early Church

 

After the departure of Christ converts to the new faith gathered together in small groups awaiting the bodily return of Christ, which they expected momentarily. Paul and the other missionaries organized these brotherhoods throughout the Roman world. Paul's letters usually contain two sections: poetic images created to encourage their faith as they awaited the return of Christ at the end of the age and practical advice for the Christians' life together.

He wrote for example to the Colossians that they were "buried with him in baptism [and] risen with him through the faith". No one could interpret that as a statement of material fact, but rather as a powerful poetic identification of the faithful with Christ. In spite of Paul's encouragement the years went by disappointing their hopes for the second coming and requiring adjustment to changed expectations.

Two classes of leaders arose, whom we may call priests and poets. The priests dedicated their efforts to preserving the heritage of the apostles. They clearly spelled out the facts and implications of the faith which they had received from the first generation of believers. They claimed the authority of their forebears, and they required uniformity of belief and obedience as a condition of membership in the Church. Paul's practical advice to struggling congregations became the rules of order; his poetic images became dogma. The priests imposed their order and dogma upon the majority of their followers and cast out the others. The priests go by the name of the Church Fathers, and the institution which they organized became the orthodox Church.

The other class of leaders we have called the poets. The earliest Christian poets largely manifested themselves in a movement called Gnosticism. While the Church Fathers transformed doctrine into dogma, these Christian Gnostic poets moved in the opposite direction. Instead of focusing on the letter they listened to the Spirit, and they heard a wide variety of things. They believed in "letting a thousand flowers bloom". Many of them enjoyed Greek or oriental learning, which they combined with Christian thought, much to the dismay of the priests.

What did the Church Fathers find so threatening about the Gnostics? First of all it was a matter of temperament; priests and poets are temperamentally at opposite poles; it has always been so. The priestly enterprise requires a conforming flock; poets simply don't conform. The Gnostic poets came up with all sorts of radical ideas which severely threatened the emerging orthodoxy.

       

They became the first of a long line of non-conforming Christians, a line that comes straight down to William Blake. Obviously a movement like Christian Gnosticism, creative as it may have been, didn't make for order. The Church Fathers were much better organized, and they successfully cast out the Gnostics, naming them heretics. Bowing to their conforming zeal the Christian Gnostics went underground but emerged periodically offering a radical alternative to the established way. 

The Bogomils, the Albigenses, the Waldensians and many other groups through the ages experienced a grace that freed them both from the law and from much concern about this world. The priestly party, who usually controlled the sword, assisted thousands of them in their exit from this world. The Church through the centuries combined a rigidly orthodox view of Christian theology with a bloodthirsty reaction toward their theological opponents.

       

Blake, like many other thoughtful people, discounted the orthodox theology on the basis of the bloodthirsty spirit, which he perceived as an obvious contradiction to the spirit of Christ. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love". The Church had done that, and Blake knew it. He therefore listened to the tongues of other men and other angels. 

Jerusalem, Plate 52, (E 201)

"The Glory of Christianity is, To
Conquer by Forgiveness.  All the Destruction therefore, in
Christian Europe has arisen from Deism, which is Natural Religion.                                                   

  I saw a Monk of Charlemaine             
Arise before my sight 
  I talkd with the Grey Monk as we stood  
In beams of infernal light

  Gibbon arose with a lash of steel       
And Voltaire with a wracking wheel
  The Schools in clouds of learning rolld 
Arose with War in iron & gold.

  Thou lazy Monk they sound afar          
In vain condemning glorious War           
  And in your Cell you shall ever dwell   
Rise War & bind him in his Cell.

  The blood. red ran from the Grey Monks side
His hands & feet were wounded wide
  His body bent, his arms & knees          
Like to the roots of ancient trees

  When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent
  He forgd the Law into a Sword
And spilld the blood of mercys Lord.
     
  Titus! Constantine!  Charlemaine!  
O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain
  Your Grecian Mocks & Roman Sword   
Against this image of his Lord!

  For a Tear is an Intellectual thing; 
And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King
  And the bitter groan of a Martyrs woe      
Is an Arrow from the Almighties Bow!"

WITCUTT 8

Earlier posts on READING WITCUTT were posted Dec 2020.

Also  concerning Witcutt Intuitive Introvert .

Jerusalem, Plate 70, (E 224)
"And this the form of mighty Hand sitting on Albions cliffs
Before the face of Albion, a mighty threatning Form.

His bosom wide & shoulders huge overspreading wondrous
Bear Three strong sinewy Necks & Three awful & terrible Heads
Three Brains in contradictory council brooding incessantly.      
Neither daring to put in act its councils, fearing each-other,
Therefore rejecting Ideas as nothing & holding all Wisdom
To consist. in the agreements & disagree[me]nts of Ideas.
Plotting to devour Albions Body of Humanity & Love.

Such Form the aggregate of the Twelve Sons of Albion took; & such
Their appearance when combind: but often by birth-pangs & loud groans
They divide to Twelve: the key-bones & the chest dividing in pain
Disclose a hideous orifice; thence issuing the Giant-brood
Arise as the smoke of the furnace, shaking the rocks from sea to sea.
And there they combine into Three Forms, named Bacon & Newton & Locke,
In the Oak Groves of Albion which overspread all the Earth.

Imputing Sin & Righteousness to Individuals; Rahab
Sat deep within him hid: his Feminine Power unreveal'd
Brooding Abstract Philosophy. to destroy Imagination, the Divine-
-Humanity A Three-fold Wonder: feminine: most beautiful: Three-fold
Each within other. On her white marble & even Neck, her Heart
Inorb'd and bonified: with locks of shadowing modesty, shining
Over her beautiful Female features, soft flourishing in beauty
Beams mild, all love and all perfection, that when the lips
Recieve a kiss from Gods or Men, a threefold kiss returns    
From the pressd loveliness: so her whole immortal form three-fold
Three-fold embrace returns: consuming lives of Gods & Men
In fires of beauty melting them as gold & silver in the furnace
Her Brain enlabyrinths the whole heaven of her bosom & loins
To put in act what her Heart wills; O who can withstand her power
Her name is Vala in Eternity: in Time her name is Rahab

The Starry Heavens all were fled from the mighty limbs of Albion"

Blake: A Psychological Strdy, W. P. Witcutt:

Page 116

"[T]he first thing that stikes and orthodox Christian, or one brought up in the shadow of orthodox Christiaity, as we all are, was blake's rejection of the Moral Law, which seems strangely inconsistent in one who, at least in later life, claimed with vehemence to be a Christian. What did he mean by it?...The answer seems to be that what he complains about is 'abstract good and evil,'  a law applied to each individual without pityor consideration of extenuating circumstances. 'One law for the lion and ox is oppression.' He saw this Law, thinking always in pictures, as in the illustration to Jerusalem -  a great Druid pylon or Menhir with a red sun shining through it amid dark clouds, while three blue-cloaked figures stand conversing underneath, 'imputing sin and righteousness to individuals.'

He seems to have desired what the Jesuits called causistry and the old English law 'equity,' that each act should be judged on its own merits and not according to a rigid abstract code. That is presumably how God judges, but fallible men must have a term of reference, even when the circumstances are taken into account. Blake's thought ran always to extremes.

...

It was only to be expected that Blake would revolt with violence against a system which worshiped the God of Nature and left out the Son altogether. This was Deism...Blake hated it. It kept the part of Christianity which he most disliked - the Moral Law - and omitted the saving personality of Christ and the forgiveness of sins." 

 

Jerusalem, Plate 52, (E 202)

"When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent
  He forgd the Law into a Sword
And spilld the blood of mercys Lord."

---

     

William Purcell Witcutt timeline

1908 born Anglican

1928 studied law

1930's converted Cathocism 

1930's 7 year seminary education

1949 Return to Anglican faith

1972 Died

TIME MAGAZINE article, JULY 4 1955

To Rome and Return

"The Rev. William Purcell Witcutt's mouth clicked shut like a snap lock when British reporters tried to interview him six years ago on his reasons for quitting the Roman Catholic Church and rejoining the Church of England. This week the lock opened smoothly with U.S. publication of Anglican Witcutt's Return to Reality (Macmillan; $1.65)—a well-written attack upon Roman Catholic doctrine.

In 1928 Witcutt, son of a Staffordshire merchant tailor, was studying law at Birmingham University when the attraction of G.K. Chesterton's anti-industrial theory of "Distributism" led him to Rome. Distributists took one look at the misery of the workingman and concluded that large-scale industry should be abolished in favor of a social-industrial structure more like that of the Middle Ages.

Since the leading Distributists seemed to be Catholics, Witcutt began to study the Roman Catholic system of thought. "It at once attracted me," he writes. "Here was an intellectual scheme moulded and shaped, it seemed, to include every detail. One had only to make an act of faith and one was settled, intellectually, for life. No more questions need be asked."

'Seven-Year Grind.' -  Anglican Witcutt became a Roman Catholic, and resolved to study for the priesthood. He persuaded Catholic authorities to waive their rule requiring converts to spend two years in the church before entering the seminary, and within a month of his reception into the church, plunged into a seven-year seminary grind at Oscott.

"It was," writes Father Witcutt, "a seven years' intensive training in how to think . . . We studied every branch of philosophy and theology. Logic was our master and the syllogism our instrument." He was entranced by the church's scholastic system of theology, "glittering and shapely as a machine." Scholastic theology's two fundamentals, says Witcutt, are the Abstract Idea (the essence of every object is comprehensible only to the mind, which is immaterial, spiritual and immortal) and the Beatific Vision ("the plunge of the soul into the Divine").

'Searching Look.' - Armed with his newfound theology, Father Witcutt was sent to a slum parish in Birmingham. For a while all went well. Then in a lecture on the Reformation .to the Catholic Evidence Guild he bore down too heavily on the corruption of the medieval Catholic clergy. "I was summoned to interview the Vicar-General, who told me, with a searching look, that I was being transferred to 'the farthest outpost of the diocese.' "

As a parish priest in the villages of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, Father Witcutt drew nearer and nearer to the God that seemed to lie just behind the veil of nature and farther and farther away from the Abstract Idea and the Beatific Vision. He found that "The God of Scholasticism was unworshipable. Nor do Roman Catholics worship Him. They cannot. They worship the Sacred Heart, the Virgin, and the Saints . . . To me Roman Catholicism seemed one of two things: either a set of dry philosophical formulae or else a range of plaster-cast statues . . . What I wanted was no vision of the intellect, but resurrection. It was the doctrine of bodily resurrection which held me by an unbreakable bond to the Christian religion, as it had held St. Paul."

“Spiritual Iron Curtain.” - Roman Catholicism, says Father Witcutt, conflicts with philosophy (“It does not allow for any advance in philosophy made since the 13th century”), with physical science (“by insisting upon the now indefensible Aristotelian doctrine” that qualities, such as color, are objective instead of being in our senses) and with history. Back in the Anglican fold, he holds that the Bishop of Rome became pre-eminent in the church only because the Mohammedans “over whelmed the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, isolated him of Constantinople, and left only the Patri arch of Rome in his former authority.”

For the last six years Father Witcutt has been a high-church Anglican curate in London’s run-down suburb of East Ham. The freedom of the Church of England is a relief to him. “More and more the Latin liturgy had become an annoyance to me,” he writes, and “I had grown to detest the spiritual Iron Curtain which divides Roman Catholics from their fellow countrymen … I am sorry to say that the Roman Catholic, and particularly the priest, despises the Church of England. He does not consider its clergy to be true priests, and he despises it for its lack of congregations and its empty pews.”

Of these empty pews optimistic Anglican Witcutt notes that the unchurched English are “not bitter anticlericals and atheists, as they would be in a Continental country. They are members of the Church who are at present asleep, and one day someone’s voice will wake them.”

ILLUMINATED BOOKS

William Blake: Poet . Printer . Prophet is the Commorative Handbook of an Exhibition of the Illuminated Books of William Blake arranged by the William Blake Trust. The Foreword is provided by Lessing J. Rosenwald whose Blake Collection was given to the Library of Congress. Geoffery Keynes, a leading Blake scholar, contributed commentary and the Chronology of the publication of the Illuminated Books and of important events in Blake's life 

An Exhibition of the Illuminated Books of William Blake, Commentary by Geoffery Keynes:

Page 16

"In the course of Making the Illuminated Books presently to be described Blake must have etched at least 363 copper-plates of various sizes. Most of these he kept by him through his several changes of residence, and many were still in the possession of Mrs. Blake after his death in 1827. Posthumous copies of the books are known, printed, probably, by Blake's friend, Frederick Tatham, on paper with a watermark 1831 or 1832. The majority then disappeared, probably being sold as scrap metal, though somehow the sixteen plates of the Songs, as  already mentioned, were available to Gilchrist when publishing his Life of Blake in 1863. Later these, too, vanished, so we were left only with the electrotype blocks kept by the printer of the Life. 

... [T]here were intervals of time between the issue of examples of a book during which Blake's taste and judgement altered. The Songs of Innocence and of Experience best illustrate this development since there was a greated demand for this book than for any other from 1794 until the end of his life in 1827. His coloring, at first extreme simplicity, became more careful and complicated, and after 1815 the general scheme was rich and elaborate." 

The image is from William Blake Poet . Printer . Prophet. Copy Z is the copy which was used to create the facsimile of Songs of Innocence and of Experience for the Blake Trust. Copy Z was printed in 1826 by Catherine Blake. The coloring was completed by William before he died in 1827.   

  

Blake Archive

Original in Library of Congress

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Plate 8, Copy Z

 The Lamb

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Songs 8, (E 8)  
"The Lamb

  Little Lamb who made thee
  Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,       
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales  rejoice!
  Little Lamb who made thee
  Dost thou know who made thee  

  Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
  Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,        
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
  Little Lamb God bless thee.
  Little Lamb God bless thee."      

SPIRIT

First posted February 2020 

Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations to Blair' The Grave
Reunion of the Soul and the Body

The Red Book, by C G Jung, Page 232
"Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call on her as a living and self-existing being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.

From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the soul: he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing dependent on man, which lets herself be judged and arranged, and whose circumference can be grasped. I had to accept that what I had previously called my soul was not my soul, but a dead system. Hence I had to speak to my soul as to something far off and unknown, which did not exist through me, but through whom I existed."  

Blake knew himself to be a spiritual being living in a spiritual world. He could discern the activity of spirits in his daily life. They appeared to him, they spoke to him they directed him, and they became the subject which he depicted in his writing and painting. He enhanced his spiritual perception by acknowledging and exercising it.

The conundrum in which man finds himself is that he is two men living in two worlds. The natural man lives in both the natural and spiritual worlds. The home of the spiritual man is both the natural and spiritual worlds. Blake preferred live as a spiritual man in a spiritual world but was forced more often to live in the natural world without relinquishing his spiritual proclivities. To some extent we choose which world will be real to us, or we oscillate between the two.

Blake did not consider the Spiritual World to be exclusively accessible to spiritual men because all can awake and be shown the hidden world. The eye is capable of seeing more than the physical because man is capable of remembering the Eternal which is his origin. Little pieces of the Eternal are scattered in Time and Space to lure man away from the natural to the spiritual.
 

Jerusalem, Plate 62, (E 213)
"I see the Maternal Line, I behold the Seed of the Woman! ...

These are the Daughters of Vala, Mother of the Body of death
But I thy Magdalen behold thy Spiritual Risen Body
Shall Albion arise? I know he shall arise at the Last Day!
I know that in my flesh I shall see God: but Emanations
Are weak. they know not whence they are, nor whither tend.

Jesus replied. I am the Resurrection & the Life.
I Die & pass the limits of possibility, as it appears
To individual perception. Luvah must be Created                  
And Vala; for I cannot leave them in the gnawing Grave.
But will prepare a way for my banished-ones to return"

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 541)
" A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the 
modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a
nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all
that the mortal and perishing nature can produce.  He who does
not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger
and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not
imagine at all.  The painter of this work asserts that all his
imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more
minutely organized than any thing seen by his
mortal eye.  Spirits are organized men: Moderns wish to 
draw figures without lines, and with great and heavy shadows; 
are not shadows more unmeaning than lines, and more heavy? O 
who can doubt this!"  

Letters, (E 724) 
"But if we fear to do the dictates of our
Angels & tremble at the Tasks set before us. if we refuse to do
Spiritual Acts. because of Natural Fears or Natural Desires!  Who
can describe the dismal torments of such a state!--I too well
remember the Threats I heard!--If you who are organized by Divine
Providence for Spiritual communion.  Refuse & bury your Talent in
the Earth even tho you should want Natural Bread." 

Jerusalem, Plate 49, (E 199)
Learn therefore O Sisters to distinguish the Eternal Human
That walks about among the stones of fire in bliss & woe
Alternate! from those States or Worlds in which the Spirit travels:
This is the only means to Forgiveness of Enemies[.] 

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 117, (E 386)
"And Los & Enitharmon builded Jerusalem weeping   
Over the Sepulcher & over the Crucified body
Which to their Phantom Eyes appear'd still in the Sepulcher
But Jesus stood beside them in the Spirit Separating
Their Spirit from their body. Terrified at Non Existence 
For such they deemd the death of the body."

Letters, (E 705)
 "Thirteen years ago.  I lost a
brother & with his spirit I  converse daily & hourly in the
Spirit.  & See him in my remembrance in the  regions of my
Imagination.  I hear his advice & even now write from his
Dictate--Forgive me for expressing to you my Enthusiasm which I
wish all to  partake of Since it is to me a Source of Immortal
Joy even in this world by it  I am the companion of Angels"

Europe, Plate iii, (E 60)
 "Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?
He laughing answer'd: I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
If you will feed me on love-thoughts, & give me now and then    
A cup of sparkling poetic fancies; so when I am tipsie,
I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive
The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.

I took him home in my warm bosom: as we went along
Wild flowers I gatherd; & he shew'd me each eternal flower:      
He laugh'd aloud to see them whimper because they were pluck'd.
They hover'd round me like a cloud of incense: when I came
Into my parlour and sat down, and took my pen to write:
My Fairy sat upon the table, and dictated EUROPE."

Gates of Paradise, The Keys, (E 268)
11   Holy & cold I clipd the Wings 
     Of all Sublunary Things
12   And in depths of my Dungeons
     Closed the Father & the Sons                     
13   But when once I did descry 
     The Immortal Man that cannot Die
14   Thro evening shades I haste away 
     To close the Labours of my Day 

---

Acts 17
[27] That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
[28] For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

First Corinthians 2
[10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
[11] For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
[12] Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
[13] Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
[14] But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Fearful Symmetry Again

First posted August 2011 

Yale Center for British Art

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Copy F, Plate 42

It was Northrup Frye who began to make William Blake's poetry popular and available to serious students. He was studying for the ministry at the University of Toronto, but went to Oxford for graduate work and published Fearful Symmetry, which made him famous. Although he maintained an ecclesiastic relationship, he became the epoch's foremost critic of English literature.

In a recent post Ellie cited a Quote from Fearful Symmetry:

"the business of the visionary [is] to proclaim the Word of God to a
society under the domination of Satan; and ... the visionary's
social position is typically that of an isolated voice crying in
the wilderness against the injustice and hypocrisy of the society
from which he sprung." (Page 336)

Out of his study of Blake's system, Frye generated a system of his own, delineated in the 1957 volume,

Anatomy of Criticism, to provide "a more intelligible account of...'myths we live by'."

Frye's last and greatest (two volume) work is: The Great Code and Words with Power which go into systems and sources exhaustively. It's very enlightening for anyone serious about learning Blake's system.

Steven Marx, a professor at Cal Poly has written a thorough study of Northup Frye, starting with a thumbnail biography, and continuing with "the sources of Blake's Vision" It's embodied in a description of Frye's extensive writing:

"A lineage of mythographers including Vico, James Frazer, Carl Jung,
and Joseph Campbell all share the view that literature evolves from mythology
and that both embody a society's central values and beliefs--about the gods
and about secular matters like work, play, action, identity, family, love and
death."

(From the 'thorough study' cited above)

The 'thorough study' essentially described and interpreted Words with Power.

POETRY

First posted August 2017 

Library of Congress

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 2

Los, as the Vehicular Form of the Eternal Urthona, is his representative in our world - the world of generation. Blake chose poetry as one of his media to express his message because it is adept at conveying spiritual content which is offered by Urthona the Zoa of Imagination. Damon (A Blake Dictionary) tells us that "Los is Poetry, the expression in this world of the Creative Imagination." 

The sense associated with Urthona is hearing which is discerned through the 'labyrinthine Ear.' Poetry is a special kind of sound designed to transmit through sound more than can be discerned in ordinary speech, just as music conveys more than the cacophony of a crowded marketplace.    

From Defending Ancient Springs by Kathleen Raine:
Page 107
"There is one type of resonance which he [William Empson] fails to consider, that resonance which may be present within a image of apparent simplicity, setting into vibration planes of reality and of consciousness other than those of the sensible world: the power of the symbol and of symbolic discourse...

Page 108
"It is in this that the poet distinguishes himself from the philosopher; not in any difference in the nature of their themes but in their way of experiencing them: where philosophy makes distinctions, poetry brings together, creating always wholes and harmonies; the work of the poet is not analysis but synthesis, The symbol may be called the unit of poetic synthesis; as Coleridge in his famous definition implies:

'A symbol is characterized by a translucence of the special in the Individual, or of the General in the Especial, or of the Universal in the General. Above all of the translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part of that Unity of which it is representative...

What the poem affirms is that the world is, in its whole and in its parts, living and conscious; it also affirms that there is a hidden source ('heaven') from whose 'gate' visible things issue from invisible.'"   

Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Plate 5, (E 34)
" 1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age" 

Jerusalem, Plate 98, (E 257)
"According to the Human Nerves of Sensation, the Four Rivers of the Water of Life

South stood the Nerves of the Eye. East in Rivers of bliss the Nerves of the
Expansive Nostrils West, flowd the Parent Sense the Tongue. North stood
The labyrinthine Ear."

Four Zoas Night I, Page 3, (E 201)
"Los was the fourth immortal starry one, & in the Earth
Of a bright Universe Empery attended day & night                 
Days & nights of revolving joy, Urthona was his name
Page 4              
In Eden; in the Auricular Nerves of Human life
Which is the Earth of Eden, he his Emanations propagated
Fairies of Albion afterwards Gods of the Heathen, Daughter of Beulah Sing
His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity
His fall into the Generation of Decay & Death & his Regeneration 

by the Resurrection from the dead"  

Europe, Plate iii, (E 60)
"Five windows light the cavern'd Man; thro' one he breathes the air;
Thro' one, hears music of the spheres; thro' one, the eternal vine
Flourishes, that he may recieve the grapes; thro' one can look.
And see small portions of the eternal world that ever groweth;
Thro' one, himself pass out what time he please, but he will not;
For stolen joys are sweet, & bread eaten in secret pleasant."

Jerusalem, Plate 83, (E 241)
"Let Cambel and her Sisters sit within the Mundane Shell:
Forming the fluctuating Globe according to their will,
According as they weave the little embryon nerves & veins     
The Eye, the little Nostrils, & the delicate Tongue & Ears
Of labyrinthine intricacy: so shall they fold the World
That whatever is seen upon the Mundane Shell, the same
Be seen upon the Fluctuating Earth woven by the Sisters."

Jerusalem, Plate 53, (E 202)
"But Los, who is the Vehicular Form of strong Urthona"

Jerusalem, Plate 3, (E 146)
 "I therefore have produced
a variety in every line, both of cadences & number of syllables. 
Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit
place: the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific
parts--the mild & gentle, for the mild & gentle parts, and the
prosaic, for inferior parts: all are necessary to each other. 
Poetry Fetter'd, Fetters the Human Race! Nations are Destroy'd,
or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry Painting and Music,
are Destroy'd or Flourish! The Primeval State of Man, was Wisdom,
Art, and Science."                      

On Homer's Poetry, (E 269)
"It is the same with the Moral of a whole Poem as with the Moral Goodness
of its parts Unity & Morality, are secondary considerations &
belong to Philosophy & not to Poetry, to Exception & not to Rule,
to Accident & not to Substance. the Ancients calld it eating of
the tree of good & evil."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 541)
"Painting, as well as poetry and music, exists and exults 
in immortal thoughts."

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 554)
"Fable or Allegory are a totally distinct & inferior
kind of Poetry.  Vision or Imagination is a Representation of
what Eternally Exists.  Really & Unchangeably.  Fable or Allegory
is Formd by the Daughters of Memory.  Imagination is Surrounded
by the daughters of Inspiration who in the aggregate are calld
Jerusalem" 

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 559)
"Noah is seen in the Midst of these Canopied by a
Rainbow. on his right hand Shem & on his Left Japhet these three
Persons represent Poetry Painting & Music the three Powers in
Man of conversing with Paradise which the flood did not Sweep
away" 

Letters, (E 730)
"Thus I hope that all our three years trouble Ends in
Good Luck at last & shall be forgot by my affections & only
rememberd by my Understanding to be a Memento in time to come &
to speak to future generations by a Sublime Allegory which is now
perfectly completed into a Grand Poem[.] I may praise it since I
dare not pretend to be any other than the Secretary the Authors
are in Eternity I consider it as the Grandest Poem that This
World Contains.  Allegory addressd to the Intellectual powers
while it is altogether hidden from the Corporeal Understanding is
My Definition of the Most Sublime Poetry. it is also somewhat in
the same manner defind by Plato.  This Poem shall by Divine
Assistance be progressively Printed & Ornamented with Prints &
given to the Public--But of this work I take care to say little
to Mr H. since he is as much averse to my poetry as he is to a
Chapter in the Bible   He knows that I have writ it for I have
shewn it to him & he had read Part by his own desire & has lookd
with sufficient contempt to enhance my opinion of it."

SOUL HOVERING OVER BODY

British Museum

Small Book of Designs

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate14 

"A Flaming Sword/Revolving every way"

 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 4, (E 34)

                 "The voice of the Devil

  All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.
  1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
  2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that
Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
  3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies.
  But the following Contraries to these are True
  1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age
  2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is
the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
  3 Energy is Eternal Delight"                

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

"But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his
soul, is to  be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the
infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and
medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the
infinite which was hid."
America, Plate 6, (E 53)
"Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.      
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease." 
Milton, Plate 14 [15], (E 108) 
"O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come?
Tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death.
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.       
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate
And I be siez'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood"
Jerusalem, Plate 71, (E 224)
"And above Albions Land was seen the Heavenly Canaan
As the Substance is to the Shadow: and above Albions Twelve Sons
Were seen Jerusalems Sons: and all the Twelve Tribes spreading
Over Albion. As the Soul is to the Body, so Jerusalems Sons,
Are to the Sons of Albion: and Jerusalem is Albions Emanation    
What is Above is Within, for every-thing in Eternity is translucent:
The Circumference is Within: Without, is formed the Selfish Center
And the Circumference still expands going forward to Eternity.
And the Center has Eternal States! these States we now explore."
Auguries of innocence, (E 429)
"We are led to Believe a Lie 
When we see not Thro the Eye"    
Laocoon, (E 273)

"Adam is only The Natural Man & not the Soul or Imagination

The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION."

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 86, (E 368)

"Los furious answerd. Spectre horrible thy words astound my Ear
With irresistible conviction I feel I am not one of those 
Who when convincd can still persist. tho furious.controllable
By Reasons power. Even I already feel a World within
Opening its gates & in it all the real substances
Of which these in the outward World are shadows which pass away
Come then into my Bosom & in thy shadowy arms bring with thee   
My lovely Enitharmon. I will quell my fury & teach
Peace to the Soul of dark revenge & repentance to Cruelty

So spoke Los & Embracing Enitharmon & the Spectre
Clouds would have folded round in Extacy & Love uniting
PAGE 87 
But Enitharmon trembling fled & hid beneath Urizens tree
But mingling together with his Spectre the Spectre of Urthona 
Wondering beheld the Center opend by Divine Mercy inspired    
He in his turn Gave Tasks to Los Enormous to destroy          
That body he created but in vain for Los performd Wonders of labour 
They Builded Golgonooza Los labouring builded pillars high   
And Domes terrific in the nether heavens for beneath
Was opend new heavens & a new Earth beneath & within
Threefold within the brain within the heart within the loins
A Threefold Atmosphere Sublime continuous from Urthonas world  
But yet having a Limit Twofold named Satan & Adam"   

Blake asks us to discern not define. What can we discern in this image and in these passages concerning the soul?   

It may seem that the upper figure is the soul and the lower figure is the body. But it appears that the upper figure discrens the lower figure, and not the other way around. Blake states "that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses." In the image the soul figure appears to discern the sleeping body, perhaps by "melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid." It is the lower figure, apparently sleeping, who needs to "Rise and look out," perhaps he is the "inchained soul shut up in darkness." But how should this be accomplished other than by "self annihilation and eternal death."

If we see the image with our natural eye, we see not that 'What is Above is Within, for every-thing in Eternity is translucent."  Seeing "thro" the eye we discern that "The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION." Like Los we must "quell [our] fury & teach Peace to the Soul of dark revenge & repentance to Cruelty" so that we may see  "new heavens & a new Earth beneath & within" opening even in this life.

FIRST VISION OF LIGHT

First posted Dec 2020 

Like Blake, Larry was interested in learning all that he could about the wisdom of the ages. In 1977 he had been studying Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and Nicoll. From there he went on to pursuing C. G. Jung and his interpreters. He came across a little book by W. P. Witcutt titled Blake: A Psychological Study which proposed to use Jungian psychology as a key to understanding Blake. As a result Larry turned to studying Blake because he found his poetry more lucid and and cogent than anything he had been studying.

Larry wrote: 

"My own serious interest in Blake began in 1977 when my wife brought Blake: A Psychological Study by W. P. Witcutt home from the Arlington Public Library. I had been on the point of a commitment to the study of Jung's voluminous writings, which at that time seemed the most creative intellectual work at hand. Witcutt diverted my commitment to Blake, which we have now."

Following his study of Witcutt Larry wrote the following on 5-18-1978.

"Some ideas about Blake's poetry:

It is naming of the selves. Sharing his visions gives great help in understanding, in gaining detachment from the hardening and rigid concrete of opinion, prejudice, passion - the principalities and powers - that work to make us automatisms, zombies, denizens of hell. It offers fresh and new ways of perceiving life - ourselves and others - it detaches us from the old man - this body of death, makes us aware of the spiritual struggle going on - we have been asleep to it - tossed under the waves, the prostrate Albion, the sick king. Blake's vivid imagery may shock us into consciousness so that we may begin to act purposely.  

Blake must have been an imaginative young boy and at some point found thinking very oppressive. Did he go from permissive and indulgent parents to a brutal taskmaster who used 'geometric logic' like Quigg did (in Caine Mutiny). He found reason and feeling horrible and his visions of them seem to center on calamity - the Fall.

He shared his visions in such a way that one might hope to understand him at a deeper, more profound and real level than do most folk including ourselves. Thus if we can achieve this understanding of Blake, we may progress in learning of others including ourselves. Then love may come forth.

The woes of Urizen do indeed move us strangely, perhaps they may evoke the Holy Spirit in a powerful way. Hurrah!

In the Four Zoas, fallen Albion gives the scepter to Urizen who builds a steel trap world, which 'has done so much harm to our imagination's elastic and vital power.' Thus he didn't hate creative thought & law but only the worship of the created good. He hated the reactionaries and identified them with reason which, no doubt, they used as a weapon against visionary liberals."  

---

Wikipedia Commons
Book of Urizen
Plate 4, Copy G

Visions of Daughters of Albion, Plate 5, (E 48)
"But when the morn arose, her lamentation renewd,
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, & eccho back her sighs.

O Urizen! Creator of men! Mistaken Demon of heaven:
Thy joys are tears! thy labour vain, to form men to thine image.
How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys           

Holy, eternal, infinite! and each joy is a Love.
...
Does not the eagle scorn the earth & despise the treasures beneath?
But the mole knoweth what is there, & the worm shall tell it thee.       
Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard?
Plate 6
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave
Over his porch these words are written. Take thy bliss O Man!
And sweet shall be thy taste & sweet thy infant joys renew!"

Letters, To Thomas Butts, (E 713)

[First Vision of Light]

     "My Eyes more & more
     Like a Sea without shore
     Continue Expanding
     The Heavens commanding
     Till the jewels of Light
     Heavenly Men beaming bright
     Appeard as One Man
     Who Complacent began
     My limbs to infold
     In his beams of bright gold
     Like dross purgd away
     All my mire & my clay
     Soft consumd in delight
     In his bosom sun bright
     I remaind.  Soft he smild
     And I heard his voice Mild
     Saying This is My Fold
     O thou Ram hornd with gold
     Who awakest from sleep
     On the sides of the Deep
     On the Mountains around
     The roarings resound
     Of the lion & wolf
     The loud sea & deep gulf
     These are guards of My Fold
     O thou Ram hornd with gold
     And the voice faded mild
     I remaind as a Child
     All I ever had known
     Before me bright Shone
     I saw you & your wife
     By the fountains of Life
     Such the Vision to me
     Appeard on the Sea"

INTUITIVE INTROVERT

First posted  Feb 2016

W. P. Witcutt in 1946 wrote a book titled 

Wikimedia Commons
Europe
Plate 4

Blake: A Psychological Study. Whatever Witcutt may have lacked in objectivity, he made up for in devotion to his personal insights. As a student of Jungean psycholoy he attempted to fit Blake's thought into the framework of Jung's system with varying degrees of success.

In trying to explain how Blake arrived at the images which peopled his poetry, Witcutt identified Blake as an intuitive introvert: intuitive as the dominant function in Blake's psyche, and introvert as the orientation to which he turned for meaning. On Page 23 we read:

"The introvert, on the contrary, is turned inward towards the inner world of his own soul. His thoughts are rationalizations of the symbols of the unconscious, not spun from the common experiences of others or from the outside world; his feelings and sensations (if either of these is his dominant function) spring from the same source; and if he is intuitive, he sees the archetypes of the unconscious clearly and vividly in his mind's eye. To the intuitive introvert the world of the imagination is far more vivid than the world of outer reality.
...
In an illuminating example, Blake tells how introverted intuition works:

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 565)
"I assert for My self that I do
not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance &
not Action it is as the Dirt upon my feet No part of Me. What it
will be Questiond When the Sun rises  do  you  not  see  a  round 
Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable
company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord
God Almighty I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any
more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look
thro it & not with it."  

Contrasting Blake's approach of presenting his work to that of one with dominate thinking function, Witcutt on Page 82 wrote:

"The man of dominant thought would write out these psychological events in his own abstract terminology; but to the intuitive introvert such as Blake or Shelley they appear as the conflicts of awesome figures. The commentators on Blake have usually been men of dominant thought; and from them one gains the impression that Blake first thought out these matters as they would have done, in abstract terminology of 'law' or 'desire' and so forth; and then (because he was writing in poetry) turned the abstractions into symbolic poetic figures. That is not in the least how one of Blake's temperament works. The figures first of all appeared in his imaginative vision just like a vivid dream, and enacted their dreamlike conflicts, made their speeches. It was afterwards that he puzzled, wondering, over what could be the meaning of their symbolic actions; and gave them names. His first instinct was to draw what he had seen; thus it is that Blake's poetry is really a commentary on his engravings."

The focus of Witcutt's book was on the internal dynamics of the psyche and on what the images Blake created told him, and tell us about integrating one's divided factions. On Page 124 Witcutt identified Blake's characters with dream-symbols:

"The intuitive introvert is the symbolist par excellence. He lives in a dream-world where symbols have in waking life as much vitality and meaning as to ordinary men in dreams. Like the madman he lives in a continual waking dream, but unlike the madman he knows the dream-symbols for the product of the imagination and can use them for the delight of others. To him the symbols appear as unrelated to anything else; they live their own lives as unearthly semi-divine figures seen in the minds eye...It is something never seen on earth."

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 560)
"If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his
Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his
Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into Noahs Rainbow or
into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these
Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things
as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he
meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy   General
Knowledge is Remote Knowledge it is in Particulars that Wisdom
consists & Happiness too. 

Milton, Plate 2, (E 96)  
"Three Classes are Created by the Hammer of Los, & Woven 
PLATE 3,                                                 
By Enitharmons Looms when Albion was slain upon his Mountains
And in his Tent, thro envy of Living Form, even of the Divine Vision
And of the sports of Wisdom in the Human Imagination
Which is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus, blessed for ever.
Mark well my words. they are of your eternal salvation:      

Urizen lay in darkness & solitude, in chains of the mind lock'd up
Los siezd his Hammer & Tongs; he labourd at his resolute Anvil
Among indefinite Druid rocks & snows of doubt & reasoning.
Refusing all Definite Form, the Abstract Horror roofd. stony hard. 
And a first Age passed over & a State of dismal woe:"