Wednesday, August 03, 2011

The Illuminated Mind

Reading from Plate 35 of Milton (Erdman 136):

"There is a Moment in each day that Satan cannot find.
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find
This Moment & it multiply. & when it once is found
It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed"

Goodness knows, that's the desideratum every Blakean
wants to achieve. Our Daily Bread is to remember the visions that came to us after the magical Moment and to record and communicate them to those we love.

Love's Body is a little book with pointers to Norman Brown's visions. It invites us to record our visions as they occur and as time allows to communicate them to whomever God may have sent to hear, see, or experience them.

A young person has the Energy to do this.
He may do it during his most creative years. As we all know, energy flags with age; as the years go by, we find the Energy of the active baby that we all longed for is steadily and unfortunately more and more rare. Would that I had the energy I had at twenty. Blake's Minute gives us a chance to make the most of what our aging body allows.

Conservation of Energy! (it goes somewhere); as Blakeans and Christians we can direct it to the most important place.

"Follow your bliss", said
Joseph Campbell. 'Redeem the time' says the New Testament, and John Wesley, and William Blake. In Jerusalem Plate 47, introducing Chapter Four, To the Christians, we read:

" We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no
time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost, is a moment
that cannot be redeemed every pleasure that intermingles with the
duty of our station is a folly unredeemable & is planted like the
seed of a wild flower among our wheat."
That Moment may spread to the limit of your energy level. Be thankful for it.

Expansion and Contraction:

Satan is the Limit of Contraction. It's the most he (it) can do to
enslave you to the God of this World (pure materiality!)

Adam is the Limit of Expansion. (Larry's vision; not Blake's)

In Plate 42 of Jerusalem Los) was speaking to whom?
To Albion "in deepest night of Ulro
":
"Thou wast the Image of God surrounded by the Four Zoa's
Three thou hast slain! I am the Fourth: thou canst not destroy me.
Thou art in Error; trouble me not with thy righteousness.
I have innocence to defend and ignorance to instruct:
I have no time for seeming; and little arts of compliment,
In morality and virtue: in self-glorying and pride.
There is a limit of Opakeness, and a limit of Contraction;
In every Individual Man, and the limit of Opakeness,
Is named Satan: and the limit of Contraction is named Adam.
But when Man sleeps in Beulah, the Saviour in mercy takes
Contractions Limit, and of the Limit he forms Woman: That
Himself may in process of time be born Man to redeem
But there is no Limit of Expansion! there is no Limit of Translucence
In the bosom of Man for ever from eternity to eternity.
Therefore I break thy bonds of righteousness; I crush thy messengers!
That they may not crush me and mine: do thou be righteous,
And I will return it; otherwise I defy thy worst revenge"
(Erdman 189)

Blake scholars learned the minute particulars- one by one, until Blake's

poetry became a code.

A Blake Group might begin with two and add another as she/he appears.

To share our visions is the most fascinating, creative activity we may
imagine.

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