NINE SPHERES

The Deity from Whom Proceed the Nine
Spheres
Illustration 100 for Dante's Divine Comedy
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK


William Blake: poet and mystic, Pierre Berger

"It is to the world of the invisible that we now find ourselves transported, a world which existed before our material world, and which will exist always; the only one whose existence is real, though we are not aware of it, seeing only its shadow projected in time and space, and taking that shadow for substance. This world is organized like ours : it has its circles, its cosmography, its hierarchy of powers. Blake could have given an exact description of it, as the visionaries and the Gnostics did of theirs. Perhaps he did so. But in what remains of the Prophetical Books, we find only fragments of description, ' Here a little and there a little.' It is only by joining the fragments, by comparing them, by interpreting or by explaining some through others, that any definite idea of his conception of this universe and its inhabitants is reached. Even then, the description is not complete. There are many blanks to be filled, many contradictions and doubtful interpretations."

Four Zoas, Night II, (E 323)
"Night passd & Enitharmon eer the dawn returnd in bliss
She sang Oer Los reviving him to Life his groans were terrible
But thus she sang. I sieze the sphery harp I strike the strings

At the first Sound the Golden sun arises from the Deep
And shakes his awful hair
The Eccho wakes the moon to unbind her silver locks
The golden sun bears on my song
And nine bright spheres of harmony rise round the fiery King

The joy of woman is the Death of her most best beloved
Who dies for Love of her
In torments of fierce jealousy & pangs of adoration.
The Lovers night bears on my song
And the nine Spheres rejoice beneath my powerful controll

They sing unceasing to the notes of my immortal hand
The solemn silent moon
Reverberates the living harmony upon my limbs
The birds & beasts rejoice & play
And every one seeks for his mate to prove his inmost joy

Furious & terrible they sport & rend the nether deeps
The deep lifts up his rugged head
And lost in infinite hum[m]ing wings vanishes with a cry
The fading cry is ever dying
The living voice is ever living in its inmost joy

Arise you little glancing wings & sing your infant joy
Arise & drink your bliss
For every thing that lives is holy for the source of life
Descends to be a weeping babe"