Monday, May 19, 2014

Some of Blake's Daughters



In the Four Zoas Blake used two kinds of daughters
      1. Daughters of Beulah (Inspiration) are devoted to the well-being of man. 
They guard the body of Albion in his mortal sleep on the Rock of Ages.       
          It has many other names, as sons of Eden, the Divine Family...
    "Then those in Great Eternity met in the Council of God
    As one Man for contracting their Exalted Senses
    They behold Multitude or Expanding they behold as one
    As One Man all the Universal family & that one Man
    They call Jesus the Christ & they in him & he in them
    Live in Perfect harmony in Eden the land of life
    Consulting as One Man above the Mountain of Snowdon Sublime
    For messengers from Beulah come in tears & darkning clouds
    Saying Shiloh is in ruins our brother is sick Albion He
    whom thou lovest is sick he wanders from his house of Eternity
    The daughters of Beulah terrified have closd the Gate of the Tongue
    Luvah & Urizen contend in war around the holy tent
                  (Four Zoas Night 1 21:1-12 311)

2. Daughters of Albion (Memory), obeying Reason weave the natural world 
of spiritual depravity.

"What is within now seen without they are raw to the hungry wind
They become Nations far remote in a little & dark Land
The Daughters of Albion girded around their garments of
     Needlework       
Stripping Jerusalems curtains from mild demons of the hills"
(The Four Zoas Night  2 Erdman - 314 -15)

Now in Milton 5. Erdman 42 99 (Erdman 99):
"Thus they sing Creating the Three Classes among Druid Rocks    
Charles calls on Milton for Atonement. Cromwell is ready
James calls for fires in Golgonooza. for heaps of smoking ruins  
In the night of prosperity and wantonness which he himself
     Created
Among the Daughters of Albion among the Rocks of the Druids
When Satan fainted beneath the arrows of Elynittria
And Mathematic Proportion was subdued by Living Proportion"

And in Jerusalem 5:26 Erdman 147) 
"Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish'd at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination        
O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!
Guide thou my hand which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of
     ages,
While I write of the building of Golgonooza, & of the terrors of
     Entuthon:
Of Hand & Hyle & Coban, of Kwantok, Peachey, Brereton, Slayd &   
     Hutton:
Of the terrible sons & daughters of Albion. and their
     Generations.

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