Thursday, June 22, 2017

Fall & Return

Wikipedia Commons 
Book of Urizen
Plate 22

This short passage is from Larry's book Ram Horn'd with Gold: The Spiritual Autobiography of William Blake.


Eden is the Eternal Realm before Creation, and Blake's garden is called Beulah, the region all around Eden. Beulah is a place for the Eternals to rest, but a dangerous place (like the Garden in Genesis). One may turn away from Eternity and choose to evaluate life in terms of good and evil (eat the apple, so to speak). The problem with good and evil is that we take as our own what belongs to God, and thereafter what we may acquire is good, and what we lack is evil. In Blake's language we have chosen the Selfhood, to focus on I, me, and mine. Or in Ovid's language like Narcissus we have fallen in love with ourselves and chosen the watery materiality over the inward spiritual truth.  In love with the world of things and thrills we have become ardent materialists.  We fall into Ulro. As was said before, the Fall began when Luvah seized Urizen's chariot of the sun in effect blotting out the sun of Urizen.  For a while (feminine) feeling ruled the world.  Eventually Los, the imagination, became Urizen's chief adversary. So:

       But a strange thing happened; the Spectre of Urthona came to a different plan. Los, empowered by love, found Urizen in his hands.  So ends Night vii:

        (Four Zoas, Night 7a 59-66   Erdman 371)


       In 4Z Blake tried over and over to give an account of the Fall; the one shown here is only one of many.

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