BODY & SOUL

Blake Archive

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 14, Copy D

Original in Library of Congress

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.
   If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear  to man as it is: infinite.
   For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks of his cavern.
Plate 15
                            A Memorable Fancy
   I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which
knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
   In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the
rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were
hollowing the  cave, 
   In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the 
cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious
stones.
   In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of
air, 
he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were
numbers  of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense
cliffs.
   In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around
&  melting the metals into living fluids.
   In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals 
into the expanse.
   There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth
chamber,  and took the forms of books & were arranged in
libraries.     

Plate 16
   The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence
and  now seem to live in it in chains; are in truth. the causes
of its life & the sources of all activity, but the chains are,
the cunning of weak  and tame minds. which have power to resist
energy. according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong
in cunning.
   Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific. the other, the
Devouring:  to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in
his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence
and fancies that the whole.
   But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the
Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights.
   Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God
only   Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.
   These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should
be enemies; whoever tries [PL 17] to reconcile them seeks to
destroy existence.   
   Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.
   Note.  Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate
them, as in  the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not
to send Peace  but a Sword.
   Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of
the  Antediluvians who are our Energies."

Given to man are two means or doors of perception; his physical senses and his spiritual senses. The doors though which his body perceives are eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch. Through intuition, imagination, intimation, and revelation the spirit receives and disseminates spiritual truth. Since physical sensation is of the body it dies with bodily death. The spiritual senses, like the Soul, are eternal and continue to operate in the Eternal World. Blake, like the Apostle Paul, recognized the Spiritual Body.
We live in both worlds, the physical and Eternal, although through our senses we may become more accustomed to the physical world of time and space. Nevertheless our Spiritual Senses are accessible to our bodies as well as our Spirits. Blake could say that "notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged", because the body and soul are interconnected serving one another and being served by the other. The Apostle Paul and William Blake agree that at death the Physical Body is left behind in the physical world, being replaced by a spiritual body as the spirit leaves time for Eternity. 
First Corinthians 2
[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.
[15] But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
[16] For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
First Corinthians 15
[41] There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory 
of  the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
[42] So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in 
incorruption:
[43] It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is 
raised in power:
[44] It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body,
 and there is a spiritual body.

Songs of Innocense and of Experience, Plate 51, (E 30)
To Tirzah
"Thou Mother of my Mortal part.
With cruelty didst mould my Heart. 
And with false self-decieving tears,
Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes & Ears.
Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay
And me to Mortal Life betray:
The Death of Jesus set me free, 
Then what have I to do with thee?"

[text on illustration: It is Raised a Spiritual Body]
Four Zoas, Page 104 (Second Section), (E 378)
"Los said to Enitbarmon Pitying I saw
Pitying the Lamb of God Descended thro Jerusalems gates
To put off Mystery time after time & as a Man
Is born on Earth so was he born of Fair Jerusalem
In mysterys woven mantle & in the Robes of Luvah 

He stood in fair Jerusalem to awake up into Eden
The fallen Man but first to Give his vegetated body    
To be cut off & separated that the Spiritual body may be Reveald"
Annotations to Berkeley's Siris, (E 663)
"They [Plato and Aristotle] so considerd God as abstracted or distinct from the
Imaginative World but Jesus as also Abraham & David considerd God
as a Man in the Spiritual or Imaginative Vision
     Jesus considerd Imagination to be the Real Man & says I will
not leave you Orphanned and I will manifest myself to you   he
says also the Spiritual Body or Angel as little Children always
behold the Face of the Heavenly Father  
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39)
"For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to 
leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole 
creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas
it now  appears finite & corrupt.
   This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
   But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his
soul, is to  be expunged;" 

LIVING IN LAMBETH

New York Public Library

Milton

Plate 36

 In 1791, after the death of his mother, Blake settled in Lambeth away from the neighborhood associated with his family. Although Lambeth which is on the south side of the Thames is now a part of London, in Blake's day it was in the county of Surry. William and Catherine lived in a comfortable row house on Hercules Road. Part of the furnishings was the printing press which Blake had acquired when he and Parker operated a printing business on Broad Street. Blake had already formulated the idea of combining words and pictures on pages of books over which he would have complete control. The prototypical examples of this process were There is No Natural Religion, and All Religions are One, which were produced in 1788.   

Two years after moving to Lambeth Blake had completed the following books:

For Children, The Gates of Paradise, 
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Visions of the Daughters of Albion,
America: A Prophecy

In the following years at Lambeth he completed:
Songs of Innocence and of Experience,
The First Book of Urizen
Europe: a Prophecy
The Song of Los
The Book of Ahania
The Book of Los 

So the nine years in Lambeth were the time William and Catherine perfected the technique of creating illuminated books from scratch. She learned from him as he applied all his years as an art student and as an apprenticed engraver, to an enterprise which gave expression to imagination. The books were the vehicle for the poetry which welled up from William's brain as he contemplated existence. 

Milton and Jerusalem were the culmination of the process for which Lambeth was the seedbed.

Milton, Plate 25 [27], (E 121)

"Lambeth mourns calling Jerusalem. she weeps & looks abroad
For the Lords coming, that Jerusalem may overspread all Nations  
Crave not for the mortal & perishing delights, but leave them
To the weak, and pity the weak as your infant care; Break not
Forth in your wrath lest you also are vegetated by Tirzah
Wait till the Judgement is past, till the Creation is consumed
And then rush forward with me into the glorious spiritual    
Vegetation; the Supper of the Lamb & his Bride; and the
Awaking of Albion our friend and ancient companion.
So Los spoke."

Milton, Plate 36 [40], (E 137)

"For when Los joind with me he took me in his firy whirlwind
My Vegetated portion was hurried from Lambeths shades
He set me down in Felphams Vale & prepard a beautiful
Cottage for me that in three years I might write all these Visions
To display Natures cruel holiness: the deceits of Natural Religion."   

Jerusalem, Plate 12, (E 155)

"And they builded Golgonooza: terrible eternal labour!
What are those golden builders doing? where was the burying-place
Of soft Ethinthus? near Tyburns fatal Tree? is that
Mild Zions hills most ancient promontory; near mournful
Ever weeping Paddington? is that Calvary and Golgotha?
Becoming a building of pity and compassion? Lo!
The stones are pity, and the bricks, well wrought affections:    
Enameld with love & kindness, & the tiles engraven gold
Labour of merciful hands: the beams & rafters are forgiveness:
The mortar & cement of the work, tears of honesty: the nails,
And the screws & iron braces, are well wrought blandishments,
And well contrived words, firm fixing, never forgotten,         
Always comforting the remembrance: the floors, humility,
The cielings, devotion: the hearths, thanksgiving:
Prepare the furniture O Lambeth in thy pitying looms!
The curtains, woven tears & sighs, wrought into lovely forms
For comfort. there the secret furniture of Jerusalems chamber    
Is wrought: Lambeth! the Bride the Lambs Wife loveth thee:
Thou art one with her & knowest not of self in thy supreme joy."

Jerusalem, Plate 37[41], (E 183)

"Where mild Jerusalem sought to repose in death & be no more.   
She fled to Lambeths mild Vale and hid herself beneath
The Surrey Hills where Rephaim terminates: her Sons are siez'd
For victims of sacrifice; but Jerusalem cannot be found! Hid
By the Daughters of Beulah: gently snatch'd away: and hid in Beulah

There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find     
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it: tis translucent & has many Angles
But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within
Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven
But should the Watch Fiends find it, they would call it Sin"

Jerusalem, Plate 84, (E 243)
"Highgates heights & Hampsteads, to Poplar Hackney & Bow:
To Islington & Paddington & the Brook of Albions River
We builded Jerusalem as a City & a Temple; from Lambeth
We began our Foundations; lovely Lambeth! O lovely Hills
Of Camberwell, we shall behold you no more in glory & pride    
For Jerusalem lies in ruins & the Furnaces of Los are builded there"    
  

Read this post for a detailed description of the process of creating Songs of Innocence and of Experience as outlined in Michael Phillip's book William Blake: The Creation of the Songs From Manuscript to Illuminated Printing.

TRUE MARRIAGE

First posted Sept 2019  

From Private Collection

Sketch of Catherine

True marriage is a mystical bond. It depends upon two people having the desire to achieve a meeting of their minds. Unless each partner is capable of appreciating the other's differences as benefits to the union, there will be strife and dissension. William and Catherine Blake did not marry because they recognized only their similarities, but because they valued the qualities in the other which were absent in themselves. William needed the stability of Catherine, while she needed the stimulation of his active mind. There were things each gave up to accommodate the other. Any hope she may have had for a conventional life she relinquished; something of his firey, contentious nature he subdued. They each valued the condition of marriage more than the need to realize his/her own individual desires.   

Catherine was not educated; in fact she signed her marriage certificate with an X. But William did not value formal education since he never sat at the foot of a schoolmaster himself. Catherine, the daughter of a green grocer, married at twenty years of age. She was prepared for a simple life of working with her husband who taught her the skills she needed in order to assist his career. Her unique contribution over the years was a calmness of spirit upon which William could rely when his fierce need to create overstimulated his mind. 

In The Stranger from Paradise, a Biography of William Blake by G.E. Bentley, Jr, there is a quote from Frederick Tatum:

"he fancied , that while she looked at him, as he worked, her sitting quite still by...[his] side, doing nothing, soothed his tempestuous mind & he has many a time when a strong desire presented itself to overcome any difficulty in the Plates or Drawings, ... in the middle of the night risen & requested her to get up with him & sit by his side, in which she cheerfully acquiesced". Page 70

Gates of Paradise, For the Sexes, (E 268)
16 Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb
     Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb
     Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
     And weeping over the Web of Life

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 122, (E 391)

"The winter thou shalt plow & lay thy stores into thy barns       
Expecting to recieve Ahania in the spring with joy
Immortal thou. Regenerate She & all the lovely Sex
From her shall learn obedience & prepare for a wintry grave
That spring may see them rise in tenfold joy & sweet delight
Thus shall the male & female live the life of Eternity           
Because the Lamb of God Creates himself a bride & wife
That we his Children evermore may live in Jerusalem
Which now descendeth out of heaven a City yet a Woman
Mother of myriads redeemd & born in her spiritual palaces
By a New Spiritual birth Regenerated from Death                  

Urizen Said. I have Erred & my Error remains with me"

Songs and Ballads, Blake's notebook, (E 481)
"I have Mental Joy & Mental Health
And Mental Friends & Mental wealth    
Ive a Wife I love & that loves me
Ive all But Riches Bodily"

Letters, (E 709)
"To William Hayley Esqre at Miss Pooles, Lavant
near Chichester, Sussex
Hercules Buildings Lambeth Sept 16. 1800

Leader of My Angels
     My Dear & too careful & over joyous Woman has Exhausted her
strength to such a degree with expectation & gladness added to
labour in our removal that I fear it will be Thursday before we
can get away from this---- City   I shall not be able to avail
myself of the assistance of Brunos fairies.  But I invoke the
Good Genii that Surround Miss Pooles Villa to shine upon my
journey thro the Petworth road which by your fortunate advice I
mean to take but whether I come on Wednesday or Thursday That Day
shall be marked on my calendar with a Star of the first magnitude
     Eartham will be my first temple & altar My wife is like a
flame of many colours of precious jewels whenever she hears it
named Excuse my haste & recieve my hearty Love & Respect
I am Dear Sir
Your Sincere
WILLIAM BLAKE

My fingers Emit sparks of fire with Expectation of my future
labours"
.

INNER REALITY

First posted Dec 2019 

Library of Congress

Marriage of Heaven & Hell

Plate 10

As a mental exercise Blake tries to get his reader to look at his world in a different way. He asks us to look at 'reality' as something which is a product of our own thinking rather than as objective facts which determine our interpretations and our actions. If you are an observer of other people you probably realize that your own mind and the minds of others are not congruent. Take that observation a step further and acknowledge that individuals either see through the lens of generally accepted conventions, or they use their own mental abilities to process the input they receive from an exterior world through their senses. If such is the case, the mind itself creates their 'reality' which does not arrive pre-processed as the events of history or the sights and sounds from outside of the body.

On Page 72, of her biography, William Blake, Kathleen Raine tells us that Blake pushes us to look deeper than surface ills to find ways to make changes to outer circumstances:       

"For Blake, outward events and circumstances were the expressions of states of mind, ideologies, mentalities, and not, as for the determanist-materialist ideologies of the modern world, their causes. Blake's 'dark Satanic Mills', so often invoked in the name of social reform, prove, when we read Milton (the poem in which these mills are most fully described) to be the mechanistic 'laws' of Bacon, Newton and Locke, of which industrial landscapes are a reflection and expression. Man has made his machines in the image of his ideology. So, always, Blake tries to discover the source of social and private ills within man. Only a change of the heart and mind of the nation can create a new society and new cities less hideous than those created by an atheist and mechanistic rationalism."

---

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 543)
 "All had originally one
language, and one religion, this was the religion of Jesus, the
everlasting Gospel.  Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus.  The
reasoning historian, turner and twister of causes and
consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon and Voltaire; cannot with all
their artifice, turn or twist one fact or disarrange self evident
action and reality.  Reasons and opinions concerning acts, are not
history.  Acts themselves alone are history, and these are
neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire,
Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus.  Tell me the Acts, O
historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away
with your reasoning and your rubbish.  All that is not action is
not worth reading.  Tell me the What; I do not want you to
tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well
as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that
you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or
impossible.  His opinions, who does not see spiritual agency, is
not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is
improbable, must reject all History and retain doubts only."

---

Milton, Plate 26 [28], (E 123)
"And every Generated Body in its inward form,
Is a garden of delight & a building of magnificence,
Built by the Sons of Los in Bowlahoola & Allamanda
And the herbs & flowers & furniture & beds & chambers
Continually woven in the Looms of Enitharmons Daughters
In bright Cathedrons golden Dome with care & love & tears
For the various Classes of Men are all markd out determinate
In Bowlahoola; & as the Spectres choose their affinities
So they are born on Earth, & every Class is determinate
But not by Natural but by Spiritual power alone, Because
The Natural power continually seeks & tends to Destruction
Ending in Death: which would of itself be Eternal Death
And all are Class'd by Spiritual, & not by Natural power.

And every Natural Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not
A Natural: for a Natural Cause only seems, it is a Delusion      
Of Ulro: & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory."

LAMBETH MOASICS

Yale Center for British Art

Songs of Innocence

Plate 2

 

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

 Plate 8

In 2007 a project was begun to display the art work of William Blake in the neighborhood of Lambeth where Blake and his wife formerly lived and worked. During the time that the Blakes lived in the Hercules Building in Lambeth they self published nine Illuminated Books displaying William's poetic writing together with his illustrations. In honor of Blake's acomplisments a group of artists and volunteers concieved of the idea of creating mosaics of Blake's pictures to display on streets and on walls of buildings in his old neighborhood. The medium of mosaic was chosen in order to show the pictures in outdoor settings. 

"The mosaics were created over the course of seven years with the help of more than 300 local volunteers. As of 2020 this free collection showcases an extensive total of 70 pieces of artwork." Interest in using mosaics in public settings grew on the south bank of the Thames including Southbank Mosaics (now Morley College London) and other venues. The London School of Moasic took up the work of training artists and producing art to be displayed. As of August 2025 the school had disbanded but left a legacy of organizations and trained artists to continue its work. The evidence of their influence is evident in a wide variety of moasic instalations in Lambeth and in London proper. William Blake's impact continues.