Life of Forgiveness

Yale Center for British Art

Edward Young's Night Thoughts

Night IV, page 12, Object 121

Larry Clayton's Blake Primer - God

iv

But the fourth feature of Jesus came into Blake's consciousness as a new experience. It came from Beyond. That is to say it was not an inward expression of Blake's psyche; it came like the Son of God who had joined the three friends in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. It wasn't something he thought of; it was something that happened to him.

It was the experience of forgiveness and self-annihilation, which are two sides of the same coin. No one forgives until he has found the grace to annihilate at least momentarily the law bound accusing spectre which is his Selfhood. And this is only possible as an act of the Imagination, which is eternal, which is Christ. Whenever you successfully annihilate your old self to the point of truly forgiving another, the eternal Christ is alive and at work in your soul. In fact it is he who does it. He is in you, and you are in him; that's eternal life.

Reduced to its barest essential that's what Jesus finally came to mean for Blake. The only unique thing about the man of Nazareth was that he taught forgiveness of one's enemies. In this sense he incarnated God. God is love, is forgiveness. "If Morality was Christianity, Socrates was the Saviour." Unlike Socrates Jesus was a man in whom God dwelt through his vision and his acts of forgiveness.

The significance of the resurrection lies in the coming to life of Forgiveness: Jesus, in you and me. In this way we defeat death.

The Everlasting Gospel, (E 874)

"Nine widely scattered entries in Blake's Notebook (in the British Library) and three sections in a separate scrap of paper (in the Rosenbach Foundation library) have long been recognized as parts of a single but unfinished (or perhaps only unedited) poem."

Textural notes for Everlasting Gospel; (E 875)

"There is not one Moral Virtue that Jesus Inculcated but Plato & Cicero did Inculcate before him what then did Christ Inculcate. Forgiveness of Sins This alone is the Gospel & this is the Life & Immortality brought to light by Jesus. Even the Covenant of Jehovah, which is This If you forgive one another your Trespasses so shall Jehovah forgive you That he himself may dwell among you but if you Avenge you Murder the Divine Image & he cannot dwell among you because you Murder him he arises Again & you deny that he is Arisen & are blind to Spirit PAGE 2 What can this Gospel of Jesus be What Life Immortality What was it that he brought to Light That Plato & Cicero did not write

The Heathen Deities wrote them all These Moral Virtues great & small What is the Accusation of Sin But Moral Virtues deadly Gin"

PAGE 3 It was when Jesus said to Me Thy Sins are all forgiven thee The Christian trumpets loud proclaim Thro all the World in Jesus name Mutual forgiveness of each Vice And oped the Gates of Paradise The Moral Virtues in Great fear Formed the Cross & Nails & Spear And the Accuser standing by Cried out Crucify Crucify Our Moral Virtues neer can be Nor Warlike pomp & Majesty For Moral Virtues all begin In the Accusations of Sin"

Auguries of Innocence, (E 495)

"God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day."

The Divine Vision represented the radiance of the spiritual realm in its ascendance over the material. In the Christian world its primary appearance, of course, is Jesus.

Blake's Search

First posted April 2019

Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts
 Page 75

This is an extract (2) from Chapter Five (GOD) of Ram Horn'd With Gold by Larry Clayton.

A Political God 

        "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (Romans 2:24)
  
         From the beginning Blake realized the close and intimate relationship between a person's image of God and his political views. The authoritarian image in some form finds favor with establishment types, authority figures and all others who perceive their welfare as dependent upon the status quo. These people feel threatened by unrest in the social levels below their own; they look to God, their primary symbol of authority, to control it. They impose this vision of God upon society, and they use their power to control and discourage alternative visions.

       Liberal types in contrast more likely entertain an image of a benevolent God, a God of mercy whose basic activity is not to control the lower classes but to lift them up, nurture the needy, provide for the poor, and protect them from the rapacious powerful.

        Blake found both types of men among the authors of the Bible; they project the two basic images of God side by side. His simplified schema of interpretation assigned to the two types the designations of priest and prophet. The priest upholds the authority of the past, the authority of tradition. The prophet sees a burning bush and hears a new word which judges the authority and tradition of the priest and invokes a new scene, new ideas, new forms, new life.

        Rather obviously Jesus belonged to the prophetic type. He had as a fundamental aim raising our consciousness of the benevolence of God. He incarnated God, and he was supremely benevolent to all but the priestly party. They suppressed him in the flesh, and in his resurrected body they have always attempted to remake him in their image. As he warned, they have used his name to control, suppress, and even exterminate large numbers of people who would not do as they were told. Blake's real mission in life, both before and after his Moment of Grace, was to rescue the world's image of God from the preemption of the priestly party.

        The conventional understanding of God is that he will get you and put you in a dark hot place forever if you don't do exactly as you are told, by his priest of course. In 1741, sixteen years before Blake's birth, a New England divine named Jonathan Edwards wrote and delivered a sermon which he named, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"; historians tell us that it scared literally thousands of people into the Christian church. A similar vision of God has haunted multitudes before and after Blake even down to the present day. Besides the superstitious fear it has aroused, this understanding of God has contributed to oceans of blood shed by well meaning Christians through the ages.

        Relating this conventional understanding to one of Blake's earliest experiences, his brief career in school yields a distinctive image of God as a Transcendental Schoolmaster. As soon as Blake reached the age of reason, he rejected such a God as radically and uniquivocally as he had rejected the flesh and blood schoolmaster . He saw such an image of God standing at the apex of a pyramid of human unhappiness, of exploitation, oppression, misery and hatred. He saw the divine right of kings and all those who derive their authority from the Crown. He saw their lackey priests extorting tithes from the people, collected by the 18th century equivalent of the IRS, and often giving little in return.

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 36, (E 325)
"It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements 
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan 
To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast 
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house 
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, & the sickness that cuts off his children 
While our olive & vine sing & laugh round our door & our children bring fruits & flowers 
Then the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten & the slave grinding at the mill 
And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison, & the soldier in the field 
When the shatterd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead 
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity 
Thus could I sing & thus rejoice, but it is not so with me!"

       He saw the emerging divine right of industrialists to work seven year old children fourteen hours a day at hard labor and reward them with a pittance. This image of God was most horrendously embodied in the judges and executioners who disposed of the child criminals. He saw the press gangs with royal authority to capture and drug anyone lacking upper class credentials; their poor victims woke up aboard ship in a state of virtual slavery, and following the brave Roman tradition they learned to fear their officers more than the enemy. Blake felt an intense mystic union with the suffering masses and even the suffering masters: he knew that a prison officer has to be just as sick as the men he guards.

       All these social programs were devised to teach poor devils to do what they were told, and behind them all stood the grim Transcendental Schoolmaster with the god sized birch rod. How could a self respecting person with any human sensitivity be other than an atheist! But Blake was never an atheist. Somehow he had to come to terms with God. If the above were a true representation of God, then he would rebel against God with his last breath. The young Blake identified with Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost: such a God is a sneaking serpent, and Blake would spend his life as the just man raging in the wilds. Schizophrenia might be the normal reaction to certain social conditions. 

         The August Schoolmaster exists to enforce good and to prohibit or punish evil. The trouble with good and evil is that in this fallen world they are always defined by the man with the biggest stick. He of course sees himself as the likeness of God, God's earthly representative. So the most oppressive tyrant, the most colossal mass murderer, the most authentic Caesar becomes the Son of Heaven. The list is long and gruesome, and Blake knew his history.

Visions of Daughters of Albion, Plate 4, (E 48)
"Then Oothoon waited silent all the day. and all the night,

Plate 5
But when the morn arose, her lamentation renewd,
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, & eccho back her sighs. 

O Urizen! Creator of men! Mistaken Demon of heaven:
Thy joys are tears! thy labour vain, to form men to thine image.
How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys  

Holy, eternal, infinite! and each joy is a Love.  

Does not the great mouth laugh at a gift? & the narrow eyelids mock
At the labour that is above payment, and wilt thou take the ape
For thy councellor? or the dog, for a schoolmaster to thy children?
Does he who contemns poverty, and he who turns with abhorrence  
From usury: feel the same passion or are they moved alike?
How can the giver of gifts experience the delights of the merchant?
How the industrious citizen the pains of the husbandman.
How different far the fat fed hireling with hollow drum;
Who buys whole corn fields into wastes, and sings upon the heath:
How different their eye and ear! how different the world to them!"

        Although he wouldn't dream of worshiping such a deity, Blake had no hesitancy about calling him God; he simply refused to call him a good God. Wide reading in Oriental, Greek, and Norse mythology had led him to an acquaintance with any number of malevolent gods. In his poetry he used these pagan images to flesh out the God of Wrath whom he found in the Old Testament. For perhaps fifteen years Blake's creative energies were largely expended in a conscious and deliberate overt rebellion against the conventional image of the Old Testament God. During those years he subjected that image to a searching and unique psychological analysis; it fills the pages of the Blake reader.
.

REASON & EMOTION

For some reason this post from July 2010 has gotten more than a thousand hits in the past.

Blake Archive

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 5

Erdman, in The Illuminated Blake
says: "Phaeton-like, down hurdle a naked man and sword and a horse with saddle cloth and broken chariot wheel...The man's spread hands are braced to hit the ground, but it is already in flames. Reason must have forgotten to let the horse do the pulling; a sword is not a bridle. But Energy must have restraint. Between them they have let the sun fall, connoting universal ruin."

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was written in 1791 when Blake was a young man; he might be called an angry young man.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 5, (E 34)
"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs
is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or
reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restraind it by degrees becomes passive
till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the
Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the com-
mand of the heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan
and his children are call'd Sin & Death
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd
Satan. For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was
cast out. but the Devils account is, that the Messiah
fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the
Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason
may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible
being no other than he, who dwells in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a
Ratio of the five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when
he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of
Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and
of the Devils party without knowing it"

Blake was continually striving to free his imagination from constraints. The internal constraints of which he was most aware (excluding the selfhood) were misguided reason and emotion. In Plate 5 of Marriage of Heaven and Hell he expressed the concern that reason would succeed in restraining the emotions to the point that the imagination was bound. Emotion or desire is the source of energy which is required for the creative process.

As a poet, Blake identified with Milton whose Paradise Lost was of consuming interest to Blake. In this Plate Blake dealt with the poet's work (his own and Milton's), Biblical characters who becomes fictional characters for both the poets, and the abstract ideas of reason and emotion.

Blake became so interested in correcting the misconceptions of his friend (his spiritual, intellectual but not corporeal friend), that he addressed the issue in his poem Milton. Since Milton died 83 years before Blake was born, this was a friendship on the level of Eternity; time was not of the essence.

The crux of Milton's error in Blake's system is stated concisely as:
"But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!"

In Blake the Father is the Divine Humanity, in whose Image man is created; the Son is the Divine Vision, God in Man, the Incarnation; and the Holy Spirit is the Divine Body, the Human Imagination, the activity of expressing the Divine.

Or other terms used by Blake:
Father = Urizen = reason
Son = Luvah = emotions
Holy Spirit = Los = intuition or imagination
Unified man = Tharmas = body

THE GRAVE 1

First posted Dec 2017 

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

John 14:2

Henry Fuseli and William Blake were both 'corporeal' friends and spiritual friends: they enjoyed each others company and shared interests, but they also related with each other through the bond of a common spiritual sensitivity. Fuseli recognized in Blake's watercolor illustrations for Blair's The Grave the implications of what he was trying to communicate of everyman's spiritual journey. To enhance the message that Blake incorporated in his illustrations, Fuseli arranged the pictures in the order appropriate to carry Blake's message.

Fuseli:
"By the arrangement here made, the regular progression
of Man, from his first descent into the Vale of
Death, to his last admission into Life eternal, is
exhibited. These Designs, detached from the
Work they embellish, form of themselves a most
interesting Poem."

I. THE DESCENT OF CHRIST INTO THE GRAVE.
II. THE DESCENT OF MAN INTO THE VALE OF DEATH.
III. DEATH'S DOOR
IV. THE STRONG AND WICKED MAN DYING.
V. THE GOOD OLD MAN DYING.
VI. THE SOUL HOVERING OVER THE BODY.
VII. THE SOUL EXPLORING THE RECESSES OF THE GRAVE.
VIII. THE COUNSELLOR, KING, WARRIOR, MOTHER, AND CHILD.
IX. THE SKELETON RE-ANIMATED.
X. THE RE-UNION OF SOUL
XI. A FAMILY MEETING IN HEAVEN.
XII. THE LAST JUDGMENT.

To Blake the Door of Death marked entry into earthly life. Christ and Man alike enter the door of death to gain experience by living in a physical, mortal body. A man takes on an identity on earth suited to the tasks assigned to him. Although the man may experience himself as a body separated from his soul this is a misapprehension. The soul remains a presence which can be accessed whenever the body is prepared to receive it. In the Vale of Death are many mansions which the man may have occasion to explore as he seeks the truth which will remain when error is annihilated. When the trumpet sounds for a man he receives the transcending vision and his body of flesh is exchanged for a spiritual body suited for Eternity. Man is not alone in the Eternal Realm but reunited with the company of the redeemed in the fellowship of love. Error is annihilated and truth reigns when the Last Judgment separates the Eternal from the transient, the Infinite from restraints of space.

Cromek, the publisher, did not follow the order suggested by Fuseli but used a completely different order in the published book:

1 Title Page - The Grave - A Poem 
2 Christ Descending
3 The Meeting of a Family in Heaven
4 The Counselor, King, Warrior, Mother and Child in the Tomb
5 Death of the Strong Wicked Man
6 The Soul Hovering Over the Body reluctantly parting with Life
7 The Death of The Good Old Man
8 The Descent of Man into the Vale of Death
9 The Day of Judgment
10 The Soul Exploring the Recesses of the Grave
11 Death's Door
12 The Reunion of the Soul & the Body

The arrangement by Cromak follows the more common understanding of Death as the end of Life when the evil man is subject to punishment and the good man is rewarded in heaven by being rejoined by his soul from whom he was alienated on earth.

British Museum

Page 1

Cromak's arrangement

Schiavonetti's Engraving  

Fuseli's arrangement

Blake watercolor

BLAKE & SHELLEY

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 40

Jerusalem, Plate 41 [46], (E 188)
"And Ely, Scribe of Los, whose pen no other hand
Dare touch! Oxford, immortal Bard! with eloquence Divine,
Divine, he wept over Albion: speaking the words of God
In mild perswasion: bringing leaves of the Tree of Life."

Jerusalem, Plate 40 [45], (E 188)

"O God descend! gather our brethren, deliver Jerusalem
But that we may omit no office of the friendly spirit
Oxford take thou these leaves of the Tree of Life: with eloquence
That thy immortal tongue inspires; present them to Albion:
Perhaps he may recieve them, offerd from thy loved hands.
So spoke, unheard by Albion, the merciful Son of Heaven
To those whose Western Gates were open, as they stood weeping
Around Albion: but Albion heard him not; obdurate! hard!
He frown'd on all his Friends, counting them enemies in his sorrow"

Blake never mentioned Shelly by name although "he must have known of the son-in-law of his friends William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft" and of Godwin's disapproval of his sixteen year old daughter's involvement with a man already married. 

It seems likely that Blake must have been troubled by the life Shelley was living as young man. Shelley married a young woman and then left her to elope with the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Until Shelley's wife died by suicide the couple were unable to marry. Shelley's wealthy father cut off his son's financial support leading him to an accumulation of debts and an unorthodox style of living. Shelley's life was short but filled with writing poetry, cultivating friendships and accumilating experience through study and travel. He lived on an emotional razor's edge. Perhaps Blake sumised that Shelley burned too much of his creative energy before reaching his inate potential. 

Since Blake showed an avid interest in reading the poetry of his contemporaries, we may assume that he read the published work of Shelley and admired his talent and many of his sentiments. Foster Damon, in A Blake Dictionary, introduced the idea that Blake was referring to Shelley when he wrote in Jerusalem of the Bard of Oxford.

Damon wrote on Page 314: "The Bard of Oxford. Oxford, the Cathedral City, is also 'an imortal bard,' whose divine eloquence fails to cure Albion. This episode is evidently a tribute to Shelley. Of all the contemporary poets, none was closer to Blake in revolutionary fervor, poetic rapture, intense visualizing, and daring thought. He denounced the tyrant God, and called himself an athiest, although only Blake surpassed him in religious feeling and insight. Shelley not only preached free love but he practiced it, yet without being a libertine. He attacked the oppressors of the poor, the coruption the government. He was an overt fighting Reprobate."

Page 71: "Ely is the cathedral citys of Cambridgeshire; its university, where the clergy are trained, is Cambridge; the greatest man produced by Cambridge was the anticlerical Milton, 'Scribe of Los, whose pen no other hand dare touch' (J 46:6).  With parallel irony, Blake (in my opinion there was no alternative) identified Oxford with the poet expelled from Oxford for his atheism, the anticlerical Shelley, 'immortal Bard; with eloquence divine he wept over Albion, speaking the words of God in mild perswasion, bringing leaves of the Tree of Life.'"

Twice Blake used the word eloquence in writing of the Bard of Oxford. He used it also in his early poem In Imitation of Spenser to intimate that with eloquence the consciousness of negative conditions can be altered: specifically that hate and envy can be dispelled.

Poetical Sketches, (E 421)

"AN IMITATION OF SPEN[S]ER
And thou, Mercurius, that with winged brow
Dost mount aloft into the yielding sky,
And thro' Heav'n's halls thy airy flight dost throw,
Entering with holy feet to where on high
Jove weighs the counsel of futurity;
Then, laden with eternal fate, dost go
Down, like a falling star, from autumn sky,
And o'er the surface of the silent deep dost fly.

If thou arrivest at the sandy shore,
Where nought but envious hissing adders dwell,
Thy golden rod, thrown on the dusty floor,
Can charm to harmony with potent spell;
Such is sweet Eloquence, that does dispel
Envy and Hate, that thirst for human gore:
And cause in sweet society to dwell
Vile savage minds that lurk in lonely cell."

CATHEDRALS

British Museum

Jerusalem 

Copy A, Frontispiece

Los entering Gothic door

From A Blake Dictionary by S. Foster Damon

Blake choose the cities which he used to represent Cathedral Cities because they had associations which could carry symbolic meaning. They could be used to represent attempts to embody spiritual characteristics which could protect Albion from making destructive decisions.

The first mentioned, Selsey, no longer existed but had been destroyed by flooding caused by the encroaching ocean. Her neighbor Chichester became the seat of her bishop, and the location of the courtroom where Blake himself was acquitted of treason in 1804. Damon associated the next mentioned, Winchester, with William Hayley who was instramental in Blake's move to Felpham. Richard Warner of Bath was cited by Damon for his courageous anti-war sermon. Damon continued through Blake's list of churchs mentioning prominent men who were associated with them including John Milton for Ely of Cambridgeshire. Milton, a graduate of Cambridge, fit the title of "Scribe of Los, whose pen no other hand Dare touch!"

Jerusalem, Plate 36 [40],(E 182)

"And these the Twenty-four in whom the Divine Family    

Appear'd; and they were One in Him. A Human Vision!
Human Divine, Jesus the Saviour, blessed for ever and ever.

Selsey, true friend! who afterwards submitted to be devourd
By the waves of Despair, whose Emanation rose above
The flood, and was nam'd Chichester, lovely mild & gentle! Lo!   
Her lambs bleat to the sea-fowls cry, lamenting still for Albion.

Submitting to be call'd the son of Los the terrible vision:
Winchester stood devoting himself for Albion: his tents
Outspread with abundant riches, and his Emanations
Submitting to be call'd Enitharmons daughters, and be born     
In vegetable mould: created by the Hammer and Loom
In Bowlahoola & Allamanda where the Dead wail night & day.

(I call them by their English names: English, the rough basement.
Los built the stubborn structure of the Language, acting against
Albions melancholy, who must else have been a Dumb despair.)   

Gloucester and Exeter and Salisbury and Bristol: and benevolent"

Jerusalem, Plate 41 [46], (E 188)

"Bath, mild Physician of Eternity, mysterious power
Whose springs are unsearchable & knowledg infinite.
Hereford, ancient Guardian of Wales, whose hands
Builded the mountain palaces of Eden, stupendous works!
Lincoln, Durham & Carlisle, Councellors of Los.            
And Ely, Scribe of Los, whose pen no other hand
Dare touch! Oxford, immortal Bard! with eloquence
Divine, he wept over Albion: speaking the words of God
In mild perswasion: bringing leaves of the Tree of Life.

Thou art in Error Albion, the Land of Ulro:               
One Error not remov'd, will destroy a human Soul
Repose in Beulahs night, till the Error is remov'd
Reason not on both sides. Repose upon our bosoms
Till the Plow of Jehovah, and the Harrow of Shaddai
Have passed over the Dead, to awake the Dead to Judgment.     
But Albion turn'd away refusing comfort.

Oxford trembled while he spoke, then fainted in the arms
Of Norwich, Peterboro, Rochester, Chester awful, Worcester,
Litchfield, Saint Davids, Landaff, Asaph, Bangor, Sodor,
Bowing their heads devoted: and the Furnaces of Los         
Began to rage, thundering loud the storms began to roar
Upon the Furnaces, and loud the Furnaces rebellow beneath

And these the Four in whom the twenty-four appear'd four-fold:
Verulam, London, York, Edinburgh, mourning one towards another"
Milton, Plate 36 [40], (E 137)
"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 34 [38], (E 180)
"Thus speaking; the Divine Family follow Albion:
I see them in the Vision of God upon my pleasant valleys.

I behold London; a Human awful wonder of God!
He says: Return, Albion, return! I give myself for thee:         
My Streets are my, Ideas of Imagination.
Awake Albion, awake! and let us awake up together.
My Houses are Thoughts: my Inhabitants; Affections,
The children of my thoughts, walking within my blood-vessels,
Shut from my nervous form which sleeps upon the verge of Beulah  
In dreams of darkness, while my vegetating blood in veiny pipes,
Rolls dreadful thro' the Furnaces of Los, and the Mills of Satan.
For Albions sake, and for Jerusalem thy Emanation
I give myself, and these my brethren give themselves for Albion.

So spoke London, immortal Guardian! I heard in Lambeths shades:  
In Felpham I heard and saw the Visions of Albion
I write in South Molton Street, what I both see and hear
In regions of Humanity, in Londons opening streets.

I see thee awful Parent Land in light, behold I see!
Verulam! Canterbury! venerable parent of men,                    
Generous immortal Guardian golden clad! for Cities
Are Men, fathers of multitudes, and Rivers & Mount[a]ins
Are also Men; every thing is Human, mighty! sublime!
In every bosom a Universe expands, as wings
Let down at will around, and call'd the Universal Tent.          
York, crown'd with loving kindness. Edinburgh, cloth'd
With fortitude as with a garment of immortal texture
Woven in looms of Eden, in spiritual deaths of mighty men" 
Jerusalem, Plate 96, (E 256)
"Do I sleep amidst danger to Friends! O my Cities & Counties
Do you sleep! rouze up! rouze up. Eternal Death is abroad

So Albion spoke & threw himself into the Furnaces of affliction 
All was a Vision, all a Dream: the Furnaces became
Fountains of Living Waters Howing from the Humanity Divine
And all the Cities of Albion rose from their Slumbers, and All
The Sons & Daughters of Albion on soft clouds Waking from Sleep
Soon all around remote the Heavens burnt with flaming fires    
And Urizen & Luvah & Tharmas & Urthona arose into
Albions Bosom: Then Albion stood before Jesus in the Clouds
Of Heaven Fourfold among the Visions of God in Eternity
Plate 97
Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely Emanation of Albion
Awake and overspread all Nations as in Ancient Time
For lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day
Appears upon our Hills: Awake Jerusalem, and come away

So spake the Vision of Albion & in him so spake in my hearing   
The Universal Father. Then Albion stretchd his hand into Infinitude."   
  
Blake's twenty-eight Cathedral Cities

1 Chichester - "lovely mild & gentle"

2 Winchester - "devoting himself for Albion"

3 Gloucester

4 Exeter

5 Salisbury

6 Bristol

7 Bath - "best and worst in Heaven and Hell"

8 Hereford, "ancient Guardian of Wales"

9 Lincoln

10 Durham

11 Carlisle

12 Ely - "Scribe of Los, whose pen no other hand Dare touch!"

13 Oxford - "trembled while he spoke, then fainted in the arms"

14 Norwich

15 Peterboro

16 Rochester

17 Chester

18 Worcester

19 Litchfield 

20 Saint Davids 

21 Landaff

22 Asaph

23 Bangor 

24 Sodor, "Bowing their heads devoted"

25 Edinburgh 

26 Verulam (Canterbury) 

27 London 

28 York 

    Church of England cathedrals

English Cathedrals

FRIENDS OF ALBION

A Blake Dictionary

S Foster Damon

Cathedral Cities

Society of Antiquaries

William Blake’s drawings of Westminster Abbey

                            Countess Aveline tomb

In Jerusalem Blake intoduced the 28 catherdal cities when Albion had turned away from the Divine Vision. Albion was the symbol Blake used to represent Britain, his beloved homeland which was enduring multiple threats including war and famine. Within Britain were her Cathedral Cities, remnats of her past attempts at providing spiritual sustenance to sustain her when threats arose. Each City was associated with individuals and events from current or past history.

Jerusalem, Plate 35 [39], (E 181)

"Los was the friend of Albion who most lov'd him. In Cambridgeshire
His eternal station, he is the twenty-eighth, & is four-fold.
Seeing Albion had turn'd his back against the Divine Vision,
Los said to Albion, Whither fleest thou? Albion reply'd.         

I die! I go to Eternal Death! the shades of death
Hover within me & beneath, and spreading themselves outside
Like rocky clouds, build me a gloomy monument of woe:
Will none accompany me in my death? or be a Ransom for me
In that dark Valley? I have girded round my cloke, and on my feet

Bound these black shoes of death, & on my hands, death's iron gloves:
God hath forsaken me, & my friends are become a burden
A weariness to me, & the human footstep is a terror to me.

Los answerd, troubled: and his soul was rent in twain:
Must the Wise die for an Atonement? does Mercy endure Atonement? 
No! It is Moral Severity, & destroys Mercy in its Victim.
So speaking, not yet infected with the Error & Illusion,

Jerusalem, Plate 36 [40], (E 181)
"Los shudder'd at beholding Albion, for his disease
Arose upon him pale and ghastly: and he call'd around
The Friends of Albion: trembling at the sight of Eternal Death
The four appear'd with their Emanations in fiery
Chariots: black their fires roll beholding Albions house of Eternity               
Damp couch the flames beneath and silent, sick, stand shuddering
Before the Porch of sixteen pillars: weeping every one
Descended and fell down upon their knees round Albions knees,
Swearing the Oath of God! with awful voice of thunders round
Upon the hills & valleys, and the cloudy Oath roll'd far and wide

Albion is sick! said every Valley, every mournful Hill 

And every River: our brother Albion is sick to death." 

Jerusalem, Plate 44 [30], (E 193)

"And Los prayed and said. O Divine Saviour arise
Upon the Mountains of Albion as in ancient time. Behold!
The Cities of Albion seek thy face, London groans in pain
From Hill to Hill & the Thames laments along the Valleys
The little Villages of Middlesex & Surrey hunger & thirst        
The Twenty-eight Cities of Albion stretch their hands to thee:
Because of the Opressors of Albion in every City & Village:
They mock at the Labourers limbs!"
From Larry's post Church 8:
"Bear in mind that 27 is a super sinister number; Frye described it as "the cube of thee, the supreme aggravation of three". A happier constellation of 28 (a composite of the complete numbers four and seven) occurs in Jerusalem where England's cathedral cities are called the Friends of Albion. With this image Blake  recognized that in spite of all its sins the church had exercised a beneficent influence upon the course of history. Blake habitually picked one of these cities to be represented an important historical personage.

       For example Ely, the cathedral city of Cambridgeshire, stands for Milton, the greatest man produced by Cambridge. Verulam, an ancient name for Canterbury, represents Francis Bacon , one of Blake's chief devils. Professor Erdman informed us that Bath represents Rev. Richard Warner, a courageous minister who preached against war in 1804, when to do such a thing bordered on sedition. Blake's admiration for Warner led to the prominence which he gave Bath in the second chapter of Jerusalem."

GOTHIC

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 84

Blake uses the word Gothic to refer to more than a period of time or a particular style, just as he uses Art to refer to more than a particular type of expression. By associating Gothic with 'Living Form', 'eternal Esistence', 'true Art' and with 'Any Age' he expand the meaning of Gothic beyond the traditional meaning. He relates Gothic to Urthona and to Imagination.  

Blake had intense exposure to Gothic architecture in Westminster Abbey when he was apprenticed to James Basire who specialized in engravings for the Society of Antiquaries. Blake was assigned the task of making drawings of Gothic monuments. As noted in Prophet against Empire "Tapestries were removed in Westminster Abbey so that Blake could copy the hidden Gothic portraits of King Sebert and Henry III." Blake was present to make sketches when the tomb of Edward I was opened to examine the body. Blake's drawings were used by his master in making engravings for publication. 

But to Blake Gothic became a symbol for what he aimed for in communicating his philosophy of Art. Gothic was was to him not only living but life-giving. Through Gothic he was able to:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour" (Auguries of Innocence, E 490)

On Virgil, (E 270)

 "Mathematic Form is Eternal in the Reasoning Memory.  Living
Form is Eternal Existence.

 Grecian is Mathematic Form
  Gothic is Living Form"

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 544)

"Poetry as it exists
now on earth, in the various remains of ancient authors, Music as
it exists in old tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it
exists in the remains of Antiquity and in the works of more
modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be surpassed; it is
perfect and eternal.  Milton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo, Rafael,
the finest specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Painting, and
Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo and Egyptian, are the
extent of the human mind.  The human mind cannot go beyond the
gift of God, the Holy Ghost.  To suppose that Art can go beyond
the finest specimens of Art that are now in the world, is not
knowing what Art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the
spirit."

Vision of the Last Judgment, (E 559)

"Multitudes are seen ascending from the Green
fields of the blessed in which a Gothic Church is representative
of true Art Calld Gothic in All Ages"

Annotations to Reynolds,(E 649)

 "What does this mean "Would have been" one of the first
Painters of his Age" Albert Durer Is! Not would
have been! Besides. let them look at Gothic Figures & Gothic
Buildings, & not talk of Dark Ages or of Any Age! Ages are All
Equal.  But Genius is Always Above The Age" 

Inscriptions and Notes, (E 671)

William Blake: engraving (revised and inscribed ca 1809-10)

"JOSEPH of Arimathea among The Rocks of Albion Engraved by W Blake 1773 from an old Italian Drawing This is One of the Gothic Artists who Built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages Wandering about in sheep skins & goat skins of whom the World was not worthy such were the Christians in all Ages Michael Angelo Pinxit" William Blake: [on a proof of the early state of the plate] "Engraved when I was a beginner at Basires from a drawing by
Salviati after Michael Angelo"

---

Jerusalem, Plate 37

Blake's Pieta

Christ and Albion

Michelangelo's Pieta

CATHEDRAL CITIES

First posted Jan 2015

Yale Center for British Art
Jerusalem, 

Copy E, Plate 54  

The alternative to Eternal Life surrounding Jesus enthroned in the heavens is Eternal Death which man would experience if the body of Albion were allowed to fall down into the deeps. In the post The Divine Humanity we saw that the whole process of the life of mankind could be incorporated in a single universal body. We can see this ultimate fall into the deeps as a mental breakdown of an individual when the integration into a unified mind has been lost. The breakdown in society following the destruction of war or natural disaster would be equally devastating. 

We can postulate in our own times the consequences if the whole structure which holds together the functioning of our civilization were destroyed by a cataclysmic event. Blake postulated spiritual and mental conditions which would result if what holds together the mind, the body or the society were to lose their integrity. To Blake it is the Divine Family which as an expression of God's mercy prevents Albion from slipping away. We met the four and twenty elders in considering the images of the Last Judgment; we meet them now as those in whom the Divine Family appeared. 

We learn that Blake associated the four and twenty elders with the twenty-four cathedral cities of Britain. Blake was critical of the established religion of his day but used the cathedral cities as a means of redemption. 

A church, like a city, is not a physical structure or an organization but is the people who comprise it. Blake could condemn the organization while he recognized the value of the human components whose lives were expressed collectively through the organization. The cathedral cities were a valid symbol for the spiritual protection provided by God's mercy because individuals sought through the church to listen to God's word.

Jerusalem, Plate 36 [40]
"O! how the torments of Eternal Death, waited on Man:     
And the loud-rending bars of the Creation ready to burst:
That the wide world might fly from its hinges, & the immortal mansion
Of Man, for ever be possess'd by monsters of the deeps:
And Man himself become a Fiend, wrap'd in an endless curse,
Consuming and consum'd for-ever in flames of Moral Justice.      

For had the Body of Albion fall'n down, and from its dreadful ruins
Let loose the enormous Spectre on the darkness of the deep,
At enmity with the Merciful & fill'd with devouring fire,
A nether-world must have recievd the foul enormous spirit,
Under pretence of Moral Virtue, fill'd with Revenge and Law.     
There to eternity chain'd down, and issuing in red flames
And curses, with his mighty arms brandish'd against the heavens
Breathing cruelty blood & vengeance, gnashing his teeth with pain
Torn with black storms, & ceaseless torrents of his own consuming fire:
Within his breast his mighty Sons chaind down & fill'd with cursings:     
And his dark Eon, that once fair crystal form divinely clear:
Within his ribs producing serpents whose souls are flames of fire.
But, glory to the Merciful-One, for he is of tender mercies!
And the Divine Family wept over him as One Man.

And these the Twenty-four in whom the Divine Family    
Appear'd; and they were One in Him. A Human Vision!
Human Divine, Jesus the Saviour, blessed for ever and ever."

Jerusalem, Plate 71, (E 225)
"And these the Names of Albions Twelve Sons, & of his Twelve Daughters
With their Districts. Hand dwelt in Selsey & had Sussex & Surrey
And Kent & Middlesex: all their Rivers & their Hills, of flocks & herds:
Their Villages Towns Cities Sea-Ports Temples sublime Cathedrals;
All were his Friends & their Sons & Daughters intermarry in Beulah
For all are Men in Eternity. Rivers Mountains Cities Villages,
All are Human & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk
In Heavens & Earths; as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven
And Earth, & all you behold, tho it appears Without it is Within
In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow."

Milton, Plate 42 [49], (E 143) 
"And I beheld the Twenty-four Cities of Albion
Arise upon their Thrones to Judge the Nations of the Earth
And the Immortal Four in whom the Twenty-four appear Four-fold
Arose around Albions body: Jesus wept & walked forth
From Felphams Vale clothed in Clouds of blood, to enter into     
Albions Bosom, the bosom of death & the Four surrounded him
In the Column of Fire in Felphams Vale; then to their mouths the Four
Applied their Four Trumpets & them sounded to the Four winds"

S Foster Damon's book A Blake Dictionary has a long section on the Cathedral Cities including a map with their locations. On Page 72 he writes:

"Despite Blake's continuous attacks on established churches, he recognized from the beginning that 'the Gothic Artists who Built the Cathedrals' were true Christians; and that, in spite of all errors and corruptions, the central idea of the churches was their fundamental and eternal reality; and that this reality, in crucial times, was bound to manifest."

Blake's Church II

 First posted June 2011

British Museum

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Copy A, Plate 39

While the Church Fathers congregated in Rome, Gnosticism had its center in Alexandria, a marketplace of competing religious and philosophical ideas. There in the third century a man named Plotinus gave birth to Neo-platonism, an amalgam of the best of Greek thought with the ethical teachings of Christ. Extremely eclectic, drawing on currents of thought from Rome to India, Plotinus's teachings became the religion of some of the later Roman Emperors. Blake read widely and drew on Gnosticism and Neo-platonism.

During the fourth century the religion of Neo-platonism disappeared as a rival of the Church. However it deeply influenced the shape of Christian theology, most notably through the mind of St. Augustine. Augustine in his spiritual journey passed through a Neo-platonic stage, which left its mark upon his Christian life and writing. Augustine occupies an anomalous position in the history of the Church: he is both a Church Father of impeccable reputation and the spiritual forebear of many theologians whose Neo-platonic bent put them on the fringe of orthodoxy:

Erigena, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Meister Eckhart are a few of these Neo-platonic Christians. Some of these thinkers succeeded in remaining within the umbrella of the authorized tradition; some were partially or totally cast out. Among them they preserved to theology a breadth and a poetic dimension that burst open the priestly cocoon with the 15th Century Renaissance and the 16th Century Reformation.

Blake had definite gnostic leanings:

"To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. He believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they might exhibit outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake."

Blake expressed many times that the church was a spiritual obstacle.

His "The Little Vagabond" portrays the "loveless morality of the churches" (Raine 148). The church, the clerics of the church and the church ceremony altogether is cold and distant. "Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold" ("The Little Vagabond ln i) is the opening line of the poem. It is obvious that the young child is distraught with his church because it is not quenching his spiritual thirst. However, he offers a remedy:

"But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,

And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,

We'd sing and we'd pray all the live-long day,

Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray."

"These lines plainly, but clearly, express Blake's religious stance. The church is a cold place that has kept a distance between its members and itself. Therefore, the meanings of the gospels have been delivered in a way that has no meaning or effectiveness. The word of God has been marginalized when it should in fact be communicated in a kind loving manner. The preacher is God and the members of the church are God as well. Instead, the preacher is a merciless intruder that is penetrating the word into the congregation's heads not alloying thought, but perpetuating cold disciplined faith. This poem is used by Blake as a way to communicate his belief that the church was suffering from cold militant preaching rather than warm intoxicating love."

(This from Analyzing William Blake's Poetry.)