Plate 75

PLATE 75   

And Rahab Babylon the Great hath destroyed Jerusalem
Bath stood upon the Severn with Merlin & Bladud & Arthur
The Cup of Rahab in his hand: her Poisons Twenty-sevenfold

And all her Twenty-seven Heavens now hid & now reveal'd
Appear in strong delusive light of Time & Space drawn out
In shadowy pomp by the Eternal Prophet created evermore

For Los in Six Thousand Years walks up & down continually
That not one Moment of Time be lost & every revolution
Of Space he makes permanent in Bowlahoola & Cathedron.

And these the names of the Twenty-seven Heavens & their Churches
Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch,
Methuselah, Lamech; these are the Giants mighty, Hermaphroditic
Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Cainan the Second, Salah, Heber,
Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah: these are the Female Males:
A Male within a Female hid as in an Ark & Curtains.   
Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine,
Luther. these Seven are the Male Females: the Dragon Forms
The Female hid within a Male: thus Rahab is reveald
Mystery Babylon the Great: the Abomination of Desolation
Religion hid in War: a Dragon red, & hidden Harlot    
But Jesus breaking thro' the Central Zones of Death & Hell
Opens Eternity in Time & Space; triumphant in Mercy

Thus are the Heavens formd by Los within the Mundane Shell
And where Luther ends Adam begins again in Eternal Circle
To awake the Prisoners of Death; to bring Albion again       
With Luvah into light eternal, in his eternal day.

But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of
    Albion 

(Erdman 230-3) 

Notes:

Plate 75
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Rahab Babylon: Rahab has a long and chequered career. In the Bible she appeared in Deuteronomy as the prostitute who harbored Joshua   when he went to spy out the land prior to the invasion of the Promised Land. (She also appeared in Jesus’ matrilineal line.)

The rest of the Plate is to a large degree the work of Rahab:

She instigated the 27 heavens using Los. They are listed in a couple of groups: what closely resembles the line of generation of the Old Testament, called “a male within a female."

The second list, called the seven male females carry us down to the present, in which Jesus broke through the “Central Zones to Death and Hell”, but to a great extent things have remained the same: the complete list from Abraham to Luther represent what Blake saw as corrupt religion ending with Luther, after which people may perhaps go back to the beginning in the Circle of Destiny.

Blake hoped that this might not happen, that the ‘Kingdom might come’ and ‘his will be done’.  Do we hope and expect that  ourseves?

Two pictures: the upper one consists of circles of angels;
in the lower one we see Rahab in the arms of a seven headed serpent like dragon.