Sexuality 3

According to Blake's myth sexes began in the moony night of

Beulah where the Eternals  came to rest from the arduous wars of 

intellect that have filled their sunny days in Eden:

"There is from Great Eternity a mild and pleasant rest

Named Beulah, a Soft Moony Universe, feminine, lovely,

Pure, mild and Gentle, given in Mercy to those who sleep.."

(The Four Zoas [Nt 1], 5.29; E303)

       Beulah, one of Blake's most ambiguous images, is a way station 

between Eden and Ulro. The Eternal, sleeping in Beulah, may rise from 

his sexual dreams and return to the activity of Eden, or he may fall 

further into Death Eternal, which is exactly what happened to Albion. 

Unable to find his way back to Heaven he lapsed into a deeper form of 

sleep where the female develops a will of her own and lures the male 

into the "torments of love and Jealousy". Late in 'Jerusalem' the 

warrior, speaking for Albion, gives a glimpse of his true (fallen) 

situation and laments":

"Once Man was occupied in intellectual pleasures and Energies,

But now my Soul is harrow'd with grief and fear & love & desire,

And now I hate, & now I love, and Intellect is no more.

There is no time for any thing but the torments of love and desire."

(Jerusalem, 68.65; E222)

(There are four worlds in Blake's psychic universe;

Eternity

Beulah

Generation

Ulro

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      Generation or the 'sexual' symbolizes for Blake this 

unfortunate materialization of spirit manifested in the Fall and in a 

fallen Creation. He also used the term 'vegetable'.

       Man in Eternity is androgynous. In Beulah, which means 

Married, the sexes are divided into loving and restful contraries. 

With the Fall the Female Will becomes dominant; the Human Form 

deteriorates to the sexual in which male and female, spirit and 

matter, exist in a state of constant warfare. Man has fallen into the
fourth world of Ulro. But whatever falls may rise again.

       The third world, Generation, is the world of Los, fallen man's 

imaginative faculty. Los generates or brings forth artistic 

creations, structures of thought, myths of meaning, much as a woman 

brings forth children. These creations always turn bad (or perhaps 

just moldy) and are broken up and cast into Los's furnace for 

renewal. The process of generation and destruction would go on 

indefinitely, like the cycle of Nature, but the Moment of Grace 

breaks in upon it. Los learns to forgive. His emanation, Enitharmon, 

now joins him as an instrument of a regeneration offering redemptive 

promise. Blake proclaims, "0 holy generation, image of regeneration".
(See also Blake's biography and Notes.)

       The change in Los and Enitharmon, who together make up fallen 

man's imaginative faculty, prepares the ground for the generation of 

Jesus. The Sons of Eden announce this event in Night viii of 4Z with 

a paean of praise. Careful study of the entire song will cast more 

light on the meaning of Blake's symbolism of sex and generation; here 

are the final seven lines:

"we now behold the Ends of Beulah, and we now behold

Where death Eternal is put off Eternally.

Assume the dark Satanic body in the Virgin's womb,

0 Lamb Divine! it cannot thee annoy. 0 pitying one,

Thy pity is from the foundation of the world, & thy Redemption

Begun already in Eternity. Come then, 0 Lamb of God,

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly."

       What Blake reports next should be a welcome change for the by 

now outraged feminist. With his usual consistency he follows the 

divine annunciation with the appearance of Satan, and the worst thing 

he can say about Satan is to call him a "male without a female":

"The war roar'd round Jerusalem's Gates; it took a hideous form

Seen in the aggregate, a Vast Hermaphroditic form

Heav'd like an Earthquake lab'ring with convulsive groans

Intolerable; at length an awful wonder burst

From the Hermaphroditic bosom. Satan he was nam'd,

Son of Perdition, terrible his form, dishumaniz'd, monstrous,

A male without a female counterpart, a howling fiend

Forlorn of Eden, repugnant to the forms of life,

Yet hiding the shadowy female Vala as in an ark & Curtains,

Abhorr'd, accursed, ever dying an Eternal death,

Being multitudes of tyrant Men in union blasphemous

Against the Divine Image, Congregated assemblies of wicked men."

(The Four Zoas [Nt 8], 104[2nd].30; E378)

An earlier version of this material may be found at Chapter Eight of the Blake Primer.