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| British Library Four Zoas Manuscript Page 22 [21] |
Four Zoas, Night I, PAGE 22 [21], (E 313)
"The Daughters of Beulah beheld the Emanation they pitied
They wept before the Inner gates of Enitharmons bosom
And of her fine wrought brain & of her bowels within her loins
Three gates within Glorious & bright open into Beulah
From Enitharmons inward parts but the bright female terror
Refusd to open the bright gates she closd and barrd them fast
Lest Los should enter into Beulah thro her beautiful gates
The Emanation stood before the Gates of Enitharmon
Weeping. the Daughters of Beulah silent in the Porches
Spread her a couch unknown to Enitharmon here reposd
Jerusalem in slumbers soft lulld into silent rest
Terrific ragd the Eternal Wheels of intellect terrific ragd
The living creatures of the wheels in the Wars of Eternal life
But perverse rolld the wheels of Urizen & Luvah back reversd
Downwards & outwards consuming in the wars of Eternal Death"
As the fall
progressed Albion's emanation Jerusalem descended to Ulro with
Albion. She finds herself barred from reentering Beulah as is
Los. Enitharmon has substituted her vision of the world under
female control for the Vision held by Jerusalem and Los. She
blocks the gates of heart, and brain and loins forcing the
avenue of return to be diverted through a long detour. Jerusalem with her vision of the divine order is removed from the field of activity by causing her to sleep as Urizen and Luvah alter the direction in which the mechanism of creation moves. The intellect is induced to direct its efforts toward moving away from the eternal, invisible and toward the temporal, material.
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Jerusalem
Plate 37, detail
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"The intellect is induced to direct its efforts toward moving away from the eternal, invisible and toward the temporal, material."
ReplyDeleteoh dear oh dear oh dear.
I came across this paragraph this morning:
"From the complex matrix of the Renaissance had issued forth two distinct streams of culture, two temperaments or general approaches to human existence characteristic of the Western mind. One emerged in the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment and stressed rationality, empirical science, and a skeptical secularism. The other was its polar complement, sharing common roots in the Renaissance and classical Greco-Roman culture (and in the Reformation as well), but tending to express just those aspects of human experience suppressed by the Enlightenment's overriding spirit of rationalism..."
p. 366, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, by Richard Tarnas
Thanks Susan,
ReplyDeleteSometimes it seem as it we are in a world controlled by the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Every device or activity which we would like to eliminate, replicates itself instantly.
The alternative is to cultivate the inner life and feed it on imagination in the stillness of a grateful heart.