FIRST VISION

Like Blake, Larry was interested in learning all that he could about the wisdom of the ages. In 1977 he had been studying Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and Nicoll. From there he went on to pursuing C. G. Jung and his interpreters. He came across a little book by W. P. Witcutt titled Blake: A Psychological Study which proposed to use Jungian psychology as a key to understanding Blake. As a result Larry turned to studying Blake because he found his poetry more lucid and and cogent than anything he had been studying.

"My own serious interest in Blake began in 1977 when my wife brought Blake a psychological study by W. P. Witcutt home from the library. I had been on the point of a commitment to the study of Jung's voluminous writings, which at that time seemed the most creative intellectual work at hand. Witcutt diverted my commitment to Blake, which we have now."

Following his study of Witcutt Larry wrote the following on 5-18-1978.

"Some ideas about Blake's poetry:

It is naming of the selves. Sharing his visions gives great help in understanding, in gaining detachment from the hardening and rigid concrete of opinion, prejudice, passion - the principalities and powers - that work to make us automatisms, zombies, denizens of hell. It offers fresh and new ways of perceiving life - ourselves and others - it detaches us from the old man - this body of death, makes us aware of the spiritual struggle going on - we have been asleep to it - tossed under the waves, the prostrate Albion, the sick king. Blake's vivid imagery may shock us into consciousness so that we may begin to act purposely.  

Blake must have been an imaginative young boy and at some point found thinking very oppressive. Did he go from permissive and indulgent parents to a brutal taskmaster who used 'geometric logic' like Quigg did (in Caine Mutiny). He found reason and feeling horrible and his visions of them seem to center on calamity - the Fall.

He shared his visions in such a way that one might hope to understand him at a deeper, more profound and real level than do most folk including ourselves. Thus if we can achieve this understanding of Blake, we may progress in learning of others including ourselves. Then love may come forth.

The woes of Urizen do indeed move us strangely, perhaps they may evoke the Holy Spirit in a powerful way. Hurrah!

In the Four Zoas, fallen Albion gives the scepter to Urizen who builds a steel trap world, which 'has done so much harm to our imagination's elastic and vital power.' Thus he didn't hate creative thought & law but only the worship of the created good. He hated the reactionaries and identified them with reason which, no doubt, they used as a weapon against visionary liberals."  

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Wikipedia Commons
Book of Urizen
Plate 4, Copy G

Visions of Daughters of Albion, Plate 5, (E 48)
"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 eagle scorn the earth & despise the treasures beneath?
But the mole knoweth what is there, & the worm shall tell it thee.       
Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard?

Plate 6
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave
Over his porch these words are written. Take thy bliss O Man!
And sweet shall be thy taste & sweet thy infant joys renew!"