Radical Christianity

 Previously posted Nov 2019

British Museum

Europe

Copy D, plate 13

British Museum commentary for this plate: 

"Copy D, plate 13; above, a papal figure with bat's wings sitting on an ornate throne, floating on a cloud, with an open book on his knees; below on each side a winged gowned female figure holding a sceptre; the sceptres pointing downwards and meeting above the text at the bottom of the plate, as though they were an upside-down pair of compasses; 5 lines of verse beginning "Albions Angel rose...". 1794 Europe," 

Europe, Plate 11 [13], (E 64)
"Albions Angel rose upon the Stone of Night.
He saw Urizen on the Atlantic;
And his brazen Book,
That Kings & Priests had copied on Earth
Expanded from North to South."

---

 The immediate followers of Jesus were accused of turning the world upside down. They followed him in challenging all forms of worldly power including death. One can make a good case for the idea that the Christian by definition challenges the powers of the world; that's certainly the meaning of 'radical Christian'.

      

 Blake perceived the legacy that Jesus left behind in two ways. On one hand the church as the mystical body of Christ consists of those who continually challenge the authority or powers of the world. On the other hand the Church as an institution becomes one of the powers of the world. The tension between these two principles probably exists within the breast of anyone seriously interested in Christ.

  In the second century Ignatius of Antioch eloquently embodied that tension with his life. Ignatius died a martyr to the secular power of the Roman Empire. Before that happened, he had spent much of his time as an ecclesiastical authority rooting out dissenters, whom he called heretics; he did this in the course of establishing the institutional authority of what became the Roman Church.

  With Constantine these two streams of authority came together. In 312 A.D. the new emperor declared himself a Christian and assumed control of the Church. He exercised that control through the simple device of naming his most trusted servant as bishop. The Church became an arm of the political power of the empire.

  From that day to this the Church has been primarily one of the powers of the world. The power of the Church has been expressed through ecclesiastical hierarchies and creeds, both imposed upon the rank and file by various coercive techniques essentially identical with those of other worldly powers. This means that the spiritual reality of Christ vis-a-vis the Church is only actualized through the same sort of dissent that Jesus made in the beginning.

  These conclusions of course may be debated, but they represent the basic and lifelong viewpoint underlying the radical protest which was Blake's art.

---

Jerusalem, Plate 52, (E 201)                  
"and many believed what they saw, and
Prophecied of Jesus.
Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the 
Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, & will erect the
Synagogue of Satan. calling the Prince of this World, God; and
destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God. 
Will any one say: Where are those who worship Satan under the
Name of God! Where are they? Listen! Every Religion that Preaches
Vengeance for Sins the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger; and not
the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan
Vengeance for Sins the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger; and not
the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan
Vengeance for Sins the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger; and not
the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, Named by the Divine
Name   Your Religion O Deists: Deism, is the Worship of the God
of this World by the means of what you call Natural Religion and
Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or
Self-Righteousness, the Selfish Virtues of the Natural Heart. 
This was the Religion of the Pharisees who murderd Jesus.  Deism
is the same & ends in the same."

Image of God

British Museum

Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

From the Blake Primer

The really exciting thing about 'The Four Zoas' is the long incubation and eventual birth of Blake's new, positive image of God concurrent with the thorough and definite laying to rest of the old one. These realities become vivid once the reader gains sufficient familiarity with the material to see the underlying currents of spiritual movement. If you like poetry, 4Z contains many beautiful lines interspersed throughout the nine Nights amidst long, bleak desert passages describing fallenness. The beautiful passages mark stirrings of the Spirit. (It has great similarity in fact to the style of Isaiah, who wrote the most beautiful parts of the O.T. surrounded by unrelieved darkness.)

Follow the speeches of Enion, the primeval mother of Los and Enitharmon. In Night i her children's increasing depravity and her maternal love lead her down into the abyss of Non-entity, in her case an abyss of consciousness. She becomes a disembodied voice sounding a note of reality over the general fallenness as it progressively develops. Her comments throughout the action preserve the feeling of human oneness that will break forth at the darkest hour. In Enion Blake found a new voice expressing a passionate love that laments but doesn't excoriate, and a faith, evolved through suffering, that the Divine Image will come to redeem. These of course are the most creative themes of the Old Testament, slowly evolving out of its generally primitive theology. Enion's speeches at the conclusion of Nights i, ii, and viii are too long to quote here, but they contain some of the most sublime poetry Blake wrote and portend the emergence of the new God of compassion.

In 4Z Blake elaborated and analyzed the God, Urizen, in the fullest detail; this version contains less heat and more light than we found in Book of Urizen. Urizen symbolizes man's thinking faculty; in the primary myth of the Fall he became estranged from his feelings. This story is told at least six times in 4Z. Blake devoted Night ii to Urizen's creation of a rocky, hard, opaque world of mathematical certainty and calculation. Anyone who has spent time on a college campus has met people highly developed intellectually and infantile emotionally. They lack the capacity to express any value more intense than "very interesting". Many, of course, have denied that value has any meaning. Imagine what kind of world they create, what spiritual climate they live in; there you have Urizen.

He is a God devoid of true feeling; he has feelings, but they're all false. He continually weeps, like the Old Testament God who wept as he punished people. He builds a world of law, devoid of feeling, devoid of compassion, devoid of humanity. His world is based upon fear of the future, and he attempts to secure himself against it at all costs. Fear defines his character and his actions until the very end of the fallen world. In Night viii Urizen is still fighting life and light. He sets out:

Four Zoas, Night viii, Page 102, (E 375)
"...to pervert all the faculties of sense
Into their own destruction, if perhaps he might avert
His own despair even at the cost of everything that breathes."

There you find a preview of the God of the superpowers of our own day. Their fear has become the guiding principle leading them toward the destruction of "everything that breathes".

Urizen's initial downfall comes in Night iii. His emanation (in this case wife), Ahania, has followed Enion, the Earth Mother, into the abyss of consciousness. She tries to share with Urizen a level of truth that he finds so unpleasant that he casts her out, and promptly falls himself like Humpty Dumpty. In Ahania's vision we have a psychologically acute and penetrating description of the incipience of a false God. It ranks with the Bible's eloquent pre-psychological denunciations of idolatry, as found for example in Isaiah 40. Blake re-used this passage in 'Jerusalem', attesting its authenticity even on the illumined side of the Divine Vision:

Jerusalem, Plate 43 [29], (E 191)

"Then Man ascended mourning into the splendors of his palace,
Above him rose a Shadow from his wearied intellect
Of living gold, pure, perfect, holy; in white linen he hover'd,
A sweet entrancing self delusion, a wat'ry vision of Man
Soft exulting in existence, all the Man absorbing.
Man fell upon his face prostrate before the wat'ry shadow,
Saying, O Lord, whence is this change? thou knowest I am nothing ...
Idolatrous to his own Shadow, words of Eternity uttering:
O I am nothing when I enter in judgment with thee.
If thou withdraw thy breath I die and vanish into Hades;
If thou dost lay thine hand upon me, behold I am silent;
If thou withhold thine hand I perish like a fallen leaf.
O I am nothing, and to nothing must return again.
If thou withdraw thy breath, behold I am oblivion."

In this parody of the Prophet Blake shows us a fundamental truth about man's image of the transcendental God. He doesn't deny the reality of a transcendental God as some of his interpreters have concluded. He denies the truth of man's image of the transcendental God, an entirely different matter.

He opposes the ascribing of qualities to the Wholly Other. According to Blake when that is done the result is something less than man. Worshiping this sub-human God the worshiper becomes something less than man himself. He represses a portion of his humanity, which Blake here calls Luvah, and that repressed portion falls upon him and afflicts him with boils from head to toe. The penalty for idolatry is brokenness and suffering, consciousness of sin, guilt, division, finitude, envy, the torments of love and jealousy, the whole bit of man's unfortunate fallen circumstances. It's all caused by the false God that man has chosen. Isaiah understood a part of this; he recognized some of the idols of others but not his own. 

Thomas Altizer, in his book on Blake, rightly took this passage as a critical revelation of the "death of God".

Man worships a shadow of his wearied intellect. No higher God is possible without the wholeness that Christ brings. Worship of a shadow of our wearied intellect leads to all the false and fatal evils that we visit upon one another from simple vanity to war.
...
The progression of Blake's poetry shows the eclipse of Christ through the long struggle of the seventeen nineties. Then he proceeded to introduce the Lamb into 4Z with a group of additional lines at strategic places. These images means relatively little to the secular reader, but cause great joy to the Christian.

The healing of Los, described in Night vii of The Four Zoas, prepares the way for Christ's coming into history. Night viii tells the story of Jesus: the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of the spiritual body. It's important to remember that in Blake's mental world and in his poetry these are psychic rather than historical events.

Blake had always worshiped the Divine Vision. In his twenty years in the wilderness the Divine Vision dimmed and lost the immediacy which had informed the beautiful poems of Innocence. Kathleen Raine points to a few lines that describe with peculiar luminosity this dimming of the Divine Vision:

Jerusalem, Plate 66, (E 219) 

"And as their eye & ear shrunk, the heavens shrunk away 

The Divine Vision became First a burning flame [Moses], then a column 

Of fire [the Exodus], then an awful fiery wheel [Ezekiel] surrounding earth & heaven: And then a globe of blood wandering distant in all unknown night [false Christianity]"

This describes Blake's personal experience and that of Mankind. But at or after Felpham he recovered the Divine Vision and realized that his name is Jesus.

He spent the rest of his life celebrating the momentous event, and the Name and proclaiming its reality in a hundred ways. It had happened to him, and it would happen to the world.

Letters, To Thomas Butts, Nov 1802, (E 720)

"And now let me finish with assuring you that Tho I have been very unhappy I am so no longer I am again Emerged into the light of Day I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God but I have traveld thro Perils & Darkness not unlike a Champion I have Conquerd and shall still Go on Conquering Nothing can withstand the fury of my Course among the Stars of God & in the Abysses of the Accuser My 

Enthusiasm is still what it was only Enlarged and confirmd" 

ERDMAN

Wikipedia Commons
America
Plate 12

David V Erdman, in Prophet Against Empire, demonstrated how the contraries reason and energy work together to accomplish what neither could accomplish alone.  The opportunity was there for Urizen to cooperate with the Lord of Day and use the Steeds of Light to bring about an accomadation with the energy of those seeking Liberty. He listened instead, however, to Reason and found that Wrath of the oppressed had seized the reins of government in the Age of Revolution. 

Page 194

“The creeping Urizen is supplied with a long soliloquy in a passage of Night Five of The Four Zoas  which is worth taking up here for the light it casts back upon The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and A Song of Liberty and The Tyger.  The fatal error of the jealous king is that his fixing of the horizon ultimately limits himself more than it does the energy of the people.  Royalty can keep its crimson robes, Orleans warned, only if it stops trying to measure of each man 'the circle that he shall run'. (French Revolution, P 91) Soliloquizing as he crawls in the den or narrow circle of his own ideas, the fallen Urizen of Night Five laments too late his imperial mistakes: his choice of war instead of peace, his failure to accept the opportunity to be an enlightened despot when the "mild & holy voice" of divine freedom said, "O light, spring up & shine" and "gave to me a silver sceptre & crownd me with a golden crown" to 'Go forth & guide' the people. 'I went not forth,' he laments, 'I hid myself in black clouds of my wrath, I called the stars around my feet in the night of councils dark'. (FZ's) Thus George assembled his council in 1774; thus Louis the King of France, prepared his ‘starry hosts’ in 1789 and let the spark of humanity in his bosom be 'quench’d in clouds' by 'the Nobles of France, and dark mists.' Each time, in the event, at Yorktown and again at Valmy, ‘The stars threw down their spears & fled naked away'. We fell.  Too late Urizen is sorry he refused to use his ‘Steeds of Light’.  

The language of the soliloquy is doubly revealing.  On the level of practice it is clear that ‘The stars threw down their spears’ means : the armies of counterrevolution were defeated. On the level of theory it is clear that Reason, when it refuses to assist but attempts to hinder Energy, is overthrown.  Denied the peaceful accommodation of the Steeds of Light, the just man seizes the Tigers of Wrath. Vetoed by a stubborn monarch, the French people became, as the London Times of January 7, 1792, put it, 'loose from all restraints, and, in many instances, more ferocious than wolves and tigers'. As Blake put it in Fayette, the French grew bloodthirsty and would 'not submit to the gibbet & halter.' 

If we take the tiger and horse as symbols of untamed Energy and domesticated Reason then it is obvious which of these contraries is more vital in days of revolution. In Hell is a proverbial that 'the tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.'
...

Page 196 

The creator must have smiled at Yorktown and at Valmy, not because his people were warlike, but because they seemed ready to coexist with the Lamb, the wrath of the Tiger having done its work. The question, 'Did he smile his work to see?' is perhaps as rhetorical as the corresponding query of Orleans: 'And can Nobles be bound when the people are free, or God weep when his children are happy?'"

Four Zoas, Night V, Page 64, (E 343)

"But now my land is darkend & my wise men are departed

My songs are turned to cries of Lamentation           
Heard on my Mountains & deep sighs under my palace roofs         
Because the Steeds of Urizen once swifter than the light
Were kept back from my Lord & from his chariot of mercies

O did I keep the horses of the day in silver pastures
O I refusd the Lord of day the horses of his prince
O did I close my treasuries with roofs of solid stone            
And darken all my Palace walls with envyings & hate

O Fool to think that I could hide from his all piercing eyes
The gold & silver & costly stones his holy workmanship
O Fool could I forget the light that filled my bright spheres
Was a reflection of his face who calld me from the deep          

I well remember for I heard the mild & holy voice
Saying O light spring up & shine & I sprang up from the deep  
He gave to me a silver scepter & crownd me with a golden crown
& said Go forth & guide my Son who wanders on the ocean  

I went not forth. I hid myself in black clouds of my wrath       
I calld the stars around my feet in the night of councils dark
The stars threw down their spears & fled naked away
We fell. I siezd thee dark Urthona In my left hand falling

I siezd thee beauteous Luvah thou art faded like a flower"

America, Plate 2, (E 52)

"Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins he siez'd the panting struggling womb;
It joy'd: she put aside her clouds & smiled her first-born smile;
As when a black cloud shews its lightnings to the silent deep.   

Soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin cry.

I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go;
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa;
And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark death.
On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions          
Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep:
I see a serpent in Canada, who courts me to his love;
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;
I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away.
O what limb rending pains I feel. thy fire & my frost            
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent;
This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold."

French Revolution, Page 10(E 294)

"Fear not dreams, fear not visions, nor be you dismay'd with
     sorrows which flee at the morning;
Can the fires of Nobility ever be quench'd, or the stars by a
     stormy night?
Is the body diseas'd when the members are healthful? can the man
     be bound in sorrow
Whose ev'ry func,tion is fill'd with its fiery desire? can the
     soul whose brain and heart
Cast their rivers in equal tides thro' the great Paradise,
     languish because the feet
Hands, head, bosom, and parts of love, follow their high
     breathing joy?
And can Nobles be bound when the people are free, or God weep
     when his children are happy?
Have you never seen Fayette's forehead, or Mirabeau's eyes, or
     the shoulders of Target,
Or Bailly the strong foot of France, or Clermont the terrible
     voice, and your robes
Still retain their own crimson? mine never yet faded, for fire
     delights in its form.
But go, merciless man! enter into the infinite labyrinth of
     another's brain
Ere thou measure the circle that he shall run. Go, thou cold
     recluse,into the fires
Of another's high flaming rich bosom, and return unconsum'd, and
     write laws.
If thou canst not do this, doubt thy theories, learn to consider
     all men as thy equals,
Thy brethren, and not as thy foot or thy hand, unless thou first
     fearest to hurt them."

FOUR ZOAS PICTURED

British Museum

Book of Urizen, printed 1794 

Copy D, Plate 14

Library of Congress

Book of Urizen, printed 1818

Copy G, Plate 16 [14]

 

First Posted  October 2009

This rare image of the Four Zoas together appears in the Book of Urizen.

Blake pictured the four Eternals peering down in the unfinished world of Urizen as it divides, falling into the abyss. Most of the copies of this plate display only three of the Zoas. In Blake's characteristic way of allowing imagination to lead him as he created his images, he has added the fourth Zoa Tharmas, to the other three in the late copy.

Blake's characters have different appearances as they are represented at different levels of existence in his myth. Here they are represented at the level of the Eternals; although no physical representation at that spiritual level can be anything more than limited and false.

Nevertheless, we see Urizen on the right, looking down at his own fallen nature as it disintegrates in separation. His beard drags in the water of matter which is created as a result of his fall. Why is he old? Because he is conservatism which must always be replaced by the new and fresh.

Beside Urizen is Los, forever young, who joins Urizen in the descent in order to be the agent of the eventual return. Suggested by the fingers of Los touching the liquid below, as if paint or ink were dripping from his hand, is an intimation of the role of imagination in the regeneration process

Next to the young Los, is another older gentleman, Luvah, who as the emotions, is a level early in physic development. Luvah becomes intimately involved in the struggle to limit the downward fall of Urizen and reverse the division in Albion. At various points Luvah works with or competes with Urizen or Los, but his service is to Jesus.

The Zoa who is missing in most of the images, Tharmas, is pictured as no more than a boy. The contradiction in the character Tharmas is that he is both the 'Parent Power' and the last to be named. Mary Lynn Johnson describes him as "innocence, instinct, the binding force of the human personality, and the body." Perhaps he is closer to the id than is any other of the Zoas, and so closer to the child.

On the engraved plate, words and image work together to involve us in the fall - from the perspective of Eternity.

Book of Urizen, Plate 15 [14], (E 78)                                       

"Thus the Eternal Prophet was divided
Before the death-image of Urizen
For in changeable clouds and darkness
In a winterly night beneath,
The Abyss of Los stretch'd immense:
And now seen, now obscur'd, to the eyes
Of Eternals, the visions remote
Of the dark seperation appear'd.
As glasses discover Worlds
In the endless Abyss of space,      
So the expanding eyes of Immortals
Beheld the dark visions of Los,
And the globe of life blood trembling"