LIVING IN LAMBETH

New York Public Library

Milton

Plate 36

 In 1791, after the death of his mother, Blake settled in Lambeth away from the neighborhood associated with his family. Although Lambeth which is on the south side of the Thames is now a part of London, in Blake's day it was in the county of Surry. William and Catherine lived in a comfortable row house on Hercules Road. Part of the furnishings was the printing press which Blake had acquired when he and Parker operated a printing business on Broad Street. Blake had already formulated the idea of combining words and pictures on pages of books over which he would have complete control. The prototypical examples of this process were There is No Natural Religion, and All Religions are One, which were produced in 1788.   

Two years after moving to Lambeth Blake had completed the following books:

For Children, The Gates of Paradise, 
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Visions of the Daughters of Albion,
America: A Prophecy

In the following years at Lambeth he completed:
Songs of Innocence and of Experience,
The First Book of Urizen
Europe: a Prophecy
The Song of Los
The Book of Ahania
The Book of Los 

So the nine years in Lambeth were the time William and Catherine perfected the technique of creating illuminated books from scratch. She learned from him as he applied all his years as an art student and as an apprenticed engraver, to an enterprise which gave expression to imagination. The books were the vehicle for the poetry which welled up from William's brain as he contemplated existence. 

Milton and Jerusalem were the culmination of the process for which Lambeth was the seedbed.

Milton, Plate 25 [27], (E 121)

"Lambeth mourns calling Jerusalem. she weeps & looks abroad
For the Lords coming, that Jerusalem may overspread all Nations  
Crave not for the mortal & perishing delights, but leave them
To the weak, and pity the weak as your infant care; Break not
Forth in your wrath lest you also are vegetated by Tirzah
Wait till the Judgement is past, till the Creation is consumed
And then rush forward with me into the glorious spiritual    
Vegetation; the Supper of the Lamb & his Bride; and the
Awaking of Albion our friend and ancient companion.
So Los spoke."

Milton, Plate 36 [40], (E 137)

"For when Los joind with me he took me in his firy whirlwind
My Vegetated portion was hurried from Lambeths shades
He set me down in Felphams Vale & prepard a beautiful
Cottage for me that in three years I might write all these Visions
To display Natures cruel holiness: the deceits of Natural Religion."   

Jerusalem, Plate 12, (E 155)

"And they builded Golgonooza: terrible eternal labour!
What are those golden builders doing? where was the burying-place
Of soft Ethinthus? near Tyburns fatal Tree? is that
Mild Zions hills most ancient promontory; near mournful
Ever weeping Paddington? is that Calvary and Golgotha?
Becoming a building of pity and compassion? Lo!
The stones are pity, and the bricks, well wrought affections:    
Enameld with love & kindness, & the tiles engraven gold
Labour of merciful hands: the beams & rafters are forgiveness:
The mortar & cement of the work, tears of honesty: the nails,
And the screws & iron braces, are well wrought blandishments,
And well contrived words, firm fixing, never forgotten,         
Always comforting the remembrance: the floors, humility,
The cielings, devotion: the hearths, thanksgiving:
Prepare the furniture O Lambeth in thy pitying looms!
The curtains, woven tears & sighs, wrought into lovely forms
For comfort. there the secret furniture of Jerusalems chamber    
Is wrought: Lambeth! the Bride the Lambs Wife loveth thee:
Thou art one with her & knowest not of self in thy supreme joy."

Jerusalem, Plate 37[41], (E 183)

"Where mild Jerusalem sought to repose in death & be no more.   
She fled to Lambeths mild Vale and hid herself beneath
The Surrey Hills where Rephaim terminates: her Sons are siez'd
For victims of sacrifice; but Jerusalem cannot be found! Hid
By the Daughters of Beulah: gently snatch'd away: and hid in Beulah

There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find     
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it: tis translucent & has many Angles
But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within
Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven
But should the Watch Fiends find it, they would call it Sin"

Jerusalem, Plate 84, (E 243)
"Highgates heights & Hampsteads, to Poplar Hackney & Bow:
To Islington & Paddington & the Brook of Albions River
We builded Jerusalem as a City & a Temple; from Lambeth
We began our Foundations; lovely Lambeth! O lovely Hills
Of Camberwell, we shall behold you no more in glory & pride    
For Jerusalem lies in ruins & the Furnaces of Los are builded there"    
  

Read this post for a detailed description of the process of creating Songs of Innocence and of Experience as outlined in Michael Phillip's book William Blake: The Creation of the Songs From Manuscript to Illuminated Printing.

TRUE MARRIAGE

First posted Sept 2019  

From Private Collection

Sketch of Catherine

True marriage is a mystical bond. It depends upon two people having the desire to achieve a meeting of their minds. Unless each partner is capable of appreciating the other's differences as benefits to the union, there will be strife and dissension. William and Catherine Blake did not marry because they recognized only their similarities, but because they valued the qualities in the other which were absent in themselves. William needed the stability of Catherine, while she needed the stimulation of his active mind. There were things each gave up to accommodate the other. Any hope she may have had for a conventional life she relinquished; something of his firey, contentious nature he subdued. They each valued the condition of marriage more than the need to realize his/her own individual desires.   

Catherine was not educated; in fact she signed her marriage certificate with an X. But William did not value formal education since he never sat at the foot of a schoolmaster himself. Catherine, the daughter of a green grocer, married at twenty years of age. She was prepared for a simple life of working with her husband who taught her the skills she needed in order to assist his career. Her unique contribution over the years was a calmness of spirit upon which William could rely when his fierce need to create overstimulated his mind. 

In The Stranger from Paradise, a Biography of William Blake by G.E. Bentley, Jr, there is a quote from Frederick Tatum:

"he fancied , that while she looked at him, as he worked, her sitting quite still by...[his] side, doing nothing, soothed his tempestuous mind & he has many a time when a strong desire presented itself to overcome any difficulty in the Plates or Drawings, ... in the middle of the night risen & requested her to get up with him & sit by his side, in which she cheerfully acquiesced". Page 70

Gates of Paradise, For the Sexes, (E 268)
16 Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb
     Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb
     Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
     And weeping over the Web of Life

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 122, (E 391)

"The winter thou shalt plow & lay thy stores into thy barns       
Expecting to recieve Ahania in the spring with joy
Immortal thou. Regenerate She & all the lovely Sex
From her shall learn obedience & prepare for a wintry grave
That spring may see them rise in tenfold joy & sweet delight
Thus shall the male & female live the life of Eternity           
Because the Lamb of God Creates himself a bride & wife
That we his Children evermore may live in Jerusalem
Which now descendeth out of heaven a City yet a Woman
Mother of myriads redeemd & born in her spiritual palaces
By a New Spiritual birth Regenerated from Death                  

Urizen Said. I have Erred & my Error remains with me"

Songs and Ballads, Blake's notebook, (E 481)
"I have Mental Joy & Mental Health
And Mental Friends & Mental wealth    
Ive a Wife I love & that loves me
Ive all But Riches Bodily"

Letters, (E 709)
"To William Hayley Esqre at Miss Pooles, Lavant
near Chichester, Sussex
Hercules Buildings Lambeth Sept 16. 1800

Leader of My Angels
     My Dear & too careful & over joyous Woman has Exhausted her
strength to such a degree with expectation & gladness added to
labour in our removal that I fear it will be Thursday before we
can get away from this---- City   I shall not be able to avail
myself of the assistance of Brunos fairies.  But I invoke the
Good Genii that Surround Miss Pooles Villa to shine upon my
journey thro the Petworth road which by your fortunate advice I
mean to take but whether I come on Wednesday or Thursday That Day
shall be marked on my calendar with a Star of the first magnitude
     Eartham will be my first temple & altar My wife is like a
flame of many colours of precious jewels whenever she hears it
named Excuse my haste & recieve my hearty Love & Respect
I am Dear Sir
Your Sincere
WILLIAM BLAKE

My fingers Emit sparks of fire with Expectation of my future
labours"
.

INNER REALITY

First posted Dec 2019 

Library of Congress

Marriage of Heaven & Hell

Plate 10

As a mental exercise Blake tries to get his reader to look at his world in a different way. He asks us to look at 'reality' as something which is a product of our own thinking rather than as objective facts which determine our interpretations and our actions. If you are an observer of other people you probably realize that your own mind and the minds of others are not congruent. Take that observation a step further and acknowledge that individuals either see through the lens of generally accepted conventions, or they use their own mental abilities to process the input they receive from an exterior world through their senses. If such is the case, the mind itself creates their 'reality' which does not arrive pre-processed as the events of history or the sights and sounds from outside of the body.

On Page 72, of her biography, William Blake, Kathleen Raine tells us that Blake pushes us to look deeper than surface ills to find ways to make changes to outer circumstances:       

"For Blake, outward events and circumstances were the expressions of states of mind, ideologies, mentalities, and not, as for the determanist-materialist ideologies of the modern world, their causes. Blake's 'dark Satanic Mills', so often invoked in the name of social reform, prove, when we read Milton (the poem in which these mills are most fully described) to be the mechanistic 'laws' of Bacon, Newton and Locke, of which industrial landscapes are a reflection and expression. Man has made his machines in the image of his ideology. So, always, Blake tries to discover the source of social and private ills within man. Only a change of the heart and mind of the nation can create a new society and new cities less hideous than those created by an atheist and mechanistic rationalism."

---

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 543)
 "All had originally one
language, and one religion, this was the religion of Jesus, the
everlasting Gospel.  Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus.  The
reasoning historian, turner and twister of causes and
consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon and Voltaire; cannot with all
their artifice, turn or twist one fact or disarrange self evident
action and reality.  Reasons and opinions concerning acts, are not
history.  Acts themselves alone are history, and these are
neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire,
Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus.  Tell me the Acts, O
historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away
with your reasoning and your rubbish.  All that is not action is
not worth reading.  Tell me the What; I do not want you to
tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well
as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that
you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable or
impossible.  His opinions, who does not see spiritual agency, is
not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is
improbable, must reject all History and retain doubts only."

---

Milton, Plate 26 [28], (E 123)
"And every Generated Body in its inward form,
Is a garden of delight & a building of magnificence,
Built by the Sons of Los in Bowlahoola & Allamanda
And the herbs & flowers & furniture & beds & chambers
Continually woven in the Looms of Enitharmons Daughters
In bright Cathedrons golden Dome with care & love & tears
For the various Classes of Men are all markd out determinate
In Bowlahoola; & as the Spectres choose their affinities
So they are born on Earth, & every Class is determinate
But not by Natural but by Spiritual power alone, Because
The Natural power continually seeks & tends to Destruction
Ending in Death: which would of itself be Eternal Death
And all are Class'd by Spiritual, & not by Natural power.

And every Natural Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not
A Natural: for a Natural Cause only seems, it is a Delusion      
Of Ulro: & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory."

LAMBETH MOASICS

Yale Center for British Art

Songs of Innocence

Plate 2

 

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

 Plate 8

In 2007 a project was begun to display the art work of William Blake in the neighborhood of Lambeth where Blake and his wife formerly lived and worked. During the time that the Blakes lived in the Hercules Building in Lambeth they self published nine Illuminated Books displaying William's poetic writing together with his illustrations. In honor of Blake's acomplisments a group of artists and volunteers concieved of the idea of creating mosaics of Blake's pictures to display on streets and on walls of buildings in his old neighborhood. The medium of mosaic was chosen in order to show the pictures in outdoor settings. 

"The mosaics were created over the course of seven years with the help of more than 300 local volunteers. As of 2020 this free collection showcases an extensive total of 70 pieces of artwork." Interest in using mosaics in public settings grew on the south bank of the Thames including Southbank Mosaics (now Morley College London) and other venues. The London School of Moasic took up the work of training artists and producing art to be displayed. As of August 2025 the school had disbanded but left a legacy of organizations and trained artists to continue its work. The evidence of their influence is evident in a wide variety of moasic instalations in Lambeth and in London proper. William Blake's impact continues.

Book of Revelation

First Posted Oct 2020

Wikipedia Commons
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun

Revelation 12 

[1] And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

[2] And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
[3] And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
[4] And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
[5] And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
[6] And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
[7] And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
[8] And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
[9] And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

From Larry Clayton's Ram Horn'd with Gold, Chapter 6 - Bible - Revelation.

       To understand the last book of the Bible the reader must have achieved a certain level of consciousness. He must have at least a rudimentary grasp of the eternal and a certain feel for symbols, especially those metaphors of time and space that point to eternal truth. Without this equipment the Apocalypse is commonly read either as a grotesque phantasmagoria or as a convenient coat-rack upon which to hang a fabric of theological inanity.

       John of Patmos, the writer of the Apocalypse, had been a bishop of the Church, a man of authority, a man of action, a man who had committed himself with a whole heart to actualizing the ideals of Jesus of Nazareth. John had seen his religious program overwhelmed by a heartless political structure, his congregation scattered, and himself exiled to a small island where he had little to do but reflect upon the past and gaze into the future.

       In his reflections John was informed by an intimate knowledge of scripture. The vivid images of the Hebrew writers ignited his imagination. They took the place of the people and events which had formerly filled his mind. The seven eyes of God, the plagues, the beasts from the sea and from the land, the harlot, the Lamb, the bride, the new heaven and the new earth-- all these and many more of John's images originate in various books of the Old Testament.

       Northrup Frye referred to Revelation as "a dense mosaic of allusions and quotations" from the Bible. The Apocalypse is an imaginative recreation of the entire Hebrew religious consciousness in an epic that carries us to the end of time and the return of man to the golden age.

       Blake attempted to do the same thing with the English religious consciousness, which explains why Revelation meant so much to him. His epic can just as rightly be called a "dense mosaic of allusions and quotations" from the Bible. In particular he seized upon John's images and combined them into the stuff of his prophetic poems.

       When Christ ascended into Heaven, he left his disciples with the expectation that he would soon return (See John 21:22). The writer of Revelation had lived through the years when this hope was increasingly deferred. It became more and more apparent that the return of Jesus was not within the time frame of their original expectations. John outlived his associates, and he differed from the other New Testament writers in that he was forced to look beyond the immediate events and their immediately expected outcome.

       He was forced to look into a more complex future. The rigor of this necessity freed him from the limited time frame that characterizes most of the New Testament. He knew the Old Testament truth that "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday". He of all the writers of the New Testament had been most significantly disappointed in his temporal hopes and forced to lift his mind from time to the eternal. That's why his is the most symbolic book, and that's why it most appealed to Blake.

       Blake used all of the symbols we have just noted and many others as well. He had brooded over these images for a life time, and they were fraught with meaning to him. They conveyed to him not only John's meanings but the original meanings of the O.T. writers from whom John had borrowed them, plus untold accretions of additional meanings acquired in the two millennia since.

       It's doubtful that John's images mean to anyone today exactly what they meant to him. That's the nature of the symbols of eternity: their temporal meanings change with the times. Our religious consciousness changes with the times; even our images of God change with the times--not just in the historical frame but in the personal frame of a man's lifetime.

       Blake took the images of Revelation--and of the rest of the Bible as well--and recreated them so as to express the evolving spiritual consciousness of his day, and ours. The images link us to our heritage, the consciousness evolves, the Spirit is timeless.

       Two of the primary images of Revelation are the "the Woman Clothed with the Sun" and the "great whore that sitteth upon many waters".  Much of the interest of John's epic lies in the conflict between these two women; they respectively represent spiritual Jerusalem and spiritual Rome. The first woman is driven into the wilderness by the Great Red Dragon; the Whore sits upon his back. But in due time the Whore is burned (much to the satisfaction of the faithful) while the other woman becomes the Bride of the Lamb.

       A minimal knowledge of this symbolism prepares one to appreciate Blake's use of the same images to tell the same story. 'The Four Zoas' was first called 'Vala': she is the woman with whom Blake began, and she originally included both of John's women. But the Moment of Grace released in Blake the vision of Jerusalem, and the long poem bearing her name recounts her suffering at the hands of the other, who gradually evolves into the Whore.

       Like John's woman clothed with the sun Jerusalem is driven into the wilderness and continually oppressed and afflicted by the forces of the Beast and the Whore. Vala, eventually manifested as Rahab, is finally burned; the scene in The Four Zoas at the end of Night viii, contains one of Blake's most explicit and extended quotations from Revelation.

   Here as in all of Blake's work he takes the biblical material, and while remaining largely faithful to its accidents, shows us new essence. Part of the final essence of Jerusalem is that her name is Liberty (Jerusalem plate 26), another manifestation of Blake's most vital lesson for us.

Four Zoas, Night VIII, PAGE 115 [111], (E 386)
"Rahab triumphs over all she took Jerusalem
Captive A Willing Captive by delusive arts impelld

To worship Urizens Dragon form to offer her own Children
Upon the bloody Altar. John Saw these things Reveald in Heaven
On Patmos Isle & heard the Souls cry out to be deliverd 
He saw the Harlot of the Kings of Earth & saw her Cup
Of fornication food of Orc & Satan pressd from the fruit of Mystery
But when she saw the form of Ahania weeping on the Void
And heard Enions voice sound from the caverns of the Grave
No more spirit remained in her She secretly left the Synagogue of Satan
She commund with Orc in secret She hid him with the flax
That Enitharmon had numberd away from the Heavens  
She gatherd it together to consume her Harlot Robes    
In bitterest Contrition sometimes Self condemning repentant
And Sometimes kissing her Robes & jewels & weeping over them 
Sometimes returning to the Synagogue of Satan in Pride
And Sometimes weeping before Orc in humility & trembling
The Synagogue of Satan therefore uniting against Mystery
Satan divided against Satan resolvd in open Sanhedrim
To burn Mystery with fire & form another from her ashes 
For God put it into their heart to fulfill all his will

The Ashes of Mystery began to animate they calld it Deism
And Natural Religion as of old so now anew began
Babylon again in Infancy Calld Natural Religion"

Milton, Plate 37[41], (E 138)
"Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine
Luther, these seven are the Male-Females, the Dragon Forms
Religion hid in War, a Dragon red & hidden Harlot

All these are seen in Miltons Shadow who is the Covering Cherub
The Spectre of Albion in which the Spectre of Luvah inhabits     
In the Newtonian Voids between the Substances of Creation"
Jerusalem, Plate 53, (E 203)
"But the Spectre like a hoar frost & a Mildew rose over Albion    
Saying, I am God O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!
Am I not Bacon & Newton & Locke who teach Humility to Man!
Who teach Doubt & Experiment & my two Wings Voltaire: Rousseau.
Where is that Friend of Sinners! that Rebel against my Laws!
Who teaches Belief to the Nations, & an unknown Eternal Life     
Come hither into the Desart & turn these stones to bread.
Vain foolish Man! wilt thou believe without Experiment?
And build a World of Phantasy upon my Great Abyss!
A World of Shapes in craving Lust & devouring appetite

So spoke the hard cold constrictive Spectre he is named Arthur   
Constricting into Druid Rocks round Canaan Agag & Aram & Pharoh

Then Albion drew England into his bosom in groans & tears
But she stretchd out her starry Night in Spaces against him. like
A long Serpent, in the Abyss of the Spectre which augmented
The Night with Dragon wings coverd with stars & in the Wings     
Jerusalem & Vala appeard: & above between the Wings magnificent
The Divine Vision dimly appeard in clouds of blood weeping."

Jerusalem, Plate 93. (E 253)
 "Then Los again took up his speech as Enitharmon ceast

Fear not my Sons this Waking Death. he is become One with me
Behold him here! We shall not Die! we shall be united in Jesus.
Will you suffer this Satan this Body of Doubt that Seems but Is Not 
To occupy the very threshold of Eternal Life. if Bacon, Newton, Locke,
Deny a Conscience in Man & the Communion of Saints & Angels
Contemning the Divine Vision & Fruition, Worshiping the Deus
Of the Heathen, The God of This World, & the Goddess Nature
Mystery Babylon the Great, The Druid Dragon & hidden Harlot    
Is it not that Signal of the Morning which was told us in the Beginning

Thus they converse upon Mam-Tor. the Graves thunder under their feet"

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE LAST JUDGMENT, To Ozias Humphry, (E 552)
 "Beneath Earth is convulsed with the labours
of the Resurrection--in the Caverns of the Earth is the Dragon
with Seven heads & ten Horns chained by two Angels & above his
Cavern on the Earths Surface is the Harlot siezed & bound by
two Angels with chains while her Palaces are falling
into ruins & her councellors & warriors are
descending into the Abyss in wailing & despair
     Hell opens beneath the Harlots seat on the left hand into
which the Wicked are descending [while others rise from their
Craves on the brink of the Pit]
     The right hand of the Design is appropriated to the
Resurrection of the Just the left hand of the Design is
appropriated to the Resurrection & Fall of the Wicked"

IMAGINATION

Blake Archive
Heads of Poets
Shakespeare

Northrop Frye believed that Blake was involved in expanding the definition of imagination. In Northrop Frye on Shakespeare he speaks on the concept of imagination in his chapter on A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"In the ordinary world we apprehend with our senses and comprehend with our reason; what the poet apprehends are moods or emotions, like joy, and what he uses for comprehension is some story or character to account for the emotion: 

'Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy, 

It comprehends some bringer of that joy'  

 

Theseus is here using the word 'imagination' in its common Elizabethan meaning, which we express by the word 'imaginary,' something alleged to be that isn't. In spite of himself, though, the word is taking on the more positive sense of out 'imaginative,' the sense of the creative power developed centuries later by Blake and Coleridge. So far as I can make out from the OED, this more positive sense of the word in English practically begins here." (Page 48)

Frye states that the character Hippolyta in saying, "It must be your imagination," implies that the "audience has a creative role in every play." So, using a definition  from his own mind Shakespeare has 'mended' the definition of the word imagination in Midsummer Night's Dream.

    

 From Puck's Final Speech:  

    "Gentles, do not reprehend.
 If you pardon, we will mend."

To Blake imagination was an inclusive term which had expanded to partake of an eternal dimension. His imagination included the Divine Vision and to him only imagination could make a poet. Without imagination he discerned that we live in a faint shadow of the real, eternal world. 

Annotations to Wordsworth's Poems. (E 665)

"One Power alone makes a Poet.-Imagination The Divine Vision"
...
"I see in Wordsworth the Natural Man rising up against the
Spiritual Man Continually & then he is No Poet but a Heathen
Philosopher at Enmity against all true Poetry or Inspiration"

Jerusalem, Plate 77, (E 231)

"I know of no other
Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body
& mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.   
  Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable
Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our
Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies
are no more."

Milton, Plate 32 [35], (E 132)

"States that are not, but ah! Seem to be.

Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore       
What is Eternal & what Changeable? & what Annihilable!

The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself
Affection or Love becomes a State, when divided from Imagination
The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State
Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created                  
Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated  Forms cannot"

Letters, To Trusler, (E 703)

"Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book. Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination which is Spiritual Sensation & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason Such is True Painting and such was alone valued by the Greeks & the best modern Artists. Consider what Lord Bacon says "Sense sends over to Imagination before Reason have judged & Reason sends over to Imagination before the Decree can be acted." See Advancemt of Learning Part 2 P 47 of first Edition But I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can Elucidate My Visions & Particularly they have been Elucidated by Children who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my Pictures than I even hoped. Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But There is a vast Majority on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation"

Letters, to Cumberland, (E 783)

"I have been very near the Gates of Death & have returned very weak & an Old Man feeble & tottering, but not in Spirit & Life not in The Real Man The Imagination which Liveth for Ever. In that I am stronger & stronger as this Foolish Body decays."

In The Educated Imagination Northrop Frye elicidated the relationship between science and imagination:

“Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. The further it goes in this direction, the more it tends to speak the languages of mathematics, which is really one of the languages of the imagination, along with literature and music.”

MENTAL FIGHT

First posted June 2016 

On page 26 of Fearful Symmetry, Frye writes:

"It appears then, then, that there are not only two worlds, but three: the world of vision, the world of sight and the world of memory: the world we create, the world we live in and the world we run away to. The world of memory is an unreal world of reflection and abstract ideas; the world of sight is the potentially real world of  subjects and objects; the world of vision is the world of creators and creatures. In the world  of memory we see nothing; in the world of sight we see what we have to see; in the world of vision we see what we want to see. There are not three different worlds, as in the religions which speak of a heaven and hell in addition to ordinary life; they are the egocentric, the ordinary and the visionary ways of looking at the same world."

British Museum
Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

The world of vision, of creator and creatures, is Blake's world of Imagination; Jung's of Intuition. This is the mental world of which Blake writes and in which he lives. He takes up the sword for mental fight and never puts it down.

Blake is the teacher par excellence who presents his subject, asks his students to incorporate an understanding of it into their own thinking and then gives them opportunities to practice the paradigm of acting which he hopes to teach. The student has not learned anything experientially until he incorporates an altered behavior into his range of options.

An aspect of becoming aware of the imaginative dimension in what goes on in the world around us, is finding patterns which enable us to fit together diverse pieces of our experience. If we recognize similar patterns in, for example religion and science, we expand our ability to assimilate a cohesive view rather than multiple limited views. If we look through a different window of perception, if we alter our preconceived assumptions, or back away form emotional involvement, the whole picture may begin to become visible.

When I was trying to catch site of a comet in the sky, I simply couldn't see it although I knew its location and that it was visible to the naked eye. I was trying to focus my eyes as I would when looking for detail in a picture. When I instead gave up on seeing the comet and looked at the whole sky, the faint light of the comet came into view. Our eyes are actually constructed with special receptors to see faint light as well as receptors for bright light. Until I 'turned off' the receptors for bright light, the receptors for dim light couldn't make the comet visible.

Frye and Blake are telling us that we have receptors for peering into the mental world of vision or imagination. But if our focus of attention is occupied with sensation, emotion or rationalization, we miss the fainter light of intuition.      

Milton, Plate 1, (E 95)
"I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land."

A Vision of The Last Judgment, (E 555)
                   For the Year 1810
        Additions to Blakes Catalogue of Pictures &c 
"This world of Imagination is the World of
Eternity it is the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after
the death of the Vegetated body   This World of Imagination is
Infinite & Eternal whereas the world of Generation or Vegetation
is Finite & Temporal    There Exist
in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing
which we see are reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature
     All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the
Divine body of the Saviour the True Vine of Eternity
The Human Imagination who appeard to Me as Coming to Judgment.
among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal
might be Establishd. around him were seen the Images of
Existences according to a certain order suited to my Imaginative Eye 
     Here follows the description of the Picture" 

BLAKE & DIOGENES

First posted Sept 2016

 Isaiah 20

[1] In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, (when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him,) and fought against Ashdod, and took it;
[2] At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.
[3] And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia;
[4] So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
[5] And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their expectation, and of Egypt their glory.
[6] And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria: and how shall we escape?

 Marriage of Heaven and Hell

"I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the
Grecian."

 Blake's Memorable Fancy on Plates 12 and 13 of Marriage of Heaven and Hell uses the Hebrew prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel to emphasize the point that a conventional mindset that follows the popular mores fails to understand the voice of prophecy. Isaiah and Ezekiel developed their ability to listen to the voice that spoke from within. To convey the message they received, they occasionally behaved in ways which startled their contemporaries. They sought to change their societies by demonstrating what were the consequences of continuing in behaviors which were leading to destruction. Blake further emphasized the technique of shocking people out of habitual nonproductive attitudes by indicating that Isaiah attributed his going naked and barefoot for three years to the influence of Diogenes who had practiced the same kinds of outrageous stunts to his Greek contemporaries.

Blake was not averse to looking to the Greek philosophy of Diogenes to reinforce his principle that man could not depend upon only data from his senses to interpret his environment and experience. Isaiah, Ezekiel and Diogenes risked being outcast from their societies in order to encourage men to have their intellect and courage opened to perceiving the limitations of conventional thinking. In writing Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake was engaging in similar strategies to those used by his heroes. He was presenting his ideas in forms and statements which were unacceptable to his public. He risked the ridicule of the critics and the indifference of potential readers by writing poetry which seemed ridiculous on the surface, and making images which appeared unpolished and obscure to current taste.

Fitzwilliam Museum
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Plate 21

We can judge that Blake had an affinity toward Diogenes from the label cynic which is often attached to the name of the fourth century BC philosopher. As a young man Blake wrote An Island in the Moon: satirical observations on the set of people with whom he was acquainted. He gave himself the name Quid the Cynic. The Greek word cynic was derived from a word meaning dog-like, and Diogenes was thought of as a dog by his critics. Perhaps the unexpected pictures of dogs in Blake's images is meant to point out his viewing whatever situation was being illustrated from a cynical perspective which he shared with Diogenes.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, PLATE 12, (E 38)
                    "A Memorable Fancy.                            
   The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked
them how they dared so roundly to assert. that God spake to them; 
and  whether they did not think at the time, that they would be 
misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
   Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite
organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in
every thing, and as  I was then perswaded. & remain confirm'd;
that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared
not for consequences but  wrote.
   Then I asked: does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?
   He replied.  All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination
this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable
of a firm perswasion of any thing.
   Then Ezekiel said. The philosophy of the east taught the first 
principles of human perception     some nations held one
principle for  the origin & some another, we of Israel taught
that the Poetic Genius (as  you now call it) was the first
principle and all the others merely  derivative, which was the
cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers  of other
countries, and prophecying that all Gods [PL 13] would at last be
proved. to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the
Poetic  Genius, it was this. that our great poet King David
desired so fervently  & invokes so patheticly, saying by this he
conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God.
that we cursed in his name all  the deities of surrounding
nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions
the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be
subject to the jews.
   This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for all 
nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what
greater subjection can be
   I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own
conviction.  After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with
his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost.  Ezekiel
said the same of his.
   I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the
Grecian.
   I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his
right  & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men
into a  perception of the infinite this the North American tribes
practise. & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience.
only for the sake of present  ease or gratification?"

AMERICA/EUROPE

 This is a lecture by Professor Edwin G Wilson to students at Wake Forest University:

You can follow pictures from Blake's America and Europe thru looking at the books at the Internet Archive as you listen to the lecture.

America - Internet Archive  

Europe - Internet Archive

In 2015 Yale Center for British Art presented an Exihibition titled Critique of Reason: Romantic Art,1760-1860. Included in the Exihibition were several of Blake's works.

The following quote is from the Yale Center for British Art, Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art,1760 -1860.

"At the height of the political and social upheaval of the French Revolution, William Blake printed his first full-scale prophetic book, America. A Prophecy. Rather than recounting the horrors that reverberated from France throughout Europe, his illustrated poem reflects on the revolutionary spirit in the American colonies, which had ended in American independence a decade earlier. Blake and many other radicals in the 1790s viewed the American Revolution as the beginning of a global process of liberating nations from superstition and despotism. Although America. A Prophecy is rooted in recent events, the text and accompanying plates do not offer a historical chronology but rather transform history into a mythical narrative of universal relevance."

I think I was most impressed by Professor Wilson's description of Orc since my association of Orc has been as Los and Enithirmon's jealous son as shown in this picture.

National Gallery Victoria

Book of Urizen

Plate 21

However I need to think of Orc more as the Energy, Freedom, Youth, and Desire motivating the Rebel.

Yale Center for British Art

America

Plate 10

LIMITED & ETERNAL

British Museum
Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

First posted Jan 2019

Near the end of his final book, Jung reached some conclusions on the ultimate questions facing man.

From C. G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 325:
"The decisive question for man is this: Is he related to something infinite or not?
...
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that there is in this life a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.
...
Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other."

Perhaps Blake would have quibbled if he had heard Jung's statement that man breaks through to awareness of the unity of the limited and the eternal, through consciousness of his constraints. But both men were struggling to reconcile the poles of a paradox. Man experiences himself as divided, as living in two worlds - the sordid world of the survival of the fittest, and the divine world of innocence where 'all things work together for good.' One which imprisons him in time and space and one which invites him to soar in his imagination.

Reconciling the opposite poles of the dilemma may have come more naturally to Blake because he spoke the language of poetry whereas Jung spoke the language of science. Blake provided us with first hand images in metaphor and pictures to facilitate the experience of reconciliation. Jung analyzed dreams and myths for the material that supported ideas and concepts which he formulated intellectually.   

---

All Religions are One, (E 1)
 "The Religions of all Nations are derived from
each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is
every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy."

All Religions are One, (E 1)
  As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) So
all Religions & as all similars have one source 
  The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius

There is No Natural Religion, (E 2)
  The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite
& himself Infinite
     Conclusion,   If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic
character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the
ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat
the same dull round over again
     Application.   He who sees the Infinite in all things sees
God.  He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
 Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is"

Marriage of Heaven and Hell,Plate 13, (E 39)
 "I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his
right  & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men
into a  perception of the infinite" 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39)
 "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear  to man as it is: infinite.
   For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks of his cavern."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 18, (E 41)
"By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke 
of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun,
black but shining[;] round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd
vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather
swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals
sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd
composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the
air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said,
between the black & white spiders 
  But now, from between the black & white spiders a cloud and
fire burst and rolled thro the deep blackning all beneath, so
that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible
noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest,
till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a
cataract of blood mixed with fire and not many stones throw from
us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent.
at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery
crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden
rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advancing toward [PL 19] us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
  My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind." 

SONG OF LIBERTY

Blake Archive

Original in Fitzwilliam Museum

Copy H, Plate 24

Thanks to Geoffrey Keynes for his introduction and commentary in William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Introduction - commentary by Keynes

 "On the third plate he had stated the doctrine of contraries - Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate. Without these contraries there could be no progression, that is, human thought and life need the stimulus of active and opposing forces to give them creative movement. In the light of this principle Blake gave the qualities, Good and Evil, meanings opposite to their their usual acceptation, and in the fourth plate announced in plain terms how the wrong interpretation had arisen, stemming from conventional moral codes. To him passive acceptance was evil, active opposition was good. This is the key to the paradoxes and inversions of which the whole work consists. Angels and Devils change places. Good is Evil. Heaven is Hell. Through freely using satire and paradox, Blake gives this book some of the most explicit statements of his mental attitudes, which he elaborated in the later Prophetic Books and restated more clearly in the phrases of the Laocoon plate in 1820. Page xi

"It is important to remember while reading the book that there are two primary features throughout - satire and personal philosophy. Blake is neither being flippant no too serious; the Marriage has much wit and good humor mingled with the expression of deeply felt personal convictions." Page xi

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 24, (E  44)

"One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression

Plate 25

Song of Liberty
1.  The Eternal Female groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
2.  Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
3  Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutter across the ocean! France rend down thy dungeon;  
4.  Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
5.  Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling, 
6.  And weep! 
7.  In her trembling hands she took the new, born terror howling;
8.  On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the
atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king! 
9.  Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the
jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield,
forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and 
[PL 26] hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
11. The fire, the fire, is falling!
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London. enlarge thy
countenance; O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and
wine; O African! black African! (go. winged thought widen his
forehead.) 
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun
into the western sea.
14. Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary, element roaring
fled away:
15. Down rushd beating his wings in vain the jealous king: his
grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans,
among helms, and shields, and chariots horses, elephants:
banners, castles, slings and rocks,
16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's
dens.
17. All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded
emerge round the gloomy king,
18. With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the
waste wilderness [PL 27] he promulgates his ten commands,
glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the
morning plumes her golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony
law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night,
crying

  Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease.

          Chorus

  Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly
black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy.  Nor his accepted
brethren whom, tyrant, he calls free; lay the bound or build the
roof.  Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that
wishes but acts not!
  For every thing that lives is Holy"
 ____________________

Chorus - Paraphrase

Liberty requires the removal of restraints which prevent the expression of joy. Accepting the designation of free when the tryrant is restricting freedom with political and religious restraints would set limits to liberty. Pretense which hides desire behind deceit destroys liberty no matter what the name.

It is life expressed through physical action and mental imagination that impart the divine to all creation. 

________________

Out of the destruction of the old system came the new. Song of Liberty began with a birth whose cry was 'heard over all the Earth.' It ended with the commandments being stomped to dust by the revolutionary force which released the energy of a new age. Liberty was not to be attained until the opposition to it had been removed. Blake systematically enumerated, in poetic language, aspects of the society in which he lived which kept him and his contempories in chains.

_____________

A Song of Liberty - Plates 25-27, commentary by Keynes

"In the sixteeenth sentence of the Song Blake added to the Rintrah of 'The Argument' one more of his personifications of abstract ideas by the name 'Urthona'. This is one of the 'Four Zoas' of Blake's conception of  Man's nature: Tharmas, his body; Urizen, his reason; Luvah, his emotions; Urthona, his imagination, All of these are explained only later in later writings, yet Blake was content to throw in one of the Zoas, unexplained, among the consequences of Revolution, perhaps because it must have been the most important result of all. Urthona concerned Art and the Divinity of Man and worked darkly in the 'dens' of the subconscious mind, but would be liberated by the collapse of Tyranny." 

LIBERTY

First posted Sept 2020

  Blake Archive

Orginal in British Museum

Jerusalem

Plate 26

Blake's Song of Liberty is often thought of in terms of support for the revolutionary spirit which could liberate man from political oppression. But this type of liberation has proven to be of a cyclical nature. Although man may temporarily acquire greater freedom by throwing off the tyranny under which he lives, he soon submits to rulers and laws which deprive him of his freedom. Blake was less interested in ending the recurring cycle of political control which kept man bound in the physical world, than he was in breaking out of the mental cycle which keeps him trapped mentally by finding repetitious patterns necessary.

Northrop Frye presents the question asked by Nietzsche: 'is the limit we see there really a limit.' Is it possible to transcend the barrier which we fear to cross? There is a New Song to be sung, but we cannot sing it unless we can look at one another not as 'the other' but as 'my other self.' In a way this would represent a return because we all crossed this barrier in the opposite direction when as infants we first discerned that we were separate from the mother who was the source of milk and warmth and the comforting touch.

There have been periods in history when man's self-perception changed. These events were evolutions of consciousness which permanently opened the psyche to new abilities. They altered the mind of man and the physical world followed as a result. The job of the individual is to follow his imagination as it leads to another dimension.

In The Great Code, Page 232-3, Northrop Frye writes about the conditions which inhibit man from achieving his potential:

"As soon as we begin to wonder whether, to use Nietzsche's phrase again, the limit we see there really is a limit, we find ourselves stumbling over the traditional Christian doctrine of 'original sin.' This doctrine holds that since the fall of Adam human life has been cursed with a built in inertia that will forever prevent man from fulfilling his destiny without divine help, and that that help can be described only in terms of the external and the objective. From our present vantage point we can characterize the conception of original sin more precisely as man's fear of freedom and his resentment of the discipline and responsibility that freedom brings.

"Thus in Milton ...liberty is the chief thing that the Gospel has to bring to man. But man for Milton does not and cannot 'naturally' want freedom, he gets it only because God wants him to have it. What man naturally wants is to collapse back into the master-slave duality, of which the creator-creature duality is perhaps a projection. Paradise Lost tells again the fall of Adam to explain, among other things, the failure of the Puritan Revolution as Milton saw it. 

"..If Milton's view of the Bible as a manifesto of human freedom has anything to be said for it, one would expect it to be written in a language that would smash these structures beyond repair, and let some genuine air and light in. But of course anxiety is very skillful at distorting languages".

Jerusalem, Plate 26, (E 171)
" SUCH VISIONS HAVE APPEARD TO ME 
     AS I MY ORDERD RACE HAVE RUN 
      JERUSALEM IS NAMED LIBERTY 
       AMONG THE SONS OF ALBION

Songs and Ballads, (E 473)
"Why should I care for the men of thames
Or the cheating waves of charterd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear
That the hireling blows into my ear

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames     
Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs
The Ohio shall wash his stains from me    
I was born a slave but I go to be free"   

Songs and Ballads, (E 472)
[How to know Love from Deceit]

"Love to faults is always blind
Always is to joy inclind                             
Lawless wingd & unconfind                    
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceit to secresy confind                       
Lawful cautious & refind                         
To every thing but interest blind             
And forges fetters for the mind"