CAVE

Fitzwilliam Museum

Visions of Daughters of Albion

Plate 1

In Part 2 of Words with Power, Frye devotes the four chapters to four metaphoric topics: the Mountain, the Garden, the Cave and the Furnace. He calls these chapters "essays on comparative mythology, organized around four primary concerns: the concern to make and create, the concern to love, the concern to sustain oneself and assimilate the environment, with its metaphorical kernal of food, and the concern to escape from slavery and restraint." (Page 139)  

Cave

The study of the Cave or the lower world begins with where we left off. In the post titled Mountain,  Jacob's ladder stretched between two levels of consciousness, 'planted in Jacob's dreaming brain.' The cave signifies the sub-conscious or supressed energies which are nearer the surface in the dreaming state. To reach the deeper levels of the lower world we are required to make a descent.

Frye

"the concern to sustain oneself and assimilate the environment, with its metaphorical kernal of food" (Page 139)

"We have now to consider the relation this world to a lower world. Here again we shall find both an enlarging and expanding of consciousness, corresponding to Jacob's ladder, ideological adaptations of it like the chain of being, and demonic parodies of it, corresponding to the Tower of Babel." (Page 229)

"The waking consciousness is considerably more docile than the more repressed forms of awareness, and consequently most structures of authority tend to focus on it and try to make sure that repressed impulses remain repressed. As usual there are resistance movements among poets...They drew also on a largley repressed oral tradition, repressed because the art of writing was controlled  mainly by more official authority." (Page 236)   

"The original descent is complemented by a creative assent, in the form of a revolutionary release of repressed elements, whether political of psychological...In the Old Testament the central image of this emancipating revolt is the Exodus; in the New Testament it is the Resurrection, Christ's escape from death as well as hell." (Page 238)

Blake was "the first person in the modern world to see the events of his day in their mythical and imaginative context. He realized the old mythical universe, in its ideological form as a rationalizing of traditional authority, was dead, and that it was time for a new emphasis in mythology that would accomodate the revolutionary movements he saw rising all around him. Being a poet and not a dialecticion, Blake also understood better than most others the metaphorical shape that the new construct would have...Blake saw that as long a man lives within a hierarchical myth without really knowing it, his whole behavior will be conditioned beyond the point of resistance: a rebellion against one hierarchy will mearly set up another one." (Page 243)

The work of the Printing house in Hell takes place not in the conscious mind of the ego but in the deeper recesses of the brain where supressed memories have been hidden. Blake is suggesting that before he has anything to transmit through words and images he must search through the contents of the brain which resides within the cave of his skull where Dragons do the word of clearing away 'All that can be annihilated' for it 'must be annihilated.' The internal process will continue in stages until the contents which germinate within his psyche find a receptive audience in the external world.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 15, (E 39)
                            "A Memorable Fancy
   I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which
knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
   In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the
rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were
hollowing the  cave, 
   In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the 
cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious
stones.
   In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of
air, 
he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were
numbers  of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense
cliffs.
   In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around
&  melting the metals into living fluids.
   In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals 
into the expanse.
   There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth
chamber,  and took the forms of books & were arranged in
libraries."

The following passage indicates that it is Vala, the exterior world, that brings forth the Imaginative Human Form from her secret Cave. As the emanation of Luvah she is an expression of human emotions which are as likely to be destructive as constructive.

Jerusalem, Plate 29 [33], (E 176)

"The Imaginative Human Form is but a breathing of Vala
I breathe him forth into the Heaven from my secret Cave          
Born of the Woman to obey the Woman O Albion the mighty
For the Divine appearance is Brotherhood, but I am Love"

Four Zoas, Night VI, Page 74, (E 351)

"Four Caverns rooting downwards their foundations thrusting forth
The metal rock & stone in ever painful throes of vegetation
The Cave of Orc stood to the South a furnace of dire flames
Quenchless unceasing. In the west the Cave of Urizen             
For Urizen fell as the Midday sun falls down into the West
North stood Urthonas stedfast throne a World of Solid darkness
Shut up in stifling obstruction rooted in dumb despair
The East was Void. But Tharmas rolld his billows in ceaseless eddies
Void pathless beat with Snows eternal & iron hail & rain     
All thro the caverns of fire & air & Earth, Seeking
For Enions limbs nought finding but the black sea weed & sickning slime
Flying away from Urizen that he might not give him food
Above beneath on all sides round in the vast deep of immensity
That he might starve the sons & daughters of Urizen on the winds 
Making between horrible chasms into the vast unknown
All these around the world of Los cast forth their monstrous births
But in Eternal times the Seat of Urizen is in the South  
Urthona in the North Luvah in East Tharmas in West"

The emptiness of the void is not unproductive. It has the potential of becoming a womb in which the spirit may be nutured and grow into a fully developed fourfold human.

Milton, Plate 41[48], (E 143)

"Hence arose all our terrors in Eternity! & now remembrance
Returns upon us! are we Contraries O Milton, Thou & I            
O Immortal! how were we led to War the Wars of Death
Is this the Void Outside of Existence, which if enterd into
PLATE 42 [49]                  
Becomes a Womb? & is this the Death Couch of Albion
Thou goest to Eternal Death & all must go with thee

Jerusalem Frontispiece