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?"

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" 

SWEDENBORG

First posted June 2022

Library of Congress

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 3

 Quote from an earlier post by Larry:

"In the 18th century Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish scientist, philosopher and religionist, had a very high reputation. In London a 'new church' sprang up espousing his values. William Blake's parents were members of the New Church. That probably explains several interesting things about Blake's early life. For example his father appeared to be about as permissive as the average modern father in our culture today, but very atypical for his generation.

Blake was imbued with a great many of the famous man's values, particularly his esoteric religious ones. As a young adult Blake found many of the same ideas among the great thinkers of the ages. He thus became less dependent on Swedenborg's thought forms. With MHH Plates 21 and 22 he declared his independence of his childhood teacher.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, (E 42)

"Plate 21
  I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident
insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:
  Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it
is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books"

Plate 22

 "Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new
truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.
  And now hear the reason.  He conversed with Angels who are
all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion,
for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions.
  Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all
superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no
further."

Perhaps the chief objection of the mature Blake was that Swedenborg had a positive demeanor re the established church. But one of the things that stayed with Blake was Swedenborg's concept of the Divine Humanity." 

____________________

Here is a section of An Interview Conducted with Kathleen Raine on July 12, 1993 by Donald E. Stanford:

interview 

"Stanford: Why did he leave the Church of the New Jerusalem? 

Raine: Ah, that’s a good question. He wasn’t a churchman really. But he remained to the end of his life a Swedenborgian. This is this much-disputed Blake system. The scholars all scratch their heads about this; but it’s no problem. If you read the “Everlasting Gospel,” which is one of his latest works, it is in fact a point-by-point summary of the five leading beliefs of the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem, and in his interviews with Crabb Robinson, Robinson asked him about Swedenborg, and Blake said that he was a sent and inspired man, and then added, “but sometimes inspired men go beyond their commission from God.” He followed the Swedenborgian teaching. In fact, we’re all deeply familiar with the phrase “Divine Humanity,” but this phrase is not Blake’s invention; this is Swedenborg. And the Grand Man of the heavens, the one in many, and many in one, of all human souls — this is Swedenborg, and Blake uses this concept in a very beautiful passage in the Four Zoas in which he talks about man contracting our exalted senses with the multitude and expanding what we hold as one, as one man, all the universal family. Swedenborg’s greatest idea, I think, was this of the one in many, and many in one, and the divine presence in man. It was a really very wonderful idea because for him, the Divine Humanity was the eternal Christ, not the historical Christ. That was the Divine Humanity of whom Blake speaks and writes and speaks of as “Jesus the Imagination.” This is purely Swedenborgian. He disagreed with Swedenborg only in one respect: He said Swedenborg put all the good in heaven and the sinners in hell and didn’t realize that both the good and the evil are included in the Divine Humanity who transcends good and evil. That is what The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is about. Point-by-point, it’s quite a funny book. It takes up Swedenborg and his memorable experiences—it’s a running discussion with Swedenborg in semi-satirical terms, but although he poked fun at Swedenborg in certain respects, nevertheless, his system is pure Swedenborgian. I’m sure the only reason why everyone doesn’t know this is that the works of Swedenborg are so boring to read that none of the academics have read them, and I don’t blame them."

Descriptive Catalogue,(E 544)

   "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 [P 45] 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."

Annotations to Reynolds,(E 658) 

 "The Ancients did not mean to Impose when they  affirmd 
their  belief  in Vision & Revelation  Plato was in Earnest. 
Milton was in Earnest.  They believd that God did Visit Man
Really & Truly & not as Reynolds pretends" 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3, (E 34)
  "As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is
the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes folded up. 

Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into
Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap:
  Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
  From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
  Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell." 

Milton, Plate 22 [24], (E 117)

"O Swedenborg! strongest of men, the Samson shorn by the Churches!
Shewing the Transgresors in Hell, the proud Warriors in Heaven:
Heaven as a Punisher & Hell as One under Punishment:
With Laws from Plato & his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods,
In Albion; & to deny the value of the Saviours blood.
But then I rais'd up Whitefield, Palamabron raisd up Westley,    

And these are the cries of the Churches before the two Witnesses' 
Faith in God  the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:
Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross
The Witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City
No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden under Foot:       
He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Westley; were they Prophets
Or were they Idiots or Madmen? shew us Miracles!
Plate 23 [25]
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their lifes whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death
Awake thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity Albion awake
The trumpet of Judgment hath twice sounded: all Nations are awake
But thou art still heavy and dull: Awake Albion awake!" 

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 546) 

 "The spiritual Preceptor, an experiment Picture.

THIS subject is taken from the visions of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Universal Theology, [P 53] No. 623.  The Learned, who strive to
ascend into Heaven by means of learning, appear to Children like
dead horses, when repelled by the celestial spheres.  The works
of this visionary are well worthy the attention of Painters and 
Poets; they are foundations for grand things; the reason they 
have not been more attended to, is, because corporeal demons 
have gained a predominance; who the leaders of these are, will 
be shewn below.  Unworthy Men who gain fame among Men, 
continue to govern mankind after death, and in their spiritual 
bodies, oppose the spirits of those, who worthily are famous; 
and as Swedenborg observes, by entering into disease and 
excrement, drunkenness and concupiscence, they possess
themselves of the bodies of mortal men, and shut the doors of
mind and of thought, by placing Learning above Inspiration, O
Artist! you may disbelieve all this, but it shall be at your own
peril."

TITLE PAGE MHH

Fitzwilliam Museum

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Copy I,  Plate 1

Printed 1827

Insight From The Unholy Bible: Blake, Jung and the Collective Unconscious, 

by June Singer

"Blake serves notice that in this little book we must expect the unexpected."  

Page 43

June Singer begins her sturdy of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by describing the title page of his book. At the top of the page is a scene which includes the first three words of the title and images of two couples under leafless trees. The woman of the couple to the right is prone on the ground, the man is kneeling beside her with a babe in his arms. Singer calls this scene the Earth. She states that "Blake gives less space to the earth than to the underworld because to him the daily activity of conscious life was the palest part of existence." She sees that the figures in this space "approch precariously close to the rim of the bottomless depths from which individual consciousness emerges." 

The middle section of the picture is divided into the left side representing the "sinister, dark, or hidden side", covered with flames of Hell. On the right side are dark and bright clouds of Heaven. This section symboizes the abyss into the pairs of opposites, represented as couples, have fallen from the earth above.

In the lower section we enter "the limitless underground regions below the threshold of consciousness." This is the area Blake felt compelled to enter:

"When Blake comes to a place in his life where his understanding of the world about him - the problems of nations in their struggle for freedom from tyranny, the travail of the working people of his own England trying to maintain themselves against the incursion of the machine - and the lack of satisfaction in his personal life and especially in his marriage, bring him to the point of despair, he sinks his own roots deeper into a place of quiet darkness where he can hope to find restoration." He was led to explore Heaven and Hell and "the archetypal opposites from which they sprang."

The lowest part of the picture in which the word HELL appears, contains male and female figures embracing. Singer postulates that Blake "consciously identifies" with the male figure on the right, the side of consciousness. The darker unconscious side of his personality is represented by the female on the left. Singer states that the embrace "is in reality a confrontation between the male ego and the 'other,' between the male who sees himself as a rational being able to perform successfully in the manner prescribed by the social order and the female afire with energy which knows no bounds or limitation...Reason and Energy are seen as the two contraries which struggle within Blake, and whose interaction so deeply concerns him in this work." 

LARRY'S MHH

Blake Archive

Original in Library of Congress

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 1, Copy D

From Larry's Blake book:

          

Blake wrote a strange document called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which he stood the dominant consciousness on its head.

          The Marriage of Heaven and Hell embodies new communicative skills which Blake used to raise consciousness, not among his contemporaries, few of whom ever saw it, but among later generations.  In Marriage of Heaven and Hell and in subsequent prophecies he describes a world of thought, imagination and reality foreign to the socially conditioned mind.  He deconditions us and reprograms us, or in his language he attempts to raise us "into a perception of the infinite." (Cf Blake's conversation with Ezekiel in Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Erdman p. 39)

          Marriage of Heaven and Hell celebrates Blake's discovery of his identity as a prophet and of the use of irony, which he likely learned from Isaiah.  He called himself a devil, but that does not have the satanic implications that simpletons have ascribed to it; all his life Blake showed implacable enmity to Satan.  Still perhaps his greatest weapon was the ability to turn conventional ideas upside down and let us see another reality beside the prevailing group-think. "Without Contraries is no progression". (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3; Erdman p. 34)

          For example laws are for the protection of society - or sometimes for the advantage of those who make them.  Wealth is virtue - or sometimes thievery.  Worship is life giving - unless it's idolatrous. War is terrible - but also profitable.  These are called antinomies.  Blake called them contraries, and the "Proverbs
of Hell" in Marriage of Heaven and Hell express his realization that much of the world's thinking is illegitimately one sided. In a strange way Blake's vision showed him the other side of the coin.  This is what he shared in the decades when he fought back.

 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 22, (E 43)

"A Memorable Fancy

  Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire. who arose before an
Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words.
  The worship of God is.  Honouring his gifts in other men
each according to his genius. and loving the [PL 23] greatest men
best, those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there
is no other God.
  The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering
himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then
replied,
  Thou Idolater, is not God One? & is not he visible in Jesus
Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of
ten commandments and are not all other men fools, sinners, &
nothings?
  The Devil answer'd; bray a fool in a morter with wheat. yet
shall not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the
greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now
hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the
sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn
away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of
others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making
a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples,
and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against
such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist
without breaking these ten commandments: Jesus was all virtue,
and acted from im[PL 24]pulse: not from rules.
  When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out
his arms embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose
as Elijah.

  Note.  This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my
particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well  
  I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no.

  One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression"

MEMORABLE FANCY

Harvard University, Houghton Library

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 4, Copy G

The overall goal of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was to break down habitual patterns of thought which orthodox teachings instill. Blake used unorthodox techniques to tear down our paradigns of thinking which limit and restrict our ability to develop out imaginations. How better to teach us to think imaginatively than to display his own ability to create a work which introduces fresh and shocking means of writing poetry. He identified himself with the Devils instead of with the Angels; he provided the Proverbs of Hell to give question to traditional good advice; he created scenarios which invert accepted roles with which we identify. We may be left a bit confused but willing to consider whether "every thing that lives is Holy."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 6, (E 35)

"A Memorable Fancy.                        

   As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of buildings or garments.
   When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a
flat  sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty
Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. 

   How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
   Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

In Blake's Apocalypse Harold Bloom sheads light on Blake's statements in the above passage. On page 82 he states:

"To walk among those fires is to compose a poem or engrave a picture, and to collect the Proverbs of Hell, as Blake proceeds to do, is to express the laws of artistic creation in a series of aphorisms.  When Blake came home from his proverb-collecting "...on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds: hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.    

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,   

Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

Bloom, on page 83, continues to expand our understanding of Blake's poetic
language:

"The Devil is the artist William Blake, at work engraving the Marriage, and the 
corroding fires refer metaphorically both to his engraving technique and the satiric 
function of the Marriage. The flat sided steep, frowning over the present world, is 
fallen human consciousness... The stony cavern of the mind has been broken open 
by Blake's art; the imagination rises from the mind's abyss and seeks the more 
expanded senses than the five making up that abyss.
...The idea of raising our intensity of perception and so triumphing over nature 
through nature is the central idea of the Proverbs of Hell."

SATAN REVEALED

First posted February 2012

LEVIATHAN & BEHEMOTH

Northrop Frye gives an explanation of the roles played by Leviathan and Behemoth in the chapter Blake's Reading of the Book of Job in Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake, edited by Angela Esterhammer. On Plate 15 Job is shown the monstrous forms of Leviathan and Behemoth. Frey's key to extricating oneself from the control of these forces is a change of perspective. Accepting the view of the world from within these monsters distorts vision. Seeing them for what they are is achieved by distancing oneself and looking from outside the system at the sources of destruction.

Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job

Butts Set 1805

From Wikipedia Commons

Page 377
... "The next step is to realize that Satan is the enemy of God, that his rule is not inevitable but is to be fought by God's creative power, and that this creative power exists nowhere at present except in man's creative power. At that point we pass into plate 15, where there are only two levels, God and Job united on top, and below them the cycle of nature inhabited by Behemoth and Leviathan.

"These monsters are identical with Satan, except that, being Satan revealed instead of Satan mysterious and disguised as God, they represent, not so much the natural miseries of drought and famine and pestilence, as the social and political miseries symbolized mainly, in the Bible, by Egypt and Babylon, and in the Book of Job itself by the Sabean Raiders. Ezekiel (chapter 29) identifies the Leviathan with the Pharaoh of Egypt, and Daniel (chapter 4) tells how Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon turned into Behemoth, the subject of several Blake pictures. The political aspect of the monsters is brought out in the phrases emphasized by Blake on Plate 15: Behemoth is 'chief of the ways of God' and Leviathan is 'King over all the Children of Pride' [Job 40:19, 41:34]. As the power in man that makes for tyranny rather than civilization, they can be, if not destroyed, at least brought under some measure of control, like the Blatant Beast in Spencer. At the same time the root of tyranny, for Blake, is still natural religion, the establishing of the order of nature, whether theistically or atheistically regarded, as the circumference of human effort (the original meaning of 'Urizen'). Hence we are all born inside the belly of Leviathan, the world of stars and indefinite places, but those who can see Leviathan for what he is have been placed outside him, like Jonah, and like Job in plate 15. After Job has attained this enlightenment, the prophecy of Jesus is fulfilled and Satan falls from heaven (pl. 16)."

Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Plate 17, (E 41)
"So I remaind with him sitting in the twisted [PL 18] root of
an oak. he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head
downward into the deep:
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." 

PROVERBS OF HELL

Blake Archive 

Original in Fitzwilliam Museum

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 Plate 10, Copy H

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was an early production of William Blake. It was begun in 1789, the year Songs of Innocence was completed. There are twelve known copies, all but one in museums or libraries. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is Blake's only satiric work among his Illuminated Books. 

Sir Geoffrey Keynes provided an Introduction and Commentary for a volume of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell produced by The Trianon Press, Paris. This useful book contains the text, images of all pages, and a respected scholar's insights into the text and illustrations 'keeping the meaning related as closely as possible to Blake's personal standpoint.'

Here are some of Keynes' comments on the image on Page 10, which is shone above:

"The scene shows three figures at the foaming edge of the Sea of Time and Space. In the center the Devil is kneeling with a scroll lying across his knees and presumably carrying the Proverbs. He is pointing impatiently to the first lines to instruct a slow-witted Angel industriously writing them down in a book, while probably misunderstanding them. Behind the Devil is a kind of throne or judgement seat from which he seems to have descended in his impatience. Sprouting from his back are spiky wings, their points directed respectively to the words 'Enough' and 'Too Much'. To his left and behind him is seated a contrasted figure, alert and interested, with his own script nearly finished across his knees while he looks to see how the stupid Angel is progressing. Erdman suggests that this is 'an apprentice Devil', perhaps Blake himself... The design seems to imply that the stupid Angel must receive and understand the evil Devil's Proverbs if he is to be saved."

Above the illustration are these nine proverbs:

"The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
     hands & feet Proportion.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
     contemptible.

The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing

     was white.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.       

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
     Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires 

Where man is not nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
     believ'd."

On pages 7-10 there are 70 Proverbs of Hell.

REASON & EMOTION

For some reason this post from July 2010 has gotten more than a thousand hits in the past.

Blake Archive

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 5

Erdman, in The Illuminated Blake
says: "Phaeton-like, down hurdle a naked man and sword and a horse with saddle cloth and broken chariot wheel...The man's spread hands are braced to hit the ground, but it is already in flames. Reason must have forgotten to let the horse do the pulling; a sword is not a bridle. But Energy must have restraint. Between them they have let the sun fall, connoting universal ruin."

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was written in 1791 when Blake was a young man; he might be called an angry young man.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 5, (E 34)
"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs
is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or
reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restraind it by degrees becomes passive
till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the
Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the com-
mand of the heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan
and his children are call'd Sin & Death
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd
Satan. For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was
cast out. but the Devils account is, that the Messiah
fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the
Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason
may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible
being no other than he, who dwells in flaming fire.
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a
Ratio of the five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when
he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of
Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and
of the Devils party without knowing it"

Blake was continually striving to free his imagination from constraints. The internal constraints of which he was most aware (excluding the selfhood) were misguided reason and emotion. In Plate 5 of Marriage of Heaven and Hell he expressed the concern that reason would succeed in restraining the emotions to the point that the imagination was bound. Emotion or desire is the source of energy which is required for the creative process.

As a poet, Blake identified with Milton whose Paradise Lost was of consuming interest to Blake. In this Plate Blake dealt with the poet's work (his own and Milton's), Biblical characters who becomes fictional characters for both the poets, and the abstract ideas of reason and emotion.

Blake became so interested in correcting the misconceptions of his friend (his spiritual, intellectual but not corporeal friend), that he addressed the issue in his poem Milton. Since Milton died 83 years before Blake was born, this was a friendship on the level of Eternity; time was not of the essence.

The crux of Milton's error in Blake's system is stated concisely as:
"But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!"

In Blake the Father is the Divine Humanity, in whose Image man is created; the Son is the Divine Vision, God in Man, the Incarnation; and the Holy Spirit is the Divine Body, the Human Imagination, the activity of expressing the Divine.

Or other terms used by Blake:
Father = Urizen = reason
Son = Luvah = emotions
Holy Spirit = Los = intuition or imagination
Unified man = Tharmas = body

SOUL HOVERING OVER BODY

British Museum

Small Book of Designs

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate14 

"A Flaming Sword/Revolving every way"

 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 4, (E 34)

                 "The voice of the Devil

  All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.
  1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
  2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that
Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
  3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies.
  But the following Contraries to these are True
  1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age
  2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is
the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
  3 Energy is Eternal Delight"                

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39)

"But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his
soul, is to  be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the
infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and
medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the
infinite which was hid."
America, Plate 6, (E 53)
"Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.      
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease." 
Milton, Plate 14 [15], (E 108) 
"O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come?
Tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death.
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.       
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate
And I be siez'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood"
Jerusalem, Plate 71, (E 224)
"And above Albions Land was seen the Heavenly Canaan
As the Substance is to the Shadow: and above Albions Twelve Sons
Were seen Jerusalems Sons: and all the Twelve Tribes spreading
Over Albion. As the Soul is to the Body, so Jerusalems Sons,
Are to the Sons of Albion: and Jerusalem is Albions Emanation    
What is Above is Within, for every-thing in Eternity is translucent:
The Circumference is Within: Without, is formed the Selfish Center
And the Circumference still expands going forward to Eternity.
And the Center has Eternal States! these States we now explore."
Auguries of innocence, (E 429)
"We are led to Believe a Lie 
When we see not Thro the Eye"    
Laocoon, (E 273)

"Adam is only The Natural Man & not the Soul or Imagination

The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION."

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 86, (E 368)

"Los furious answerd. Spectre horrible thy words astound my Ear
With irresistible conviction I feel I am not one of those 
Who when convincd can still persist. tho furious.controllable
By Reasons power. Even I already feel a World within
Opening its gates & in it all the real substances
Of which these in the outward World are shadows which pass away
Come then into my Bosom & in thy shadowy arms bring with thee   
My lovely Enitharmon. I will quell my fury & teach
Peace to the Soul of dark revenge & repentance to Cruelty

So spoke Los & Embracing Enitharmon & the Spectre
Clouds would have folded round in Extacy & Love uniting
PAGE 87 
But Enitharmon trembling fled & hid beneath Urizens tree
But mingling together with his Spectre the Spectre of Urthona 
Wondering beheld the Center opend by Divine Mercy inspired    
He in his turn Gave Tasks to Los Enormous to destroy          
That body he created but in vain for Los performd Wonders of labour 
They Builded Golgonooza Los labouring builded pillars high   
And Domes terrific in the nether heavens for beneath
Was opend new heavens & a new Earth beneath & within
Threefold within the brain within the heart within the loins
A Threefold Atmosphere Sublime continuous from Urthonas world  
But yet having a Limit Twofold named Satan & Adam"   

Blake asks us to discern not define. What can we discern in this image and in these passages concerning the soul?   

It may seem that the upper figure is the soul and the lower figure is the body. But it appears that the upper figure discrens the lower figure, and not the other way around. Blake states "that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses." In the image the soul figure appears to discern the sleeping body, perhaps by "melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid." It is the lower figure, apparently sleeping, who needs to "Rise and look out," perhaps he is the "inchained soul shut up in darkness." But how should this be accomplished other than by "self annihilation and eternal death."

If we see the image with our natural eye, we see not that 'What is Above is Within, for every-thing in Eternity is translucent."  Seeing "thro" the eye we discern that "The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION." Like Los we must "quell [our] fury & teach Peace to the Soul of dark revenge & repentance to Cruelty" so that we may see  "new heavens & a new Earth beneath & within" opening even in this life.